Chapter 19
Matt
I recognized Frank's voice through the door before I opened it. Twenty-eight years of knowing someone meant you could identify them from three words shouted through wood.
I looked back at Carrie. Still catching her breath, shirt half-buttoned, cheeks flushed, lips swollen, that particular look of a woman who'd been thirty seconds from somewhere she very much wanted to go and had just been rerouted.
She was trying to fix her hair and her buttons at the same time and succeeding at neither.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I have to—"
"I know. Go."
I opened the door. Frank stood there with a bottle of wine and that grin. The one that said he was about to crash whatever I had going and didn't feel remotely bad about it.
"Matty! I brought—" He stopped. His eyes moved past me to Carrie, who was standing in my entryway still working the last button. His expression cycled through recognition, comprehension, and horror in about a half-second.
"Oh shit."
"Yeah."
"Oh shit, I—" Frank's face actually colored. I had never, in twenty-eight years, seen my brother look embarrassed. He'd been arrested in his underwear and handled it with more composure than this. "I didn't know you had company. I should've called. I just thought—"
"It's fine."
It was not fine. My body was still running the program Carrie had started, and standing here making introductions while my blood was all in the wrong zip code was its own kind of torture.
"I was going to see if you wanted to hang out," Frank said, gesturing vaguely with the wine bottle. "Have a drink. Talk. But clearly you're—" He gestured at Carrie, at me, at the general situation. "Yeah. I'm just gonna go."
"No, it's okay," Carrie said. Her voice came out steadier than mine would have. She'd composed herself in the time it took Frank to panic, which was either impressive or concerning. "I should probably get going anyway."
"You don't have to," I started.
"Frank, this is Carrie." I decided to rip it clean. No hesitation. "My girlfriend. Carrie, this is my brother Frank."
The word was out before I'd run it through any kind of review process. Girlfriend. I'd said it the way I'd take a shot in the slot, on instinct, blade on puck, released before my brain had finished calculating whether the lane was actually there.
Frank's eyebrows climbed. "This is Carrie? The Carrie?"
"Yeah."
"Wow." He looked at her with genuine interest. Then at me. Then back at her, squinting. "You know, you two have the same jaw. Same eyes. It's actually kind of uncanny."
Carrie laughed, and I watched some of the tension leave her shoulders. "I was thinking the same thing. The resemblance is striking."
"Except I'm the handsome one," Frank said.
"Debatable," I muttered.
But I was watching Carrie, and I saw the exact moment the word caught up with her. The laugh faded. Her eyes went wide and locked on mine with a look I couldn't read. Surprise, or confusion, or the particular alarm of a woman who'd just been given a title she wasn't sure she'd applied for.
Girlfriend.
I'd called her my girlfriend. Out loud, to my brother, in an entryway that still smelled like what we'd been doing thirty seconds ago. And the word hung in the air between us and she hadn't said it back and my stomach was doing something I was going to pretend wasn't happening.
"I should really get going," Carrie said. The steadiness was back in her voice but the uncertainty was in her posture. "It's late. You two should catch up."
"I'll walk you out."
Frank stepped aside, giving us space with an expression that said he understood more than he was letting on. I guided Carrie toward the door with my hand on the small of her back, and she let me, but she moved stiffly, thinking too hard about something she hadn't decided whether to share.
The night air hit us cool and clean. I could still taste her on my lips. Could still feel the ghost of her hands in my hair, the pull, the urgency. Could still hear the sounds she'd been making before the doorbell had stolen everything.
She leaned against her car. That small smile was back, but it looked careful now. Measured. The smile of a woman running risk assessment.
"Girlfriend, huh?"
A teasing note in her voice. Something else underneath it.
"Yeah."
"Funny. I don't remember you ever asking me out."
She was right. I'd kissed her. Told her I wanted her around. Made promises with my mouth against her neck. But I'd never done the simplest thing, the most basic play, the one every teenager figured out before prom.
I caught her arm. Pulled her close, close enough to see the gold flecks in her eyes, close enough to smell her perfume layered with my own scent from where I'd been pressed against her.
"Carrie Wilson, would you like to go to dinner with me? Friday night?"
Her lips parted. Nothing came out.
