7. Sophia
SOPHIA
I did not kiss him in the driveway. I want that on the record, because it's the last good decision I made for about three weeks.
I went back inside instead, and I wrestled the skates off my sleeping son, and I lay awake half the night staring at my ceiling, furious at my own body, which had stood eighteen inches from Marcus Kovalenko in the dark and remembered everything, the cold-and-cedar smell, the heat that comes off him, the way he says my name like it weighs something.
Three years of armor, and one birthday party with a Zamboni cake had rusted it straight through.
The problem was the work.
Because now we had to actually do the youth-program project together, the thing Denise had assigned us, and there's no armor in the world that survives a man who's good at his job sitting across a table from you being good at his job.
We met twice a week, professionally, in a conference room or sometimes a coffee shop near my place, and I kept telling myself it was fine, it was work, I was a professional, and then he'd lean over to look at a layout and his shoulder would brush mine and my entire nervous system would light up like a scoreboard.
He felt it too. That was the unbearable part.
I'd catch him losing his place mid-sentence, his eyes dropping to my mouth, the muscle in his jaw going tight, and then he'd drag himself back to the work with visible effort, because he'd promised me slow, on my terms, and he was keeping the promise even though it was clearly killing him, and a man keeping a promise that's killing him is the single most attractive thing I have ever encountered.
Dani staged an intervention about it, because that's what best friends are for.
She came over with wine and the specific expression of a woman who's decided to say a hard thing, and she sat on my couch and watched me pretend to work and finally said, "Okay, I'm just going to ask. What are you doing with the hockey player."
"Co-parenting."
"Sophia." She gave me the look. "I've known you eight years.
I watched you build this whole life out of spite and stubbornness and a refusal to need anybody, and I respect it, it's the most impressive thing I've ever seen a person do.
But I've also watched you for the last month, and you light up when he texts about Luca's schedule, which is not a thing co-parents do, and you've started wearing actual clothes to the Wednesday handoffs, and you got a haircut, and you keep saying his name in this specific way, and I'm your best friend so I get to say the thing nobody else will.
" She refilled my glass. "You're still in love with him.
You never stopped. And you're terrified of it, because the last time you loved him it cost you everything, and so you're hiding inside the word co-parenting like it's a bunker.
And I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just telling you that the bunker's got a window now, and you keep looking out of it, and at some point you're going to have to decide whether you're going to live in the bunker forever or open the door. "
"It's not that simple, Dani. He left me at a window three years ago. He told me it was a mistake. I have a son to protect."
"I know. And maybe he's still that guy and you should keep the bunker locked.
But maybe he's not, maybe people change, maybe the man who shows up early to every single handoff and reads parenting books and looks at your kid like he hung the moon is a different man than the one at the window.
" She shrugged. "I'm just saying, the thing you're most scared of isn't him hurting you again.
You survived that once, you'd survive it again, you're the strongest person I know.
The thing you're most scared of is wanting it.
Wanting him. Because wanting a thing means you could lose it, and you've spent three years making sure you never wanted anything you could lose.
That's the bunker. And it's safe, and it's lonely, and you're going to have to decide if safe and lonely is the whole rest of your life. "
I didn't have an answer for her. I poured more wine instead. But the thing she said sat in me all week, the bunker, the window, the wanting I was most scared of, and it was still sitting in me on the Thursday everything changed.
It came to a head on a Thursday, late, in my apartment, which was my own fault for suggesting we finish the deck there because Luca was at my mother's and the coffee shop had closed.
The weeks of working together had been their own slow torture, the good kind, the kind you don't want to end.
And a man keeping a promise that's killing him is the single most attractive thing I have ever encountered.
The old Marcus, the one from three years ago who'd taken what he wanted and burned it down in the morning, would never have kept this promise.
He'd have pushed, charmed, taken. This Marcus sat across a table from me twice a week, clearly wanting me, and did nothing, asked for nothing, because I'd said slow and he'd decided my no was sacred.
And every week he kept the promise was another week the fortress I'd built against the old him crumbled, because the old him I could resist and this him I could not.
You can wall out a man who takes. You have no defense against a man who waits.
We'd been working for two hours. The deck was almost done, and it was good, our best work, the two of us building something for kids that was better than either of us would have made alone, and somewhere around the second glass of wine the work had drifted into talking, the easy way it always drifted with us, and he'd told me about Irina cleaning offices at night, and I'd told him about my father's empty chair at the dinner table, and the room had gone soft and low and dangerous.
"Can I ask you something?" he said. We were on the couch, the laptop forgotten on the coffee table, closer than two professionals should sit. "And you can tell me to go to hell."
"When have I ever needed permission to tell you to go to hell?"
The corner of his mouth moved. "Fair." Then the almost-smile faded.
"That year. Before the night. When you were the PA and I was.
Whatever I was. Did you feel it too, or was that all me?
Because I've spent three years not sure if I imagined it.
