Chapter 20 #2
We made it down the hallway in slow, uneven steps.
Ignatius’s house was all warm stone and dark wood, lined with framed art that looked like they belonged in museums. Dragons in flight.
One of what looked to be a beautiful woman, with a much younger Ignatius's arm around her. Another of both him and Doryu.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
He nodded, but he turned his face away, as if he couldn’t quite look at the symbols of family right now without flinching.
The guest suite door was already open. Inside, the room was dim, lit only by a bedside lamp. Big bed. Soft-looking. A chair in the corner. Another door leading to what I assumed was a bathroom. The air in here was cooler than the living room, thank God.
I led him in, then stopped and turned to face him.
“Right,” I said. “Here’s the plan. Go to the bathroom. You get into bed while I get you water. You drink the water. Then you sleep for, like, three years.”
He gave me a look that was half fond, half wrecked. “That’s not medically—”
“Don’t care,” I said. “Doctor Phoenix’s orders.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Doctor Phoenix.”
“Very prestigious diploma,” I said. “Printed it myself and everything.” That got the barest snort out of him.
He went to the bathroom while I retraced my steps for some bottles of water.
When I came back, he was where I’d left him but listing slightly more sideways, like gravity was trying to tip him over.
“Drink,” I said, pressing the bottle into his hand. He did, swallowing slowly, his throat working. Watching the simple act of him putting water into his body made something in my chest unclench. He’d been running on fumes and fire for too long.
“More?” I asked.
He shook his head and passed the bottle back, fingers brushing mine. “Thank you.”
“Any time.” I set it down and ducked into the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth, wet it. “Can I?”
He tilted his head, confused.
“Just—” I touched the damp cloth to the side of his neck, just below the jaw.
He sucked in a breath.
“Too cold?” I froze.
He blinked once, then shut his eyes, exhaling. “No,” he whispered. “Feels…nice.”
I let the cool cloth trace along his skin, up over his temple, across his forehead. He leaned into it, the way he’d leaned into my hand at the clinic when everything was burning. Not much. Just a fraction. But it was enough.
“You’re still warm,” I said quietly. “But it’s…different.”
He opened his eyes halfway. “Different how?”
“Not scary,” I said before I could dress it up. “Not—out of control. Just…you but turned up a little.”
A line eased between his brows. For the first time since he’d woken in the white room, he didn’t look like he was constantly bracing for an alarm.
“Phoenix,” he said slowly, “earlier—at the clinic—did I…hurt anyone?”
The rookie flashed in my mind. The forged report. Wells’s smug face.
I lowered the cloth and cupped his cheek with my free hand, making him look at me. “No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
“You don’t know that,” he murmured. “There was that rookie, and the ice—”
“The rookie slipped because a Grizzly defenseman clipped his skate after you'd already left,” I cut in gently.
“I saw the game footage Ignatius pulled. The report was fake, Cole. Your father lied, and the player barely has a bruise.” I grinned.
"The Dragons won. Max scored in the last fifteen seconds. "
His eyes searched mine, like he was looking for cracks. “You’re sure.”
“Positive.” I swallowed. “Ignatius showed me. You didn’t do that. That’s on them.”
His shoulders sagged. A breath left him like a punctured tire. “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find out none of this is real,” he admitted. “That I’m still on that table.”
I set the cloth aside and slid both hands up to frame his face. His skin was hot under my palms, but it didn’t burn, and I knew it would never burn me.
“You’re not,” I said. “You’re here. With me. In Ignatius’s ridiculous guest room with a bed the size of a small country.”
He huffed a weak laugh.
“Lie down,” I said, softer. “You look like if I blow on you, you’ll tip over.”
He hesitated. “What if I—if it—” His hand twitched toward his chest, where the dragon lived. “What if it starts again while I’m asleep?”
“I’ll be here,” I said. “If anything feels wrong, I’ll wake you. Or I’ll yell for Ignatius or Doryu and his overqualified legal team. Between the three of us we can probably take one dragon.”
He gave me a flat look. I grinned.
“You know what I mean,” I amended. “You won’t be alone with it.”
That—that seemed to land. His gaze went softer, almost glassy. “Okay,” he whispered.
He shifted back on the bed, awkward with the blanket still swaddled around him.
I helped tug his shoes off, then the hoodie that had seen better days, until he was down to a soft worn t-shirt and sweats.
