Chapter 52
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Holly
“He looks at me like I’m not the disaster… I’m the reason he’ll survive it.”
The doctor’s verdict should have felt like relief, but it landed in Holly’s chest like a threat wrapped in kindness.
No permanent damage, he’d said, which sounded like mercy until he followed it with words like carefully and slowly and the quiet implication that her body had limits whether she accepted them or not.
She’d smiled anyway, nodded like a good patient who wasn’t already calculating the cost of every day she couldn’t rehearse properly, every sponsorship that might evaporate, every treatment bill waiting at home like a loaded gun.
Her brain had already opened seventeen worst-case scenario tabs and refused to close any of them.
When the doctor finally left, the room went too still, and the silence made space for the fear she’d been holding back since the second her ankle snapped.
What if this takes more than time? What if it takes my career?
What if it takes my mother? She stared at the sun slicing through the blinds in pale ribbons and hated how fragile it made her feel, trapped in a bed like she’d been reduced to something breakable.
Nate came back in like he belonged there, like hospital rooms were just another place he could claim with his presence. He was carrying two coffees and a paper bag, and he looked unfairly good for someone who’d barely slept and had spent the last several hours being a one-man security system.
His curls were a mess. There was a shadow of beard across his jaw that she desperately wanted to feel between her thighs.
His hoodie hung loose on his shoulders like armor he’d forgotten to take off, and when he looked at her, his eyes softened in a way that made her throat tighten because she didn’t know what to do with gentleness that didn’t demand anything in return.
He handed her a cup like it was the most normal thing in the world for an NHL menace to become her personal fetcher. She took it, their fingers brushing, warmth sparking through her hand and up her arm like her nervous system had been waiting for his touch the way plants wait for sunlight.
He didn’t talk right away. He sat beside her, close enough that she could feel him without looking, the heat of him bleeding into the sterile air.
She sipped the coffee, the bitterness grounding her, and tried not to notice how her chest loosened just a fraction with him there.
She’d always told herself she didn’t need anyone to soothe her because needing people was how they got in where they could hurt you.
But Nate didn’t feel like he was trying to take something. He felt like someone holding the door open and offering her room to breathe. It was obscene, really, how quickly she’d come to trust the steadiness of him.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he said finally, voice soft, like he’d learned the shape of her storms.
Holly’s laugh came out thin. “That’s not a thing.” Fantastic. Even her coping mechanisms had become observable phenomena.
“It is with you,” he replied, turning his head to look at her properly. “You do that stare. Like you’re about to fight the world.”
She tried to roll her eyes, but it came out weaker than she’d meant it to. “I’m fine.”
Nate made a sound that didn’t argue so much as refuse.
“You don’t have to be fine in front of me,” he said, and that sentence hit harder than any dramatic declaration could have because it was said like fact.
Like he wasn’t trying to win her over because he’d already decided she was worth the truth.
His gaze flicked to her ankle, the brace, the swelling, the way the blankets couldn’t hide the injury’s ugly reality.
Holly watched the muscle jump in his jaw as if he was physically restraining himself from harming the universe on her behalf.
When he looked back at her, something in him had shifted into quiet certainty, the kind that made her feel both protected and terrified.
“I went to the studio this morning.”
A flicker of a frown passed over her face. “What for?”
“To make sure Lars fucking left,” he told her, that sexy fucking voice of his hovering on the verge of a growl that would undo her senses all the fucking way to a hospital room blowjob. Truly incredible how her libido continued clocking in for work during medical emergencies.
“Really,” she said, eyes wide. “What happened?”
“Not much,” he shrugged. “He ranted. I put him in his place.”
She had only just narrowed her eyes at him when he realized he’d said the wrong thing. “I didn’t hit him, I swear.”
“Mmm,” she hummed, suspicion lingering in her gaze until he grinned lopsidedly and completely disarmed her.
“I had an idea on the way back here.”
“That sounds dangerous,” she winced. “I didn’t know your brain was capable of forming coherent thoughts.” She smirked as he pretended to be wounded.
“Horrible woman,” he play-pouted. “No, it was a good idea.”
Her smirk widened. “What was it, then?”
“Come with me on an adventure,” he said.
Holly blinked, convinced she’d misheard. “What?”
“Denmark,” he said, like that solved everything.
He said it gently, but there was resolve under it, something immovable.
Like this was something he needed just as much as she did.
“Come with me for a bit. Just until your ankle’s stable.
Until the media stops camping outside your building.
Until you can sleep without flinching every time your phone buzzes. ”
Her mouth opened, but her thoughts were tripping over each other. “Nate, I can’t just get up and go. There’s the show, and my mom…”
“I’m not asking you to abandon your life,” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees now, like he was in a locker room trying to talk a teammate off the ledge.
“I’m asking you to let yourself heal somewhere you’re not being hunted.
Somewhere you’re not one bad headline away from breaking your own spine trying to prove you’re still useful. ”
That word punched her. Useful. She’d spent so long being useful to everyone.
Useful to producers who needed her to be a storyline.
Useful to judges who needed her to be a spectacle.
And useful to an industry that loved her talent but loved her obedience more.
She swallowed hard, trying not to let him see the way her eyes burned.
