Chapter 14 #2
I stepped closer, close enough that he had to tilt his head back slightly to maintain eye contact. “What if we found a way to separate the coaching from everything else? What if you could coach me the way you used to, and we dealt with the other stuff separately?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” He stopped again, his gaze dropping to my mouth before snapping back up to my eyes. “Because every time I look at you, I think about kissing you again.”
The admission sent heat rushing through my system. “So kiss me again.”
“Adan—”
“I’m serious. If that’s what you’re thinking about anyway, if that’s what’s making it impossible for you to coach me properly, then maybe we should get it out of our systems.”
“That’s not how attraction works.”
“How do you know? Have you tried?”
“This is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this situation in the first place.”
“No, what got us into this situation was you deciding that one kiss meant we could never have a normal working relationship again.”
I could see him struggling, see the careful control he’d been maintaining for a week starting to crack.
“I’m not asking you to risk your job. I’m not asking you to date me or declare your feelings in front of the team. I’m asking you to stop acting like I’m radioactive.”
“And if I can’t? If being near you makes it impossible to maintain professional boundaries?”
“Then we’ll figure it out when we get there. But this,” I gestured at the space between us, at the careful distance he was maintaining even now, “this isn’t working for either of us.”
He was quiet for so long, I thought he might not respond. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with emotion. “I hate that I’ve hurt you. That I’ve made you feel like you lost your coach.”
“Then fix it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Start by not acting like touching me is going to end the world.”
Before he could respond, I closed the distance between us, not to kiss him but to wrap my arms around him in the kind of hug I’d given him at the youth center. The kind of contact that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with the friendship we’d been building.
For a second, he went rigid, like he was going to pull away. Then his arms came up around me, tentative at first, then stronger as he let himself return the embrace.
“I missed this,” I said quietly. “I missed being able to talk to you.”
“I missed it too.”
“Then don’t take it away again.”
“I’ll try.”
We stayed like that for a long moment, holding each other, and I could feel some of the tension that had been building between us starting to ease. This was what I’d been missing: not just the attraction, but the comfort of being close to someone who understood me.
But as the seconds stretched on, I became aware of other things. The way he smelled, clean and familiar and distinctly him. The solid warmth of his body against mine. The way his breathing had changed, becoming deeper and more careful.
When I pulled back to look at him, his eyes were dark and focused on my face with an intensity that made my pulse quicken.
“Adan,” he said, his voice rough.
“Yeah?”
“I think we should—”
I kissed him.
It wasn’t planned, wasn’t a conscious decision, but an instinctive response to the way he was looking at me. But unlike the first kiss, which had been brief and shocking, this one immediately deepened into something more urgent.
His hands came up to frame my face, and I pressed closer, backing him up against the door as the careful control we’d both been maintaining shattered completely.
This wasn’t the tentative exploration of the first kiss—this was need, pure and simple, seven days of tension and avoidance and forced distance exploding into desperate contact.
I tangled my fingers in his hair, amazed by how soft it was, how perfectly he fit against me. He made a sound low in his throat when I bit gently at his bottom lip, and the sound sent heat racing through my system.
“Adan,” he gasped when we broke apart for air, but he didn’t try to stop me when I kissed him again.
This time, he kissed me back with equal intensity, his hands sliding from my face to my shoulders to the small of my back, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us.
When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, trying to process what had happened.
He sighed. “We shouldn’t have—”
“Probably not.”
But neither of us moved away. I couldn’t look away from him. He was so damn gorgeous, his lips slightly swollen from kissing, his normally perfect hair messed up from my hands.
“This doesn’t solve anything,” he said quietly.
“Doesn’t it?”
“It makes everything more complicated.”
“Maybe. But it also proves that we can’t pretend this doesn’t exist between us.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his hands still resting on my back, his body still pressed against mine.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But we figure it out together instead of you making unilateral decisions about what’s best for both of us.”
“And if this ruins everything?”
“Then at least we’ll ruin it together.”
Despite everything, that made him smile. “You have a very unique approach to problem-solving.”
“It’s worked for me so far.”
“Has it?”
“Well, I got you to kiss me twice. I’d call that a success.”
His smile widened, and for the first time in a week, he looked like the Nils I’d been getting to know: relaxed, genuine, present in the moment instead of constantly calculating potential consequences.
“What happens tomorrow?” he asked.
“Tomorrow, we go back to being coach and player. You teach me hockey, I try to learn from you, and we both try to figure out how to make this work.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we’ll deal with that when we get there. But I’m not willing to give up without trying.”
He studied my face for a long moment, and I could see him weighing options, calculating risks, trying to find a path forward that didn’t end in disaster for both of us.
“Okay,” he said finally.
“Okay?”
“Okay. We try to make this work.”
The relief that flooded through me was overwhelming. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. This might be the worst decision either of us has ever made.”
“Or it might be the best.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I usually am.”
That earned me another smile, and as I finally stepped back to give him some space, I felt lighter than I had in a week. We hadn’t solved everything—we probably hadn’t solved anything, really—but we’d at least acknowledged that running away from the problem wasn’t working.
And for now, that felt like enough.