SULLY
First road game of the season and it's ugly from the drop.
They come out heavy, running everything that moves, and the refs have decided they're not calling anything tonight, which is fine, that's hockey, until it isn't. Second period, Cap's got the puck behind the net, and their winger comes in late and high, driving him headfirst into the boards.
Emmett goes down.
I don't remember deciding anything. I'm already there, gloves off, and the guy's got about half a second to look surprised before I've got a fistful of his jersey.
He gets one in early, right on the cheekbone, and it opens me up.
I feel it go warm down the side of my face, and I don't care.
I get him twice, then a third, and the linesmen come in.
It takes both of them to get me off him, and the crowd is absolutely feral.
I get five for fighting, as does he, and we both go to the box. He continues to chirp me the entire time, but I ignore him as I sit there with a towel pressed to my face and blood on my knuckles. Emmett is back on his feet down the other end, which is the only part I actually needed to know.
What a fucking disaster of a game and I’m to blame. We lose 3–2. They score on the power play we hand them. I sit on that bench in the third with my jaw locked and a cut cheek and watch the season's first road game slip away.
After, in the room, the doc has a look, tapes the cut, and tells me it doesn't even need stitching, just a couple of strips, an ice pack, and try not to get hit in the same spot again.
My hand's worse than my face. By the time I've showered, dealt with the media, and boarded the bus to go to the hotel, it's late.
My face throbs and my hand is all bruised.
I put the ice on it and lay on top of the covers still half-dressed and look at my phone.
There are about forty messages. Team chat, group chat, my mother twice, and my sister sending a screenshot of my own face close-up from the TV.
And one from Ember.
Ember: Are you okay? That was horrible to watch.
Ember: Text me when you're back at the hotel, even if it's late, letting me know you’re okay.
Sent three hours ago. I look at it for longer than I should. Should I text? I look at the clock, it’s going to be late. Maybe her phone is off, and she will get it in the morning. She seems worried.
Sully: Back at the hotel. Alive. Cut cheek. No stitches. Pissed I cost my team the game.
The dots come up straight away, which means she wasn't asleep either.
Ember: Send a photo. I need to see it.
I still. She wants a photo. Not that kind of photo. I would never send one of those, but maybe she needs to be reminded of who she has sleeping next door while I’m away. I quickly take my shirt off and take a photo of my face so that it includes my body too.
Ember: I think it looks bad. You didn’t really do a close-up of it.
Dammit, my little photo didn’t work.
I take a photo of the side of my face. It looks worse in the light than it feels, all butterfly strips and the start of a bruise.
Ember: Ouch. Does it hurt?
Sully: No.
Ember: Liar.
Sully: Yeah, it hurts, but I’m a hockey player, it comes with the job.
Ember: Thanks for sticking up for my Em. I was screaming at the TV. Cass had to take my wine off me.
Sully: Oh no.
Ember: Is Emmett okay? He just said he was fine.
Sully: He's fine. Sore neck. He'll be right.
Sully: You do realize this is our job and this is what comes with it.
Ember: I know, but this is like the first time since high school that I’m a part of it with you two.
Sully: Well, I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine. Sore, which is normal, and pissed because I gave the other team an advantage and we lost.
Ember: Don’t be hard on yourself. Like you said, it’s your job, and you’ll be back out on that ice in another couple of days, and you have a clean slate and can right the wrongs from the past game.
Sully: Wow. You sound like coach.
Ember: Do I? Well, I’ll take it. I know how you and Em take it personally when you lose but it is a team game, and everyone had a part to play.
The texting doesn’t stop for the next hour, and this is the best comedown I’ve ever had. She tells me about the office. The shelves are all in and stocked with samples. The girls have painted, and the desks are in.
Ember: You should rest.
Sully: So should you.
Ember: I know I was worried, but now I feel better after speaking to you.
Sully: Me too.
Ember: Night.
Sully: Night.
I lie there in the dark with the ice melting on my hand, my face on fire, and a stupid feeling in my chest.
And that's how it starts. This away trip, we start talking regularly, memes are sent, and then she shows me a photo from her run club around Central Park, it’s sunlight coming through the oak trees.
Then images of the office and her day, and I send her photos of Bouch asleep on the plane, training, and photos of whatever city we are in.
As the games progress, so do we through our texts. We talk all the time about anything and everything, and I enjoy the companionship.
Two weeks.
That's how long the trip is. It's the longest stretch of the season, and it's brutal.
Six cities, back-to-back. We win some, we lose some, we claw a couple back in the third that we had no business winning.
