Chapter 18
ADAN
I should’ve been over there with them, breaking down plays and talking shit about Albany’s defense. Instead, I was lingering by the visitor’s locker room, pretending to check my phone while actually waiting to see if Nils would appear.
He’d mentioned driving separately before the game, something about needing to run errands.
At the time, I’d been too focused on pre-game prep to think much about it.
But now, with the team getting ready to pile onto the bus for the four-hour ride back to Buffalo, I was a little disappointed that we wouldn’t have the chance to spend time together.
“Adan?”
I turned to find him approaching from the coaching staff exit, gear bag slung over his shoulder. He’d changed out of his coaching attire into jeans and a sweater that made his eyes look impossibly blue in the parking lot lights.
“Great game tonight,” he said, stopping a careful distance away. Even here, with most people gone, we maintained the professional spacing that had become second nature.
“Thanks. That positioning drill we worked on really paid off in the second period.”
“I noticed.” His voice carried that warm pride that always made my chest tight. Then, more quietly: “Want to skip the bus ride? I have an idea.”
My heart rate kicked up immediately. “What kind of idea?”
“The kind that involves not being trapped on a bus with twenty other people for four hours. The kind that allows us to spend the night together.”
“Hell yes.”
A smile flickered across his face. “Good. Meet me at my car in five minutes. Try not to look too happy.”
I forced myself to walk casually back to where Tank was loading equipment onto the bus, even though every instinct wanted to sprint to Nils’s car immediately. “Hey, I’m gonna catch a ride back with Coach Anders. He wants to go over some stuff on the ride home.”
Technically, not a lie.
Tank groaned. “For real?”
I shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’m learning things from him every day.”
Also not a lie. I was getting way too good at this.
“You sure? We were gonna play cards.”
“It’s fine. I’ll see you back at campus.”
Tank studied me for a moment, and I wondered if he suspected something. He knew me better than anyone, so if anyone was to pick up on something being off, it would be him. But finally, he shrugged. “Your loss. Webb brought his poker chips.”
I grabbed my gear and headed toward the far end of the parking lot where Nils had parked. He was already in the driver’s seat, the engine running. I threw my bag in the back and slid into the passenger seat, immediately hit by the warmth and the faint scent of his cologne.
“So where are we actually going?” I asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.
“North.” He glanced at me with that subtle smile that always made my stomach flip. “I have a plan.”
Twenty minutes later, we were on I-87 heading away from Albany, the city quickly behind us.
I’d relaxed completely into the passenger seat, my usual post-game adrenaline morphing into something warmer and more content.
The simple pleasure of being alone with Nils, no teammates or coaches around, no need to monitor our words or maintain careful distance, was intoxicating.
“There’s a bag in the back with warmer clothes,” he said. “It’s going to be cold where we’re going, so I brought some extra you can borrow.”
Now I was really curious. I twisted around to find a duffel bag and pulled it into my lap. Inside were thick sweaters, winter gloves, thermal underwear, and what looked like snow pants. Everything looked new, tags removed but creases still showing from being folded in the store.
“Did you buy all this?”
A slight flush colored his cheeks. “I wanted to make sure you’d be warm enough, and I only brought one set of everything with me from Sweden.”
I held up one of the sweaters, a thick wool cable-knit that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. “Nils, this is too much—”
“It’s practical. You’ll need it where we’re going.”
“Which is where, exactly? Are we going skiing? Ice fishing? You’re not taking me on some Swedish wilderness survival exercise, are you?”
He laughed, that genuine sound I’d been hearing more often lately. “No wilderness survival. Though that might be fun for another time.”
Another time. The casual assumption that we’d have other adventures, other stolen moments like this, made warmth spread through my chest.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he said. “It’s something we talked about once. Something you’ve never experienced.”
I thought back through our conversations, trying to remember what I might have mentioned wanting to do. Then it hit me: that night on the bus after our first away game, talking about the stars. How I’d never really seen them, not the way he described them in Sweden. “Are we going stargazing?”
His smile widened. “Yup.”
“In November? It’s freezing!”
“Hence the warm clothes. But the cold air makes for better visibility. Less atmospheric distortion.”
“Nerd,” I said fondly.
“And proud of it.”
We stopped in a town called Lake George for supplies.
