Chapter 7
Theo
The knock on my apartment door came at eleven-thirty, long after I had given up on hearing from Luca.
I'd spent the last two hours staring at my phone. I drafted and deleted messages. Are you okay? Too desperate. We should talk. Too formal. Fuck you for treating me like nothing. Too honest.
I settled on silence and tried to convince myself I was fine with it.
The knock came again. Quieter this time. Almost hesitant.
I knew who it was before I opened the door. Something in my chest pulled tight—the same magnetic force that had been dragging me toward Luca Moretti since the day I crashed into him with a coffee.
He stood in my hallway looking wrecked. He was still in the dark jeans and Storm hoodie from earlier, his hair disheveled like he'd been running his hands through it for hours. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face pale.
"I'm sorry," he said before I could speak. "I'm so fucking sorry, Theo."
My ribs were healing, but they still ached when I breathed too deep. My heart was a different kind of bruise entirely.
"Come in." I stepped back, hating how easily I gave in. Hating how much I wanted him here despite everything.
Luca moved past me into my barely furnished apartment. He'd been here three times in three weeks—always after dark, always careful. He stood in the middle of my living room like he didn't know what to do with his hands.
I closed the door and leaned against it, arms crossed. Waiting.
"Tonight was..." He stopped, his jaw working. "The way I treated you at the bar. In the parking lot. It was wrong."
"Yeah. It was."
His eyes closed briefly. When they opened again, they were devastated. "You deserve better than being someone's secret."
"I knew what I was getting into." The words came out flat. "You made it clear from the start. Nothing public. I agreed."
"That doesn't make it right." Luca took a step toward me, then stopped himself.
"I watched you tonight. Laughing with Santos and Reid.
Being yourself. And I couldn't even stand next to you.
Couldn't touch you. Couldn't..." His voice cracked.
"I left because I was about to break in front of everyone. "
Something in my chest loosened a fraction. "You could have texted. Told me that."
"I was afraid if I texted, I would say things I can't take back." He ran a hand through his hair, making the mess worse. "Things that would make this harder for both of us."
"Harder than what?" I pushed off the door, closing half the distance between us. "Harder than standing in a parking lot listening to you tell me this doesn't mean anything?"
"I never said that." His voice went rough. "I have never said that."
"You don't have to. You show me every time you walk past me in the hallway like I'm a stranger. Every time you put three seats between us in the locker room. Every time—"
"I'm terrified." The words burst out of him. "Every fucking day I'm terrified that someone will see the way I look at you and know. That our teammates will figure it out. That management will decide I'm not captain material anymore. That I'll lose everything I've spent a decade building."
I knew he was scared. But hearing it laid bare like that—the raw fear in his voice—hit different.
"How long?" I asked quietly. "How long have you been carrying this?"
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he moved to my threadbare couch and sank down onto it, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
I followed. I sat beside him, close enough to feel his warmth but not touching.
"I was fourteen." His voice was barely above a whisper. "First year playing elite hockey. There was a kid. Sam. We were..." He swallowed hard. "We liked each other."
My heart clenched. I knew where this was going.
"Someone saw us making out. By the next morning, everyone knew."
"Jesus, Luca."
"I learned fast. Keep my head down. Don't look at anyone too long. Don't let anyone close enough to figure it out. By the time I made it to juniors, I had the mask perfected. Intense. Focused. Married to the game. No distractions. No complications. No risk."
He lifted his head. The look in his eyes gutted me.
"I've been that person for sixteen years, Theo. I don't know how to be anyone else anymore."
I wanted to touch him. I wanted to pull him close and promise it would be okay. But I needed him to finish this first.
"Then I showed up," I said softly.
"Then you showed up." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "With your smile and your complete inability to pretend you're someone you're not. And from the first day, you've been cracking me open."
"Is that why you pushed me so hard in training?"
"I was trying to make you hate me." He shook his head. "I thought if I was enough of an asshole, you'd keep your distance. But you just smiled at me and asked if that was all I had."
I felt my mouth curve. "You're going to have to work harder if you want me to hate you."
"I know." He turned toward me on the couch. The distance between us felt like miles. "The thing is, I don't want you to hate me. I want..." He stopped, something crumbling in his expression. "I want things I can't have."