“And your mom,” he continued, softer now, like he’d stepped into a room where he knew he had to lower his voice. “If she needs you, we’ll get on a plane. If she wants to come, she comes. If you need to fly back for appointments or chemo or just… to sit with her, we’ll come back. I’ll be there.”
Holly stared at him because what the hell was she supposed to do with a man offering her options instead of pressure.
Offering her a future that didn’t involve her clawing for oxygen.
She was so used to love being conditional that she didn’t know how to trust something that came with no tricks and no transaction.
This was not in her emotional risk assessment spreadsheet.
“I don’t—” she started, then stopped, because honesty was clawing its way up her throat.
I don’t know how to accept this. I don’t know how to let someone take care of me without feeling like I owe them my soul.
Instead she said, “Denmark is… far. And I don’t have great memories there. You know that.”
Nate nodded, face serious. “I know. Which is why it’s perfect. Let me help you make good memories there, Holly.” A beat, and a glimpse of cheek. “And it’s not that far.”
“It’s basically the moon,” she shot back, because she needed the sarcasm. “You’re trying to lure me to some Scandinavian ice castle so your mother can murder me with etiquette.”
His eyes warmed, and for a moment the soft Nate flashed through, the one she had seen on the ice with her, the one who laughed like he’d forgotten he was allowed to. “I’ll handle my mother.”
Holly’s breath caught at that, not because it was dramatic but because she believed him.
She believed he’d stand between her and his own family without hesitation, the same way he’d stood between her and Lars, the same way he’d stood between her and a room full of predators disguised as cameras.
She’d spent her whole life being the one who shielded herself.
Letting someone else do it felt like standing on glass.
“What if I go,” she said slowly, voice quieter now, because the question felt like stepping off a cliff, “and then the show ends and you go back to your team and I’m just… a detour.”
Nate went still, hurt in a way he tried to hide and failed because he was too real for that. Not her fault. Still painful anyway. He reached out, placing his hand over hers on the blanket.
“Holly,” he said, and the way he said her name made it sound like a vow he hadn’t dared speak yet.
“You’re not a detour. You’re not PR. You’re not a fucking fake relationship.
You’re the first thing that’s felt like home to me in a long time, and that scares the shit out of me because I don’t know how to be good at this. But I’m trying.”
She stared at their hands, at the way his thumb moved in slow, soothing arcs like he was memorizing her pulse.
She realized with dizzy clarity that she wanted this.
Not just the trip. Not just the escape. She wanted him.
Holly wanted the version of life where mornings were coffee and teasing and his huge hands.
She wanted the version where she didn’t have to be sharp all the time.
She wanted the version where she let someone else carry part of the weight.
Her throat tightened. She hated how much it meant, and she loved it anyway.
“I’m scared,” she admitted, the words so small they barely felt like hers.
Nate’s eyes softened like he’d been waiting for her to say it, and he nodded. “Me too,” he said quietly. “So let’s be scared together. You’re recovering, Martinez. And if Denmark’s where the story broke, maybe it’s the right place to start over again.”
Holly exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for weeks, then months, then years. She looked up at him, at this ridiculously gorgeous man sitting beside her hospital bed like he belonged to Future Holly, because Current Holly just didn’t fucking deserve him.
“Okay,” she whispered, as if the word could shatter if she said it too loudly. “I’ll come.”
Nate’s expression changed so fast it nearly hurt to witness, like he’d been holding himself still for fear of scaring her, and the moment she agreed he couldn’t contain it anymore.
Relief flooded his face, bright and stunned and almost boyish, and the look he gave her wasn’t lust or swagger or charm.
It was gratitude. It was devotion. It was the expression of a man who’d been chosen and didn’t know how to survive the tenderness of it.
He leaned in and kissed her forehead, slow and reverent, like he was sealing the promise without needing words. “Good,” he murmured against her skin. “Then we go breathe.”
And Holly, lying there in a hospital bed with a life that felt like it was dangling by threads, realized something terrifying and beautiful. She wasn’t falling apart. She was being gathered.
By him.
@TLFTea on X
Sources say Nate Eriksson has been at the hospital for hours. HOURS.
This man used to leave the penalty box faster than this.
Hockey menace in his domestic kitten era and we are LIVING.
@ballroomburnbook on TikTok:
Video: Nate carrying Holly off-stage.
Text overlay: WHEN YOUR NHL DANCE PARTNER REFUSES TO LEAVE YOUR HOSPITAL ROOM
Caption: The way this #ttf season keeps escalating tho?
HAMMERHEADS: MURDER LINE EDITION
Jaime
Brick, why did the team Physio say you called her to ask how ankle bones ‘work structurally’?
Cash
he’s learning anatomy for revenge
Zeke
Man about to fight the concept of ligaments
Roman
is he still at the hospital???
Leo
pack it up boys he’s in LOVE love
Nate
Fuck off, you’re all dead to me.
:
NHL enforcer Nate Eriksson’s unexpected soft side
Sources close to production say the League’s resident bruiser has barely left Take the Floor’s pro dancer Holly Martinez’s side following her devastating injury during the show’s live broadcast last night.
“He’s been incredibly attentive,” one insider shares.
“Very protective.” Fans online are already speculating that the pair’s on-screen chemistry might reach new heights now that… READ MORE →