Chapter 9
KIERAN
The shift happened without ceremony.
One morning, I emerged to find Nico already in the kitchen.
Two mugs sat on the counter, mine filled with Assam, strong and dark, his with that pale green tea his grandmother would have approved of.
He'd learned my preference without asking.
He handed me the mug without comment, and I took it without thanking him.
The absence of formality felt more significant than any polite exchange.
He was cooking eggs. He cracked each egg one-handed, a trick that required more wrist control than most people realized, and the yolks landed intact in the sizzling butter.
"You put dill in these," I said, staring at the green flecks scattered across the plate he slid toward me a few minutes later.
"My mummu puts dill in everything. Eggs, salmon, potatoes, bread." He shrugged one shoulder. "She'd put it in tea if she thought she could get away with it."
"Has she tried?"
"Twice." The corner of his mouth twitched.
Then, so briefly I almost missed it, the twitch became an actual smile.
Not the polite, controlled expression he used in team meetings, not the locked-door blank he wore at the facility.
A real smile that changed his face entirely, making him look younger and lighter.
"She made dill tea for my grandfather once as a joke.
He drank the whole cup without complaint.
She was furious. She said the point was to make him suffer, not to discover he had no taste buds. "
I laughed. The sound surprised both of us. Nico's smile widened a fraction, and his shoulders settled. For three seconds he wasn't the disgraced forward or the man sleeping on the floor or the Snake. He was just a guy in my kitchen, making me laugh, being human.
"Your grandmother sounds terrifying," I said.
"She's eighty-three and she could probably take Bishop in a fight."
"I believe that."
Something moved across his face. Quick, suppressed before it fully formed, but real.
The corner of his mouth twitched upward again, and for a fraction of a second, I saw the shape of the real smile he'd been withholding.
It transformed his face the way the first crack transforms ice: a suggestion that something warmer existed underneath.
I found myself wanting to see the full version.
"Eat," he said, turning back to the stove. "You've got that film session with Abbott at nine."
At the facility, the thaw was slower but visible.
Nico's play had become impossible to ignore.
Six weeks into the season, he was generating the most scoring chances per sixty minutes of any forward on the roster.
His connection with Theo had developed into something bordering on telepathy.
They found each other on the ice with a timing that couldn't be coached—a chemistry that happened once or twice in a career if you were lucky.
Reeves moved Nico to the second line, pairing him with Theo and Volkov. The combination clicked instantly—nine points in three games, the kind of production that made front offices look prescient and made locker rooms adjust their opinions.
Hockey players were pragmatists. If you helped them win, they'd tolerate almost anything. Nico wasn't tolerated yet, but the active hostility had burned down to something cooler. Guys acknowledged him in the halls. They included him in tactical conversations. They used his first name.
Jamie started the broader inclusion. Walking out of the facility after practice one afternoon, he called back over his shoulder without breaking stride: "Varis. Korean barbecue Thursday. You eat meat?"
Nico blinked. "Yes."
"Thursday at eight. I'll text you the address.
" Jamie was already around the corner, Abbott falling into step beside him.
Abbott reached over and stole a protein bar from Jamie's open gym bag.
Jamie swatted at his hand without looking.
They walked out of the building shoulder to shoulder, bickering about something I couldn't hear.
Thursday came. Nico sat at the restaurant table with twelve Storm players around him, his chopsticks held correctly, his expression cautiously open.
Jamie dominated the conversation. Abbott sat beside him and added dry commentary that made Jamie laugh too loud.
Theo dragged Nico into a debate about defensive zone breakouts that lasted through three rounds of bulgogi.
Even Eriksson, the quietest veteran on the roster, directly asked Nico a question about Finnish hockey.
Bishop didn't come. No one mentioned it.
The game against Nashville was where it happened.
Third period, Storm up 2-1, and the arena was tight with the compressed energy of a close game.
Nico carried the puck through the neutral zone, Theo on his left wing, Volkov trailing.
