Chapter 30 #2
“She asked if it had become physical.”
My throat closed.
“I told her yes.”
I stared at the dog because looking at Declan right then felt like stepping too close to an open flame. Tiny blinked up at me with his big tragic face, completely unaware of how badly humans could injure each other without raising a hand.
“She asked if it was serious,” Declan said.
I forced myself to look at him.
He looked back.
“I said yes.”
My face probably gave me away. It usually did. My emotions had never understood chain of command.
“She asked if I loved the person.”
Everything inside me paused at once.
The room became too defined. The lamp. The seam on the couch cushion. Tiny’s collar tag against my wrist. Declan’s knuckles. My own breathing, not quite steady.
“You said my name?” I asked.
“No.” His voice was steady, but it cost him. “She asked if I loved the person. I said yes.”
Yes.
He had given the word to his wife first. Not because it belonged there, but because she had asked him for truth while her life changed shape in front of her.
Happiness rose in me and collided with guilt so violently neither survived intact.
“Did she ask if she knew me?”
“Yes.”
My stomach twisted. “And?”
“I told her I wouldn’t answer that tonight.”
I stared at him.
“She deserved honesty,” he said. “She didn’t deserve your name dropped into the first hit.”
I pressed my palm to my mouth and nodded once.
“She understood what that meant,” he said. “Olivia’s smart.”
“And she went to Rachel.”
“Yes.”
“Who still talks to Roman.”
“Sometimes.”
“Jesus.” I dragged a hand down my face. “That’s not dangerous because of Roman.
He already knows, and he wouldn’t expose us.
I know that. But Rachel doesn’t deserve to get dragged into decoding her friend’s heartbreak, and Roman doesn’t deserve to be put in a position where he has to pretend he doesn’t know what he knows. ”
“No,” Declan said. “He doesn’t.”
I appreciated that he didn’t try to soften it. I was so tired of soft edges around hard things.
“Rachel won’t run to him just to gossip,” I said, more to myself than him. “She’s not like that. Roman would’ve married someone with a functional spine and a mean left hook.”
Declan’s mouth moved, almost a smile and not quite.
“And Roman won’t say anything,” I continued. “He’d staple his own mouth shut first. But he’ll clock every bruise this leaves. He always does. Then he’ll sit there looking half-asleep while silently making a list of everyone he thinks failed to protect me, including me.”
“He cares about you.”
“I know.” That was part of the ache. “He cares aggressively.”
Declan sat back, the couch dipping under his weight. “Olivia is angry. Hurt. She should be. I’m not going to control who she talks to.”
“No. I know. She gets to have people.” My voice roughened. “She gets to have a place to go.”
There it was again. The part I couldn’t sidestep.
“I ended things with Vanessa and felt like garbage,” I said. “I hurt her. I know I did. But Vanessa and I weren’t building the same kind of life you and Olivia were. She liked parts of being with me. The cameras. The apartment. The hockey girlfriend thing. But Olivia was your wife.”
Declan’s mouth pressed flat.
“I don’t know how to apologize for helping hurt her without making it about me,” I said. “But I am sorry. I chose this too. It didn’t happen to me. I wasn’t swept away by some tragic music. I made choices.”
“I know,” he said.
It didn’t sound like absolution. It sounded like he was letting the truth stand in the room without dressing it up.
For once, I didn’t try to knock it over.
The silence stretched. My knee started bouncing under Tiny. He huffed, offended, and shifted his weight like I was inconveniencing him in his time of need. I made myself stop by pressing my heel into the floor.
Then the next problem shoved its way out.
“You’re still my coach.”
Declan didn’t flinch.
“Yes.”
“That part won’t stop screaming in my head.”
“I’ve been hearing it too.”
“No, I mean all of it.” I rubbed my palms over my thighs. “Not the sexy forbidden thing. Not the part people write headlines about. The real part. You decide my ice time. You decide lines. You bench me if I need benching. You talk to management about my play. You have actual power over my career.”
“I know.”
“If the team finds out, not guesses, but knows, it changes every room we walk into.”
“Yes.”
