34. Dante #2
I pull him in with both arms. My face presses against his temple. His chest heaves against mine. We stand at center ice holding each other while confetti drops, the trophy comes out, and cameras flash against our cages and shoulder pads.
The trophy ceremony happens in a blur of handshakes and photographs.
Addison stands at center ice with the trophy in his hands and tears running down his cheeks.
He doesn’t wipe them away. Talia steps onto the ice beside him, her arm through his.
She is crying too, tears running straight down her face.
Addison looks at her, his jaw working, his hand covering hers on his arm before they both look back at the ice.
In the stands above them, Genny is on her feet.
Her phone is down. Her hands are still. She watches Addison hold the trophy with an expression I can’t read from here.
When Talia looks up toward her section, Genny doesn’t look away.
He hands the trophy to Adrian. Adrian lifts it. The roar shakes the rafters.
Adrian passes it to Declan. Declan to Gio. Gio to Cole.
Cole holds it. The weight shows in his arms, in the way his face changes when the metal touches his gloves. Then he turns to me.
“Your turn,” he says.
He passes it.
The trophy is heavy and cold, the handles worn smooth from the hands that came before. I lift it. The light catches the metal, and the crowd screams, and the sound hits my chest, sharp and clean.
I look up.
The press section.
Maya is standing. Her laptop is closed. Her press credential hangs against her chest. She is gripping the rail with both hands, her eyes on me and her face wet.
She mouths two words.
Come home.
The tunnel is loud with the aftermath, equipment staff hauling bags, trainers carrying ice, reporters pressed against the barricades with microphones extended. The team files past. Adrian has the trophy balanced on one shoulder. Gio is singing something in Italian that he is making up as he goes.
She is at the end of the tunnel.
She leans against the concrete wall. Coat on. Bag over her shoulder. The press credential still around her neck. Arms crossed, she watches the tunnel until she finds us.
Cole sees her first. He breaks into a jog, still in his Under Armour, hair soaked, his jersey with the championship patch already sewn on clutched in one hand by an equipment manager who works fast. He reaches her and lifts her off the ground.
Her legs leave the concrete. Both arms go around his neck, her bag swinging against his hip as her face presses into his chest.
“Put me down,” she says into his jersey.
“Never.”
“Cole. My feet.”
“Your feet are fine. Your feet are experiencing championship-level elevation.”
“My feet are experiencing a man who smells like a hockey bag.”
He sets her down. His hands go to her face. He kisses her, quick and hard, a tunnel kiss after a win while the blood is still up.
She is laughing when he pulls back. Her hand stays on his chest. Then she looks past him.
At me.
I am ten feet behind Cole. The tunnel is concrete and fluorescent and smells like Zamboni exhaust, and I am standing in it in my Under Armour with wet hair and the championship still buzzing under my skin.
She crosses the distance. Her boots hit the concrete. Her eyes stay on mine. She reaches me, and her hands land on my face, both palms on my jaw, her thumbs braced high under my cheekbones.
Then she kisses me.
The noise drops behind her kiss, behind her hands locked on my jaw.
When she pulls back, her thumbs move across my cheekbones. Her eyes search my face.
“That pass,” she says. “The empty net. He gave it to you.”
“He always gives it to me.”
“You could have shot from center. You had the angle.”
“I had the angle.”
“But you waited for him.”
“I always wait for him.”
“The play you two run,” she says. “The cycle, the give-and-go, the timing. I’ve watched it from the press box for four years. I’ve written about it. The way you find each other before the lane opens.” She pauses. “I know what it looks like from sixty feet up.”
Her hands tighten on my face.
“I didn’t know what it looked like from here.” Her voice drops. “With your face right in front of me and the sweat still on you.”
Her thumbs press harder against my cheekbones. Her eyes are bright.
Her gaze catches on the sweat at my temple, the drag of my breath, the tremor still running through my hands.
The tunnel empties around us. Equipment carts roll past. A reporter with a camera pauses, then moves on.
Cole steps back in beside us. His arm goes around her shoulder. His other hand lands on the back of my neck. The three of us stand in a concrete tunnel under a championship arena.
“For the record,” Cole says, “the empty-net pass was a hockey decision. Best angle. Better percentage.”
“It was a hockey decision,” I say.
“Pure strategy,” Cole says.
“Pure strategy,” I say.
