Chapter 25
Aaron
Three feet.
That’s how far apart we’re standing in the baggage claim at Logan, and it might as well be three miles.
Sasha has his duffel over one shoulder and his phone in his hand and he’s scrolling through it like he’s barely aware I exist. The perfect picture of two rival teammates who just happened to be on the same flight.
Forty-eight hours ago I was lying in a bathtub with my back against his chest.
The airport is a zoo — holiday travelers everywhere, families dragging suitcases, kids screaming, the whole terminal smelling like fresh donuts and wet coats.
The snow that trapped us in New York hit Boston too.
Everything is delayed, rerouted, backed up.
People are tired and annoyed and nobody is paying attention to two college hockey players standing near the exit.
But we can’t be seen leaving together. We already agreed on that. Separate car services, separate routes back to Hartley, and by the time we’re on campus again we’re co-captains who spent the holidays apart and have nothing interesting to report.
My phone buzzes. A text from Sasha, standing right next to me.
Stop looking miserable. You’re a terrible actor.
I glance at him. He doesn’t look up from his screen, but he almost smiles.
I type back: I’m not miserable. I’m tired.
You’re miserable. You’ve been staring at me like a sad puppy since we landed.
I don’t look like a sad puppy.
You look exactly like a sad puppy. It’s very cute. I want to kiss you.
Easy for him. Impossible for me.
Except it wasn’t impossible in New York. In New York I kissed him whenever I wanted. In the penthouse, in the bath, against the windows with the whole city behind us. I kissed him whenever I wanted and nobody cared.
And now I’m standing three feet away from him in a crowded airport, texting him because I can’t even talk to him.
My car’s here in ten, he texts. Yours?
Fifteen.
He pockets his phone. Tilts his head slightly toward the corridor to the left — the one that leads to the family restrooms and a bank of vending machines. A nothing hallway. A dead-end nobody uses.
I wait thirty seconds. Then I follow him.
He’s leaning against the wall past the vending machines, arms crossed, that lazy grin already in place. The hallway is empty. No foot traffic, no cameras, no one. Just fluorescent lights and linoleum and him.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“Come here.”
I go. My body doesn’t even consult my brain — I just close the distance and he catches my jacket and pulls me in and his mouth is on mine.
Warm. Familiar. His hand slides to the back of my neck and holds me there and I grab the front of his coat and kiss him back and for about ten seconds the airport disappears and we’re back in the penthouse and nothing outside this hallway matters.
He pulls back. His thumb traces my jaw. His blue eyes are soft and close and completely unguarded.
“I’ll see you on campus,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t be weird about it.”
“I’m never weird about it.”
“You’re always weird about it.” He kisses me once more — quick, firm, his hand still on my neck. “That’s okay. I like weird.”
He steps back. Picks up his duffel from where he dropped it. Gives me one last look — half smirk, half heat — and then he’s walking away, down the corridor and around the corner, gone.
I lean against the wall. Close my eyes. Breathe.
A week at the Pemberton and I’m wrecked. Completely, totally wrecked.
I push off the wall. Turn around.
And Meghan Sullivan is standing at the end of the hallway with her carry-on and her mouth open.
For a second neither of us moves. She’s in a puffy coat, her brown hair pulled back. My ex-girlfriend. She looks like she’s been traveling all day. She also looks like she just watched me kiss Sasha and her brain is doing the math at high speed.
My stomach drops through the floor.
“Aaron?” she says.
“Meghan. Hey.” My voice comes out like someone kicked me in the chest. “What are you — I thought you were in New Jersey.”
“I was. Tom’s parents’.” She’s still staring at me. Not with horror. Not with disgust. With the very specific expression of a person who’s been lied to by someone she trusted. “Was that — was that Sasha?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. The hallway is tilting.
“Aaron.” She steps closer. Lowers her voice. “That was Sasha Vorontsovsky. Your rival. The guy you’ve been doing commercials with where you both say you can’t stand each other.”
“Meghan —”
“Can we — can we not do this here?”
She looks at me for a long moment. Her expression shifts from stunned to something else. Hurt. Not about the kissing. About the keeping it from her.
“How long?” she asks.
“Meghan, please. Not here.”
She presses her lips together. Nods once. “Fine. But you’re telling me everything.”
“I —”
“When are you back in Hartley?”
“Tonight. I’m heading straight there.”
“Then I’m coming over tomorrow.” It’s not a question. “And you’re telling me everything, Aaron.”
She shows up at my house on Maple Street at two the next afternoon with a hot chocolate for each of us.
The house is empty — Robertson and Cooper are still home for the holidays, Nakamura’s with his family in Connecticut.
The place is quiet in that drafty, creaky way old Victorians get when no one’s been running the heat for a week.
I turned it back on last night but the radiators are still catching up, clanking and ticking through the walls.
Meghan follows me up the narrow staircase to the attic.
Past the first door at the bottom, up the steep steps, through the second door at the top.
Two layers of separation from the rest of the house.
Not that anyone’s here to separate from, but the habit is automatic now.
Close the doors. Make sure no one hears.
My room is the same as I left it. Neatly made bed under the sloped ceiling, desk by the dormer window, the small bathroom off to the side.
It’s cold up here — the heat hasn’t fully reached the third floor yet — and the dormer windows rattle when the wind picks up outside.
Through the glass I can see Maple Street under a layer of dirty snow, the bare trees, the gray December sky.
It’s not the Pemberton.
Meghan sits cross-legged on the end of my bed. Wraps her hands around her hot chocolate and looks at me.
