Chapter 13
Graham
Hotel rooms are liminal spaces. They exist outside of time and geography. They are designed to be forgotten—beige walls, generic abstract art, the faint, recycled smell of industrial cleaner.
To most people, they are lonely.
Outside, the wind was howling off the Mississippi River, burying the city in a foot of fresh snow. Down the hall, my teammates were sleeping, or playing Xbox, or trying to sneak girls past the curfew check at the elevators.
But inside Room 412, the world had narrowed down to the sound of breathing.
Faye was asleep.
I had smuggled her in three hours ago, hidden under my oversized team parka, using the service stairs to avoid the coaches in the lobby. It was a violation of team rules. It was reckless. It was exactly the kind of chaos I used to despise.
Now, I lay awake in the dark, watching the city lights cast orange stripes across the duvet, and I couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
My shoulder ached—a dull, persistent throb from the flight—but I didn't move. Faye’s head was resting on my chest, her hand curled loosely around the fabric of my t-shirt. If I moved, I would wake her. And watching her sleep felt like a privilege I hadn't earned.
I closed my eyes, trying to drift off, but the silence was too loud.
In the silence, the ghosts came back.
The smell of turpentine. The crackle of fire. The sound of my mother laughing, high and shrill, as she threw a canvas into the fireplace.
"It’s too bright, Graham! The colors are screaming at me!"
The heat on my face. The smoke alarm blaring. My father walking in, calm, cold, and efficient. He didn't yell. He just picked up the phone.
"Clean it up," he had said to the staff. "Erase it."
My breath hitched in my chest. My heart rate spiked, hammering against my ribs.
Faye stirred.
"Graham?" Her voice was thick with sleep, a soft murmur in the darkness.
I tried to slow my breathing. "Go back to sleep, Faye."
She didn't. She pushed herself up on one elbow, squinting at me in the dim light. Her hair was a mess, falling over her face. She brushed it back, her hand lingering on my cheek.
"You're sweating," she whispered. "And your heart is racing. Nightmare?"
"Just... thinking."
"Liar."
She sat up fully, pulling the sheet with her. She wrapped her arms around her knees, staring down at me. She didn't look annoyed at being woken up. She looked... present. Anchored.
"Talk to me," she said.
"It’s nothing. Game jitters."
"We're playing the Gophers. You aren't scared of the Gophers. You scored a hat trick against them last year." She reached out and placed her hand over my heart. "This isn't hockey. This is the other thing."
"What other thing?"
"The thing that makes you clean the counters three times a day. The thing that makes you stare at walls when you think no one is looking."
I turned my head away, looking at the generic hotel curtains.
I had spent my entire life building walls. Thick, impenetrable walls of order and discipline to keep the chaos out. I had let Faye scale them, but I had never let her see the foundation. I had never told her why the walls were there.
But after yesterday—after the blackmail, after selling my soul to my father to save her—the weight of the secrets felt crushing.
"Do you know why I hate color?" I asked. The question hung in the air, strange and jagged.
Faye frowned. "You don't hate color. You just... prefer monochrome."
"I hate it," I corrected. "I hate bright reds. I hate chaotic yellows. I hate splatter paint."
"Why?"
I sat up, leaning back against the headboard. I dragged a hand down my face.
"My mother was an artist," I said. "Like you. But not like you. You paint to understand the world. She painted to escape it."
Faye stayed silent. She shifted closer, her knee bumping my thigh under the covers.
"She was brilliant," I continued, the words scraping my throat. "When she was lucid. She filled our house with murals. Every wall. The kitchen was a garden. The hallway was a galaxy. It was... magic."
I closed my eyes, remembering the way the sunlight used to hit the painted vines in the breakfast nook.
"And then the down cycle would hit. The mania turned into paranoia."
"Graham..."
"I was seven," I said, opening my eyes to look at her. "I came home from school. She had taken a knife to the walls. She was screaming that the colors were trying to eat her. That they were too loud."
Faye flinched. I saw the horror in her eyes, but she didn't look away.
"She tried to burn the house down," I said flatly. "To 'purify' it. She lit a fire in the living room with her canvases. I tried to stop her. I burned my hands."
I held up my hands in the dark. The scars were faint now, lost among the hockey calluses, but I knew where they were.
"My father came home. He put the fire out. He sent her away to the clinic in Zurich."
"And then?" Faye whispered.
"And then he hired a crew. They came in the next day. They sanded the walls. They painted everything white. Stark, blinding white. They threw away her brushes. They threw away her clothes. By the time I came back from my grandmother’s house a week later, it was like she had never existed."
I looked at the beige hotel wall.
"He told me, 'Graham, look how clean it is. Look how quiet. Order is safety. Chaos is dangerous.'"
A tear slipped down my cheek. I didn't wipe it away.
"I believed him," I confessed. "I spent the next fifteen years trying to be white paint.
Trying to cover up anything messy. I became the Governor.
I became the perfect student, the perfect captain, the perfect son.
Because I was terrified that if I let a little bit of color in...
I would burn everything down like she did. "
Silence stretched between us.
I waited for her to pull away. I waited for her to look at me with pity, or fear. I had just told her that my blood was tainted. That I was terrified of my own genetics.
Faye moved.
She crawled across the bed until she was straddling my lap. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her forehead against mine.
"You are not white paint," she whispered fiercely.
"I tried to be."
"You failed. Thank god." She pulled back to look me in the eye. "Graham, look at me. You aren't her. And you aren't him."
