Chapter 17
Matt
Two weeks went by, and I told myself every day of them that I was fine.
Bob helped. The dog folded into my routine like he'd been drafted for it.
Morning runs at six, him loping alongside me with his tongue out and his ears streaming, matching my pace without being asked.
Weight training, he'd wait outside the gym and charm everyone who walked through the door, tail going, zero discrimination.
Film sessions, he'd sit in the corner with his head on his paws, watching the screen like he was studying tape.
Coach George's assistant started bringing him treats, and by the second week the guys were fighting over who got to sit next to him on the bench.
Mason especially. He'd show up to practice with premium treats in his jacket and deny it to my face while Bob chewed contentedly at his feet. Even Nate, who claimed a dog allergy that I had zero medical evidence for, would sneak him pieces of his protein bar when he thought nobody was watching.
Bob had been sad at first. He'd wait by the door in the evenings, whining softly, head coming up at every footstep in the hallway.
On runs he'd lunge toward every blonde woman we passed, pulling the leash tight, then deflate when it wasn't her.
I knew what he was looking for. I knew who he was looking for.
And I'd pull the leash gently and say "not her, buddy" and keep moving and pretend the words didn't apply to both of us.
By the second week, he stopped waiting at the door.
I tried to stop too. Tried to file Carrie under Closed, under Mistake, under Complication I Was Better Off Without.
Some days I almost believed it. Other days I'd be standing in my kitchen at two in the morning, unable to sleep, and I'd find myself staring at the blue leash with the paw prints hanging from the hook by the door, and the whole case I'd built against her would quietly fall apart.
The leash she'd handed me with tears she hadn't let fall. The promise she'd made with her fingers wrapped around mine.
I'd put the leash back on the hook and go to bed and start the case over in the morning.
* * *
The first game of the season arrived like a reckoning.
Home opener against Detroit. The arena was packed, every seat filled, and the energy rolling off the crowd was different from anything I'd felt before.
Not the usual opening-night buzz. This was charged.
Tense. Twenty thousand people who'd spent the summer reading headlines about whether I was a traitor or a victim, and they'd come tonight to find out for themselves.
I could feel it during warm-ups. The eyes. The cameras tracking me harder than usual. Fans holding signs, some supportive, some not. A guy three rows up in a Baker jersey with LOYALTY? written across it in black marker. I read it and filed it and kept skating.
Coach George pulled me aside by the tunnel. "Show them who you are. Show them why you're going to wear the C."
I nodded. Couldn't speak. My throat was locked around something too big to swallow and too dangerous to let out.
The puck dropped and the first shift hit me like a wave breaking.
Detroit came out physical, testing us, looking for cracks.
And for the first time in months, my body answered without hesitation.
No delay. No second-guessing. Just the ice under my blades and the puck on my stick and fifteen years of training taking over like a system running clean.
First period. A turnover at their blue line, and suddenly the lane opened. I took two strides, faked the D-man to his inside hip, and went wide. Their goalie cheated left. I went high glove. The puck hit the back of the net and the building came apart.
My name. Twenty thousand people screaming my name. Not the booing from the finals. Not the insults from the sidewalk. My name, the way it was supposed to sound, and it filled my chest and pushed out everything that had been sitting there for weeks.
Second period I threaded two assists through gaps that shouldn't have existed.
Passes I could feel before I saw them, my hands and the ice and the geometry all speaking the same language.
Third period, Detroit pulled within one and I switched to shutdown mode.
Blocked three shots. Disrupted every zone entry they tried.
Took a hit behind the net that rang my helmet and got right back up and finished the shift.
We won 4-2. The best game I'd played in years. Maybe ever.
The media swarmed afterward. Cameras, microphones, the full circus.
"Matt, after the rumors this summer, can you clarify your commitment to Boston?"
I looked directly into the lens.
"I'm never leaving the Boston Bruins. This is my team. This is my city. I'm not going to the White Hearts or any other team. I'm here until they forcibly remove me from the ice."
The room erupted. Laughter, applause. Mason was in the background grinning like a man whose investment had just paid off. Coach George nodded. The answer they'd needed. The answer I'd needed to hear myself say.
I drove home with the windows down, October air biting at my face, the kind of cold that cleaned the inside of your head.
Bob sat in the passenger seat with his nose out the window, ears flapping.
Everything felt right for the first time in weeks.
The game humming in my muscles, the crowd still echoing in my chest, my body and the ice and the season all pointing in the same direction again.
Then I pulled into my driveway and saw her.
Carrie.
On my front porch. Bob's old leash in one hand, a tennis ball at her feet.
She was sitting on the top step with her knees pulled up, and she looked happy, genuinely happy, that smile that reorganized her whole face, but underneath it she looked tired.
The kind of tired that comes from not sleeping well, from carrying a weight that won't put itself down.
Bob lost his mind. Barking, straining against the seatbelt, his whole body vibrating. I sat in the car with my hands on the wheel and watched her stand up, watched her smile falter into a look more uncertain, more nervous, and I tried to figure out what I was feeling.
Angry. Yes. Definitely angry, or at least the memory of angry, the echo of it still sitting where it had been for two weeks.