Maya looks between us. Her mouth twitches once before she gets it under control.
“I have a story to file,” she says. “About a hockey game. In which two forwards kept finding each other like the puck had nowhere else to go.” She pushes up on her toes and kisses me.
Soft. Her mouth warm against the cold still coming off my skin.
Then she turns and kisses Cole the same way. “I’ll be home by midnight.”
“We’ll wait up,” Cole says.
“You’ll be asleep by ten,” Maya says.
“Championship-level staying awake. Watch us,” Cole says.
She walks down the tunnel. Her bag is over her shoulder, her boots on the concrete, her press credential swinging against her chest.
Cole’s hand tightens on my neck.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
Cole’s arm drops around my shoulders. We walk down the tunnel with the concrete under our feet and the noise behind us. Behind us, the arena noise thins with every step.
Elm House is dark when we get in. Maya is out of the car first, her coat on the hook before Cole gets his bag through the door, her laptop open and glowing in the living room before I finish locking up behind us. She is already typing.
Her fingers move, a rapid-fire click-clack that echoes the frantic beat still hammering inside my ribs.
The championship adrenaline hasn’t bled out yet; it’s a live wire under my skin, making my muscles twitch and my breath come short.
I go to the kitchen and pour water just to have something to do.
The glass feels too smooth, too cool in my hand.
My thumb taps the counter in a rhythm I don’t choose—the same tempo as the final horn, the same pulse that hasn’t stopped since I skated off the ice.
Three more minutes, I tell myself. Let her work.
I last three minutes.
Then the glass hits the counter with a thud that’s louder than I intended, and I’m crossing to the couch.
Cole looks up before I reach him. His eyes flick to Maya, then back to me, the question already there. She is still typing. Fast. Focused. The blue-white glow from the laptop cuts across her face, highlighting the tight concentration in her brow. I want to ruin it.
I take his phone out of his hand and drop it on the cushion beside him.
His mouth curves. “Impatient?”
“Yes.” The word is gravel in my throat.
Maya’s typing stutters for half a second.
Then it starts again, defiant.
I grip the front of Cole’s shirt and bend down.
His hand catches my hip before my mouth reaches his.
The kiss hits hard, all the noise from the arena still inside my chest, the last horn still shaking under my skin.
Cole opens for me immediately, his fingers digging into my waistband, his breath rough and warm against my mouth.
I taste the sharp tang of Gatorade and victory on his tongue, and my own body answers with a surge of heat that has nothing to do with the game.
From the desk, the keys stop.
I don’t look over.
Cole does. His eyes cut toward her, dark and amused, before I catch his jaw and turn him back to me.
“Let her work,” I say against his mouth.
Maya exhales through her nose. “I hate both of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Cole says.
Her typing starts again, harder this time, each keystroke a punctuation mark.
I drag Cole up from the couch. He comes willingly, one hand fisting the back of my shirt, the other sliding under the hem. His palm hits bare skin, hot and possessive, and my grip tightens in the back of his shirt until the fabric strains. Mine, the grip says. Ours.
He kisses me again standing, chest to chest in the living room while Maya files the story ten feet away and pretends not to watch.
I hear every time her typing falters. The pause between keystrokes.
A sharper inhale. Her chair shifts when Cole’s mouth drops to my neck and his teeth find the place below my jaw—the spot he knows makes my knees weaken.
The bite is sharp, claiming, and a shudder works its way down my spine.
“Focus, Maddox,” I say without lifting my head.
“Don’t use my own name against me,” she says.
Cole laughs against my throat. The sound vibrates into my skin, into my bloodstream.
I back him against the couch. His legs hit the edge, and he sits hard, pulling me down with him.
I catch myself with one hand on the back of the couch and the other in his hair.
He looks up at me, flushed, championship-drunk, beautiful in the dim room.
His pupils are wide, his lips parted, and for a second I just stare, arrested by the sheer trust in his face.
He’d let me do anything right now. The thought is a hook in my gut.
Maya’s typing stops.
“Stop watching us and finish the story,” I say.
“I’m thinking.”
“You stopped typing.”
“I’m thinking with distractions.”
Cole’s hand slides up my thigh, his thumb pressing into the muscle. “She thinks better when she watches.”
The typing resumes. One sentence. Maybe two.
I straddle Cole’s lap.