Chapter 38 #2
His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there this time and his grip on my hip tightens to where it’s almost painful and we are so close I can feel his chest rising and falling, can feel every place we're touching, and the whole kitchen has collapsed down to this, us, and how bad we’re both aching for it.
He leans in. Barely. Just enough. Stubble almost grazing my jaw, his mouth a breath from mine, and I can taste the almost of it, can feel it in my whole body, the wanting, the waiting—
"How long is this going to take? Are you guys actually making dinner or just—"
Blake.
Jamie moves back so fast it's like he teleported.
Facing the stove. Spoon in hand. Every wall up and every expression sealed and nothing on his face at all, like the last ten minutes happened to someone else in a different kitchen.
Blake stands in the doorway taking in the scene with the expression of someone who absolutely knows what he interrupted and is panicking about whether to acknowledge it or not.
I want to throw the spoon at him.
I want to kill him with my bare hands.
"We're cooking," I say. My eyes say go back to your room right fucking now and never come out.
"Right," Blake says slowly. His eyes say you are making a catastrophic mistake and also go fuck yourself. "Because that's definitely what that looked like. If cooking is staring at each other."
"Do you want to eat or what?"
"I'm going." Hands up in surrender. He glances at Jamie. "Nice to meet you." And then he's gone.
Silence crashes back in. The moment is gone with it.
Fully, completely, permanently gone. I look at Jamie, trying to gauge his reaction.
He looks at me and he’s red at the collar.
Grip on the spoon slightly too firm. Ears — and this is my favorite thing about him, this involuntary tell he absolutely hates — pink at the tips.
Yeah.
Same.
"Stir better this time," I say, trying not to laugh.
"Shut the fuck up," he responds.
I grin so wide it hurts.
We eat at the counter. I want to be close to him so I put us close together and Jamie notices but says nothing, which I'm choosing to read as informed consent.
It's quiet. The good kind.
"So what's up with the intensity?" I ask.
Because it's been sitting in the back of my head since the first morning session.
Since the first time I watched him on the ice at six AM, alone, like the only thing standing between him and something terrible was the rhythm of his own blades. "The hockey. Why so much of it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. It's everything. The way you talk about it, the way you train, the way you played through a shoulder injury for weeks and didn't say a word. It's like nothing else is allowed."
He takes a drink of water and sets the glass down.
"My dad got me into it," he reveals. "Young. Like six."
"Okay," I say. I know better than to push. Jamie is a locked door and if you throw yourself at it, it just holds. You wait. You give him room. You let him decide whether he’s going to give more. "That's a long time."
"Yeah."
"Did you ever want anything else?" I question. "When you were a kid. Before it took over?"
"Not really." Then, quieter, "My dad made sure that’s all I had time for."
I don't push. I turn back to my food instead.
"Me and my brother used to play hockey together," I pivot.
"Trying to keep me out of trouble. I was a nightmare as a kid — shocking, I know.
" I glance at him playfully. "He made it fun.
That's the thing I keep thinking about with this team.
Nobody's having fun. Like somewhere along the way we all forgot that's what it's supposed to feel like. "
"Your brother still play?"
"AHL. Trying for the show." I stab a piece of pasta. "He's the real talent in the family. I got the mouth."
"Don’t do that. You have a lot of talent," Jamie says and keeps eating. Unbothered by the kind thing he just said like he says kind things all the time, which he absolutely does not.
"Thanks, Jamie."
He redirects so cleanly it almost impresses me. "What position does he play?"
I let him have it. "Center. Where do you think I learned all my bad habits?"
The corner of his mouth twitches. For a second, he just pushes his food around his plate. Then he says, carefully, "You know, Coach wanted you at center when you first transferred."
"What?" I frown. “Why didn't he put me at center then?"
Jamie stares down at his plate. Because apparently whatever's about to come out is hard enough that he can't look at me while he says it. "Because I asked him not to."
I blink. "You what?"