And every night, wherever I am, my phone goes.
By the end of it, I'm not even pretending anymore, not to myself.
I stop going out with the boys. I go back to the room, and I call her, and we talk until one of us falls asleep.
It's the best part of every single day. The last leg home, I sit on the plane and watch the city come up out of the dark, and I feel it in my chest, that pull, and it isn't the apartment I'm thinking about, or my own bed, or a decent shower.
It's her.
I grab a cab from the arena and head home. I'm tired, looking forward to a shower and getting into my own bed after two weeks of hotels. I get out of the elevator and tap my card against the keypad, and I’m let into my apartment.
She's there as soon as I open the door. She comes around the corner from the kitchen the second she hears the door, and when she sees me, her whole face changes, this smile breaking across it. She crosses the room and wraps her arms around my neck before I've even got my bag off my shoulder.
“You're home,” she says into my neck.
I drop the bag, and I get both arms around her and hold on.
“Yeah, I'm home.” The air between us crackles, and I’m seconds away from leaning forward and kissing her, but then I still. “Um, where’s Cass?” I ask her.
“She’s on a date.”
My brows rise high. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she says, disentangling herself. “You must be beat. Did you want to go have a shower while I prepare some dinner for you?”
“Have you eaten?” I ask.
“Yeah, earlier, but I’m happy to warm up some leftovers. I attempted a stew the other night, it’s okay,” she explains.
“Sounds good,” I tell her.
I shower off two weeks of planes and hotels and come out to the smell of something warm. She's got a bowl on the counter, and a beer open next to it. She did this for me. I haven’t had anyone look after me when I get home as I’ve always lived by myself.
We take it to the couch, and I dig in. The stew is actually good, better than she's letting on, and I tell her so.
She waves me off, and I eat two bowls of it.
We fall into an easy rhythm chatting. I sit there with an empty bowl and listen to what she is chatting about, and I don't want it to be over.
That's the thing. I've been up since five, I've played a game, I've flown across the country, and the last thing I want is for her to say she's going to bed because I like this domestic bliss I have walked into.
But eventually she yawns, and then she catches me watching her, and something shifts in the air.
She stands up quickly and takes my bowl to the kitchen.
“You must be exhausted, and here I am chatting away. I’ll clean up,” she tells me.
“Thanks,” I mumble, disappointed because I was kind of hoping she would rip my clothes off as soon as I walked in the door. “Night.”
I walk away.
“Night,” she calls out.
I crash onto my bed, and it feels divine after all those nights in hotel beds.
It's comfortable, it’s mine, and it's quiet, and I lie there wide awake.
I can hear her, not loudly, just the small sounds of her walking around down the hall, a tap, a door, the creak of her getting into bed.
I lie in the dark listening to it, wondering what she is thinking, and I know I'm not sleeping.
I last fifteen minutes, pathetic really.
I just don't want to be in this room when she's in that one. I'm up and out my door and head down the hall, my heart thumping wildly in my chest. I stop outside her door feeling like a desperate idiot, and it’s honestly not about sex, but I don’t know what it is.
I knock, so quietly it barely counts.
“Yes?” she calls out.
“It’s me,” I whisper.
“Come in,” she says.
I push the door open, and she's a shape in the dark, propped up on one elbow.
“This isn't …” I stop. “It's not that. I just …”
“What is it then?” I hear the covers rustle.
“I shouldn’t be here.” I chicken out, turning to head out the door.
“Sully …” she calls my name. “You don’t have to go.”
I still.
“If you need me, I’m here,” she says quietly.
That does something to my chest, and I don’t think, I just feel as my footsteps eat up the distance between us. I get in behind her, pull her back against my chest, and put my face in her hair. She settles into me, her hand coming to rest over mine on her stomach.
This is what I needed.
“I missed you,” I say into her hair. It comes out before I've decided to say it. “Missed you crawling into my bed and keeping me up half the night.”
She goes still for a second. “We said …”
“I know what we said, and I still stand by it.”
Her hand tightens over mine. “I missed you too.”
And it's the most honest either of us has been since Maine. She falls asleep first. I feel it happen, her breathing slow and even, her hand heavy over mine. I stay awake a while longer, just holding her. I’m in so much trouble, I’m in too deep.
I kiss the top of her head and slowly disentangle myself.
As much as I want to stay here all night, I can’t afford my sister to find us again.
So I do the honorable thing and reluctantly get out of bed and head back to my room, where I have the best sleep I’ve had in a while.