Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Evan
I paced my living room.
Nico
On the ground. See you in an hour.
That text had come fifty-three minutes ago.
I forced myself to sit down, then immediately stood back up. My apartment was already clean. I’d seen to that an hour ago, working through a restless energy that needed somewhere to go. Now there was nothing left to straighten, and I was down to pacing, which at least used up the time.
I wasn’t anxious. I was just… ready. Had been ready since Tuesday, if I was being honest, which I was trying to be these days.
The buzzer sounded, and my heart kicked against my ribs.
“Come up.” I unlocked the elevator and stood in the middle of my living room and waited.
Footsteps in the hallway. A knock.
I scanned the apartment one last time, making sure everything was in place. Then my eyes caught on the coffee table and the neat stack of books there. My stomach dropped.
Ice Hockey for Beginners sat right on top.
Shit.
I’d bought it Tuesday night after watching Nico’s game against Portland, sitting alone in my apartment trying to understand what I was seeing on the screen. The rules, the positions, the terminology… I’d wanted to learn his world, understand the game that had shaped his entire life.
But I’d meant to hide it before he got here.
I grabbed it, looked around for somewhere to put it, and then the knock came again, and there was no time. I shuffled it to the bottom of the stack, crossed to the door, and pulled it open.
He looked tired, with shadows under his eyes, mouth drawn at the corners, and hair slightly damp from the shower. But when he saw me, his whole face relaxed into a grin.
We stood there for a moment. Just looked at each other.
Then Nico stepped inside, kicked the door shut behind him, and kissed me.
The kiss was desperate and hungry. His stubble scraped against mine, catching and dragging with every shift of our mouths. He tasted like mint toothpaste, and when I pulled him closer, he made a sound low in his throat that went straight through me.
“Missed you,” he murmured against my mouth.
“Missed you too.”
We kissed until I was breathless, until his hands were sliding under my shirt and I was pulling him closer by his belt loops.
When we finally broke apart to catch our breath, we were both breathing hard.
“Let me…” He stepped back and ran a hand through his hair. “Let me take off my shoes before I forget what I came here to do.”
“What else did you come here to do?”
His grin was wicked. “I’ll show you in a minute.”
He toed off his sneakers, took my hand, and pulled me toward the couch. And that’s when he saw it.
The book.
He stopped, reached down, and pulled it from the bottom of the stack. Ice Hockey for Beginners. He turned it over in his hands.
“I can explain—”
“You bought a book about hockey.” His voice was quiet. Almost awed.
“I watched the Portland game Tuesday, and I didn’t understand half of what was happening. The penalties, the power plays, why everyone kept stopping…” I shook my head. “I meant to hide it before you got here.”
“Why would you hide it?”
“Because it’s embarrassing. I’m thirty-two years old reading a children’s guide to a sport.”
He looked up from the book, and his expression made my breath catch. “Evan. You bought a book about hockey because you wanted to understand my world.”
“Well, yes.”
“That’s not embarrassing.” He set it down carefully, like it was something worth being careful with. “That’s one of the best things anyone’s ever done for me.”
“It’s just a book.”
“It’s not just a book.” He crossed to me in two strides. “It’s you trying. It’s you caring enough to learn something you have zero interest in because it matters to me.”
“I might have some interest,” I admitted. “I watched three periods Wednesday without getting bored. And I cheered, apparently loud enough to concern my neighbors. I had the book by then. It helped.”
He shook his head, still smiling, like he didn’t quite know what to do with me. “Come here.” He kissed me again, slower this time, and I let myself sink into it.
Then his hands slid to my hips and pulled me flush against him, and I felt exactly how much he’d missed me.
We barely made it to the bedroom. His hands were everywhere, and mine were just as desperate, and when we finally got rid of the last of our clothes, I pulled him down onto the bed and held on while he took us both in hand.
Four days. It had only been four days, and I’d missed him every single one of them.
Afterward, we lay still while we caught our breath, tangled and sweaty and in no hurry to move.
“Shower,” he said eventually, into the quiet.
“Yeah.”
I turned on the water, and he stepped in behind me, his hands finding my shoulders, the heat of the water and the heat of him simultaneous.
He washed my hair without asking, his fingers working through it slowly, and I stood under the water and let him.
I understood that this was what it was supposed to feel like.
Not Ryan’s version of intimacy, which had always had an audience even when it was just the two of us—everything performed, everything angled.
This was private. Just us. Just water, warmth, and Nico’s hands in my hair, like it was the most natural thing he’d ever done.
“You okay?” he asked.
“More than.”
He pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, and I closed my eyes.
When we got out, dried off, and went back to bed, the afternoon light had shifted toward evening. He pulled me against his chest, and we lay there without talking, the comfortable kind of quiet that I was still learning to trust.
“I told Fortin and Thompson about you,” he said after a while. “That we’re together. Should’ve mentioned it sooner. I told them on the first roadie.”
I went still. Before the trip. Before the confession, even. While he was still being vague with me, he’d been telling his teammates.
I sat with that for a moment, turning it over.
It could have stung, the idea that two men I’d never met had known about me before I knew about Nico.
But the more I thought about it, the more it landed differently.
He’d been telling the people in his daily life.
Moving toward honesty from the inside out, building toward telling me, not keeping it from everyone equally.
He’d been trying, in his own imperfect way, for longer than I’d known.
“How’d they take it?” I asked.
“Great. Asked about you. Want to meet you someday.” He paused. “No pressure on that. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Okay,” I said. “Someday.”
His arm tightened around me. “No rush.”
We were quiet again. The dresser across the room caught my eye.
“I did something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Top right drawer.” I nodded toward the dresser. “I cleared it out. And there’s a toothbrush in the bathroom for you. The blue one.”
He was still for a moment. Then he pulled back to look at me. “You cleared a drawer.”
“It seemed practical. You’re here often enough.” I kept my voice even. “Unless that’s—”
“Evan.” His hand came up to my jaw. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s just a drawer.”
“It’s not just a drawer.” His thumb moved along my cheekbone. “It’s you making room. On purpose. That’s not nothing.”
He was right. It wasn’t nothing. I’d stood in front of that dresser Tuesday morning, the apartment quiet, Nico somewhere over the Pacific Northwest, and I’d opened the drawer and started moving things without letting myself think too hard about what I was doing.
Because thinking too long meant talking myself out of it.
And I was done talking myself out of Nico.
“It’s yours,” I said. “Whenever you want to use it.”
He kissed me, soft and slow, and I kissed him back. A drawer was such a small thing to feel so much about.
After a while, he shifted, propping himself up to look at me. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “Let me bring dinner. Something good. A real date night.”
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah.”
His smile was immediate and warm. “Yeah?”
“Don’t push it,” I said. “I already said yes.”