“Every compliment looks like favoritism. Every correction looks personal. If I play well, people question why. If I screw up, it becomes proof. If you sit me, they’ll say you’re overcorrecting. If you don’t, they’ll say I’m getting special treatment.”
“I’ve thought about it.”
“Management?”
“They would have to address it.”
“That’s the nice version.”
“It’s the accurate version.”
“Would you get fired?”
He didn’t answer quickly enough.
My stomach dropped.
“Declan.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I can’t predict it. There are conduct policies, morality clauses, optics, power dynamics. Even if we’re both adults and the relationship is consensual, I’m your head coach. That matters.”
Hearing him put it that plainly hurt, but it also steadied something in me. He wasn’t pretending that wanting each other made the rest of the world stupid.
“What happens to me?” I asked.
“They won’t fire you.”
“Don’t give me the padded answer.”
His attention sharpened.
“I’m not asking if they terminate my contract tomorrow,” I said. “I’m asking what happens to my life.”
Declan exhaled slowly. “Your reputation takes a hit. Media turns it into a spectacle. Some people decide you were manipulated. Some decide you manipulated me. Some say you slept your way into ice time, which is absurd and exactly the kind of absurd people love. Some make it about you being with a man. Others pretend they’re not making it about that while doing it anyway. ”
My skin felt too tight.
“And the room?”
“The room changes. Maybe not with everyone. Maybe not forever. But yes, it changes.”
I looked toward the dark window. “Benny would panic and then ask a question so invasive he’d need a lawyer.”
“Likely.”
“Milo would try so hard to prove he was normal about it that he’d become deeply abnormal.”
“Yes.”
“Roman would quietly threaten people with his goalie stick.”
“He may already have a list.”
A breath came out of me. Not quite a laugh, but close enough to remind me my lungs still worked.
Then the weight came back.
“Can we have a future?” I asked.
Declan looked at me like he understood I needed the truth more than comfort.
“Yes,” he said. “But not without a bill attached.”
My eyes burned. I blinked until the room behaved. “That answer sucks.”
“It’s the only one I trust tonight.”
I nodded too many times, caught myself, and stopped.
My head felt crowded again, thoughts knocking into each other.
Olivia at Rachel’s. Rachel knowing the shape of a secret even without the name.
Roman already knowing and having to carry it.
Tessa knowing enough to run damage control before anyone asked.
The team. Cameras. My dad seeing headlines.
Harper calling me an idiot with fear under it.
Declan sitting in front of management because of me.
“We need boundaries,” Declan said.
“We have boundaries.”
“We have secrecy habits. That isn’t the same thing.”
That one landed.
He leaned forward again. “At the rink, the line has to be cleaner than it’s ever been. For both of us.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“No private meetings without a legitimate reason. If there is one, the door stays open or someone knows where we are. No riding together from team events. No messages during work hours unless it relates to work or there’s an actual emergency.”
I felt the next rule before he said it.
“And game days,” he added. “I can’t be the thing you use to regulate before puck drop when I’m supposed to be functioning as your coach.”
That hurt in a specific, ugly place.
I looked down at Tiny’s head. “So I just deal with it.”
“No.” His voice softened, but didn’t weaken. “You use the systems that belong to you. Alarms. Food before you get shaky. The breathing routine. Roman if you need a human being. Your notes. The stuff we built that doesn’t require me pulling you into a hallway.”
I hated that he was right.
I hated that the routines helped and I still wanted his hand at the back of my neck because sometimes my brain accepted pressure better than words.
“I like when it’s you,” I said.
“I know.”
“It works.”
“I know that too.”
Tiny shifted, trying to climb higher into my lap and failing with great effort.
Declan watched me, his face worn open by the day. “I can help without being the only structure you trust.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
There it was. My fear, said responsibly. That I’d become too much. Too dependent. Too scattered. Too loud. That the parts of me he could steady would eventually become the parts he resented.
When I opened my eyes, he was still looking at me.
“I don’t want to wreck your life,” I said.
“You don’t get to carry my choices for me.”
“I can still care.”
“Yes,” he said. “You can care.”