"I feel like him sometimes. Cold. Controlling."
"You control things because you want to protect people," she argued. "Your father controls things because he wants to own them. There is a difference."
She took my hand—the one with the faint burn scars—and kissed the palm.
"And you aren't your mother. You don't destroy. You build. You build teams. You build strategies. You built a home for me when I had nothing."
"I made you sign a contract," I pointed out, a weak smile tugging at my lips.
"A very sexy contract," she teased, though her eyes were wet. "But Graham... you let the color in. You let me paint in your living room. You wear my gold dress. You let me leave my messy shoes by the door."
"It drives me crazy."
"Good crazy. The kind of crazy that proves you're alive."
She kissed me then. It wasn't a kiss of passion. It was a kiss of absolution. She kissed me like she was trying to breathe the fear out of my lungs and replace it with her own air.
I held onto her. I gripped her waist, burying my face in the crook of her neck.
"I’m scared," I whispered into her skin. "I’m scared that one day I’ll wake up and the chaos will be too much. Or that my father will win."
"He won't win," she vowed. "Because you aren't fighting him alone anymore. We're a team. You and me. The Governor and the Brat."
I laughed, the sound vibrating in my chest. "The Brat."
"It’s a term of endearment."
She pulled back, her fingers tracing the line of my jaw.
"Can I tell you a secret?" she asked.
"Anything."
"I used to think my art was a mistake. My father told me it was useless so many times I started to believe him. I thought... maybe I am just a spoiled girl playing with paint."
She looked down at her hands.
"But when I draw you... when I paint the way you look on the ice, or the way you look at me... I feel like I finally have something to say. You gave me my voice back, Graham."
My heart squeezed. It was a physical ache.
I had sold my future to my father to save her. I had traded my freedom so she could keep painting. And hearing her say that—that I was her muse, her voice—made the sacrifice feel cheap. I would do it again. I would do it a thousand times.
"We save each other," I said hoarsely.
"Yeah. We do."
She shifted on my lap, her body warm and soft against mine. The heavy conversation had shifted the air in the room. It wasn't sad anymore. It was intimate. Charged.
"Make me forget," she whispered, leaning forward to bite my earlobe. "Make me forget about fathers and fires and contracts."
"Faye..."
"Please. I need to feel you. I need to know you're here."
I didn't need to be asked twice.
I laid her back against the pillows. I moved over her, covering her body with mine.
This time, there was no rush. There was no desperate clawing.
I worshipped her.
I kissed every inch of her face. I kissed her eyelids, her nose, her temples. I traced the curve of her ribs with my hands, memorizing the map of her body.
"You are a masterpiece," I murmured against her skin. "Better than any mural."
"So cheesy," she breathed, arching into my touch.
"I mean it."
I entered her slowly.
It was a homecoming.
The sensation of being inside her was the only peace I had ever known. It silenced the ghosts. It erased the white walls. It was vibrant and real and terrified me with its intensity.
We moved together in the dark hotel room, a slow, rhythmic dance. I watched her face in the moonlight. I watched the way her expression softened, the way her lips parted, the way she looked at me with total, unguarded trust.
"Graham," she sighed, wrapping her legs around me. "I love you."
She said it again. This time, she didn't take it back.
"I love you," I said back. The words felt heavy, permanent. "I love you, Faye."
When the end came, it was quiet. A shuddering release that left us both breathless and clinging to each other as if the gravity in the room had suddenly failed.
Later, in the grey light of pre-dawn, we lay tangled in the sheets.
"Graham?"
"Hmm?"
"What happens after?"
"After what?"
"After graduation. After the draft. When you go to the NHL."
I tightened my arm around her. The question I had been dreading.
"I go where the team is," I said carefully.
"And me?"
"You go to Paris. For the program."
"And then?"
"And then..." I kissed her temple. "You come to wherever I am. Or I come to you in the off-season. We make it work."
"Do you think we can?" she asked, her voice small. "Long distance? With your schedule? And my... everything?"
"I think," I said, "that I would commute from the moon if I had to."
She giggled. "That would be a hell of a commute."
"I’d buy a fast rocket."
"I want a house," she whispered suddenly. "Someday. Not a big one. Not like my dad’s or yours. A small one. With big windows. And messy gardens. And walls painted whatever color we want."
I closed my eyes, picturing it. A house without white walls. A house full of light and paint and noise.
"A yellow kitchen," I suggested.
"Yellow?" She sounded surprised.
"Yeah. Bright yellow. Like the sun."
She squeezed my hand. "Okay. A yellow kitchen. And a studio for me. And a gym for you."
"And a dog."
"A big dog. That sheds everywhere."
"Don't push it," I smirked.
We lay there, building a fantasy life in the air above the bed. A life that felt so real I could almost touch it.
But beneath the fantasy, the cold reality was waiting.
My father’s deal.
You sign with the team I choose.
What if he chose a team that hated art? What if he chose a team in a city where Faye couldn't thrive? What if he used his control to keep us apart, just to prove he could?
I looked at Faye, sleeping peacefully with a smile on her face, dreaming of yellow kitchens.
I couldn't tell her. Not yet.
I would enjoy this. I would hold onto this stolen weekend in Minneapolis. I would let myself believe in the fantasy for just a little longer.
Because I knew, with the instinct of a man who had been waiting for the other shoe to drop his entire life, that the peace wouldn't last.
The Third Period was coming. And in hockey, the Third Period is where the game is won or lost.
Or where you get checked into the boards so hard you never get up.