Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Creed
Then . . .
I knock when I arrive at his room.
It takes him a few seconds to answer.
Long enough for me to look down at myself in the hallway mirror opposite the door and wonder why I’m suddenly aware of the way my suit fits after a game.
I’ve been photographed like this a hundred times.
Postgame suit. Tie loosened. Hair still a little damp from the arena shower.
Body tired enough that every muscle has an opinion.
This is different.
This is Halston.
The door opens.
He stands there in jeans and a dark sweater, hair damp from a recent shower, feet bare on the carpet like he forgot shoes were an option. His face does that thing it does when he sees me—one second of total control, then something private moving behind it before he gets himself in order again.
Fuck.
I missed him.
“Glad you could make it,” he says. “Please come inside.”
His voice is polished.
His hand on the edge of the door is not.
It tightens once, then releases.
I step in, and he moves aside, but not far enough. My shoulder brushes his chest. It’s brief. Fabric against fabric. A nothing contact that doesn't feel like nothing.
Neither of us says anything.
For half a second, I think he is going to offer his hand. For half a second, I think I might take more than that.
Then Halston exhales through his nose, barely, like the choice costs him.
He steps closer and hugs me.
Not hard at first.
Carefully.
Like he is giving me a chance to refuse.
I don’t.
I put an arm around him and feel the shape of him against me, narrower than I am but strong, all restraint and tension and expensive soap. His hand settles between my shoulder blades. My palm finds the back of his sweater.
It has been long enough since I saw him that the hug should be casual.
It is not casual.
His breath changes near my ear.
Mine does too.
Then he pulls back first because one of us has to be decent.
His eyes drop to my mouth for less than a second.
I let him see that I noticed.
He clears his throat, turns, and says, “Your coat.”
“Right.”
I hand it to him. He takes it and hangs it himself in the closet near the door.
The suite at the Merkel is two rooms—a sitting room with a fireplace burning low, a bedroom visible through a half-open door.
The smell of the fire mixes with whatever Halston has put in his hair, clean and expensive and faintly cedar.
There’s a tray with champagne on ice and two flutes on the coffee table.
The view through the windows is Coal Harbour at dusk, boats sitting in the water with their navigation lights on, thin wet snow falling with no intention of staying.
The room is warm.
Too warm, maybe.
Or maybe that is me.
“I’m impressed,” he says.
“That I made the schedule work?” I cock an eyebrow.
“No.” He closes the closet door. “Three goals.”
“Ah, yes.” I shrug, as if it doesn’t matter.
It matters.
I’m tired down to the bone, and my right hip is going to be a problem tomorrow. I can still feel the third goal in my hands, the release, the sound after. I can also feel the fact that Halston watched.
“Two assists,” he adds.
“Too bad you couldn’t be at the arena,” I say, almost casually.
It comes out cleaner than it feels.
His gaze comes back to mine.
A small pause.
There. He heard the thing under it.
“It was the last thing I had to do for my grandfather before heading out,” he says. “You’d think we were on vacation, but in fact, he had me working. Something about taking a month off and not leaving problems behind.”
“He’s taking a month off?” I arch an eyebrow.
“No. I am.” He says it like he is still surprised by his own decision. “I decided to do some hosting and, when possible, some traveling before school resumes.”
“Traveling? Hosting?” I rub the back of my neck. “I’m confused.”
“Liv and you will be staying with me for a while,” he reminds me. “I want to make sure I’m around. And maybe book some trips to your away games.”
I can’t help the smile. “You’d do that?”
He nods. “She likes to see you play live.”
“And do you?”
His answer comes slower.
Not because he is unsure.
Because he is deciding how much truth to hand me.
“I do,” he says. “Even when most of the time I have to remind Liv that she can't coach you from the other side of the glass.”
I laugh and shake my head. Of course, he has to do that. “Sometimes I imagine her voice cursing at whoever hit me.”
“Oh, it’s not your imagination.” His mouth curves. “She does that. All the time.”
I laugh again, and this time his eyes stay on mine.
The fireplace pops once behind us. The sound is small, but the room feels closer after it.
“So,” I say, because the air is getting too honest, “did you watch me from the family lodge while working for Cornelius?”
“I watched part of it from a Whistler bar with Everett.”
I look at him, confused.
