Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
ALEXIO
I was with Vanya when two very important things happened.
The first—the Legends lost their fourth game against the Mavericks and were out of the playoffs.
And twenty minutes later, I realized that in that relatively large circle of vision I had, I could see.
Like, properly see. It wasn’t flickering in and out, and it wasn’t going blurry anymore.
It also wasn’t absolutely perfect, but I could make out the freckles on Vanya’s nose and the flecks of gold in his deep brown eyes.
It was the best feeling in the world, only I didn’t want his face to be the one hovering over me.
I was home for the first time in what felt like a hundred years, though really, it had only been a few days. It was terrifying at first, though between Vanya, Sven, and Nikos, I was never alone. But each day, I healed a little more, and each day, I breathed a little easier.
I still felt a little bit like a monster for having Jonah’s reality be my worst nightmare, but the fact that he understood made me feel a little less terrible.
I would have coped. Eventually. I would have adjusted, and of course, I would have had the best support system in the world that would have made sure I wasn’t floating around in some void.
But it wasn’t what I wanted. I wasn’t done playing hockey yet. I wasn’t done seeing the world. I wanted more time to be able to watch Jonah fall apart beneath me, and I think he wanted that for me too.
I didn’t see him much during the last stretch of his games. He had gone back to being focused, and I was hoping he was riding high on knowing that I loved him the same way I was riding that high of knowing he loved me.
But I was ready for him to come home. I needed him to come home.
Which was what I texted him the moment I knew they were getting on their plane to come back to Boston.
Jonah: See you soon. Kisses.
I didn’t bother replying. He was going to go into airplane mode soon enough, and frankly, I wanted real kisses, not ones typed on the screen. I turned to Vanya when I realized Jonah’s plane was going to be landing soon, and I cleared my throat.
“Hey, bud.”
He stared at me over his oversized snack bowl. “You needing something?”
“Yeah. I need you to leave.”
He blinked at me, then shook his head. “Is okay. Just tell me you hate me. I understand.” He hid his smile in a handful of popcorn.
“Fuck off. Jonah’s on his way, and while I know you’re probably a dirty perv who likes to listen to that kind of thing, I don’t want an audience.”
He sighed and sat up, leaning over to kiss my forehead. “You looking better today. Tracking me better. How many fingers?” He held up his middle one, and I kicked him in the shin.
“Fuck off.”
He grinned and sat back down. “You not cleared to have sex. Don’t make bad decision with my best friend.”
I wasn’t going to. I was shit scared of damaging something and waking up in that emptiness again.
What I was going to do, though, was peel off all of Jonah’s clothes, then my own, and simply let myself feel his skin against mine.
I was going to do it with all the lights on, too, so I could look at his face and make sure I memorized it, just… just in case.
Gathering his things, Vanya stopped at the end of the couch, then walked over and sat back down. “I was worried about you.”
I stared at him. The space around him was strange and foggy, but the clear window showed me his face and his torso. Then his hands as he dragged fingers through his hair.
“I’m okay.”
“I know. But…you keep us away, Zeki. You keep us all away. Even boyfriend.”
Bowing my head, I nodded. “I know. I was freaked-out. It wasn’t personal.”
“Yes, but it feel sort of…like if you…” He let out a growl. “Sorry. I wish I was like my sister. She study English so hard in school. I learn French? What the fuck I need French for?”
I burst into laughter. “It’s a good language, especially if you want to be a Canadian.”
He perked up. “Yes. Okay, is good point. But words are hard. With this much emotion.” He pressed a hand to his chest.
The edges of my vision flickered, and before I could panic, the clear circle got wider. Fuck. I was not going to assume, and I was not going to hope too much. Well, maybe I was going to hope a little.
“Vanny,” I told him and reached for his hand, “you’ve been a really good friend to me, even when I was a major dickhead.”
He tilted his head to the side and frowned. “You were maybe…not so open. Your heart.” He touched my chest. “Maybe have hard time with people who like you.”
That wasn’t a lie.
“But you give me time to wear you down. Like big tide on the beach.”
I snorted. “You’re definitely a big tide, bud.”
He grinned like that was the world’s best compliment. “I want to just say…if you’re scared. Hurt. Lost… Is okay to be alone for a little while. But we are here. Family. Your brother. Good friends. New best friends on Legends.”
