Chapter 13
Kai
Hotel rooms are liminal spaces. They exist outside of time, suspended between departure and arrival. They smell of industrial lemon cleaner, starched linens, and the ghost of a thousand strangers who have slept in the bed before you.
I usually hated them. They were lonely. They were the places where I stared at the ceiling and counted the cracks in the plaster, replaying every missed pass, every lost face-off, every mistake until the sun came up.
It felt like a fortress.
Outside the heavy oak door, the team was celebrating.
We had won the Semi-Finals against BU. It had been a bloodbath—a grinding, ugly, 2-1 victory that had left my body feeling like it had been put through a woodchipper.
But we had won. The Frozen Four was next. The Championship. The end of the line.
Inside the room, the world was quiet.
Maeve was sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed, wearing one of the hotel’s plush white robes. She had flown down commercially, staying at a different hotel, but had sneaked into mine twenty minutes ago using a key card Silas had "accidentally" dropped for her.
She was icing my knee.
The bag of ice crunched softly as she adjusted it, her movements precise and gentle. The only light in the room came from the city skyline glowing through the sheer curtains—the amber and white lights of Boston painting her skin in soft, shifting hues.
I lay back against the pillows, watching her. I was shirtless, my ribs aching, my knee throbbing, but my mind was strangely quiet.
"You're staring," she whispered, not looking up from her task.
"I'm memorizing," I replied.
She paused, her hands stilling on the ice pack. She looked up, her violet eyes searching mine in the dim light.
"Memorizing what?"
"You," I said. "The way you look in this light. The way you frown when you're concentrating. The way you look at my damaged knee like it's something precious instead of something broken."
"It's not broken," she corrected softly. "It's just bruised. Like the rest of you."
"Same thing."
She sighed, a soft exhale that seemed to carry the weight of the last few weeks. She finished adjusting the ice and climbed onto the bed, crawling over the duvet until she was sitting beside my hip. She tucked her legs under her, pulling the robe tight.
"You played like a man possessed tonight," she said. "I was watching from the nosebleeds. You looked... scary."
"I had to be."
"Why?"
"Because if I wasn't scary, I was terrified," I admitted. The words slipped out before I could check them.
Maeve went still. She reached out, her cool fingers tracing the ink on my left arm—the sleeve of Russian monsters. She traced the jaw of the wolf, the twisted roots of the forest, the dark, swirling lines that covered my skin from shoulder to wrist.
"Tell me about them," she said.
I tensed. "It's just ink, Maeve."
"It's not just ink," she countered. "You don't do anything without a reason, Kai. You calculate everything. The way you skate, the way you speak, the way you touch me. Everything has a purpose."
She looked at me, her gaze steady and demanding.
"Tell me about the monsters."
I looked away, staring at the generic abstract painting on the far wall. It was a swirl of grey and blue. It looked like a storm.
I had never told anyone about the tattoos. Not Silas. Not the coaches. Definitely not the puck bunnies who traced them with manicured nails and cooed about how "badass" they were.
But Maeve wasn't a puck bunny. She was the woman who had held me while I fell apart on a kitchen floor. She was the woman who had driven through a snowstorm to watch me bleed for a game she didn't even like.
"In Russia," I started, my voice rough, "we have stories. Fairy tales. But they aren't like American fairy tales. There are no singing mice. No fairy godmothers."
I turned my arm over, exposing the inner forearm. There was a figure there—a skeletal man with iron chains.
"This is Koschei the Deathless," I said. "He is an evil sorcerer. He cannot be killed because he hid his soul. He put it inside a needle, which is inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside an iron chest, buried under a green oak tree on an island."
Maeve traced the skeletal figure. "He hid his soul to survive."
"Yes," I said. "He made himself invincible by separating his heart from his body. Nothing could hurt him because there was nothing inside him to break."
"Is that what you're trying to do?" she asked softly. "Hide your soul?"
I closed my eyes. "I didn't have a choice."
