Chapter 41
Rhys
There's a real possibility we play Eldridge if we win the next game.
I found out last night. Haven't slept. Haven't eaten.
Have been lying in bed staring at the ceiling like if I look at it long enough it'll give me an answer about what to do with the fact that Marcus Hale might be standing on the same ice as me within the next two weeks.
The memories don't come in order. They never do. Just pieces. The blue light. His hands in my hair. I love you and I think we can make this work. And then the door opening. His hands letting me go immediately like I burned him. The slam. The way he looked through me after. Every single day.
I drag myself out of bed and drive myself to the rink because that's what I do. I show up. I always show up for Jamie. Even when every part of me wants to stay under the covers until the schedule changes. Even when part of me wants to throw the next game so I can just get rid of the problem.
I turn down the corridor and Jamie is already there.
Center ice. Fully geared up. Moving through a solo drill in that unhurried focused way he has when he thinks nobody's watching — like the ice belongs to him and he's just letting the rest of us borrow it.
He sees me come through the tunnel and stops.
There's a hint of a smile on his face. The kind I've been collecting without meaning to and definitely without plans to stop.
This thing between us that's been wildfire since September — all heat and damage and nobody coming out clean — settling into something else recently.
Something more peaceful. Something that feels less like surviving each other and more like choosing each other. Less like taking and more like giving.
He’s not running away this time.
"Rhys." He skates toward the boards. "I won't even say anything anymore.
Just gonna record myself on my phone and play it back for you when you're late.
Save us both the trouble." Normally I'd bite back immediately.
Rare jokey Jamie is a gift and I take every one gladly.
But I can't fix my face right now and he clocks it before I'm even through the gate.
"Hey." Softer. Right up to the boards. Green eyes on mine, sincere and steady. "You okay?"
"Bad mood," I grumble.
"Yeah, I can see that. Eldridge?"
I look up. "Word travels fast."
"Fitch told me yesterday morning." He holds my gaze. "Is that what's going on?"
Beat.
"Yeah."
He nods once. Doesn't push. Doesn't try to fix it or say something useful or turn it into a moment.
Just takes it and lets it sit before he moves on.
That's the thing about Jamie that keeps catching me off guard.
He knows when something doesn't need words.
Most people can't do that. Most people get uncomfortable with silence and fill it with something useless. Not Jamie.
"Okay," he says. "Come on."
He spends the whole practice trying to cheer me up without making it too obvious he's trying. Keeps the drills light. Stays extra close. At one point deliberately fumbles an easy pass and looks at me with the most aggressively innocent expression. He’s being… cute.
I laugh. Just once.
He catches it and holds it tight. His face does that almost private thing — like I just handed him something he's been waiting for. By the end I'm not fixed. But feel less like I'm drowning.
We skate to the boards and I reach for my water bottle and he says without looking at me:
"Ditch with me."
"Sorry?"
"Whatever you have today." He pulls his helmet off. Runs a hand through his blonde hair, damp at the ends, falling forward across his forehead. "Ditch it."
I gawk at him. "Jamie Nash is telling me to skip class?"
"I'm telling you to come hang out with me." He glances sideways and there's a lightness in it I haven't fully gotten used to yet. "My room. Right around the corner. No funny business, I promise."
"Boo. Boring."
"Not what you need right now." He refuses to look away. "I mean it."
I look at him. This impossible, infuriating, quietly devastating man standing at the boards in full hockey gear asking me to come hang out in his room because I look like I've been hit by a truck. I pick up my bag.
"Lead the way."
His room is exactly what I expected and somehow still manages to surprise me.
Clean in a way that borders on aggressive.
Everything in its place, bed made tight, nothing on the floor, nothing out of order.
The kind of room that tells you everything about a person without them saying a word.
Small desk. TV he definitely only uses for film.
A single photo on the desk I don't look at long enough to make out.
