Chapter 19 Blake
The championship celebration was chaos—media swarming, NHL scouts requesting meetings, teammates spraying champagne everywhere despite Coach's protests that this was an athletic facility, not a nightclub.
Logan and Nolan were surrounded by reporters, fielding questions about draft predictions and professional prospects. I stood to the side, smiling for photos but acutely aware that my name wasn't being mentioned with the same excitement.
Enforcers were useful. Enforcers were necessary. But enforcers were not top draft picks.
I'd probably go in the third or fourth round if I was lucky. Maybe to a team on the opposite coast from wherever Nolan and Logan ended up. Maybe to a team that didn't make playoffs, where I'd spend years fighting meaningless fights while my friends—my family—succeeded without me.
The thought made my chest tight with familiar anxiety about being left behind.
I found Mira an hour after the celebration started, long after everyone else had left the rink. She was alone on the ice, still in her coaching clothes but wearing figure skates she'd brought from her room. Practicing her figures in the dark, the only light coming from the emergency exits.
I watched from the shadows as she moved across the ice with impossible grace, her body telling stories I couldn't quite interpret. There was something sad in her movement tonight—something that made me want to go to her, hold her, fix whatever was causing that expression.
I laced up my hockey skates and stepped onto the ice.
She noticed me immediately, stopping mid-spiral. "Blake. Everyone's looking for you. The team wants to celebrate."
"I wanted to find you more."
She glided over, and we stood in the center of the ice, alone in the massive arena, surrounded by thousands of empty seats and the ghosts of our victory.
"You stayed," I said quietly.
"What?"
"The ice show scouts. I saw them leave without you. You turned down their offer."
Mira's expression cycled through surprise, guilt, and something I couldn't name. "How did you—"
"I pay attention. To everything about you." I took her hands, my large ones engulfing her small fingers. "Why did you stay?"
"Because I wanted to," she said simply. "Not for my parents—though your guys' insane generosity solved that problem. Not even for you three, though that was part of it. I stayed because leaving would mean running from the first real happiness I've found. I'm tired of running."
My chest felt too tight, too full of emotion I didn't know how to process. "Mira—"
"But Blake, we need to talk about draft picks and where you'll all end up. About the fact that this—" She gestured between us. "—might not be geographically possible."
"I'll follow you," I said immediately. "Wherever your career takes you. Whatever you decide to do. I'll follow. I'll give up hockey if that's what it takes to—"
"Stop." Her voice was sharp, her eyes flashing with anger I'd never seen directed at me before. "Just stop."
"I'm trying to tell you that I love you."
"By offering to give up everything you've worked for?" She pulled her hands from mine. "By sacrificing your dreams for mine? That's not love, Blake. That's martyrdom."
"But I want to—"
"I don't care what you want if it means destroying yourself for me!" Her voice echoed in the empty arena. "I've spent my entire life watching people sacrifice for me—my parents, my coaches, even Sam in his own twisted way. I'm done being the reason people give up their dreams."
"That's not what I'm doing—"
"Then what are you doing?" she demanded. "Because from where I'm standing, you're offering to throw away your hockey career—the thing you love, the family you've built—just to follow me around like some kind of lost puppy. And I won't let you do that."
Anger flared in my chest. "You don't get to make that decision for me."
"And you don't get to make sacrifices on my behalf without asking if I want them!" She shoved my chest—not hard enough to move me, but hard enough to make her point. "I don't need you to give up everything for me. I need you to value yourself as much as you value everyone else!"
"I'm trying to show you how much you mean to me."
"By devaluing yourself? That's not love, Blake. That's fear. You're so afraid of being left behind that you're offering to destroy your own future to prevent it."
Her words hit like a physical blow because they were true. Every word was true.
"I don't want to lose you," I admitted, my voice rough. "Any of you. You're my family. My home. The thought of being drafted to some team across the country while you all stay here together—"
"Then we'll figure it out," Mira interrupted. "But we figure it out together, as partners. Not with you sacrificing everything while we just accept it."
"I don't know how to do that," I said quietly. "I don't know how to let people care for me without trying to pay them back through sacrifice."