"Why?"
The question hung in the air. Why.
It was the question that opened the door to the basement. The dark, cold place where I kept the memories I tried to drown in vodka and adrenaline.
"My father," I said. The name tasted like ash. "Aleksei."
"The Boss."
"He... he doesn't believe in talent," I explained, opening my eyes to look at the ceiling. "He believes in engineering. When I was seven, I wanted to paint. I liked colors. I was... soft."
I felt Maeve's hand tighten on my arm. She was listening. Really listening.
"He took my paints away," I continued. "He burned them in the fireplace while I watched. He told me that creation was a feminine trait. That Volkov men do not create; they conquer."
"Kai..."
"He put me on skates the next day," I said. "He hired a private coach. An ex-Soviet drill instructor. If I fell, I had to do fifty pushups on the ice. Without gloves."
I looked at my hands. They were scarred. Calloused. Large. They were weapons now, but I remembered when they were small and red and freezing.
"When I was twelve," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper, "I lost a game. A championship for the junior league. I missed a penalty shot in overtime."
I could still feel the shame. It was colder than the Boston winter outside.
"My father didn't yell," I said. "Yelling would have been better. He just... looked at me. Like I was a bad investment. Like I was a stock that had crashed."
I turned my head to look at Maeve. Her eyes were shimmering with tears. She wasn't pitying me. She was furious. Her jaw was clenched, her breathing shallow.
"He drove me home in silence," I told her. "But he didn't drive to the house. He drove to the dacha. Our summer cabin in the woods. It was January. It was twenty below zero."
I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat making it hard to speak.
"He left me there," I said. "He told me, 'You are weak because you rely on comfort. You rely on warmth. A wolf does not need a hearth. A wolf needs only its teeth.'"
A tear slid down Maeve’s cheek. She wiped it away angrily.
"He left you alone?" she whispered. "At twelve?"
"For three days," I said. "There was wood for the fire, and canned food. But no phone. No electricity. Just me and the silence and the cold."
"Oh my god."
"I cried for the first day," I admitted. "I was terrified. I thought the wolves would come. I thought I would freeze."
"And the second day?"
"The second day, I got angry. I chopped wood until my hands bled. I screamed at the trees. I hated him. I hated hockey. I hated everything."
"And the third day?"
"The third day," I said, looking at the tattoo of the wolf on my shoulder, "I stopped feeling anything. The cold didn't hurt anymore. The silence wasn't scary. I realized that if I didn't care... if I didn't want anything... nothing could hurt me."
I looked back at her.
"That's when I became the Machine," I said. "When he came back to get me, I didn't run to him. I didn't cry. I just got in the car. I haven't cried since."
Maeve let out a sob. She scrambled up the bed, moving until she was straddling my hips, avoiding my bad knee. She wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder.
"He's a monster," she cried into my skin. "He's a monster, Kai. He tortured you."
"He made me strong," I said automatically. It was the lie I had told myself for ten years.
"No," she pulled back, grabbing my face in her hands. Her grip was fierce. "He made you traumatized. That's not strength. Strength is feeling things and keeping going. Strength is what you did tonight—playing through pain for your team. Strength is... is letting someone in."
She kissed my forehead. Then my eyelids. Then my bruised cheek.
"He tried to turn you into Koschei," she whispered. "He tried to make you hide your soul so he couldn't hurt it. But he failed."
"Did he?"
"Yes," she insisted. "Because I see it. I see your soul, Kai. It's in the way you protect Silas. It's in the way you look at me. It's in the way you tried to save that stupid chicken dinner even though you knew it was ruined."
I let out a shaky laugh. "The chicken was a disaster."
"It was," she smiled through her tears. "But you tried. A machine wouldn't try. A machine wouldn't care."
She leaned her forehead against mine. We breathed the same air.
"You aren't hollow," she promised. "You are full. You are so full of light and anger and love that it spills out of you. And he hates it. He hates it because he can't control it."