"Like what?"
"Like touching you in public. Like taking you to dinner where people might see us. Like introducing you as..." He trailed off, looking lost. "I don't even know what word to use. What are we?"
It was the first time either of us had asked the question out loud.
"I don't know," I admitted. "We are something, though. Aren't we?"
"Yeah." His voice went rough again. "We are something."
The apartment was quiet except for the distant sound of traffic through the thin walls. My building wasn't much—peeling paint, unreliable heat, neighbors who played music too loud. But it was mine. And more importantly, it was private.
"I came out when I was sixteen," I said.
"Made it to college hockey because I was good enough that scouts overlooked the fact that I was openly bi.
But I lost friends. I had teammates refuse to share a locker room with me.
Got benched by coaches who didn't want to deal with the 'distraction.
'" I met his eyes. "When Chicago drafted me, I promised myself I wouldn't hide anymore.
That I had earned the right to be myself. "
"You did." Luca’s hand moved like he wanted to reach for me, then stopped halfway. "You're everything I've been too afraid to be."
"I'm not fearless, Luca. I'm just tired of being afraid."
"I don't know how to do what you do. How to be that brave."
"You fought for me." The memory of him dropping gloves flashed through my mind—Luca’s face transformed by rage, fists swinging, blood streaming from his split knuckle. "You lost control in front of twenty thousand people and every camera in the arena. That was brave."
"That was panic." But something shifted in his expression. "When I saw him hit you, when I heard you go down—I stopped thinking. I just needed to make him hurt for touching you."
"I want this," I said quietly. "Whatever this is. But I need to know it's real for you. That I'm not just..."
"You're not just anything." Luca finally closed the distance. His hand came up to cup my jaw. His thumb traced my cheekbone with devastating gentleness. "You're everything I've been terrified to want."
His eyes searched mine. I saw all of it there—the fear and the longing and the war he'd been fighting with himself since the day we met.
"Kiss me," I said.
He did. It was slower. Deeper. Luca kissed me like he was memorizing the shape of my mouth, the taste of me, the way I breathed his name against his lips. His hand slid into my hair, holding me steady while his tongue swept against mine.
Heat pooled low in my belly. My hands found his waist, pulling him closer until we were pressed together on my cheap couch.
"Theo." He broke the kiss, breathing hard. "If we do this—I need you to know I'm falling for you. I have been since you looked at me like I was worth something more than a captain’s C."
My heart cracked open. "Say it again."
"I am falling for you." His forehead pressed against mine. "And it's terrifying because I don't know how to give you what you deserve. But I can't stop. I can't walk away from this. From you."
I kissed him again, harder this time. I poured everything I couldn't say into the slide of lips and tongue and breath. He responded with a low sound that vibrated through his chest into mine.
"Bedroom," I managed between kisses.
We barely made it. We stood in the doorway shedding clothes between desperate touches. My fingers shook on his zipper. His hands trembled as he pulled my shirt over my head, careful of my still-healing ribs.
"Are you..." He stopped, looking at the fading bruises across my side. Purple and yellow now instead of black. His expression went devastated. "Does it still hurt?"
"Not much anymore. And I don't care." I grabbed his hand and placed it directly over the worst of the bruising. "I want you to touch me."
His eyes darkened. "You sure?"
"Luca. I have been sure since the first morning you corrected my stance and I felt your hands on me." I pushed him backward toward the bed. "I am very, very sure."
We fell onto the mattress together, a tangle of limbs. Luca’s mouth found my neck, my collarbone, the sensitive spot just below my ear that made me gasp. His hands mapped my body—trailing down my sides, across my stomach, lower.
When his fingers wrapped around me, I nearly came apart.
"Perfect," he breathed against my throat. "You're perfect, Theo."
"Not..." The word broke on a moan as his grip tightened, stroking. "Not perfect."
"You are." He lifted his head to look at me. The intensity in his eyes stole my breath. "Your smile. Your laugh. The way you never back down. The way you crashed into my life and refused to leave even when I tried to push you away. Perfect."
Heat burned behind my eyes. "Luca."