Chapter 12
Calder
I stop hearing the conversation before I realize it's gone quiet. I’m not able to say exactly when the shift happened, whether she moved first or I moved first or whether it was just the silence between us filling up with something neither of us named.
The apartment settles warm and still around us while Arabella sits curled beside me beneath the blanket. Close. Too close. My hand still rests in her hair, the ends sliding absently through my fingers while she looks up at me slowly.
And suddenly the rest of the apartment disappears.
The lamp beside the couch throws soft light across her face. Her leg presses lightly against mine beneath the blanket. I can hear her breathing, slow and steady, and my body keeps leaning toward hers like distance stopped making sense somewhere along the line.
Arabella looks at me differently now. Softer somehow. Like she trusts me here.
The thought hits hard enough that my chest tightens.
She shifts slightly closer against the cushions without seeming aware she's doing it. Relaxed. Comfortable. Like being this close feels natural to her now.
Jesus Christ.
My fingers tighten slightly in her hair before sliding carefully through the strands again. The movement feels automatic now. Instinctive. Like my body stopped asking permission a while ago.
I glance toward her mouth before I can stop myself.
My body is already halfway there before my brain catches up.
Neither of us moves.
That somehow feels worse.
The apartment feels impossibly quiet around us. Every inch of space between us suddenly feels deliberate. I can feel the warmth of her breath now. See the way her eyes flick briefly toward my mouth. My pulse kicks hard enough that breathing stops feeling automatic.
One more movement.
That's all this would take.
I am about to kiss Arabella.
And the terrifying part is that nothing about it feels wrong.
My hand stays tangled lightly in her hair while she watches me quietly. Calm. Patient. Just there. Something in my chest gives way under the weight of it.
I don't want this moment to end.
I stayed too long here on purpose.
I could have left after coffee. After the first conversation. After the second time we both almost fell asleep talking. Instead I kept finding reasons to stay because the thought of leaving felt worse than staying.
Calm in a way I haven't been in years. Not after games. Not during travel. Not even inside my own apartment. But here, on her couch, with her tucked beside me beneath a blanket while city lights glow faintly outside the windows, my entire body loosens without permission.
Her apartment feels better than mine does. That's the real problem. Not wanting her. Wanting to stay. The realization pulls air sharply back into my lungs.
I still don't move.
Arabella watches me carefully now. Her breathing shifts slightly. My hand stays in her hair. One more second and I am going to kiss her. The certainty of it hits all at once.
That's the thing that finally scares me.
I don't think it would be a mistake. I pull back first. Not dramatically. Barely even physically. Just enough to interrupt the moment before I lose the ability to stop myself at all.
Arabella stills immediately. The shift is tiny. Still enough that I feel it. My hand slips slowly out of her hair. The warmth goes with it.
Jesus Christ.
The silence changes. Arabella watches me quietly. The awareness in her expression lands.
I drag one hand roughly across my jaw. Too close. We got too close.
"I should go," I say. The words come out rougher than usual.
Arabella's expression shifts slightly beneath the blanket. Small enough most people probably wouldn't notice. I notice. Guilt twists through my chest.
"It's late," I add.
Weak. Pointless.
We both know that's not the reason. Arabella nods once. Quiet.
"You should sleep."
The second the words leave my mouth I hate them. They sound wrong. Careful in a way that makes the apartment feel colder.
I stand too quickly. One second the apartment feels warm and dangerously soft. The next I'm reaching for my hoodie like distance alone will fix whatever just happened between us.
Get it together.
Arabella stays curled into the cushions watching me quietly. The awareness in her expression lands. Five minutes ago I was stretched beside her playing with her hair like I belonged there.
I grab my bag off the floor. Too fast. Too controlled.
"You don't have to rush out," Arabella says quietly.
The words stop me. I look at her automatically. Bad idea. She still looks soft from exhaustion, relaxed beneath the blanket, hair slightly messy from my hand. The sight hits.
I look away immediately.
"It's fine," I say.
Too quick. Too clipped.
I hear it the second it leaves my mouth. So does she. The softness drains out of the apartment after that. Painfully. I shoulder my bag and avoid looking at her for too long, because if I do I already know what happens.
