30. CHAPTER 30
Livia
The Wildfire wins their fourth consecutive game—this time with the LA Demons on Portland ice—and the city loses its mind.
Deservedly.
It’s the kind of win that had all the dramatic elements ending with a third-period comeback from two goals down.
Boss buried the winner with forty-seven seconds left on a shot that had no business going in but did.
The arena erupted like a cyclone explosion.
Arch turned around on the bench and because I was nearest to him picked me up in a brutal hug before unceremoniously dropping me to swarm over the wall to join his teammates.
The entire team is celebrating at Morrison’s, a bar three blocks from the arena, and it has been effectively annexed by the Portland Wildfire for the last two hours. Someone found a back room with a karaoke setup that Arch has been hogging for the past forty minutes.
I am two glasses of wine into the evening and not anywhere close to enjoying myself. Apparently, time does not heal wounds because I’m just as sad now as I was when Locke walked out of my office.
I’m at a table in the back corner with Birdie and Juno, which is the best possible configuration to celebrate a hockey game and not think about anything else.
Juno is filming nothing tonight because even Juno Paxton has decided that some nights belong to the people living them and not to the documentary.
I watch all the players and their significant others, and I drink my wine and try not to let my gaze wander over to Locke on the other side of the room.
I’m shocked he’s here tonight.
He’s no longer under any mandate to hang with the team and I figured he’d avoid this scene.
What’s even more shocking is that he seems to be enjoying himself. He’s hanging out with Dutton Black, a veteran third-line defenseman and he’s actually… laughing.
What the fuck?
“He keeps looking over here,” Birdie says.
“I know,” I say.
“Are you going to let him?”
“He can look wherever he wants.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I take a drink of wine.
Juno is watching the karaoke stage but then swivels her whole body toward me and leans in. “I need to tell you something.”
I jerk in surprise over the earnest and somewhat pained look on her face. “Oh-kaay,” I drawl.
Birdie looks confused and leans in to listen.
Juno glances at Crosby, standing over at the bar with the other players, and then back to me. “Okay… I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. Crosby didn’t say it was a secret, but it felt like it was, but now I’m not sure, so I need to tell you. Yeah… it’s the right thing to do.”
Birdie and I exchange a look and she shrugs. She’s as clueless as I am.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Okay,” Juno says with a heaving breath. “Apparently, Locke went into the locker room yesterday and announced to the entire team that you and he were in a relationship.”
The air is physically punched out of my lungs. “What?” I wheeze.
She nods. “Yeah, like… that’s a statement, right?”
My head whips Locke’s way, and he’s staring right at me, as if he knew we were talking about him. I look back to Juno. “Why would he say that?”
“Because he obviously believes it,” Juno says with an eye roll.
“Crosby told me and like I said, he didn’t say it was a secret.
I just assumed everything was right between you two, but since you’re sitting over here with me and Birdie, drowning your sorrows in wine, I’ve figured out everything is not okay. So I had to tell you.”
“And he told the entire locker room?” I ask skeptically, because that doesn’t sound like Locke. Except… he’s here tonight, laughing with teammates.
Maybe he’s demonically possessed?
The karaoke has gone quiet, and the sudden silence raises the volume of celebratory chatter.
“What do you think I should do?” I ask Juno and Birdie collectively.
“Well,” Birdie drawls. “You can either go ask him what the hell is going on or play it coy and make him do the work. I’m all for requiring a bit of groveling myself, but I’m evil that way.”
There’s a screech of sound over the speaker, followed by a twangy frequency that hurts my ears. Everyone groans, turning toward the stage.
And I almost fall out of my chair as I see Locke standing there with the karaoke microphone in his hand.
The entire room registers this at once, and someone gasps loudly before all conversation drops dead silent.
Because Locke Donovan does not get on stages.
Locke Donovan does not voluntarily stand in front of rooms and sing.
Locke Donovan barely grunts at people.
He just stands there, all eyes pinned on him.
He taps the microphone and it produces a thumping echo. He dips his head. “I’m not doing karaoke, so don’t get excited. I just need your attention.”
Nobody moves.
He looks around the room. His teammates, the coaching staff, the various people who have populated this season and this team.
He finds them one by one with those beautifully expressive eyes.
“I owe this team an apology. I’ve been on the roster for over three months, and I’ve been playing like I’m alone on the ice.
Like none of you are there.” He pauses, glances at Van.
“That’s not about this team. That’s about something that happened a long time ago, on a different team, when I was seventeen.
Someone I trusted completely turned on me and I never let it go.
And I brought it here and put it on all of you, and that wasn’t fair. ”
It’s like everyone is holding their breaths. I’m stunned he’s admitting this, and in such a public way.
“The point is,” Locke says, and his voice has shifted—still level, still him, but with an openness I’ve not heard from him before—“you always show up for me. And I was ready to use every reason I had to not let that mean anything.” He pauses, his eyes moving to me.
