Chapter 11 Hog #2
I was still wearing his henley. My Storm hoodie sat in a wrinkled heap on the bedroom floor, smelling like yesterday's practice and the particular funk that lived in every hockey player's gear bag.
"You keeping that?" Rhett nodded at the shirt.
"Thought I'd return it."
"Keep it." He moved past me toward the kitchen, grabbing his keys off the counter. "Looks better on you anyway."
"It doesn't fit."
"I know." He grinned. "That's the point."
I yanked the henley off—probably stretched it another size in the process—and raced to the bedroom to grab my hoodie. The fabric was cold and stiff and smelled like I'd been living in it for a week.
Rhett checked his phone while pulling on his jeans. "Sloane wants to meet you. Actually meet you, not just hear about you." He glanced up. "She's been asking since New Year's."
I froze. "What?"
"Dinner."
"Yeah. Nothing fancy. Dinner." He pocketed his phone, utterly oblivious to the way my brain had started spinning.
"She's protective." Rhett grinned. "You'll be fine."
Fine. Right. Totally fine. Just dinner with the sister of the guy I was—what were we, exactly? Dating seemed too simple. Seeing each other sounded like we were hedging. Together felt presumptuous after one night.
Whatever we were, I was apparently meeting his family—at least part of it.
"She doesn't—" I started. "She doesn't have access to power tools, right? Or a lie detector?"
Rhett laughed. "She's a high school guidance counselor."
"That's worse." I pulled on my jacket, fingers fumbling with the zipper. "Guidance counselors are trained to extract information. They're basically professional interrogators with better PR."
"Hog."
"What if she hates me? What if I say something stupid and Thanksgiving gets weird and—"
"We're not at Thanksgiving yet." He stepped closer, hands finding my shoulders. "And she's not going to hate you."
"You don't know that."
"I know Sloane. She will ask you a thousand questions, probably make at least three jokes at my expense, and then decide whether you're worthy of her baby brother." He paused. "Which you are."
"Based on what evidence?"
"Based on the fact that you're standing here panicking about meeting her instead of running for the door."
I used to think intimacy was the hard part—the getting naked and being vulnerable and letting someone see you without armor. But standing in Rhett's apartment, about to walk out the door with him beside me—that felt harder.
Intimacy happened in private. This was something else. This was coffee and family and being seen after the lights came on. This was letting all the carefully separated pieces of my life exist in the same space, trusting they wouldn't destroy each other in the process.
"Ready?" Rhett asked.
"No."
"Me neither." He grabbed his keys, testing the weight of them in his palm. "Let's go anyway."
My Prius looked ridiculous next to Rhett's truck. Compact and fuel-efficient, and entirely wrong for someone my size. I'd bought it because it made sense. After all, being practical about one thing in my life felt important when everything else was chaos.
Rhett's truck was a beast—'96 Silverado with rust eating through the wheel wells and a bumper sticker that said SUPPORT LOCAL HOCKEY in faded letters.
"You driving or am I?" he asked.
"You into folding up this early in the morning?"
"Fair point." He clicked his key fob, and the truck chirped. "Hop in."
I walked around to the passenger side, boots crunching in the snow, and caught our reflection in the storefront window across the street. Me in my Storm hoodie, too big and taking up too much space. Rhett beside me in his contractor's jacket, steady and sure.
My brain tried to find the mismatch, where we didn't work. Came up empty.
I yanked open the truck door and climbed in. The bench seat was cold through my jeans. The interior smelled like coffee and sawdust and winter, exactly like Rhett.
He slid behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine coughed, caught, and roared to life. Heat started pumping through the vents—barely warm yet, but promising.
"You good?" he asked.
I looked at him. At how his hands rested on the steering wheel, confident and capable.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm good."
"Liar."
"Okay, I'm terrified. But we're going anyway."
"That's the spirit."
"Jake's going to roast me alive."
"Probably, but affectionately."
We pulled onto the street, and Thunder Bay opened up around us—grain elevators dark against gray sky, harbor frozen at the edges, and the Sleeping Giant keeping watch in the distance. My adopted city. The place I'd come back to every summer because Gram was here.
Now, Rhett was here too. Part of the landscape. Part of what made the place feel like somewhere I might want to stay.
"Hog?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for letting me come."
"Thanks for wanting to," I said.
He reached across the bench seat and found my hand. Squeezed once.
We drove through Thunder Bay with our fingers linked, heading toward team breakfast and the moment when my worlds would collide. I was still terrified. Still expecting the moment when Jake's chirping or Pickle's questions would make Rhett see me trying too hard to be both things simultaneously.
For once, I was willing to risk it.