12. Kieran
TWELVE
KIERAN
The second the video call ended, I stared at my phone like it had personally betrayed me.
A moment ago, Thane Hale had been sitting in his team's arena after a professional hockey game. Now he was apparently on his way to my apartment. The transition between those two facts felt alarmingly short.
"Well," I said to the empty room, "this seems like a terrible decision."
The apartment offered no opinion. Unfortunately, my brain had plenty.
Why had I given him my address?
Why was there a sweatshirt hanging over the arm of the couch like it paid rent?
Why had I spent the last two days checking hockey scores like I suddenly understood hockey?
I didn't understand hockey. Not really. I'd watched Seattle's game that night because Thane was playing, and most of the rules still made absolutely no sense to me.
Men skated up and down the ice at alarming speeds.
Whistles happened for reasons nobody bothered to explain.
Every so often, somebody got sent somewhere called the penalty box.
The only part I consistently understood was when Seattle scored.
And Thane.
I always knew where Thane was.
Every time he touched the puck, I found myself paying attention.
Every time another player slammed into him along the boards, my stomach dropped.
At one point, he'd ended up tangled with two Vancouver players near the net, and I'd actually stood up from the couch before realizing how ridiculous that was.
He was a professional athlete. Getting hit by large men on skates was apparently part of the job description.
That hadn't stopped me from worrying anyway.
Most importantly, why had I somehow forgotten that professional athletes occasionally existed in physical spaces and could therefore show up when they said they would?
I pushed myself off the couch and turned slowly in a circle.
The apartment immediately looked different.
Five minutes ago, it had looked perfectly normal. It wasn't fancy, but it was clean. The furniture matched in the loose, optimistic way that came from buying things secondhand and hoping nobody noticed. The bookshelf was overloaded. The kitchen was small. The couch had seen better decades.
Now it looked like a crime scene.
Not an actual crime scene.
A student-housing crime scene.
The kind investigators might enter before concluding that the victim had been murdered by an aggressively limited budget.
I groaned and headed for the kitchen.
The counter was already clean.
I wiped it anyway.
Then I wiped it again.
Halfway through a third pass, I stopped and stared at the cloth in my hand.
"What am I doing?"
The counter remained silent.
Apparently, nobody in the apartment had answers tonight.
I abandoned the kitchen and moved into the living room. A textbook that had been sitting perfectly acceptably on the coffee table suddenly offended me. I relocated it to the bookshelf. A throw pillow got fluffed. A blanket got folded. The sweatshirt on the couch got carried to my bedroom.
Ten seconds later, I returned and fluffed the throw pillow again.
The problem wasn't the apartment.
The problem was that Thane was actually coming. For the past two days, he'd existed mostly in my head. A memory. A hockey game on television. A press conference. A handful of articles and interviews I'd probably spent far too much time reading.
That version of Thane felt manageable. This version didn't.
This version was getting into his car and driving across the city. This version knew where I lived.
The worst part was that I believed he was coming.
If some random guy from the bar had said he was on his way, I might have doubted him.
Thane wasn't some random guy. When he said he was coming, I believed him completely.
And that somehow made me even more nervous.
Because every minute that passed made one thing increasingly clear.
The man I'd spent the last forty-eight hours convincing myself I would never see again was on his way to my apartment.
The problem with waiting for something important was that time immediately stopped cooperating.
Five minutes felt like twenty. Twenty felt like an hour. Every time I glanced at the clock, I was convinced more time had passed than actually had. Every time I checked my phone, I discovered the same thing I had discovered thirty seconds earlier.
Nothing.
I straightened a stack of papers that were already straight. Adjusted a lamp that hadn't been bothering me until now. Checked the clock for the fourth time in three minutes.
I wandered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stared at the contents without seeing any of them.
A minute later, I found myself standing by the living room window.
The street outside looked exactly as it always did.
Cars passed. People walked by bundled in coats and scarves.
Christmas lights glowed from neighboring buildings.
Meanwhile, my brain refused to settle on a single thought.
Why was he coming?
The question kept circling back, no matter how many times I tried to dismiss it.