Love.
She used the word casually. Like it belonged there.
"Maeve," I whispered. "I'm broken. You don't want this. You want... you want easy. You want sunlight. I'm just winter."
"I love winter," she said.
She kissed me.
It wasn't a hungry kiss. It wasn't the desperate, frantic mating of the last few weeks.
It was slow. It was healing. It was a balm on a wound I had been carrying for a decade.
She tasted like salt tears and sweetness. She moved her lips against mine with a tenderness that unraveled me completely.
I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her down onto me. I needed her weight. I needed her reality to anchor me to the earth.
"Make me feel it," I whispered against her mouth. "Make me feel something other than the cold."
"I will," she vowed.
She sat up, reaching for the belt of her robe. She untied it slowly, letting the white fabric fall open. She was naked underneath.
In the amber light of the city, she looked like an angel. But a fierce angel. An avenging angel.
She lowered herself onto me. She was careful of my knee, bracing her weight on her shins. She guided me inside her with a steady hand.
When we connected, I let out a groan that came from the bottom of my chest. It felt like coming home after a long, brutal war.
"Look at me," she commanded softly.
I looked.
"I am right here," she said, starting to move. "I am not leaving. I am not sending you away to the cold. You are safe here, Kai. You are safe with me."
I believed her.
For the first time in my life, I wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wasn't waiting for the criticism. I wasn't calculating the ROI of the interaction.
I was just... being.
We moved together in the quiet dark. It was a slow, rolling rhythm. I held her hips, guiding her, but she set the pace. She took everything I had—the pain, the fear, the memories of the frozen cabin—and she transmuted it into pleasure.
She leaned down, her hair creating a curtain around us, shutting out the hotel room, shutting out Boston, shutting out the NHL.
"I love you," she whispered against my lips.
The words hit me like a physical blow.
I froze. My heart hammered against my ribs.
I had never said those words. I had never heard them directed at me—not really. My mother said them, but they were always followed by but you need to listen to your father.
Maeve’s love had no conditions. No buts.
"Maeve," I choked out.
"You don't have to say it back," she said quickly, sensing my panic. "I just... I needed you to know. I need you to know that you are loved. Not for the hockey. Not for the money. Just for you."
She kissed me again, swallowing my silence.
And then she shattered me.
We finished together, clinging to each other as if the world was ending. Afterward, she collapsed on my chest, her breathing ragged, her skin slick with sweat.
I pulled the duvet up over us, tucking her in. I held her close, stroking her hair.
"I want a cabin," I said into the darkness.
She lifted her head slightly. "What?"
"In the future," I said. "Not a cold one. A warm one. With a fireplace that never goes out. And a studio for you. With big windows."
She smiled against my chest. "And a dog? A big, stupid dog that sheds everywhere?"
"Yes," I agreed. "A dog. And... no ice. No rink."
"What will you do then?"
"I'll paint," I whispered. The confession was terrifying, but it felt right. "I'll paint you."
Maeve let out a soft sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. She kissed the tattoo of the wolf on my chest.
"It sounds perfect," she said.
"It sounds like a dream," I corrected.
"Dreams can come true," she mumbled, sleep already pulling her under. "We just have to fight for them."
"Yeah," I said quietly. "Fight."
I watched her fall asleep. I watched the way her eyelashes fluttered against her cheek. I watched the steady rise and fall of her breath.
She was my dream.
But as I looked out the window at the cold, hard city, the reality of my life came crashing back.
My father was watching. The Dean was watching. The draft was looming.
And dreams? Dreams were fragile things.
Especially when you lived in a world made of ice.
I kissed the top of her head, a silent vow forming in my throat.
I will protect you, I thought. Even if I have to break my own heart to do it.
I closed my eyes, but the darkness behind my lids wasn't empty anymore. It was filled with the image of a warm cabin, a fireplace, and a girl with violet eyes who loved the monster in the dark.