"Then learn." Her voice softened. "Learn to accept love without feeling like you have to earn it through usefulness. Learn to believe you're worth keeping just because of who you are, not what you can give up for others."
We stood in the center of the ice, the anger between us transforming into something else—something vulnerable and raw and painfully honest.
"I love you," I said again. "Not because you need protecting or because I want to sacrifice for you. But because you make me feel like I'm more than my size and my fists. Because you see past the enforcer to the person underneath who just wants to be chosen."
"I love you too," she whispered. "Your gentleness and your strength and your enormous heart that wants to take care of everyone. But Blake, you have to take care of yourself too."
Then she kissed me.
Not soft and tentative—hard and demanding, like she was trying to convince me through physical contact of truths I couldn't quite believe with words. Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me down to her level, and I lifted her off her feet without thinking.
She wrapped her legs around my waist, and suddenly we were pressed together in ways that made thinking extremely difficult. The kiss deepened, became more urgent, her body warm and perfect against mine despite the cold of the rink.
"Blake," she gasped against my mouth. "I want—"
"What do you want?" My hands tightened on her waist, holding her easily even though she was suspended entirely on my body.
"You. Right now. Right here."
"Mira, we're in the middle of—"
"I don't care." She kissed me again, her lips moving to my jaw, my neck, making me forget every rational thought about appropriate locations. "I want you to stop being so careful with me. Stop treating me like I'm going to break. I won't break."
"I'm too big—"
"You're perfect." She pulled back to look at me, her eyes dark and certain. "Show me your strength, Blake. All of it. I can handle you."
That was all the encouragement I needed.
I skated us over to the boards, pressing her back against them, my body covering hers. My size—which I usually tried to minimize, tried to make smaller and less threatening—became an asset as I used it to shield her, protect her, create a private space in the center of an empty public arena.
What followed was rushed and desperate and perfect. I tried to be gentle, tried to maintain control, but Mira kept encouraging me to let go, to stop holding back, to trust her with my full strength.
When she encouraged me to grip harder, move faster, be less careful, I finally let myself believe that maybe—possibly—I didn't have to be small for her. That she wanted all of me, size and strength and intensity included.
The emotional intimacy of trusting her with my unrestrained strength while she trusted me with her body created a connection that went beyond physical. This was vulnerability in its purest form—both of us exposed and choosing each other anyway.
We were so focused on each other that we didn't hear the door open. Didn't notice we were no longer alone until Nolan's voice echoed through the empty arena.
"Blake? Mira? Are you—oh."
We froze.
Logan's voice joined Nolan's. "Oh my god, are they—they are. They're definitely—"
I pulled away from Mira immediately, trying to shield her with my body, both of us frantically attempting to look presentable. Mira's face was flushed, her hair disheveled, her lips swollen. I probably looked worse.
Nolan and Logan stood at the arena entrance, their expressions cycling through surprise, understanding, and something that looked suspiciously like jealousy.
"We can explain—" Mira started.
"You don't need to explain," Nolan interrupted, his voice carefully neutral. "You're both adults. You're together. This is—" He paused. "Okay, I'm not going to lie, watching you two together is making me feel some feelings that I need to process."
"Jealousy feelings?" Logan asked. "Because same."
"But also," Nolan continued, "I'm recognizing that this was probably necessary. For both of you. For all of us."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"We've been navigating this relationship as a group," Logan explained, skating onto the ice to join us. "But we also need individual moments. Pairs within the larger dynamic. You two needed this—needed time alone to work through your stuff without us hovering."
Nolan followed Logan onto the ice. "And honestly? Seeing you two together—seeing Blake finally let go of his careful control and Mira trusting him completely—that's beautiful. Jealousy-inducing, but beautiful."
"So you're not mad?" Mira asked cautiously.
"More like we're going to need our own time with you soon," Logan said. "To balance things out. But mad? No."
The four of us stood in the center of the ice, the tension from earlier dissolving into something approaching normalcy. Whatever passed for normal in our extremely abnormal relationship.
"Can we go home now?" Mira asked. "I'm freezing, emotionally exhausted, and I'd like to put on clothes that aren't currently questionable."
"Home sounds good," I agreed.