People didn't usually do this. They especially didn't do this after a one-night stand. They definitely didn't do this after spending the previous day becoming the biggest story in Seattle sports.
Thane Hale had reporters following him. He had cameras shoved in his face. He had teammates, sponsors, executives, and half the internet demanding pieces of his attention.
Yet somehow he had finished all of that and decided to spend his evening driving across the city to see me.
I looked down at my phone again.
Still nothing.
The silence inside the apartment seemed louder than it had earlier. The refrigerator hummed softly in the kitchen. A car door slammed somewhere outside. From another apartment, I could hear faint music playing through a wall.
For the first time all day, loneliness crept back in. Not the sharp kind. Not the kind that hurt.
Just the familiar awareness of being by myself.
The feeling had been easier to ignore while I was cleaning things that didn't need cleaning. It was harder to ignore now that there was nothing left to do except wait.
I thought about everything and nothing.
A knock sounded at the door. Every thought vanished instantly. The sound wasn't loud. Just three ordinary knocks from the other side of the apartment. My pulse jumped anyway. For a second, I stood completely still.
Then I crossed the room. The distance between the couch and the front door couldn't have been more than fifteen feet. It somehow felt much longer. I reached for the handle, took a breath, and pulled the door open.
Cold December air slipped into the apartment immediately.
Thane stood on the other side wearing a dark coat with the collar turned up against the weather. Dampness clung to his hair from the light rain outside, and one hand held a cardboard drink carrier while the other carried a paper bag from a restaurant I recognized from downtown.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
The drive here was real.
The call had been real.
The knock had been real.
Most importantly, he was real.
He had actually come.
Standing in front of my apartment holding takeout and coffee, like showing up was the most natural thing in the world.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Hi."
Something warm and ridiculous unfolded inside my chest. "Hi."
His gaze moved briefly past me toward the apartment before returning to my face.
"I come bearing food."
I looked at the bag. Then at the coffee. Then back at him. "You realize this is how people get invited inside."
His smile widened. "I was hoping you'd say that."
I stepped back to let him inside.
Another rush of cold air followed him into the apartment before I pushed the door shut behind us. Up close, the scent of rain clung faintly to his coat, mixing with the smell of coffee and whatever was inside the takeout bag.
"You can put those on the table," I said.
Thane held up the drink carrier. "Good. My fingers were starting to lose circulation."
Despite myself, I laughed. The sound seemed to ease some of the nervous energy bouncing around the apartment. A minute ago, I'd been worrying about my furniture. Now I was standing in my living room trying not to stare at the fact that Thane Hale was actually here.
He shrugged out of his coat and paused. For a second, I thought he might drape it over the nearest chair. Instead, he looked at me. "Where do you want this?"
"Uh, here." I took the coat and hung it on the rack beside the door. By the time I turned back around, he'd already carried the food to the coffee table.
I watched him while pretending not to.
Growing up in foster care meant constantly walking into unfamiliar homes and trying to figure out whether you belonged there. You learned to notice every expression. Every glance. Every subtle sign that somebody was judging where you came from or what you didn't have.
Thane didn't give me any of those signs. He just sat down on my old couch like it was the most normal couch in Seattle.
"What did you bring?" I asked.
A grin tugged at his mouth. "Food."
"Thank you. Very helpful."
He opened the bag. "Burgers. Fries. And before you ask, yes, I also brought dessert."
I narrowed my eyes. "You brought dessert?"
"I've known you for almost two days." His expression remained perfectly serious. "That's long enough to identify a pattern."
The laugh escaped before I could stop it.
A few minutes later, we were eating from paper containers balanced on the coffee table. The television remained off. Christmas lights from a neighboring apartment blinked faintly through the window. The atmosphere felt oddly comfortable, considering the circumstances.
At some point during the conversation, I realized I wasn't nervous anymore. Curious. Confused. Maybe a little overwhelmed. But not nervous. The realization settled quietly between one bite and the next, which was probably why the question slipped out before I could overthink it.
"Why are you here?" The words weren't challenging. I genuinely wanted to know.