Chapter 38
thirty-eight
SOPHIE
The buzzer’s scream punches through twenty thousand screaming fans, but I can’t move. My ass stays glued to the plastic seat while fans surge past me, a tide of celebration I’m not part of. Because I just watched the man I love throw himself on his sword.
My fingers have gone numb around the railing. On the ice below, Mike’s teammates pile on each other at center ice—a writhing, joyful heap of bodies and sticks—but all I see is the guy in the middle of it all, quiet and reserved, like he’s in mourning.
Dead eyes. Mechanical movements. A stranger wearing Mike Altman’s face.
The same after the game as he’d been in the first period.
Before the transformation. God, the transformation.
I’d watched Mike become himself again in the second period. Every blocked shot that left him limping. Every hit that should have put him on his ass but didn’t. The way his teammates played around him, for him, like he was the sun and they were just planets in his orbit.
When twenty thousand people chanted his name after that goal, calling him a legend, my stomach turned itself inside out. Because I finally got it. I hadn’t asked him to choose a different job. I’d asked him to cut out a piece of his soul and hand it to me on a platter.
“Excuse me.” I shove past celebrating fans. “Sorry, coming through.”
Down in the concrete corridors under the arena, my sneakers squeak against the floor as I flag down a security guard for directions—third left, straight ahead, follow the noise. Then I’m running, my heart hammering harder with each turn, until the muffled celebration gets louder and louder and?—
The locker room door gapes open, releasing waves of music and laughter and testosterone-fueled joy. I freeze at the threshold. This is their church, their sacred space where I definitely don’t belong. But then Mike’s voice cuts through the chaos—low, tired, done—and my feet move without permission.
Twenty heads swivel toward me the second I cross into their territory.
The music cuts. Maine’s beer freezes halfway to his lips. Rook looks up from his phone. And there’s my dad, eyebrows climbing toward what’s left of his hairline. But there’s something else in his face too. Like he knew this was coming. Like maybe he’s been waiting for it.
But Mike.
Mike.
He’s slumped on a bench near his locker, still in his gear except for the jersey that hangs behind him like a ghost. Sweat plasters his dark hair to his skull.
An angry red welt screams across his thigh where that slap shot nailed him, and there’s a gash on his back where he must have copped a stick at some point.
His beautiful hands—the ones that held mine through Mom’s relapse, that know exactly how to touch me, that write terrible poetry and reads it without fear—work at his skate laces with the precise movements of someone preparing for a funeral.
And the sight of him taking off those skates cracks something open inside me.
I cross the room in five strides, tears already burning my eyes. I know the other guys are watching me, judging me, probably having put two and two together about why their captain is a dead man walking. And when Mike’s head snaps up, the exhaustion and sadness in his face nearly drops me.
But I reach past him, yank his jersey off the hook and shove the jersey against his chest. “You put this back on. Right now.”
He grabs it, staring at me like I’ve sprouted a second head. “Sophie, what do you?—”
I grab his face with both hands. His stubble scratches my palms—rough and real and mine.
“I saw everything.” My voice cracks but I push through, aware of twenty sets of eyes on us but not giving a single fuck.
“The zombie in first period. Just going through the motions because I killed the thing that makes you you.”
His jaw goes rigid under my hands. “Soph?—”
“Then I saw the rest.” A sob escapes despite my best efforts.
“I saw what you really are when you stop pretending to be okay with half a life. You’re not just good at hockey, Mike.
You ARE hockey. You’re art on ice. You’re their captain, the guy they’d follow into hell because they know you’d lead them back out. ”
Behind me, Maine mutters, “Fucking right.”
“You taught me to try new things, to be brave enough to be terrible at stuff, but it was okay because we did them together.” I’m crying openly now, my thumbs painting wet streaks across his cheekbones. “You helped me and encouraged me and warmed me and loved me…”
Mike lets out an exhausted sigh. “I still do, Sophie, that’s why?—”
“When Mom relapsed, I panicked.” I continue, not daring to let him speak until I’m done, because I’m shit scared he might deny me, deny this, and retreat back into his shell.
“I grabbed onto you so tight I ended up drowning you, making demands that were so fucking unreasonable and knowing you’d comply. ”
My hands shake as I suck in a breath. Time to jump off the cliff.
“So here’s my new thing: trust.” The word tastes like freedom. “Trusting that we’re strong enough to handle whatever comes. Trusting that two people who love each other can figure out the logistics. Trusting that keeping you in a cage would kill the man I fell in love with in the first place.”
I release his face only to grab his hands, pressing them between mine. “Call your agent tomorrow. Tell him Mike Altman is back on the market. And I happen to know your coach, and I’m going to be telling him you’re not done for this season.”
The locker room erupts in gasps and “holy shit” and “did she just?—”
I find my dad’s eyes. He’s watching us with an expression I can’t read, but he’s smiling.
Then I look back to Mike again. “We’ll figure it out.