"You don't want to?" I kept my voice level. Tried to, anyway. The disappointment was already building its case.
"It's not that." She bit her lip. Looked at the ground, then back at me.
"I'm worried about what it'll do to your team.
You just got them back, Matt. Just got their trust. You made that speech on TV tonight, told twenty thousand people you'd never leave Boston.
If they find out you're dating someone from the White Hearts—"
"I don't care."
"You should."
"You're right. I should." I pulled her closer, until our bodies met, until I could feel her breathing and she could feel mine.
"I've spent two weeks trying to convince myself you're a complication I can't afford.
That the smart play is to walk away clean and never look back.
And I can't do it, Carrie. I can't make myself care more about what the locker room thinks than about the fact that not having you around made everything worse. "
Her eyes searched mine. I let them. Let her read whatever she needed to read in my face, because I was done hiding from this woman and I was done pretending the answer was anything other than what it was.
"Dinner," I said. "Friday. A real date. And when people ask, I'm going to call you my girlfriend, because that's what I want you to be. And if my team has a problem with it, they can bring it to me directly."
She stared at me. I watched her run the numbers. The risk. The fallout. The very real chance this would blow up in both our faces and take everything we'd rebuilt with it.
Then she smiled. Not the careful one. The real one, the one that rearranged her whole face, the one I'd been trying not to think about for two weeks and failing every single night.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yes. Friday. I'd love to."
The relief moved through me so fast it left me unsteady. I kissed her. Couldn't help it. Cupped her face and poured everything into it, the want and the frustration and the stubborn impossible hope that this might actually work despite every reason it shouldn't.
When we pulled apart, she was breathless, grinning, looking at me with gold-flecked eyes that made me forget I'd ever learned to protect myself.
"You should get back to Frank."
"Probably."
She kissed me once more. Light. Quick. The kind that's a down payment on something bigger.
"Goodnight, Matt."
"Goodnight."
I watched her drive away. Stood in the driveway longer than any reasonable person would, still tasting her, already counting down to Friday.
* * *
Frank was on my couch when I came back in. Bob's head in his lap, the wine open on the coffee table, two glasses poured. He looked up with the grin already loaded.
"So. Girlfriend."
"Don't start."
"You're dating someone from the White Hearts." He took a drink. "That's bold, Matty. Even for you."
"I said don't start."
"Does your team know?"
The question landed where it was aimed. I sat down, picked up the glass, took a drink that was bigger than the question deserved.
"No."
"Going to tell them?"
"Eventually."
"That's what people say when they mean never."
"It's what I mean when I mean I don't have the answer yet."
Frank studied me. Really looked, the way he sometimes did when he was being my brother instead of my chaos. When the charm dropped and the thing underneath showed through, the thing that reminded me why I'd loved him before he'd given me reasons not to.
"You really like her."
"Yeah."
"She seems good. Real. Like she actually sees you, not the jersey."
That landed somewhere I hadn't braced for.
Because Frank was right. Carrie didn't look at me and see the captain, the missed shot, the controversy.
She'd met me at a gas station in the rain before she'd known any of it.
She'd liked me when I was just a soaked stranger helping a dog.
And everything since had been built on that, not on the name or the number.
"She is good," I said.
"Then fight for it." He raised his glass. "To terrible decisions and the women who inspire them."
I clinked my glass against his. "To terrible decisions."
We drank. Bob snored between us. And the worry was there, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. Coach George. Mason. The locker room. Everything I'd rebuilt tonight, the game, the statement, the trust. All of it sitting on one side of a scale, and Carrie on the other.
The smart move was obvious. The safe play was right there, clearly marked, well-lit, a system I'd been running my whole career.
But my whole career I'd been the guy who took the safe play. Read the ice, ran the system, protected the lead. And it had gotten me three finals losses and a year of silence and a ceiling I'd been staring at every night while the tape ran.
Carrie was the opposite of safe.
She was the shot you take when the lane isn't there yet, when the play is still developing, when the smart money says hold. The kind of shot that either goes in and changes everything or goes wide and confirms every fear you've ever had about yourself.
I drained my glass.
Damn, I wanted her. Enough to take the shot. Enough to live with wherever it landed.