He moved slowly, carefully, like his muscles weren’t entirely convinced they belonged to him yet.
“Do you want a shirt?” I asked. “I can find you something from my bag or steal something from Ignatius’s closet and we’ll swim in it together.”
He shook his head, a faint flush creeping up his neck. “I’m fine.”
He lay back against the pillows, blanket pulled up to his chest. For a second he looked awkward, like a giant kid who didn’t know what to do with his limbs in a space that wasn’t a locker room or a rink.
“You going to stand there and stare at me all night?” he asked, voice rough but teasing.
“Tempting,” I said. “You’re very pretty.”
The flush deepened. “Phoenix.”
“What?” I stepped closer, perching on the edge of the mattress. “It’s true.”
He looked away, his fingers twisting in the blanket. “Are you…staying?”
I froze for a second, because the way he asked it—quiet, almost casual, but with something raw underneath—hit me right in the ribs.
“Do you want me to?” I asked, because I knew he wasn't just talking about tonight.
He exhaled. “Yes. But I’ll understand if it’s…too much.”
“Too much what?”
“Everything,” he said simply. His eyes flicked back to mine. “The dragon, the Council, my father, the lawyers. The attention. The fact that you almost got kidnapped and incinerated because of me.”
“Hey,” I said softly. I reached over, took his hand again. “You didn’t almost incinerate me. In that room? You blew up restraints and glass and a lot of expensive equipment. You didn’t even scorch my shirt.”
“You weren’t in my way,” he murmured.
“I’m always kind of in your way,” I said. “That’s a design feature.”
He tried to smile. It wobbled. “Phoenix…”
“Look.” I slipped my legs up onto the bed, sitting sideways so we were almost facing each other.
“Is it a lot? Yeah. If I wrote a list of things that terrify a former street rat with a talent for pissing people off, ‘dragon politics’ and ‘angry rich fathers with lawyers’ would be right at the top. But I’m still here. ”
He swallowed. “You might not want to be tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll deal with tomorrow tomorrow,” I said. “Tonight? I want to be exactly here. With you. In this bed. Without any more old men trying to kill you or bind your soul or audit your taxes.”
He let out a breath that almost counted as a laugh. “You’re mixing threats.”
“All your threats are mixed,” I said. “It’s part of your charm.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Then, very quietly, he said, “I want you in my future.”
Something inside me stuttered.
He kept going, words coming slowly, like he was tasting each one to make sure it wouldn’t explode.
“I don’t know what that future looks like,” he said.
“I don’t know if I’ll still be playing, or if the league will let me, or if the dragon will behave, or if my father will be shouting about me in newspapers for the next decade. ”
I squeezed his hand.
“But when I think about…after,” he continued.
“When I picture getting up in the morning, going to practice, coming home. Or not going to practice—” his mouth twisted “—and doing…whatever people do when they’re not hockey players anymore.
When I picture myself in ten years, twenty years…
” He swallowed. “You’re there. In all of it. ”
My chest clenched so hard it almost hurt.
He looked away, staring at a knot in the wooden headboard like it might rescue him. “I know it’s a lot,” he said. “I know you didn’t sign up for this. You were just trying to survive and then I happened to you. So if—if you decide you want something simpler. Someone simpler—”
“Stop,” I said.
His mouth snapped shut.
I took a breath, then another, because my heart had picked that moment to thump like it was auditioning for a metal band.
“Cole,” I said, and his name tasted like smoke and something sweet. “I'm a failed con artist with a history of bad decisions, one mailed threat away from getting my ass handed to me by the legal system. Simple is not in my vocabulary.”
“You could have it,” he said. “You could walk away and find someone whose father won’t try to have you arrested and whose chest doesn’t occasionally turn into a furnace.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But he wouldn’t be you.”
He tried to pull his hand back. I held on.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Look at me.”
Slowly, reluctantly, he did.
“I crashed your team’s party with a plan to ruin you,” I said.
The words still tasted like ash, but I forced them out.
“I walked in there intending to get you drunk and get you in a compromising position and then sell you to the highest bidder. And then you looked at me like I was a person and not a problem, and you talked to me like I was worth more than the nothing I started with, and somewhere between your father being a bastard and your team being ridiculous and your dragon putting its head in my lap, I realized I didn’t want your money. I just wanted…”
You.
The word stuck in my throat.
He watched me, something open and terrified in his eyes.