Chapter 39
I stepped out of the bathroom, steam billowing out from behind me, to see that Sebastian had already climbed under the covers.
His back was propped against the headboard, his chest and abs on display, his lower half covered.
His reading glasses were on, and a small amber jar was open on the bedside table next to him as he worked the cream into his knuckles.
I stopped and simply watched him, marveling at the quiet domesticity of this moment. This was my reality now. For the rest of my life, this was how my nights would end. I shook my head in wonder.
God, I was a lucky fucking bastard.
I crossed the room and joined him in bed. “Is that the stuff that costs a million dollars an ounce?”
“It’s a hundred and fifty,” he said without looking up from his ministrations. “And it’s per jar, not per ounce.”
“Oh, well. Totally reasonable then,” I snarked.
He looked at me over the rims of his glasses, his gaze heated. “Laugh all you want. But you love these soft hands on your body. In your body.”
I felt my body heat from the tips of my ears to the soles of my feet. I really did love those hands.
“Yup, okay. Point taken.”
He chuckled and screwed the lid back on the jar as I reached for my water bottle on the nightstand.
Empty. Damn it. I always did this—drained it completely in the morning, then forgot to refill it before bed, paying for it at three o’clock in the morning when I woke up parched and had to stumble downstairs in the freezing cold to refill it.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and pushed to my feet. “I’m going to run downstairs. You need a refill?”
He glanced at his half-filled bottle and shook his head. “I’m good.”
The kitchen was lit by the glow of the light above the stove. I filled my bottle at the fridge, the old house completely quiet and still around me.
I was halfway to the stairs when I remembered my phone still in my bag.
I detoured to the front hall, crouching down to unzip the front pocket and fish it out.
The screen showed two missed calls from Carl.
I pushed to standing slowly.
Carl wasn’t the type of guy who called twice and didn’t leave a message.
Shit.
It was one day before the holiday roster freeze.
The Marauders had already made some moves.
Rhys Tomlinson’s signing two days ago had been the biggest. He was a twenty-eight-year-old offensive defenseman who skated like a berserker with a point to prove who’d been having the best season of his career in Atlanta until he’d gotten into a bar fight with a fan.
He was the kind of player that made someone a handful of years old with an expiring contract start doing math he maybe didn’t want to do.
I tried to talk myself off the ledge. Told myself not to read into the missed calls and mostly succeeded. Until a text message lit up my screen.
Carl
I don’t care when you get this. Call me.
I started to panic.
I didn’t want to get traded.
I knew the drill by now. Lord knew I’d been through it enough times. And I’d gotten good at it. Well, as good as you could get when everything felt like it’d been ripped out from underneath you.
But that was before.
Before I had a house I loved coming home to.
Before I had teammates who I loved like brothers.
Before I’d kissed Sebastian in the friends and family room tonight, the same way those same teammates kissed their wives and girlfriends.
Before I’d spent hours at dinner holding his hand across a table in public because I could do that now.
He was planning on calling a realtor this week.
Earlier, we’d joked about which side of the closet would be his, and what furniture he was going to bring up from D.C.
He’d taken a job here. For me. He’d chosen Portland, chosen this, and I was about to repay him for that by having to go somewhere else.
My shoulders dropped. I didn’t want to go back upstairs there and tell him. Not after the night we’d just had.
But I couldn’t not tell him either.
I turned toward the stairs, the phone heavy in my hand.
When I stepped back inside the bedroom, Sebastian was still propped against the headboard, but his glasses were off, and his eyes were closed, a book resting in his lap.
“You awake?” I whispered, hoping like hell that he wasn’t.
“Yeah.” He opened his eyes slowly. “What’s wrong?” he asked a second later, his eyes widening as he pushed himself up into a sitting position.
I held up my phone. “Two missed calls from Carl. And a text that came in a couple of minutes ago.”
Sebastian’s gaze dropped to my phone and then moved back to my face. He tried to keep his expression neutral, but his eyes tightened almost imperceptibly, and the muscle in his jaw ticked. “What did he say?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Nothing. The fucker didn’t leave a voicemail.”
He reached out and slid the phone from my grip, his eyes tracking quickly over the screen, then passed it back to me. “You should call him.”
I knew I should, but I really didn’t want to. I also knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get any sleep. I’d stay up all night imagining a thousand different versions of a conversation that would send me packing.
He set his book on the nightstand and patted the mattress. “Come here. We’ll do it together.”
“Thank you,” I breathed out, climbing in next to him.
Carl picked up on the second ring. “Taylor, thank god. I was worried you were dead in a ditch somewhere, which would be really fucking tragic because I’ve got great news.”
Carl and I had worked together for a long time. For him, “good news” meant the money was still flowing. Some other team wanted me. I still had a career, though with every new trade it felt less and less like one.
I blew out a breath, my eyes locked on Sebastian. I felt like I was going to be sick. “Where am I off to now?”
His hand found my knee, and I watched as his pulse fluttered rapidly in his neck, the only outward sign that he was as nervous as I was.
Carl laughed, loud and boisterous. “Oh, no. Nothing like that, kid. Your team sent over a new contract after the game tonight. They’re offering you a raise and three more years.”
I blinked, not entirely sure I’d heard him correctly. “Can you repeat that?”
Sebastian squeezed my knee and let out the breath he’d been holding.
“They want to lock you up before the freeze,” Carl explained. “Hendricks went to the front office himself to ask for it to be put in motion.”
I was staying in Portland. I didn’t have to leave. I could finish my career with the Marauders. I didn't know how long I'd been sitting there processing this news, but it was long enough that I felt Sebastian shift beside me, dipping his head to catch my eye.
