Chapter 22
Skyler
Ichanged my shirt four times.
Four.
Which was three more than I’d ever changed for any date in my entire life, including prom, including the time I’d taken a model to a charity gala, including every single dinner with every single woman I’d ever been interested in.
Was it normal for a guy to worry over his shirt—a T-shirt, no less—like a crazy former hobbit obsessing over a ring?
But this wasn’t a date with a woman.
It was a date with Jacks.
It still felt strange calling an outing with a guy “a date,” but I’d resolved to normalize this as much as possible. It gave my jittery nerves some sense of comfort to ground whatever we were doing in language I already understood.
Guys went on dates with other guys.
Didn’t they?
Fuck me if I knew. I wanted to see Jacks again, to touch his face and kiss him like we did last time.
I’d dreamed about it the whole time we were out of town.
Every time I laced up my skates and hit the ice, I looked into the stands hoping beyond hope to see him smiling at me through the glass.
That part was ridiculous for two reasons.
First, we were on a road trip and he was nowhere near whatever town we were in.
And second, he’d never even been to one of my games—not even our home games.
Still, I couldn’t stop looking around, scanning the crowd, hoping to see messy dark curls bouncing across a perfectly shaped forehead.
Jesus, I’ve turned into a thirteen-year-old girl who just had her first kiss.
And apparently, Jacks had also turned me into the kind of person who stood shirtless in front of his closet at 6:15 p.m., agonizing over fabric choices like they contained the secrets of the eternal life.
The first shirt—a fitted navy henley—felt too casual, too “I didn’t try.” The second—a crisp white button-down—felt too formal, too “I’m trying to impress you.” The third—a vintage Lightning tee—felt too on-brand, too “I have no personality outside of hockey.”
I settled on the fourth: a soft gray pullover that was somewhere between dressy and casual, the kind of thing that said, “I put in effort, but I’m not weird about it.”
At least, I hoped that’s what it said.
Clothes spoke on dates, didn’t they? God, I hoped mine would . . . unless they had a big, rude mouth and threw me under the bus. I needed help, not an archnemesis made of cotton and whatever other shit they put in a pullover.
On reflection, they said, “I own a gray sweater.”
Which was fine.
That wasn’t nemesis talk. I could handle that.
I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror for the tenth time. My hair was doing its thing, unruly but passing as intentional. The stubble on my cheeks was at that sweet spot between “forgot to shave” and “ruggedly handsome.” And my eyes were . . .
Fucking terrified.
That, I couldn’t fix.
My phone said 6:22, thirty-eight minutes until Jacks arrived, and my apartment looked like a crime scene of indecision.
I’d rearranged the living room twice, moved throw pillows from the couch to the chair and back again, lit a candle, then blown it out because it seemed too romantic, relit it because the apartment smelled like hockey gear and anxiety, then blown it out again because what kind of grown-ass man lit candles for another grown man?
The kind who was having a full-blown identity crisis, apparently.
I relit the candle.
The food situation was handled, at least. I’d ordered from a Thai place Jacks had mentioned in passing weeks ago—the one near Barbacks that he said had the best pad see ew in Tampa.
I still didn’t know what pad see ew was, but Jacks seemed to like it, so I’d ordered two large servings of the stuff.
The delivery was scheduled for 7:15, giving us time to settle in before the food arrived.
I set out plates and silverware, ready for the transfer-from-container-to-plate operation that would constitute my version of “gourmet cooking.”
Everything was under control.
Everything except the Category 5 hurricane tearing through my central nervous system.
I sat down on the couch.
Stood up.
Sat down again.
Picked up the remote, turned on the TV, turned it off.
Picked up my phone, opened Instagram, closed it without looking at anything.
Twenty-four hours ago, I’d kissed a man.
Not any man. I’d kissed Jacks.
I’d walked across my kitchen, backed him into a wall, and pressed my lips to his like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And it had been.
It still was.
In that moment, with his breath on my face and his eyes wide and his back against the wall, nothing else had existed. There was no hockey, no career, no carefully constructed identity I’d built over twenty-seven years of being Skyler Shaw, All-American Straight Guy.
There was only him.
Only us.
Only the terrifying, exhilarating free fall of letting myself want what I wanted.