It was probably bustling in the summer, but it was now deserted, almost desolate.
Darkness was falling rapidly, and the small grocery store was empty at this hour, just us and a bored-looking cashier who barely glanced up from his phone.
Nils moved through the aisles with purpose, filling a basket with what seemed like enough food for a week.
“Firewood,” he muttered, checking something on his phone. “Matches, hot chocolate, marshmallows—”
“Marshmallows?”
“You can’t have hot chocolate without marshmallows. It’s a rule.”
“Since when?”
“Since I decided five minutes ago.”
I followed him around the store, oddly charmed by this domestic side of him. He debated between different types of pasta, frowned at the limited wine selection (before remembering I couldn’t legally drink it anyway), and spent five full minutes choosing the perfect firewood bundle.
“You know we’re only going for one night, right?” I asked as he added a third type of cheese to the basket.
“I want to make sure we have options.”
“Options for what? Are we feeding an army?”
He paused in front of the breakfast foods. “I don’t know what you like for breakfast. Eggs? Pancakes? Cereal?”
“Nils.” I put my hand on his arm, not caring if anyone saw. “Whatever you make will be perfect.”
Something soft passed over his face. “I want this to be good for you.”
“It already is.”
Back in the car with our supplies, we turned off the main road onto increasingly narrow mountain paths.
The GPS on Nils’s phone showed us heading deep into the Adirondack Park, far from any towns or cities.
Snow banks rose on either side of the plowed road, and the trees pressed close, their branches heavy with fresh powder from last week’s storm.
“This is beautiful,” I said, pressing my face closer to the window. “I’ve never been anywhere like this.”
“No?”
“City kid, remember? My version of nature is Chestnut Ridge Park, and that’s like twenty minutes of trees max before you hit suburbs again.”
“My family has a cabin in the mountains,” Nils said, then caught himself. “Had. When I was young. We’d go there in winters.”
There was something odd about the way he said it, a careful correction that made me curious. But before I could ask, we rounded a bend and the cabin appeared through the trees.
It was perfect, like something out of a Christmas card. Small but sturdy, with log walls and a steep roof designed to shed snow. Smoke already rose from the chimney, and warm light glowed in the windows.
“Someone’s here?” I asked, suddenly worried.
“No, the rental company prepared it for us. Turned on the heat, started a fire. It should be warm inside.”
“You rented this place?”
“Just for tonight.” He pulled up beside the cabin and turned off the engine. “I wanted somewhere we could be completely alone. No chance of anyone from school seeing us.”
The thoughtfulness of it, the planning he’d put into this surprise, made my throat tight. “This is incredible.”
“Wait until you see the stars.”
We unloaded the car, carrying groceries and bags inside.
The interior was even better than the exterior—one main room with a stone fireplace, exposed wooden beams, and comfortable furniture that looked actually lived-in rather than staged.
A ladder led up to what must be a loft bedroom, and the kitchen, while small, had everything we might need.
“How did you even find this place?” I asked, setting grocery bags on the counter.
“Research. I looked for dark sky locations within driving distance. This area has some of the least light pollution on the East Coast. Class 2 on the Bortle scale.”
“I have no idea what that means, but it sounds impressive.”
He was already unpacking groceries, organizing them with the same methodical approach he brought to coaching. “It means it’s so dark here that we should be able to see the Milky Way clearly, among other things.”
“The Milky Way,” I repeated slowly. “For real?”
He paused in his unpacking to look at me. “That’s why we’re here.”
The simple statement hit me hard. He’d remembered a casual comment from months ago, had planned this entire trip to show me something that mattered to him. How many people had ever paid that kind of attention to what I wanted?
We worked together to enhance the fire that was already burning, adding logs until it blazed properly. The warmth filled the small space quickly, and I stripped off my outer jacket, hanging it on a hook by the door.
“Hungry?” Nils asked. “I could make us something simple before we go outside.”
“In a bit. I want to see these famous stars first.”
He smiled. “Get the warm clothes on. All the layers.”
Bundling up took longer than expected. Thermal underwear, regular clothes, then snow pants and the thick sweater. Gloves, hat, scarf. By the time I was done, I felt like the Michelin Man.
“I can barely move,” I complained, attempting to bend my arms.