I rolled my eyes, and when they refocused, all of him was there. I let out a trembling breath and fought the urge to rub my eyes and see if that would take anything away. “I know. Thank you.”
He nodded and stood up. “I’m expecting more. To hang out. Have barbeque with new friends, okay? You come too.”
I nodded. “I’ll come too.”
He leaned down and kissed my forehead again, then walked back to the couch, grabbed his bag, and let himself out the front door.
All I could do after that was collapse backward onto the couch cushion and let myself feel how really and truly full my heart actually was.
Jonah let himself in forty minutes after the app told me his plane had arrived. I did my best not to pace. I still couldn’t see everything in my periphery, and I had knocked my shins into my coffee table so many times they looked worse than they did at the end of the season.
I took a shower instead, now that I was allowed to wash my hair. The wound on my head had bled a lot, but the split was shallow enough I didn’t need stitches. The scab was nasty, but everything was healing.
And I could still see.
I stared at myself in the mirror for way too long before finally getting dressed, and I was just sitting down when Jonah appeared.
“Where are you?” he demanded. I grunted in my attempt to get up, and he held up a hand. “Stop right fucking there. Where are you?”
I sighed and flopped back. “Couch. In the L.”
He made his way around the coffee table better than I did for a man who didn’t know my apartment even a fraction as well as I should, and his hands found my thighs before he climbed up on top of them and straddled me.
He kissed me after that, long, slow, and deep. His fingers pushed into my hair, and as he broke the kiss, he felt along the scab.
“No stitches?”
“Mm. Nope. It was a small cut. Feels worse than it is.”
He sighed and pulled his hand away, but he didn’t go far. He traced a touch along my jaw, then down the sides of my neck and over my collarbone. He did this a lot when we were together, and I had a feeling it was the same as the way I looked at him when he was under me.
“I missed you,” he said.
I grinned. “I missed you too. Actually…” I eased him off me, then stood up and tugged him off the couch. “Come with me.” I was careful not to knock him into any of my tables as I headed for the window, then stopped in a patch of afternoon sun.
The rays glinted off his eyes—the prosthetics looking a bit more painted in that light. It highlighted all the shadows on his face—the bruises under his eyes from the way he hadn’t slept, and the little scrapes along his jaw because he had clearly shaved right after that last game.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I put my hands on his shoulders and took all of him in. My breath caught in my throat. Fuck, he was so beautiful. “Just looking at you.”
“Looking at—oh. Baby. Can you…?”
“I can see. A lot better than the last time you were here.” It was four days ago, and I’d been able to make out his features, but not with this kind of detail.
“Oh. I want to kiss you,” he breathed out.
I grinned. “Me too. But first, I need to say something. Again,” I added as an afterthought. I put my hand to his jaw. “Jonah. I’m in love with you.”
In the hospital, when I told him that, I’d imagined his face in my head. I imagined him lighting up, and trying and failing not to smile, and looking both a little shattered and elated.
All the things I’d felt when he told me.
But I was wrong. He looked even better. He was a fucking angel in the afternoon glow.
“I love you too.”
My heart moved into my throat, threatening to choke me with how fucking much I adored him. “Now you can kiss me.”
He pushed me against the wall, probably too hard for my current injury, but it was hard to give a shit when his lips met mine and he devoured them. His tongue pushed into my mouth, and he clung to me like he was afraid if he didn’t, I would disappear.
I kissed him back with the same desperation, fingers clawed into the back of his shirt, so even if he tried to pull back, he wouldn’t be able to go easily.
“I can’t wait to fuck you,” he told me, his mouth curved in a smirk.
I nodded. “I know. You’ve been so patient for me. So good for me. And I’m going to make sure I show you the moment I can.”
He pulled back. “I thought that was my line. In the hospital. Isn’t that what I promised?”
I grinned and tipped his chin up, tracing his bottom lip with my thumb. I looked at him because I could. Because I couldn’t stop. Because I never wanted to stop. “I don’t think it matters. It just matters that you’re here. That you don’t want to go.”
He pressed himself against me, burying his face into my neck. “No. I don’t want to go.”
Squeezing him tightly, I kissed his temple. “Do you want to go rot on the couch and be sad about your season for a bit?”
He hummed. “Just for a bit. Because I’m a little bit of a monster too, and I’m not that bummed about it.”