I’d spent the last twenty-four hours expecting the regret to slam into me like waves against rocks. I kept waiting for the panic, the shame, and the oh-God-what-have-I-done spiral that seemed inevitable.
But it hadn’t come.
Why hadn’t it come?
That was, perhaps, the most confounding part of all this.
Instead, I’d woken up this morning with my face buried in the couch cushion that still smelled like Jacks’s shampoo. My first conscious thought had been: When can I see him again?
That was either the best sign in the world or the worst.
I wasn’t sure which.
My phone buzzed.
Jacks: Should I bring anything tonight? Wine? Dessert? A detailed PowerPoint on proper cuddling techniques?
I laughed, the sound too loud and strained in my empty apartment.
Me: Your presence is sufficient, but if you happen to have a dessert, I won’t say no.
Jacks: Key lime pie from that bakery on Howard?
Me: I might actually kiss you again for key lime. Let me get the wall ready.
Jacks: Ha. Right. Your wall. Hope it remembers me. See you at 7, hockey star.
Me: See you soon.
I set the phone down and pressed my palms against my eyes.
This was real.
This was happening.
I, Skyler Shaw, captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning, was about to have a dinner date with a man, a man I’d kissed, a man who made me feel things I’d never felt with anyone, male or female, in my entire life.
And I had no roadmap for any of it.
With Brooke, and with every woman before her, there had been a script, a well-worn path that I could follow without thinking.
The moves were simple: Ask her out, pick a nice restaurant, make conversation, and kiss her good night.
All I had to do was follow the steps in the expected order, hit the expected marks, and perform the expected version of myself.
It had always felt like performing.
I hadn’t realized that until now.
With Jacks, there was no script or template or plan. I had no culturally mandated sequence of events telling me what came next. There was only us, two people figuring it out in real time, making it up as we went along.
And it was terrifying.
It was also the most alive I’d felt in years.
At 6:58, a knock on my door nearly had me peeing all over the couch . . . which would’ve done very bad things to my pre-date planning—not to mention my jeans.
He was two minutes early.
I smoothed my sweater, took a breath that did nothing to calm my nerves, and opened the door.
Jacks stood in the hallway holding a white bakery box and wearing a dark green button-down that made his eyes look like warm honey. His curls were damp, like he’d just showered, and he’d trimmed his stubble into something more intentional than his usual bar-worker scruff.
He’d dressed up.
For me.
Something swooped low in my stomach.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
We stood there for a moment, grinning at each other like a couple of idiots separated by a doorframe, neither of us sure how to navigate the transition from “texting friends” to “people who’d spent two hours making out on a couch yesterday.”
“You going to invite me in?” he asked. “Or should I eat this pie in the hallway? I’ll need a fork if you choose option number two.”
“Right. Sorry. Come in.” I moved aside and motioned for him to enter.
He stepped past me, close enough that I caught a whiff of his cologne—something woody and warm that made me want to bury my face in his neck. I shoved that thought aside, closed the door, then followed him into the kitchen, where he was setting the bakery box on the counter.
“Place looks different,” he said, glancing around.
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Cleaner? Did you . . . did you clean for me?”
“I clean regularly. I’m a clean person. This is perfectly normal levels of clean.”
His smirk only made my nerves spike.
Then his lips curled upward in what could only be called a leer of pride. “There’s a candle lit.”
“I like candles.”
“Since when?”
“Since always. I’m a candle guy. I contain multitudes.”
He was grinning now, that warm, knowing grin that made me feel simultaneously seen and exposed. “You cleaned, and you lit a candle. You’re adorable.”
“I’m an NHL captain. I’m the antithesis of adorable.”
“You’re an adorable NHL captain who cleaned his apartment and lit a candle for our date.”
The word hung in the air between us.
Date.
He’d used it last night, in his text. It’s a date. I’d agreed, but hearing it now, out loud, in person, in my apartment, made it feel different. It made it feel more real, more undeniable.
“Is that what this is?” I asked, not challenging, just double-checking, making sure we were on the same page. “A date?”
Jacks leaned against the counter, his expression open but careful. “What do you want it to be?”
I considered the question.
Two days ago, I wouldn’t have had an answer.
Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have even understood the question.
“I want it to be a date,” I said.
The words came out steady and certain, far more certain than I’d expected.
Something shifted in Jacks’s expression—that guarded carefulness melting into something warmer, something almost like relief.