The room went quiet again, but this time it wasn’t empty quiet. It had us in it. It had the dog breathing like a broken engine and the furnace clicking and the truth sitting between us, ugly and necessary.
I shifted closer before I could talk myself out of it.
Tiny objected by going boneless and sliding halfway off my lap, then scrambling upright with zero dignity.
“Move, you dramatic tank,” I muttered.
Declan reached for me. His fingers closed around my wrist, not tight, just enough to ask.
I went.
The space between us disappeared by inches. My knee against his thigh. His arm around my shoulders. My body held stiff for one stupid second because being comforted without sex felt more dangerous than getting naked. Sex had rules. Bodies made sense. This was softer, which meant it could hurt more.
Then I leaned into him.
Declan’s arm settled around me. His other hand came to my hair, fingers sliding in and resting there. Not gripping. Not directing. Holding.
My thoughts didn’t stop. That wasn’t how my brain worked.
Olivia was still at Rachel’s. Roman’s name still sat there, not as a threat, but as one more person who might end up bruised by being close to me.
Management still existed. The team still existed.
Vanessa was still somewhere without me in the version of her life she’d been building.
But the thoughts moved farther away from my skin.
Tiny took one look at us and decided the moment required his full participation. He heaved himself onto the couch with the grace of a tipped refrigerator and sprawled across both of us, one huge paw landing on my stomach.
“Christ,” I wheezed. “He’s trying to finish what the guilt started.”
Declan let out a quiet laugh. Small. Rough. Real.
“He’s comforting you.”
“He’s rearranging my organs.”
Tiny licked my chin.
“Moist emotional support,” I said.
Declan’s hand moved once over my hair. His mouth touched my temple, a slow kiss that made my throat tighten worse than anything he could have said.
I lifted my head.
He looked at me without hiding. Too tired for masks. Too honest for escape.
“I need to say it to you,” he said.
My chest hurt.
“You don’t have to because you said it to her.”
“That’s not why.”
I barely breathed.
“I love you,” he said. “It doesn’t make this clean. It doesn’t erase what we did. But it’s true.”
The words went through me hard and quiet.
I wanted to answer immediately. The reply was already there, pressing up behind my teeth. But I was afraid of making it automatic. Afraid of using it like a bandage. Afraid of turning the best thing I’d ever heard into a way to hide from the worst parts of the night.
So I reached up and touched his beard, thumb brushing the rough hair near his mouth.
“I love you too,” I said, because waiting would have been another kind of lie.
Declan closed his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them, I kissed him.
It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t hallway panic or locked-door hunger. It wasn’t punishment, reward, defiance, escape. His mouth met mine slowly, like we were both too aware of the wreckage around us to pretend a kiss could fix it, but needed it anyway.
His lips were warm and firm. I felt the first press of them through my whole body, not as a spark, but as relief so deep it almost hurt. His hand stayed in my hair. Mine slid to the side of his neck, fingers resting over his pulse. He angled his head, and I followed. The kiss opened by degrees.
I tasted coffee and mint. Felt his breath catch when my tongue touched his.
Felt the low pull of want in my stomach and didn’t chase it into something bigger.
Not tonight. Tonight it was enough to have his mouth on mine and his body solid under my hand and the truth between us finally spoken out loud.
Tiny groaned like we had personally betrayed him and shoved his head between our chests.
I broke the kiss against Declan’s mouth, laughing under my breath. “He’s homophobic.”
“He’s jealous.”
“Of me or you?”
“Both, probably.”
I sank back against him, Tiny crushing my lap, Declan’s arm steady around me.
The house still felt changed. Olivia was gone.
Rachel’s name sat in the room with us now, and Roman’s beside it, not as a danger, but as proof that secrets had weight even when nobody betrayed them.
Vanessa was out there rebuilding herself without me.
Tessa knew too much. The team didn’t know enough yet. Management knew nothing.
The fallout was coming.
But sitting there in Declan’s quiet living room with his hand resting on my shoulder, I understood something I hadn’t wanted to understand before.
Choosing him didn’t mean we got to outrun the consequences.
It meant we stopped pretending they weren’t ours.
I turned my face into his chest and let him hold part of the weight while I held the rest.