Chapter 53 #2
And I think — with a clarity that feels like the first clear thing I've thought in months — that I would rather lose everything I've ever built than watch Rhys finish this game alone while Marcus Hale gets to stand on the same ice as him and feel nothing.
I would rather lose everything.
That's the line I cross in my head, clean and irreversible, and once I cross it there's nothing left to weigh.
None of it.
Rhys is more.
Rhys is more than all of it.
Rhys is everything.
I choose Rhys.
I wait until Marcus comes back on the ice and I immediately go to him.
It doesn't take long.
I get close enough that there's nothing between us, nothing incidental about it, and I say: "Whatever you just said to him. Don't."
Marcus turns to face me with a confused look.
"Stay the fuck away from him," I continue. "You've done enough. You did enough a year ago. Walk away from him and don't come back."
A million emotions move through his face. Guilt, maybe. Recognition. The look of someone who knows exactly what he did and has been living with it and thought he could come here tonight and look at Rhys and call it something else.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he bites out.
"I know exactly what I'm talking about," I say. "I know that you watched all of it happen and chose nothing." My voice is level. "I know you loved him and chose yourself." I hold his gaze. "So I'm telling you again. Leave him the fuck alone. He’s mine."
Marcus looks at me, glint of challenge in his eyes.
"And if I don't?" he says, and shoves me once.
That’s it.
I hit him.
Clean. Hard. The right hand, all of it behind it. My father, Rhys, Danny, Jonah, all of it.
A good hit.
Good enough that he stumbles back.
The bench erupts. Whistles everywhere. Players from both sides.
Fitch yelling something from the bench that I'm not hearing.
The ref between us immediately, hands on my jersey, and Marcus coming back up with blood at his lip and fury in his face and I feel nothing except the relief of a decision fully made.
The best decision I’ve ever made.
And it feels like a head laying on my chest.
Tastes like peppermint.
I’m at peace for the first time in a long time.
No longer haunted by ghosts.
They separate us.
Marcus goes to his bench and I go to mine.
Fitch is already there. I don't let him speak. "I know," I say. "Bench me, it’s fine." He looks at me for a long moment. His face — not just anger. Surprise.
"Sit down, Nash," he says, and calls out one of the other players to the ice.
I sit down. I pull my jersey off. Just that. I pull it over my head and I hold it for a second — Harlow across the chest, my name and number on the back, four years of everything I've been building — and then I reach down the bench and tap Rhys on the arm as he comes out.
I hold it out.
He looks at the jersey.
Looks at me.
His eyes go through about eight things in the space of two seconds.
Confusion first. Then understanding — slow, dawning, the kind that moves through your whole body not just your head.
His jaw goes slightly slack in shock. His eyes go bright in a way I've only seen a handful of times. The biggest smile I’ve ever seen on anyone.
Or maybe it just feels that way because it means so much to me.
He knows what this is.
No words. No speech. No grand declaration.
Just my jersey. Just me handing him the thing that is the whole of my life and saying — without saying — I choose you. In front of everyone. On this ice. Right now.
I love you.
He takes it. His hand closes around the fabric and for one second his eyes find mine and everything we haven't been able to say to each other for weeks lives in that second completely.
Then he turns and pulls it on over his pads.
Skates back out onto the ice with a new sense of determination.
I watch the rest of the game from the bench.
Rhys with my number on his back.
He's different the second he steps back on the ice. Locked in, in the real way — not the mechanical going-through-motions of the first period but the Rhys I know. The one who reads plays before they develop and makes decisions that seem inevitable after and covers ice like it belongs to him.
He scores in the third period. Top shelf. The move I've been watching him perfect at six AM for months. Clean and precise and unhesitating.
He doesn't celebrate. He skates back to position and I see his hand come up for half a second and press flat to the number on his chest.
My number.
We win 3-2.
The bench empties onto the ice. Guys everywhere, noise everywhere, the chaos of a team that just beat their biggest rival and knows it. I'm off the bench immediately. Moving through the celebration, through the bodies, looking for my number in the crowd.
I find it.
Find him.
Except he's already moving the other direction. Through the chaos, cutting through the mob going the opposite way, and I push toward him but he's faster and the crowd is thick and—
He's gone. Through the tunnel. I stand at the edge of the ice with the celebration going on around me. His name on my lips.
Not loud enough.
Not in time.
The locker room door swings shut.
By the time I get there he's not in it.
His gear is on the bench, half-pulled off, left where it fell.
My jersey is folded on top of it.
Neat. Careful.
Left there like something precious.
Like something he couldn't keep.
I pick it up and just stand there holding it.
The celebration is still going on around me and I am standing in the middle of it holding a jersey with my number on it that Rhys Callahan wore and then left and I don't know what that means.
I don't know what any of it means.
But I know this.
I think part of me would let Rhys destroy my life.
And I think I’d thank him for it.
Because I’m finally free.