Chapter 21
Rhys — Past
More months of me and Marcus went by and it was perfect.
So perfect it almost scared me. We'd decided early on to keep it between us — the team was finally warming up to me, and Marcus had never been with a guy before.
He wanted to make sure it was real before it became anyone else's business. I understood that.
I did.
I'd initially planned on being out once I settled in at Eldridge.
Would've preferred not to hide. But being with Marcus was worth it — worth the careful distance in public, the secret looks across the locker room, the way we existed in two different versions depending on who was watching.
When it was just us, there were no other versions.
Just him and me and however many hours we could steal.
I was at his place every day or he was at mine. We found reasons. Film to watch, food to eat, homework neither of us actually did. Any excuse to be in the same room with the door closed. Kisses in empty corridors, hands that lingered a second too long when nobody was paying attention.
All of it careful. All of it ours.
The team had finally, finally started to feel like a team.
They'd let me in — not all the way, not completely, but enough.
Enough that I wasn't eating alone anymore.
Enough that the locker room didn't go quiet when I walked in.
That was all Marcus. They trusted him, so they extended a fraction of it to me, and I took it.
But there was a timer on all of it.
The NHL draft sat on the horizon like a countdown nobody wanted to look at directly.
Still a ways off, but close enough to feel.
Everything would change then. Marcus's whole future hinged on the next year and I wasn't going to be the thing that complicated it.
His dream was NHL first, then nursing. So I decided not to waste whatever time we had.
He opened the door in a rush that night, slightly breathless, like he'd been waiting right on the other side.
"Hi."
Both of us smiling at each other.
"Hi."
The door wasn't fully closed before we collided — a tangle of arms and mouths and the precise urgency of two people who'd been apart for less than one day and felt every hour of it.
It was always like that. All consuming. His hands found my face immediately, tilting me up, and I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in closer because there was no such thing as close enough with Marcus.
He kissed me slow and deep, unhurried despite the urgency of it, like he had a point to make.
My back met the wall and I let it, hands sliding up into his hair, and he made a low sound against my mouth that did something catastrophic to my ability to think.
We stayed there a while — just that, just his mouth and his hands and the taste of him — until I was dizzy with it.
I pulled back.
"Marcus. Wait." I pressed a hand flat to his chest. "I need to talk to you."
He blinked. Lips red and swollen. Slightly dazed. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, come."
He took my hand and I led him around the corner into the living room.
I stopped walking.
He'd moved the couch. The whole thing pushed back, leaving an open space on the floor covered in quilts and blankets layered over each other, pillows stacked at one end.
A projector threw deep blue light across the ceiling and walls in swirls — the whole room underwater, swimming in it.
Little fake flame candles lined the edges in a loose circle, flickering orange against the blue.
I stood there and looked at it for a long moment.
"Marcus."
"I know." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's a lot. It's extremely cheesy, I'm fully aware, before you say anything—"
"What is this?"
He took a breath. Stepped into the room and turned to face me, hands finding his pockets, looking at me the way he did sometimes when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
"Okay so." He started slow. "The blue is symbolic.
Like water. Because when I'm not with you — when I'm in practice, in class, in a room full of people — I feel like I'm underwater.
Like everything is muffled and heavy and I'm just getting through it.
" A pause. "And then I'm with you and I'm not.
Everything just — clears." He held my gaze.
"I wanted to do something that felt as big as that.
As big as what you are to me. Even if it's cheesy.
Especially if it's cheesy, because you deserve cheesy, Rhys, even if you're going to make fun of me for it like an asshole. "
I opened my mouth.
"I'm not done." He crossed the room slowly and stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my chin up slightly to hold his stare.
He reached out and tucked a piece of hair back from my face, just to have somewhere to put his hands, just to be touching me.
"I love you. I need you to actually hear that.
Not as something people say — as the truest thing I know right now.
I love the way you are, the way you never shut up about music.
" His voice dropped. "I love that you show up.