“So,” she says. “Sasha.”
“Yeah.”
“Your co-captain.”
“Yeah.”
“That was staged. Diego — our agent — he sets that stuff up.”
“Aaron.” She puts her hot chocolate on the desk. “How long has this been going on?”
I sit against the headboard with my knees drawn up. The ceiling slopes down on both sides, close enough to touch if I stretched my arms out.
“Before junior year,” I say. “ He was at the rink and I was skating and it just —” I stop. Start again. “I don’t know how to explain it. We were competing, and then we were in New York for Diego’s thing, and then we weren’t competing anymore.”
“Before junior year started.” She lets that sink in. “Aaron, that’s over a year.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been hiding this for over a year and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“I’m not just anyone.” Her voice is sharper now.
Not mean. Hurt. “We talk all the time. You called me when you were stressed about your dad. You called me when you couldn’t sleep before the Frozen Four.
I’ve been — I thought we were close. I thought if something this big was happening in your life, I’d be someone you’d —”
She stops herself. Takes a breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It comes out small.
“Don’t apologize. Just tell me.” She pulls her feet up under her and faces me fully. “Tell me how it happened. All of it.”
So I do.
I tell her about the rink that first day — Sasha showing up while I was skating, the trash talk that felt different from regular trash talk.
I tell her about New York, the hotel bar, the first time he kissed me and I didn’t stop him.
I tell her about the rivalry being real and fake at the same time — how we genuinely compete but the hatred is performance.
I tell her about sneaking around at Ashford, locked doors and lying to everyone about where I am.
I tell her about the Pemberton. The penthouse. The snowstorm. Christmas.
I don’t tell her the details. But I tell her enough that she understands what it is.
“It’s not just — it’s not just hooking up,” I say, and my voice cracks on it. “It’s not casual. It’s —”
I stop. Because the next word is the one I’ve never said out loud.
“You’re in love with him,” Meghan says.
I press my hands against my eyes. My throat is so tight I can barely breathe.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I am.”
She’s quiet for a minute. I keep my hands over my face because if I look at her I’m going to fall apart, and Aaron Kelly doesn’t fall apart. Not in front of people. Not ever.
But then I feel the bed shift, and she’s next to me. Her shoulder against mine. Her hand on my arm.
“Okay,” she says. “That’s okay, Aaron.”
“God, Aaron.” She’s quiet for a second. “How are you ever going to tell your parents? They’re going to freak out.”
“I can’t.” My voice is barely there. “At least I haven’t found a way to yet.”
We sit there. The house is silent around us — just the radiators clanking and the wind pushing against the dormers.
The floorboards creak when the house settles.
It’s the opposite of the penthouse in every way.
No heated marble, no floor-to-ceiling glass, no city sprawling below.
Just a cold attic in an old rental, a narrow bed, and the first person I’ve ever said any of this to.
“You know what’s crazy?” Meghan says after a while.
“All of it?”
“The rival thing.” She shakes her head. “I’ve watched those commercials. That interview where he called you — what was it — ‘the second-best player on his own team.’”
“He didn’t mean that one.”
“Oh, I figured that out about thirty seconds ago.” She lets out a laugh. “God, Aaron. You’ve been putting on a whole show.”
“It’s good for the brand. Diego says the rivalry angle is worth —”
“I don’t care what it’s worth.” She turns to look at me. Her brown eyes are steady. “Are you happy?”
Nobody asks me that. My parents ask about school. My brothers ask about the team. Sasha asks what I want. Nobody asks if I’m happy.
“In New York I was,” I say. “I was really happy.”
“And now?”
I look around my room. The neat bed. The desk with my textbooks stacked on it. The dormer windows with their view of bare trees and gray sky. Everything small, everything in its place.
“Now I’m scared,” I say. “Because I don’t know how to do this. Be back here and pretend everything’s the same when nothing is.”
“You don’t have to figure it all out today.”
“I know.”
“And you don’t have to do it alone anymore.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “You’ve got me now. For whatever that’s worth.”
I exhale. Didn’t realize I was holding it.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I say. “Meghan, I mean it. Nobody. Not Tom, not —”
“I know.” She holds up her hand. “I won’t. I promise.”
“Sasha’s citizenship — his visa — it’s complicated. If this gets out before —”
“Aaron. I said I promise.” She gives me a look. “I kept your terrible taste in music a secret for three years of high school. I can handle this.”
I laugh. It’s unsteady and completely real. She smiles and bumps my shoulder again and for a second it’s just us — two friends on a narrow bed in a cold attic, the way it might have been if I’d told her years ago. If I’d told anyone.
She leaves an hour later. I walk her down through the empty house and watch her drive off from the front porch, her taillights disappearing down Maple Street.
I go back upstairs. Both doors closed. Attic quiet.
My phone is on the nightstand. Three texts from Sasha.
Made it back. Road was bad.
Hope your family isn’t driving you crazy yet.
I miss you already, Aaron Kelly.
I stare at the screen. My room is small and cold.
Days ago I was someone who could kiss him whenever I wanted.
Now I’m back in the attic with the sloped ceilings and the thin walls and the two closed doors, and I have never felt more like a liar.
I type back: Miss you too.
Two words. Through a screen. It’s the only way I can get them out.
I hit send. Lie back on the narrow bed and stare at the ceiling where it angles down toward me on both sides, close enough to touch.
One person knows.
It doesn’t fix anything. But it makes the ceiling feel a little less close.