I'll stay.
And staying right now feels dangerous in a way I don't know how to handle. Arabella doesn't react dramatically. That somehow makes it worse. She just goes quieter.
I know exactly what changed.
I almost stayed.
I make it all the way to the door before stopping. My hand closes around the handle. Then stays there. The apartment behind me is completely quiet. I can still feel her watching me. The awareness settles hard between my shoulder blades.
One more second.
That's all it would take. I could turn around. Walk back across the apartment. Sit back down beside her on that couch.
Kiss her properly. Slow enough to make her breath catch.
Slow enough that she'd melt into the cushions beneath me.
My brain supplies the image of her looking up at me afterward, flushed and wrecked and wanting more.
The thought hits hard enough that my grip tightens painfully around the door handle. Stay past that.
Stay.
The thought hits hard enough that my chest physically aches. I close my eyes briefly.
Jesus Christ.
I have never wanted to stay somewhere this badly before. I open the door and step through it before I talk myself into staying.
The cold air outside hits.
It should help. It doesn't. I walk too fast down the street with my hands shoved deep into my pockets. Every step away from the building feels wrong somehow. Like I left something important behind upstairs.
I drag one hand roughly back through my hair while city lights blur softly across the empty sidewalk.
Her apartment felt safer than mine does.
Warmer.
Quieter.
Not because of the apartment itself. Because she was in it. I think about the couch. The blanket. The sound of her laughing earlier. The way she relaxed beside me like she trusted me there. The way my own chest loosened when she did.
My own apartment will be empty when I get home.
I exhale sharply and keep walking.
The almost-kiss keeps replaying. Her eyes. Her breathing. The feeling of her hair sliding through my fingers.
Pulling away did nothing.
The distance only sharpens it. She's still there in my chest even now, twelve minutes away from her building, walking faster than I need to on an empty street.
I'll still show up tomorrow morning. Of course I will. I'll look for her the second I walk in. I'll notice whether she slept, whether she's annoyed at me, whether she avoids me or acts like tonight didn't happen.
I nearly laugh at myself.
Walking into the rink every morning already looking for her before I even hit the ice. Adjusting my drills around her skating patterns. Staying longer than I need to because she's still there and I don't particularly want to be anywhere she isn't.
I stop briefly at the corner and stare down the empty street.
There was a guy on the team three years ago.
Farrow. Good player. Exceptional in a back-to-back stretch when nothing could touch him.
Then someone got a photograph — him and whoever he was seeing, outside a venue after a loss, looking like the loss hadn't gone anywhere yet.
It ran for two weeks. The questions started.
His locker room changed. The way the coaching staff watched him changed.
Not because anything had actually happened — the relationship was fine, the person was fine — but because now it was a story, and stories don't go away.
Once the story exists, it follows you. Every game gets measured against it.
Every bad night is evidence. Every good night is despite it.
Farrow played two more seasons and then didn't.
I watched the whole thing from the next stall. I understood the lesson before anyone had to say it to me directly.
It was never about the relationship. It was about the photograph.
I also know I ended something at twenty-two because my shooting percentage dropped four points over three games and I couldn't separate the cause from the variable. It probably wasn't her. But I couldn't prove it wasn't. So I made the call the data suggested and I told myself that was discipline.
I've never been certain I was right about that.
She's a distraction. The thought lands flat and automatic. Familiar. Safe. A word I already know how to handle. I latch onto it.
Distraction.
That's all this is. That's what it has to be. I know how to handle distractions. You name them. You contain them. You walk away before they become important enough to cost you something.
That's the system. The problem is the word doesn't fit as cleanly as it should. Distraction implies something that pulls focus away from what matters.
But standing in her apartment tonight I wasn't distracted.
I was calmer than I've been in months. My shot timing has been sharper this week. My head clearer. I've been sleeping better.
I shove both hands harder into my pockets.
Distraction, I tell myself again. The certainty feels weaker this time. The street stays cold and empty around me. My apartment is twelve minutes away. Arabella is behind me. And somehow she still feels closer than anything waiting ahead of me does.
I keep walking.