The standing close. The coffee. I need to know if I made it up. "
"You didn't make it up." The wine, the dark, three years of armor giving way.
"I rearranged my whole schedule to be the one who brought you your coffee.
I knew your order before you ordered it.
I used to dread the road trips because you'd be gone for ten days.
" I laughed, a little wrecked. "You didn't make it up, Marcus.
I had it as bad as you did. I had it so bad I slept with you the one night you let me, and then I let one cruel speech at a window convince me it had all been in my head, because believing it was real and that you didn't want it anyway was more than I could carry. "
He went still. We were very close now. I could see the new scar through his eyebrow, the gray of his eyes gone almost black in the low light.
"It was real," he said. "All of it. The whole year.
The night. I have never wanted anything in my life the way I wanted you, and I was so sure I'd ruin you that I ruined it first." His hand came up, slow, telegraphed, giving me every chance to stop him, and he touched my jaw, just barely, the backs of his fingers.
"Tell me to stop. I'll stop. I'll get up and go work on the deck and we'll never talk about it again. Your terms. Say the word and I'm gone."
I should have said the word.
I had so many good reasons. Three years of them.
The armor, the independence, the boy down the road at my mother's who deserved a mother who didn't make the same mistake twice.
The fact that loving Marcus Kovalenko had cost me everything once and I had no guarantee it wouldn't again.
Every wise careful self-protective instinct I'd built screamed the word at me.
"Don't stop," I said.
I'd had every good reason to say the word.
Three years of reasons. The armor, the independence, the son down the road who deserved a mother who didn't make the same mistake twice.
The fact that loving Marcus Kovalenko had cost me everything once and there was no guarantee it wouldn't again.
Every wise, careful, self-protective instinct I'd built over three years screamed the word at me, stop, the safe word, the word that would keep my fortress intact for one more night.
And I didn't say it, and I want to be honest about why, because it wasn't recklessness.
It was the opposite of recklessness. It was a woman who'd spent three years being so careful she'd nearly forgotten she was alive, deciding, with her eyes open, that careful had cost her more than it had ever saved her, that the fortress she'd built to keep the hurt out had also kept the joy out, and that just this once, with this man, in this moment, she wanted to find out what was on the other side of the wall she'd lived behind so long she'd forgotten it was a choice.
And then his mouth was on mine, and three years went up like paper.
I'd forgotten. That was the thing that undid me.
I'd spent three years carefully forgetting how he kissed, the way a man that big and that contained kisses like he's been starving and you're the first meal, controlled and desperate at once, his hand sliding into my hair like he'd been waiting three years to do exactly that, which I suppose he had.
I made a sound I wasn't proud of. He answered it with one of his own, low in his chest, and pulled me into his lap, and the careful professional distance we'd been pretending to keep for weeks detonated all at once.
"Sophia." He pulled back an inch, breathing hard, his forehead against mine.
"I need you to be sure. Because if we do this, I'm not going to be able to do slow anymore, I'm not that strong, and I don't want to take a thing from you that you'll regret in the morning.
You told me the door was closed. Are you opening it?
Tell me clearly, because I will not misunderstand you, not about this, not ever again. "
And here is the thing about Marcus Kovalenko that nobody in this city knows, the thing under the famous ice, the thing that has wrecked me twice now.
He stopped, in the middle of the thing he wanted most, to make absolutely sure I wanted it too.
The man everyone calls a destroyer held me in his lap and asked permission, clear, twice, because three years ago he hadn't been careful with my heart and he'd decided he was never going to be careless with it again.
"I'm opening it," I said. "I know I'm going to regret it. I don't care. I've been careful for three years and I'm so tired, Marcus. Just this once, let me not be careful. The door's open. Don't make me say it again."
He didn't make me say it again.
And I want to mark the thing he did, because it's the thing that no one in this city would believe of the most feared man in hockey, and it's the reason I trusted him with my body that night when I'd trusted him with nothing for three years.
He stopped, in the middle of the thing he so clearly wanted, to make absolutely certain I wanted it too.
Twice. Clearly. The man everyone calls a destroyer held me in his lap with the want coming off him like heat and asked permission, plainly, and waited for the answer, because three years ago he hadn't been careful with my heart and he'd decided, somewhere in the months since, that he would never again be careless with any part of me.
A man who stops to ask, when stopping is the last thing his body wants, is a man who has decided your yes matters more than his want, and there is nothing, nothing, more disarming to a woman who's spent her life guarding herself than a powerful man who treats her no as sacred and her yes as a gift.
He stood up with me wrapped around him like I weighed nothing, like he'd been built to carry me, and he carried me down the hall toward my bedroom, and the last coherent thought I had was that I'd just done the bravest and stupidest thing I'd done in three years, and that I could not, for the life of me, tell the difference anymore between brave and stupid, and that maybe, where this man was concerned, there had never been a difference at all.