Bare. Like someone who never let themselves take up space here or set down roots anywhere. I want to go around and move everything two inches just to see what he does. He’d probably explode.
"Bed," he says, pointing to it. Like it's obvious what he wants.
"Excuse me—"
"You look terrible. Lie down." He's already at the little kitchen space filling a glass of water. "Go."
I go and drop face down onto his bed and turn my head into the pillow and let out the longest breath I've taken in hours.
His mattress is firm. His pillow smells like him — clean mixed with detergent and just him.
He appears with water and a protein bar with a suspicious crack down the middle and a bag of pretzels.
"This is what you have?"
"I don't really keep food in my room."
"Jamie."
"The protein bar is fine. It broke in my bag. Nutritionally it’s still the same." Completely serious.
He watches until I take a bite. Only then does he seem satisfied.
"You're weird, you know that?"
Jamie shrugs. "Move over."
I scooch over and he sits against the headboard.
It’s a single bed which means the situation is immediately closer.
His shoulder against mine. His thigh alongside mine.
Body completely pressed right there against mine and he doesn't comment on it, just settles in and looks at the ceiling like this is normal, like we’ve done it a hundred times.
Like my heart isn’t about to jump out of my chest.
The pull of him is maddening. Even now. Even like this — no act, no game, nothing between us except a small bed. I can still feel it. That low constant hum of being near Jamie Nash. Like standing next to something that never shuts off.
But it's different right now.
Right now it doesn't make me want to crawl out of my skin.
Right now it's the only thing keeping me in it.
Jamie is steady. Safe.
Campus sounds come through the window. Voices. Someone's music. A regular school day carrying on without us.
"You don't have to talk if you don’t want to," he says.
"I know."
"It's stupid," I say eventually. "To still let him take up this much space in my head."
"It's not stupid, he meant a lot to you at one point."
"He's not even doing anything. Isn’t even here. He just exists on our game schedule and I'm lying in your bed losing my mind about it."
Jamie doesn't answer right away. "The things that hurt us don't care how much time's passed," he says. Like he's thought about this, as if he knows it from somewhere personal. "They just sit there and wait until it’s easier to hurt us again, when we least expect it."
"That's not terrible," I say.
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm always surprised when you act like a real person."
The corner of his mouth lifts into what I privately call the Jamie barely smile. I shift onto my side to face him. He stays looking at the ceiling for a second and then turns too, so now it's just us on this narrow bed in the middle of the day, together, staring into each other’s eyes.
It just feels like him.
His eyes are very green in the afternoon light.
I've never been this close to him without something happening between us — without a fight or a charged moment or one of us closing the distance.
This is different. This is just him looking at me like he has nowhere else to be and nothing to hide and I don't know what to do with that version except lie here and feel and treasure it all.
Jamie Nash is soft right now and he doesn't even know it and I think if I said anything about it he'd disappear so I'm just going to lie here and look at him and memorize it. Just in case he takes it back.
"The worst part wasn't the end," I pause.
"It was before all of that." He waits. "He set up this whole thing one night.
Moved his furniture. Got a projector. Made the whole room look like it was underwater — this deep blue light everywhere.
Fake candles all around the edges." I look at the ceiling.
"Said it was symbolic. That when he wasn't with me he felt like he was drowning.
Like I was the only thing that made it stop.
" A beat. "Told me he loved me. That we could make it work no matter what came next. "
Jamie doesn't move, just absorbs the pain in my words.
“And I believed him. Every single word. I thought — this is it.
This is real. This person actually sees me and wants me and we're going to be okay.
" I close my eyes. "And then later he's telling someone on the team I'd been making him uncomfortable.
" I open my eyes. "The blue room is the thing I can't shake.
Because he meant it. When he said it, he meant it completely.
I know he did." I look at Jamie. "That's the part that really destroyed me.
That you can really mean something and still do what he did.
Like everything that happened to me after, all those terrible things, meant nothing at all.
I thought he really did love me. I feel so fucking stupid. "