27. Kieran
TWENTY-SEVEN
KIERAN
I was halfway through mindlessly scrolling when a photograph stopped me. My thumb froze. Thane stared back at me from the photograph attached to the article.
The headline read: ORCAS SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS AFTER HOLIDAY SLIDE
A photograph of Thane sat beneath it. That wasn't what caught my attention. The smaller photograph beside it did. It was the two of us leaving the skating rink in Juniper Hollow. I stared at the screen for a second before opening the article.
Most of it was exactly what I expected. Discussion about the losing streak. Quotes from coaches. Statistics. Speculation. Probably the kind of thing sports writers produced after every loss.
Halfway down the page, another photograph appeared. This one had been taken outside the sports bar. The next showed us walking through town in Juniper Hollow.
A strange feeling settled in my stomach. Suddenly, something that had felt private didn't feel private anymore.
I kept scrolling until I reached the comments section. Normally, I ignored comments. Most of the time, they were little more than strangers shouting into the void. This time, though, I found myself reading them.
At first, they seemed harmless enough. People debated coaching decisions, complained about missed opportunities, and argued over line combinations as though they personally belonged behind an NHL bench. Then the conversation started shifting.
A few people pointed out that Seattle had lost two straight games since Thane's relationship had become public.
Others suggested that maybe the team needed fewer distractions and more focus.
One commenter wrote that relationships could wait until the offseason.
Another insisted the Orcas needed Hale locked in if they wanted to turn things around.
None of the comments were particularly cruel. Nobody was attacking me. Nobody was calling me names. Most of them probably didn't know anything about me beyond a handful of photographs attached to a sports article.
And yet the same idea kept surfacing in different ways. The relationship had become part of the conversation. Not as something positive. Not even as something negative. Just as a variable people were now factoring into the equation.
I knew it was ridiculous. Two hockey games did not suddenly erase years of experience, talent, and hard work. One relationship did not determine whether a team won or lost. The logic fell apart the moment I examined it.
The problem was that the comments sounded reasonable on the surface. They weren't fueled by hatred or outrage. They were people looking at a situation and drawing conclusions that made sense to them. That made them much harder to dismiss.
I exited the article and opened another. Then another. Different writers. Different websites. Different headlines.
My phone vibrated in my hand. For one ridiculous second, I expected to see Thane's name. Instead, I saw Janelle's. A knot formed somewhere beneath my ribs. The message was simple.
Janelle: Sam and I were talking about how close you are to graduation. He swears that's impossible because you were twelve five minutes ago. We're proud of you, kiddo. *white heart emoji*
No matter how much time passed, she never seemed to forget I existed.
My thumb hovered over the screen before I typed back.
Me: Thanks. Tell Sam I'm officially offended he thinks I'm still twelve.
The reply came a few minutes later.
Janelle: I'll tell him. Though for the record, I agree with him. *grinning face emoji*
I smiled despite myself. That was Janelle. Kind. Warm. Genuine. She never pushed. Somehow, she always seemed to know when to leave space for me to answer or not answer. Exactly the way she'd always been.
I set the phone on the coffee table.
The problem was that seeing her name had stirred something I hadn't been thinking about five minutes earlier.
A feeling I'd spent years getting very good at ignoring. The waiting. The hoping. The quiet certainty that if I could just be good enough, easy enough, lovable enough, somebody would finally decide to keep me.
My jaw tightened. I pushed the thought away immediately. It didn't go very far.
I picked up the remote and changed the channel.
A Christmas movie was playing, but five minutes later, I couldn't have told anyone what had happened in a single scene.
My attention kept drifting back to the photographs and the comments beneath them, and to the uncomfortable realization that people who had never met me were discussing my relationship as though it were part of a hockey debate.
My phone rang. I looked down automatically.
Thane.
For the first time all morning, I felt something that wasn't confusion or unease. It was relief. He was home.
"Hey."
"Hey, yourself." The warmth in his voice settled over me immediately. "I just got home."
"I figured."
"Figured, huh? Here I thought you'd be impressed by my incredible travel skills."
"You got on a plane."
"It was a very complicated plane."