He lets out a deep sigh before responding. "I asked him to put you on wing instead."
"Why?"
He finally looks up. And for the first time all night, he looks nervous. Actually nervous. "You were distracting me."
I laugh because that's obviously a joke.
Jamie doesn't laugh back.
My smile slips.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Neither of us says anything for a second. I can practically see him regretting this conversation in real time.
"You changed my position because I distracted you?"
His face goes red.
Jesus Christ.
Captain Jamie Nash is blushing.
"I didn't change your position."
"You absolutely changed my position."
"I made a suggestion to Coach."
I can't stop smiling. "Because I was distracting."
He points his fork at me. "Don't make this worse, it’s hard enough without you being an asshole. I’m trying to say I’m sorry. Anyway, I talked to him and he switched you to center, where you belong."
"Jamie."
His eyes narrow. "Rhys."
I grin. "You had a crush on me!" He immediately reaches for his glass. And somehow that answer tells me everything.
"No, and stop smiling. I just couldn’t concentrate with you constantly talking."
"Oh my god, you changed my position because you had a crush on me. I can’t believe it."
His lip lifts at the corner of his mouth.
He sets his fork down carefully.
I feel the question forming before he asks it.
"So, can we talk about why you really left Eldridge? For real."
There it is.
I set my fork down and look at my plate. He looks at me and says nothing. Just waits. It just — sits there. Opens up space. Gives me room I don't know what to do with. I’m purposefully prolonging the moment so I can decide how best to answer.
"The hockey was great," I say. "I don't have a complaint about the level of play I got.
I was really good and learned a lot there.
" I pause. "But it was bad. For me specifically.
" I look at him sideways. "I was out. Or — I got outed.
And the team decided to make that everyone's problem. Mostly mine."
He goes very still, concern etched clear as day in his features.
"The captain—" I stop. Start again. "There was a captain.
Marcus. We were—" A vague hand gesture that covers months of something I still can't quite name cleanly.
"And when it came out he made sure he wasn't the one who looked bad.
" The shrug I give comes out wrong. Too tight.
"Instead, it fell on me. And the team followed his lead. Because it was his team."
Silence.
"And I had nobody there." Just a fact. "Zero people. My own fault — I wasn't letting anyone in. Or rather, they didn’t let me in. So it was just hockey and Marcus and nothing else. And when it all went wrong I had nothing to catch me."
"Rhys, I'm so sorry," he says. His expression twists for a second, like the words hurt on the way out.
I grab my fork again and pick at my food. "Anyway. I left and found out I was capable of starting over as myself here." I glance at him. "Turns out I'm very good at new. Which is either a skill or a red flag depending on who you ask."
He's not looking at his plate or eating. He's just looking at me. Open. Unguarded. Like something got through without him noticing and now it's too late to close it back up.
"The guy," he says, carefully. The way he handles things he knows are fragile. "Marcus. Did he—"
"It doesn't matter what he did. He made a choice. I made mine." I meet his eyes. "I'm here now."
He holds my stare. "Yeah," he says. "For what it's worth," he continues after a minute. Eyes on his plate whenever he says something real. I wait. "It's their loss. Eldridge. I’m sorry for whatever happened, but I’m happy you’re here. They didn’t deserve you, him or the team."
Like he hadn't just dropped those words straight into the middle of my chest and left them there.
"Don't get soft on me, Nash."
"I'm not being soft."
"That was the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"It was a fact."
"It was a very sweet fact—"
"Callahan."
I smile at my plate. "Noted," I say. "Genuinely. I’m happy I’m here too."
He doesn't say anything else. Doesn't take it back either.
And that's what I love the most about Jamie Nash that I keep tripping over no matter how many times I tell myself not to.
He never takes things back. He says them flat and factual and eyes-on-his-plate like they're nothing. And they're never nothing. They’re so much more meaningful because he literally fights himself to be able to say these things. It doesn’t come easy to him at all.
So I know when he says something, he really means it.