“My cousin,” he says. “He wanted to talk business before the flight east. I took him to a bar with the game on.”
“Where does he think you are right now?”
Halston shrugs. “I didn’t tell him. He’s a leech.”
“A leech?” I arch my eyebrow.
“Yes. Doesn’t work. Never plans to do anything. Expects part of the inheritance because he has made breathing near money his occupation.”
“Wow, that’s—”
“Sorry, I forgot to add, he’s a scammer,” Halston interrupts. “Always has a new business to pitch to anyone who will listen and, ideally, invest.”
“Let me guess. It never works out.”
He scoffs. “Never.”
There is a bite in his voice, but it is controlled. That makes it worse somehow. Halston, angry, is not loud. It’s measured. Clean. A blade put back in its case before anyone can say he drew it.
“How was Christmas?” I ask.
Halston gives me a small look.
It is the look of a man being asked how something was when he and the person asking both know there is no honest answer that fits inside polite conversation.
“Halston.”
His mouth softens at the way I say his name. Barely. Enough.
“There was assigned seating,” he says. “The napkin rings were silver. My cousin Adelaide cried at dinner on the twenty-fifth, and the family’s response was to give her a Xanax and pretend not to remember it the next morning.
My grandfather drank three glasses of port and two shots of whiskey.
Then he told me a story about his father that I had not heard before, which is the only reason I remain upright as a person descended from these people. Otherwise, it was as expected.”
I don't know what to say to that.
I know loud families. I know complicated families. I know people who love badly and try again in the morning.
This sounds like a room where pain gets folded into the table linen.
“What was the story?” I ask.
“For later.” He looks toward the fireplace, then back at me. “It is a long story, and tonight is not a long-story night.”
“What kind of night is tonight?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
He looks at me for a couple of beats.
The room changes around the silence. The snow taps the window and disappears against the glass. The boats outside sit in the harbor with their little lights on, not moving, as if someone paused the city just to see what we would do.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he says. “I think we have to decide.”
My pulse shifts.
To awareness.
I sit down on the couch because standing there with him looking at me like that is no longer reasonable.
Halston sits next to me and shows me the menu, close enough that his knee almost brushes mine.
He smells clean. Warm. Recent showers and expensive hotel soap.
I focus on the menu because looking at his hands would be a mistake.
We order food to the room at seven.
By the time it comes, Coal Harbour is fully dark.
The boats are still where they were when I arrived, their navigation lights blinking quietly through the wet snow.
Inside, the fire throws low gold across the glass and makes the whole room feel suspended above the water.
The suite is too elegant for takeout containers and two men pretending not to watch each other over dinner.
We eat at the small table by the window.
Halston pours champagne like he has been taught there is a correct way to do every single thing a man can do with his hands.
I watch anyway.
“This is different,” he says.
I narrow my gaze. “Different how?”
“Usually we’re at the bar or your place with Liv.” He sets the bottle down. “Don’t get me wrong, I love both places. But this is unusual. Good, though.”
I look at him across the table, the fire behind him making his face seem even more composed than usual.
I realize then that we have never really talked about us.
Not as a side current. Not as the third point of the triangle.
Not as two men in a hotel suite in Vancouver while Liv is somewhere else, trusting us to know how to be careful with each other.
“So,” I say, “are you okay with this . . . us? You and me?”
Halston’s eyes don't leave mine.
He nods once.
“I am very attracted to you,” he says.
Simple.
No apology.
No joke to hide behind.
The words move through me with more force than they should.
“Good to know,” I say, because my voice is the only part of me behaving. “Because I’m also attracted to you.”
I don’t add that I might be falling for him. That’s something for maybe another day or . . . who knows? This relationship is easy and yet complicated.
“I like us as three—and individuals too,” I add, because that’s how I see us.
His smile appears slowly. “Me too.” He clears his throat.“It’s not easy to find a woman who understands that I like men too. Or a man who is comfortable with my sexuality—and accepts his.”
The sentence is calm.
The hurt underneath is not.
I set my glass down.
“There it is,” I say softly.
“What?”
“The part where you make it sound clinical so it doesn’t sound like it hurt.”
His face stills.
I wonder how often people let him get away with that.
Probably often.
He looks down at his glass. “It didn't always hurt.”
“No?”