Every single day. Even when this place was making it hard, you kept showing up.
That's — that's everything to me, Rhys. You're everything to me. "
The blue light moved across his face and I looked at him and felt my heart crack open.
"I think," he said, softer now, "that whatever next year looks like — the draft, everything after — I want to figure it out with you. I'm not saying I have a plan. I'm saying I want one. With you in it. I think we can make this work."
I had never let myself think that far. Never considered that Marcus Hale would want real. Something lasting. That he would rearrange his furniture and set up a projector and stand in the middle of it all and tell me I was everything to him. That I could be enough for someone that big.
I choked out a laugh before I could stop it.
"Marcus," I said. "I'm not a fucking girl."
He covered his face with his free hand immediately, shoulders already shaking, embarrassed. "I know that — I've only ever done romantic stuff for girlfriends, so that's what you're getting. I panicked."
"The fake candles—"
"They're romantic—"
"There are so many of them, Marcus, it looks like you're going to sacrifice me—"
"Rhys, I swear to god—" He was fully laughing now, face still in his hand. I grabbed his wrist and pulled it away. Looked at him — properly, completely, at this ridiculous beautiful person standing in the middle of this ridiculous beautiful room he'd made for me — and it settled into my bones.
"I love you, too," I said. I squeezed his hand. "And this—" I gestured at the room, "—is a lot and I will be making fun of you for it forever. But it means everything to me that you tried, baby."
"I mean it," he said. Softer. "This is different. You're different. I don't know what the next couple of years look like but I know I want you with me."
"I want the same," I said. "I want you. However that looks."
He smiled. That one dimple. The deep groove in his left cheek that I had completely lost my mind over. He kissed me tenderly that time. Both hands cradling my face, slow and confident, like a decision being made out loud.
It felt like a promise.
He laid me back onto the blankets and hovered over me, mouth finding my jaw, my neck, the hollow of my throat, and I stared up at the blue light spinning across the ceiling.
"Why does it feel like I'm about to lose my virginity?" I asked.
He dropped his forehead to my collarbone. "Please. Please don't."
"No, genuinely — after I give my innocence to the captain of the hockey team, I hope you take me to prom. I hope you call me the next day. I hope you write me a letter—"
"Rhys—"
"I just have standards, I'm not easy, you should know that about me going in—"
"You are the most annoying person I have ever met in my entire life—"
"I want flowers after. And a text. Not just a text, like a real text where we both express our love, not just hey—"
He kissed me. Hard. Both hands in my hair, pressing me back into the blankets.
I shut up.
His hands slid under my shirt and dragged it over my head and then his mouth was on my chest, my ribs, the line of my stomach, and every coherent thought I had evaporated completely.
He took his time — learning every part of me like he had all night and was planning to use every second of it.
His mouth traced down my stomach and I exhaled sharply, fingers twisting into his hair, and he looked up at me from under his lashes with this expression that did something dangerous to my heart.
"Still want to talk shit?" he asked.
"Absolutely not, please continue," I said.
He grinned and went back to kissing me. I was completely undone, hands pulling at him, needing him closer, needing everything.
He settled between my legs and looked down at me — really looked, the blue light catching his eyes, his hair, the line of his jaw — like he was taking a second to just have this. Just see me.
It was devastatingly tender in a way I wasn't prepared for — the kind of close that has nothing to do with proximity and everything to do with being completely known by someone.
Every sound I made he answered. Every time I pulled him closer he went in.
Like there's nowhere else either of us was supposed to be.
When it was over we laid tangled in the blankets, his arm heavy around me, my cheek on his chest, his heartbeat slowing under my ear. The blue light still moving across the ceiling. The fake candles still flickering at the edges. Neither of us talked for a while.
I pressed my face into his chest and started laughing. He did too, chest shaking under my cheek, arms pulling me closer, and I laid there in the blue light in this ridiculous setup thinking I could stay there forever.
And meaning it completely.