The Nashville defense pinched, both guys stepping up to challenge the rush, gambling that their goalie could handle whatever got through.
Nico saw the opening before it existed. He pulled the puck to his backhand, dragging the near defenseman with him, then snapped a pass through the vacated lane to Theo streaking down the left side.
Theo one-timed it. The Nashville goalie got a piece of it, blocker, angled up, but the puck deflected high, hit the crossbar, and dropped. Loose puck in the crease.
Nico was already there. He'd followed his own pass, read the rebound, and arrived at the far post a half-second before the defense could recover.
The puck was sitting on the goal line like a gift.
He didn't need to shoot, he just redirected it with his blade, a touch so light it barely registered on the replay.
The red light went on.
His first goal as a Storm player.
The bench erupted, stick taps against the boards, the percussion of helmets being slapped, the full-throated roar of a team that had just watched a man earn his place.
Theo reached him first, nearly tackling him into the glass.
Volkov grabbed the back of Nico's jersey.
Jamie leaned over the boards and shook Nico's helmet with both hands.
From my crease, sixty feet away, I watched Nico stand in the center of the celebration and look stunned.
Not the practiced surprise of a veteran playing humble, but genuine shock.
His teammates were surrounding him, and touching him, claiming him, as he stood there with his arms at his sides and his stick hanging loose.
Then Theo said something in his ear, and Nico raised his stick to the crowd. The applause wasn't universal, there were still holdouts, people who'd read Brue's article and made their decision. But it was loud. Loud enough.
Luca skated past me on his way to the bench. "You're staring," he said, just loud enough for me to hear.
"I'm a goalie. I stare at everything."
"You're staring at him."
I tapped my blocker against the post. The ring echoed through the crease. Drop it, Cap.
Luca dropped it. But the look he gave me was one of recognition, the same look Theo must have given him once, before either of them admitted what they were.
After the game, the locker room buzzed with win-energy.
Nico sat in his stall undressing, and for the first time since he'd arrived, the radius of empty space around him had collapsed.
Guys were talking near him, around him, occasionally to him.
The corner stall was still a corner stall, but it wasn't an island anymore.
I unlaced my skates and told myself the feeling in my chest was professional satisfaction. A teammate was integrating. The monitoring arrangement was working. Mission accomplished.
But that didn't explain the 3 AM conversations that had migrated from the kitchen counter to the couch.
It didn't explain the breakfast routine, the dill eggs, the way I'd started saving the last cup of hot water in the kettle because he always woke up after me and I didn't want him to have to wait.
And it certainly didn't explain the night he fell asleep mid-sentence during a movie, something terrible on Netflix, and I watched his face go slack and unguarded, the hard lines dissolving. And I thought, There you are.
He was curled into the corner of the couch, his breathing slow and even. His face in sleep was younger and softer, stripped of the armor he wore during daylight hours. The tension in his jaw had released. His lips were slightly parted.
I sat in the armchair across from him and watched him sleep. Something dangerous unfurled in my chest, warm and terrifying—and completely beyond my ability to control.
I should have woken him.
Instead, I took the blanket from the back of the couch and draped it carefully over his shoulders, tucking the edge against his neck the way you'd tuck in someone you—
I stopped that thought.
In the morning, the blanket was folded neatly on the couch cushion. Beside it, a Post-It note in the handwriting I was learning to recognize.
Thanks for the blanket.
Four words. I folded the note and put it in my pocket. Neither of us mentioned it when Nico emerged twenty minutes later, dressed for practice, his hair still damp.
"Morning," he said. Same as always.
"Morning," I said.
We drank our tea. We made small talk about the practice schedule. We ate dill eggs in the quiet kitchen while the November light spread across the floor.
Something had shifted. The apartment didn't feel like a monitoring arrangement anymore.
I watched Nico rinse his plate and glance over his shoulder with a small, almost-shy half-smile.
I smiled back.
This was a problem.