“Someone helped me see that it did. That it meant everything.”
Locke stares at me, and it has nothing to do with professional frameworks or ethical boundaries or any of the hundred things I’ve used to manage the fact that Locke Donovan got past every wall he ever built.
“Livia,” he says. To the room. To me. Both simultaneously.
“I’ve been punishing you for something someone else did to me.
That was wrong and I’m so sorry.” He doesn’t look away.
“You told me once that I don’t have to manage it alone, and I was afraid to trust that.
But you were right. Hell, you’re right about most things, which is one of the reasons I—” He stops, clears his throat.
“Which is one of the reasons I love you.”
The room inhales a collective gasp.
I press my hand briefly to my mouth.
Birdie makes a sound beside me that I would describe as a squeak.
Locke is still looking at me. “I know I don’t have the right to ask you to take a chance on me,” he says softly.
“I know I walked out and I went cold and I made you feel like you didn’t matter and you did.
You do.” He pauses, glancing around, then back to me.
“I’m standing up here in front of everyone because this team was willing to give me a chance even after everything I put them through—”
“We forgive you, man,” someone shouts from the back, and everyone laughs in solidarity.
Locke looks at the room, then looks back at me.
“If they’re willing to give me a shot,” he says with a sheepish smile, “you should too.”
Birdie nudges me hard and whispers, “Bitch… you better go get him before I do.”
I look at Locke Donovan standing on a karaoke stage, a man who doesn’t make speeches, who doesn’t stand in front of rooms, who spent years keeping everyone at the exact distance he needed to stay safe, now choosing to be exposed in front of every person who matters because he decided I was worth it.
I slide out of my chair and cross the room.
He steps off the stage, handing the microphone back to Boss, and meets me at the bottom. I don’t think about whether it’s tidy or resolved or whether we’ve said all the things yet because we haven’t and we both know it and none of that matters right now.
I put both hands on his face and bring his mouth to mine.
He kisses me back immediately and completely, one arm around my back pulling me in and the other hand coming up to my hair. The room detonates with cheering and catcalls. Boss whoops into the microphone at full volume.
When I finally pull back, we’re both breathing hard and his forehead drops to mine. Locke’s eyes are closed and I feel the release move through him, the sign of a man who’s been holding a weight for a very long time and has just been allowed to put it down.
“I owe you an apology too,” I say quietly so only he can hear.
“What I did in that session—I pushed past the line. I used what we were to get you to open up. I knew I was doing it and I still did it.” I hold his gaze.
“I was doing my job and caring about you at the same time and I let the job win. That was wrong.”
He smiles at me in understanding.
“I know what it cost you to tell me what you told me. And then I used it as leverage, and you had every right to be furious. I’m sorry.”
His expression gentles. “I punished you for what Adam did,” he replies. “I handed you the worst thing I had and then used it as evidence against you before you could even respond to it.” He shakes his head slightly. “That’s not on you. That’s on me.”
“We both have things to own.”
“Yeah.” His hand is on the side of my face. “We do.”
“So, we own them and then we move forward.”
He looks at me, his icy eyes full of warmth. “You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not simple.” I put my hand over his heart. “But it’s possible. You just stood on a stage in front of your entire team and said you love me. I think you can handle the rest of it.”
Relief fills every line on his face. “I do,” he says earnestly. “Love you.” He says it the second time like the first time unlocked the door, like having said it out loud once made it easier to say again. “I’m not someone who says that.”
“I know,” I say.
“I’m saying it anyway.”
“I know,” I say again.
“Livia.”
“I love you too,” I say, giving him a soft kiss. “This is real and it’s our time now.”
He exhales a ragged sigh. Then he kisses me again, just the two of us at the bottom of a karaoke stage in the back of a bar with his teammates giving us slightly too much attention.
“Oi,” Boss calls from somewhere behind us. “Are we done? Because I want to sing a song… maybe a love ballad this time.”
Locke lifts his head.
He looks at me.
He looks at the room.
At Rome with his quiet steady expression, at Arch grinning with the easy warmth that is just who he is, at Crosby who’s been here before and is glad to see someone else arrive, at Boss who’s ready to sing loud.
Locke’s gaze slides to Birdie in the corner and Juno who is watching all of it with those clear eyes and not reaching for her camera, which is the best thing she could do.
He looks at all of it—this team, this city, this bar—and his eyes settle into something contented. As if he has just opened up and accepted everything.
“Yeah,” he says to Boss. “We’re done.”
Locke takes my hand.
Boss puts the microphone to his mouth, and the karaoke machine comes back to life.
The room reassembles around us and I stand with Locke’s hand in mine. I think about everything that led here—the winery and the sessions and the hotel in LA and the parking lot with Grant.
I think about all the ways two people who are very good at managing everything nearly managed themselves out of the best thing either of them had found.
We didn’t.
That’s the whole of it.
We didn’t.