He was blurry, and my eyes were burning. I blinked and swiped at them with the back of my wrist, then sniffled.
“You still there?” Carl asked after a few more seconds had passed
“Yeah, I’m here. I just …” I blew out a breath. “Three years? You’re sure?”
“I’ve looked it over myself, and it’s a good deal. Best one you’ve ever got, frankly. I think you’re going to be real happy with the numbers. I’ll send all the paperwork over tonight, and we can go over it in the morning.”
“Sounds good,” I managed to scrape out. “Thanks, Carl.”
“Get some sleep,” he said before the line went dead.
I sat there with the phone in my hand feeling … not numb, exactly, but something close to it. My fingers tingled like they did when I woke up in the middle of the night, having slept on my arm for too long, and my blood felt fizzy in my body. I recognized it as an adrenaline crash.
Until I’d joined the Marauders, I’d spent so long being the guy teams kept around because I was useful enough not to cut but replaceable enough not to fight for.
The guy who didn’t get too attached to his teammates or the city because there was always another one on the horizon. I hadn’t known how to be anything else.
And even though I’d been with the team for three years, I never quite let myself believe that I’d get to stick around. That I could potentially end my career here.
Sebastian gently pried the phone from my hand and set it on the nightstand.
I turned to him and just fell apart. Big, ugly sobs that came from somewhere deep inside of me. His arms came around me, and he pulled me into his chest, one hand cupping the back of my head. I pressed my face into his neck and let the tears flow.
I cried for the twenty-one-year-old kid who’d just lost his best friend and didn’t understand why. The one who felt cut adrift in the world, living in a city he’d never even visited before, where he basically knew no one and always felt like an outsider.
For the twenty-five-year-old who found himself unexpectedly traded to Vancouver. Then Chicago. Then Atlanta. And finally, Maine.
For the thirty-year-old who bought a house that was way too big for one person, wanting desperately to put down roots. To have a home. A family someday. Someone to call his. Someone who called me theirs back.
Sebastian’s hand moved slowly up and down my back, his chin resting on the top of my head, his body steady and solid beneath me, completely unbothered by the fact that I was falling to pieces in his arms.
Eventually, my tears turned to sniffles, which turned into exhaustion. I rolled away, onto my back, scrubbing both hands over my face and staring up at the ceiling.
“Sorry,” I croaked.
Sebastian turned onto his side, gazing down at me with so much love and devotion on his face that for a second I had to close my eyes.
“Don’t be,” he said simply.
“Can I tell you something?” I asked, opening my eyes to stare up at him.
“Of course.” He kissed my forehead, then scooted down so that he was lying on his side next to me.
I rolled to face him, resting my cheek on my hands.
“When Tomlinson signed, I had this moment of panic where I instantly started catastrophizing. We hadn’t really talked about your job prospects, but in that moment, it occurred to me that my job might actually be the problem.
I almost decided to retire right then and there, and follow you wherever you ended up. ”
Sebastian’s brows pulled together, the corners of his mouth turning down. “You didn’t say anything about that.”
“You’ve got enough on your plate. I didn’t want to pile on.”
He tucked a long strand of tear-damp hair behind my ear. I was in desperate need of a haircut.
“Don’t shut me out, Tay. I know I’ve been a mess, but I never want you to feel like you can’t be honest with me.”
“I’ll do better,” I promised, scooting closer to drape my leg over his.
“So what now?” he asked, pulling me in tight.
Even with this new contract, the rug could still be pulled out from under me.
And if it wasn’t, the reality was I only had so much more playing time left in this body.
A lot of defensemen retired in their mid-thirties, which was right around the time my contract would be up again.
Nothing in this league was guaranteed, but knowing the Marauders wanted me on the roster was enough to let me exhale.
“Tonight at dinner, I just looked at you and thought, ‘Wow. I finally have everything I’ve ever wanted.’”
“Me too,” he said quietly.
I rested my hand on his stomach, tracing patterns across his skin, writing words on his body.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Calmness settled over me. A sense of rightness I couldn’t deny.
“Except lying here now,” I murmured softly, watching goosebumps rise in the wake of my touch. “I realize that’s not entirely true.”
I felt the moment Sebastian quit breathing, his body going tight.
“No?” he asked.
I looked up at him to find that old mask of careful indifference fixed firmly on his face. The one I’d learned over the last few months was the facade he adopted when he didn’t want people to know what he was really thinking or feeling.
I shook my head. “No.”
His lips flattened, and with a huff, he started to move out from underneath me.
I rolled on top of him, pinning his wrists to the pillow. Sebastian might be taller, but I was stronger. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“I don’t want you to be my roommate.” I peppered his jaw, neck, and clavicle with slow, careful kisses. “I want you to be my husband,” I whispered against his skin.
I felt his gasp. “What did you just say?”
I moved back up to stare into his eyes. Those same eyes I’d latched onto one afternoon when I was twenty years old and thought, “Mine,” without really understanding what that meant.
The ones I’d glimpsed across a crowded dance floor a decade later, harder now, more world-weary and cold.
The ones I’d kissed the tears from a week ago when the world had let him down.
“Marry me.”
Those eyes went wide, his lips parting. He looked completely caught off guard.
Shocked, and potentially not in a good way.
“What do you say?” I asked softly, my heart beating rapidly as worry gripped me. I may have just made a very grave error in judgment.
All at once, Sebastian's mouth curled into a wide smile, his amber eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’ve been in love with you since I was twenty-one years old,” he said finally. “So yes. Absolutely yes. It’s always been yes.”