I shook my head, smiling despite myself.
His laughter followed, familiar and easy, and for a moment, everything felt normal again.
Then he cleared his throat. "Anyway, I was wondering if I could come over."
I wanted to see him. I wanted him sitting beside me on this couch. I wanted to hear about the road trip, the games, and the flight home. I wanted to stop feeling like something had been off balance for the past two days.
The silence stretched a little longer than it should have.
"Kier?"
I closed my eyes briefly. "Yeah. Of course, you can come over."
"Good." The smile in his voice was unmistakable. "I'll be there soon."
After the call ended, I lowered the phone into my lap and stared at the dark screen. Part of me was already counting down the minutes until he arrived. And another part of me was quietly wondering whether that was a mistake.
The next forty minutes crawled.
By the time a knock sounded at the door, my nerves felt stretched tight. I opened the door. Thane stood on the other side.
The road trip had left its mark. He looked tired. There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, and his hair looked slightly longer than it had a week ago, though that was probably my imagination.
What struck me most was the expression on his face. He was smiling. The smile of somebody genuinely happy to see me.
"Hey." The word barely left his mouth before he stepped forward and wrapped an arm around my waist. Then he kissed me. It felt like what a real home was supposed to be. My hands found his jacket automatically. I let myself lean into him and forget everything that had happened that morning.
When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead briefly against mine. "Hi, baby."
The simple affection in his voice nearly undid me. “Hi, Thane.”
He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. "God, it's good to see you."
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. "You saw me three days ago."
"Three very long days ago."
That earned him a smile despite everything.
He dropped onto the couch and stretched his arm across the back cushions.
God, I wanted to sit on his lap and let him wrap those ridiculously strong arms around me.
Instead, I sat beside him. Close enough to feel his warmth.
Close enough to remind myself he was actually here.
I'd missed him.
Thane looked me over. "Did you eat breakfast?"
I stared at him. "Hello to you too."
His mouth twitched. "That's not an answer."
"I had breakfast."
"An actual breakfast?"
I rolled my eyes. "You're impossible."
"I'll take that as a yes."
The annoying part was that he looked entirely too pleased with himself.
"What about lunch?"
I turned to look at him. "Did you fly all the way back from Los Angeles just to interrogate me about food?"
"Maybe." I shook my head, but a smile slipped through anyway.
Thane smiled back. "There it is."
"What?"
"That smile."
Heat crept into my face. "You're ridiculous."
"Probably."
For a moment, it was easy. Easy to sit there beside him. Easy to forget the articles. Easy to focus on the fact that he was home.
I asked about the flight instead. He told me about turbulence somewhere over Oregon and how one of the younger players had spent half an hour convinced the plane was going down.
"Please tell me it wasn't Briggs."
"It was not Briggs."
"Tannen?"
"No."
I narrowed my eyes. "You aren't going to tell me who it was, are you?"
Thane grinned. "Nope."
"You're no fun."
"I've been called worse."
Eventually, he started talking about the road trip.
He told me about some of the ridiculous things that happened whenever a group of hockey players spent too much time together.
The stories made me laugh, and for a while, it was easy to focus on the fact that he was home instead of everything I'd read that morning.
Then the conversation drifted toward the games. The conversation flowed the same way it always had. Effortlessly. One topic slides into the next without either of us having to force it.
"You looked frustrated afterward," I said.
A corner of his mouth lifted. "We lost."
"I know."
He shrugged. “Losing usually isn't on my list of favorite activities."
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Then I asked, "Was it really that bad?"
Thane considered that. "No." He shook his head. "That's probably the frustrating part. We weren't getting run out of the building."
I frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means we weren't being dominated. The games were close." He settled back against the couch. "You can spend most of the night doing a lot of things right and still come away with nothing."
I nodded.
"The frustrating part is knowing we were right there," he said. "If a couple of breaks had gone differently, we'd probably be having a very different conversation."
A very different conversation.
"That's hockey," Thane said. "Sometimes the puck misses by an inch, and that's the game."
Thane kept talking, not complaining or making excuses. Just explaining the game the way somebody who had spent most of his life playing it would.