Chapter 23
They walked in silence for two blocks, their footsteps syncing on the sidewalk without either of them intending it, the way bodies that had learned each other's rhythms did without conscious thought.
The night air was cold and sharp with salt.
The streets of Phoenix Ridge were quiet, the evening crowd thinning as they moved away from the waterfront bars toward the beach access road.
A few cars passed, headlights sweeping across their faces and moving on.
Above them, the sky was cloudless and thick with stars, a sky that only existed in coastal towns small enough to escape the worst of light pollution.
Mara's heart was hammering. She could feel it in her throat, in her wrists, in the tips of her fingers that were curled inside her coat pockets because if she let them free they would reach for Lex and she needed to say the words first. She needed to get this right.
She had spent ten sleepless nights composing and discarding and recomposing what she wanted to say, lying on her sofa with Goldie pressed against her chest and the words circling her brain like birds looking for somewhere to land.
Somewhere around three in the morning on the second night, she had simply stopped arguing.
There were no arguments left, only the knowledge of what she needed to do, and she had gotten up before dawn and come here before she could talk herself out of it.
Now the moment was here and the rehearsed speeches had evaporated and all that remained was the truth, messy and unpolished and terrifying.
Lex walked beside her with her hands in her jacket pockets and her hair still damp from the post-game shower and her face unreadable in the streetlight.
She carried soap, leather, the cold night air, and even now, even with everything broken between them, Mara's body responded to her proximity with a pull so strong it was gravitational.
Lex hadn't spoken since they'd left Lavender's.
She was waiting. Giving Mara the space to find her footing, the same way she'd given Mara space in the gym that first night, patient and present and refusing to push.
The patience was its own kind of courage, and Mara loved her for it.
"I'm sorry about the game," Lex said finally, breaking the silence as they turned onto the beach access road.
Her voice was raw. "I played like garbage.
I know that. It wasn't because I've stopped listening to the system or because I've gotten lazy.
It was because I'm so messed up about us that I can't think straight on the ice. Which I know isn't an excuse."
"I know why you played badly," Mara said. "I'm not angry about the hockey."
Lex glanced at her. In the dim light, surprise crossed her face, followed by warmth. Lex had expected the coach. She was getting the woman.
"I've been angry at myself," Mara continued.
"For pulling you. For sitting behind those boards and doing my job while you were hurting and knowing I was the reason you were hurting and not being able to do anything about it because there were six thousand people watching.
" She paused. The beach access road ended in a small parking lot, and beyond it the sand stretched wide and pale to the waterline.
"It was the hardest coaching decision I've ever made.
Not because the decision was complicated.
Because pulling you felt like punishing you for loving me. "
Lex was quiet. They crossed the parking lot and stepped onto the sand, their shoes sinking into the loose, dry surface above the tide line.
The ocean was close now, the sound of it filling the air, waves rolling in long, unhurried lines that broke in white foam against the shore.
The moon was nearly full, casting everything in a pale, silvery light that made the sand look white and the water look dark and the woman beside Mara look like someone from a painting, all contrast and shadow and the gleam of wet hair.
"Take your shoes off," Mara said. The words came out before she'd fully formed the thought.
She had imagined this moment on her sofa, in the dark, with Goldie's warmth against her chest. She had imagined the beach and the water and the cold and the two of them standing where the ocean met the land, the boundary between one world and another.
Lex looked at her. "What?"
"Take your shoes off. Walk in the water with me. Please."
Lex's expression shifted from surprise to an expression more complicated, one that wanted to smile but wasn't sure it was allowed to yet.
She bent down and unlaced her boots and pulled off her socks and left them in a pile on the dry sand.
Mara did the same, stepping out of her own boots and feeling the cold sand against the soles of her feet.
The temperature made her gasp, the cold shocking and immediate.
March in Phoenix Ridge was not summer. The sand was cold and the water, when they walked down to the surf line and let the first wave wash over their feet, was colder.
Mara gasped. Lex hissed through her teeth.
The cold was sharp and bracing and real, and it cut through the fog of emotion that had been clouding Mara's brain for ten days and brought everything into sharp focus.
The sand beneath her feet. The salt in the air.
The sound of the waves. The woman standing beside her, ankle-deep in the Atlantic Ocean on a Thursday night in March, shivering in her leather jacket and waiting.
"I have spent so long hiding," Mara said.
She was looking at the ocean, not at Lex, because if she looked at Lex she would lose the thread of what she needed to say.
"After Sara, I built my life around the principle that the safest thing I could do was keep everyone at a distance.
No relationships. No vulnerability. No risk.
I became the best coach I could be because coaching was the one thing I could control, and control was the only thing that kept me from falling apart. "
The waves washed over her feet and retreated. The cold was numbing, her toes going stiff, and she welcomed it. The physical discomfort was an anchor.
"When you came to Phoenix Ridge, you terrified me.
Not because you were difficult or because you were talented or because you challenged me behind the boards.
All of that I could handle. I've handled difficult players before.
I've coached talent. I've managed egos. That's my job and I'm good at it.
" She took a breath. The salt air filled her lungs, cold and clean.
"You terrified me because you looked at me and saw through everything.
Every wall. Every defense. Every layer of professional distance I'd built.
You looked at me like you already knew who I was underneath all of it, and I hadn't let anyone see that person.
Not Helen. Not my family. Not anyone. And you walked into my office with your tattoos and your attitude and your ridiculous smile and you saw her in about thirty seconds, and I panicked. "
Lex made a small sound beside her. Not a word. A low sound, raw and unguarded, pulled from somewhere deep.
She paused. A wave broke larger than the others, soaking their ankles, the cold water sending a shock up her calves. Beside her, Lex stood still, her feet planted in the shifting sand, her face turned toward Mara, listening with an intensity that Mara could feel like heat.
"I fell in love with you," Mara said. The words came out on a shaking breath.
"I fell in love with you and I was too afraid to say it because saying it made it real and real things can be lost. And I have already lost so much, Lex: my career once, my sense of self, my belief that I could have both a job and a life.
I was afraid that if I said the words out loud and then lost you, the loss would be so total I wouldn't survive it. "
Her voice cracked on the last word. The tears she'd been fighting broke through, silent and warm on her cold cheeks.
She turned to face Lex and the moonlight showed her everything: Lex's face, open and raw and streaming with tears of her own, her dark eyes bright with an emotion so intense it was almost too much to look at directly.
"I love you," Mara said. She said it clearly, with her whole voice, standing ankle-deep in the cold Atlantic Ocean under a sky full of stars, and the words that had terrified her for weeks came out steady and certain and true.
"I am in love with you, Lex Landry. I want to be with you.
Not in secret. Not behind locked doors. I want to stand next to you in front of Astoria and the team and the league and whoever else needs to know, and I want to tell them that this woman is mine and I am hers and I am done hiding. "
Lex's face crumpled. Not with sadness. With relief.
Relief that looked like pain because the tension it released had been held so long her body had forgotten what relaxation felt like.
She pressed her hand over her mouth and her shoulders shook and for a moment she couldn't speak, and Mara reached out and took her other hand and held it, their fingers interlacing, cold and wet from the ocean spray, gripping tight.