But underneath that, quieter and more honest, something else entirely.
Relief. The kind that makes your hands go loose on the wheel.
I got out. Let Bob free. He bounded toward her like she'd been deployed overseas instead of gone for two weeks, jumping, spinning, that high delighted register.
She dropped to her knees laughing, letting him lick her face, burying her hands in his fur, and watching her with the dog, watching the joy break across her face, I felt a crack run along a line I'd been holding together with discipline and denial and two-in-the-morning arguments I'd been having with a leash on a hook.
"I'm sorry," she said, looking up. Those brown eyes. The gold flecks. "I know I shouldn't be here. But I missed him so much, and I have some time off, and I thought maybe I could spend a little time with him. If that's okay."
I should have said no. Should have protected whatever was left of the wall. But watching her with Bob, seeing how genuinely happy she was, I couldn't fake the refusal.
Damn it. I'd almost forgotten how beautiful she was. Almost. The almost was doing a lot of load-bearing work.
"Come inside," I said, before the sensible part of me could object. "You want a beer?"
Her eyes went wide. "Really?"
"Before I change my mind."
My place was game-day chaos. Equipment bag by the door, protein shake containers on the counter, Bob's toys scattered across the living room like a tennis-ball crime scene.
She didn't seem to notice. She settled onto my couch like she'd been sitting there for years, Bob immediately jumping up to park his head in her lap.
I grabbed two beers. Twisted the caps. Handed her one. Our fingers brushed on the exchange, and the contact went through me the way it always did with her, a current that had no business still running after everything, and I pretended not to notice. She pretended not to notice me pretending.
"Congratulations on the game," she said. "I watched. You were incredible."
"You watched?"
"Of course I watched." She stopped. Took a drink. "I saw the interview after. What you said about staying."
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
"No. I'm just glad you did."
We fell into something that felt dangerous in its ordinariness.
Talking about Bob. His quirks. How he'd learned to open doors if they weren't locked.
How he'd stolen an entire rotisserie chicken off my counter and eaten it before I could react.
How he whined during sad parts of movies like he understood what was happening.
She laughed at all the right moments. Offered her own Bob stories from the weeks she'd had him.
The tension between us didn't disappear, but it softened into something we could sit inside without it cutting.
An hour passed. Then another. Bob fell asleep on her lap, snoring, completely at peace, and she was absently running her fingers through his fur, and the scene was so domestic, so quiet, so exactly the kind of thing I'd been telling myself I didn't want, that my chest ached with how badly I did.
"I should go," she said eventually, shifting Bob carefully off her lap. He grumbled but moved.
"How's work?" I asked.
I hadn't meant to say it. The question came from somewhere I hadn't authorized, from the part of me that had been watching her all evening and reading the tiredness underneath the smile and wanting to know what was costing her.
She paused. Standing in my living room, beer still in hand, uncertain.
"Complicated."
"How?"
"They offered me a promotion. Senior Media Strategist. My own office. Real money. Everything I wanted when I took the job."
"But?"
"But I keep thinking about what it cost. That I got it because I was good at manipulating someone who trusted me.
" She looked at me, and the guilt was right there, unguarded, no performance.
"I haven't decided if I'm taking it. Kyle thinks I'm crazy for hesitating.
Says opportunities like this don't come—"
I kissed her.
Didn't think about it. Didn't debate. Didn't run the cost-benefit or check the tape or do any of the things I'd trained to do before every major decision.
The lane opened and I took it the way I'd taken the breakaway three hours ago, on instinct, on the muscle-deep knowledge that some plays you don't get back if you let them pass.
I crossed the space between us, took her face in my hands, and kissed her.
Slow. Deliberate. Not desperate like the hallway, not frantic like the power outage.
This was a choice made with my eyes open and the full weight of everything she'd done and everything I'd felt sitting right there between us, and I chose her anyway.
She made a small sound of surprise against my mouth.
Her beer bottle slipped and hit the carpet.
I heard it, didn't care. Her hands came up to grip my shirt, pulling me in, and she kissed me back with a softness that wrecked me worse than the urgency ever had.
Like she'd been waiting. Like she hadn't been sure she'd ever get to do this again and now that she was, she was going to feel every second of it.
My hands slid from her face to her waist. Her fingers loosened on my shirt and went to my chest, palms flat, feeling my heart, which was going fast and hard and not even pretending to be under control.
When we pulled apart, both breathing rough, her eyes were wide and her lips were swollen and she looked as confused as I felt. But not scared. Not running.
"Matt—"
"I've been dying to do that all evening."
"All evening? I've only been here two hours."
"Exactly."
She laughed. That real laugh, the one that made the room feel right, the one I'd missed in a way I hadn't let myself measure until right now when I had it back.
"You're impossible," she said.
"And you're beautiful."
Her cheeks flushed. She pressed her forehead against my chest and I wrapped my arms around her and held on, and Bob barked once from the couch, tail going, looking between us like he'd been waiting for this exact outcome since the gas station.
Two weeks without her had been easier than I'd thought.
Having her back was better than I'd known.