Long distance if we have to. Whatever it takes.
Because you helped me fly, and now I want you to fly with me, and I’m done being the weight around your ankles. ”
Mike hasn’t moved. Hasn’t breathed. His dark eyes search mine like he’s looking for the catch, the fine print, the part where I take it all back. And, suddenly, I realize this is what he must have been like last year, during his injury and before his therapy.
“Mike, please, come back to me. I’m so sorry.” The words barely squeeze past the knot in my throat. “I was so scared of losing you.”
Something shifts in Mike’s expression. The exhaustion cracks, and underneath there’s something raw and desperate. It’s like I see him emerging from the darkness and into the light, all played out on his face, and then he moves faster than I’ve ever seen him move off the ice.
One second I’m standing there with snot probably running down my face, the next I’m in his lap with his mouth crushing mine and his hands fisted in my hair like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. Twenty hockey players explode into cheers and wolf whistles.
Mike pulls back just enough to press his forehead to mine. “You’re everything,” he says, his voice wrecked. “Thank you for not making me choose.”
“Mike.” Dad’s voice cuts through the celebration like a referee’s whistle, serious and somber.
We both turn to find him standing three feet away, arms crossed. But there’s definitely moisture in his eyes and his mouth is fighting a smile as he looks between us. It’s clear the serious tone was just theatrics, because all the other guys are smiling as well.
“I expect you at the next practice,” he says. “We’ve got a championship to win.”
Mike’s arms tighten around me. “Yes, sir.”
“And Sophie?” The smile wins. “Next time maybe wait until they’ve showered?”
The tension dissolves instantly. Mike’s chest shakes with something between laughter and relief as he buries his face in my neck. His breath comes in waves against my skin, hot and unsteady. Someone cranks the music back up and the party resumes with twice the energy.
But as the chaos erupts around us, Mike just holds me, swaying slightly in the middle of the maelstrom like this is our kitchen and not a locker room full of half-naked hockey players.
I can’t read what he’s thinking, but he’s holding me so tight that it’s clear he’s afraid he might lose me if he lets me go.
“You sure about this?” His lips brush my ear. “Being apart? Or else moving every few years? And probably having to learn what icing means?”
I pull back to really look at him. This beautiful, complicated man who was willing to amputate a piece of himself to keep me whole. The man who climbs fake rocks with eight-year-olds to make my day easier and can’t write poetry worth shit but tries anyway if it brings a smile to my face.
“I want you,” I tell him. “Everything else is just logistics and frequent flyer miles.”
He kisses me again, softer this time but somehow more intense. A promise written in the language of lips and tongues and hands that know exactly where to touch. Someone starts a chant of ‘MVP’ up, but in our bubble of two, the noise fades to white static.
“I love you,” Mike says against my mouth. “Thank you for giving me back my life.”
“I love you too.” I trace the C on his chest plate, right where his heart hammers against the padding. “Thank you for teaching me how to fly. And flying with me.”
That smile—his real smile, the one I almost killed—breaks across his face like sunrise. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
His teammates part for us, still whooping and hollering.
Maine salutes with his beer. Rook shouts something about not doing anything he wouldn’t do.
And, as we stumble into the hallway and the door swings shut on the beautiful chaos, the sudden quiet feels like breaking the surface after a deep dive.
“Your place or mine?” he asks.
“Yours is closer.”
“Thank god.”
We make it maybe ten feet before he backs me against the concrete wall.
His mouth finds mine with desperate precision, like he’s trying to climb inside my skin through sheer determination.
His hands frame my face with devastating gentleness even as his tongue does things that should be illegal in public.
“Thought you wanted to leave,” I gasp when he finally lets me breathe, hands now roaming my body.
“Changed my mind.” His lips trail down my throat. “Need a minute to ask a question?—”
I shut him up with another kiss, pouring every apology, every promise, every ounce of love into the connection. My hands tangle in his sweaty hair and I don’t even care that he smells like hockey equipment and desperation, because it’s the smell of Mike.
“No, seriously,” he pulls away again. “I need to know.”
“ What ?” I groan in desperation.
He laughs, raw and perfect. “So you actually like hockey now?”
“I can’t say that, but I like you,” I tell him. “And you are hockey, so by the transitive property or whatever, yes. And I’m not going anywhere. Except maybe Calgary. Or Nashville. Or wherever else you get paid a lot of money to be beautiful on ice.”
He drops his forehead to my shoulder. “But you hated hockey so much…”
“Can’t hate something that makes you this happy.”
He pulls back to study my face, and whatever he finds there must satisfy him because the last of the tension bleeds out of his shoulders. The haunted look finally, finally fades.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go home.”
Home.
Four letters that suddenly mean something completely different than they did an hour ago. Because home isn’t my apartment or his or even this town. It’s wherever this beautiful, terrifying adventure together takes us.
And for the first time in my life, I can’t wait to find out where that is.