Chapter 56
FUCK AROUND, FIND OUT (FAMILY EDITION)
Nate
“That was the moment I knew. I’d go to war for her. So I did.”
The table looked like it belonged in a magazine spread, candles lined up with military precision, and napkins folded so sharp they could’ve drawn blood.
Even the wine was poured like it had something to prove, in delicate glasses that looked like they’d break if you looked at them wrong.
Everything about it screamed presentation over presence.
Nate sat stiff-backed in one of the carved-out dining chairs, Holly beside him, his hands resting on his thighs so he wouldn’t reach for hers under the table like a lifeline.
He’d grown up in this house. This exact room, but it still made his shoulders knot up like he was waiting to be benched. The plates didn’t clink when you set them down. The silence had a dress code. Even joy came with a user manual.
He loved his mom. Of course he did. But he’d never pretended she didn’t come with barbs.
Helene Eriksson had always wanted him to be something else.
A financier like his dad. Maybe a surgeon.
Something sharp and cold and high-achieving.
Finding out her son was a kid who liked fights more than figures had never sat well with her.
Sure, she'd made her peace with the NHL.
Fame had a way of smoothing jagged edges, but it never fully softened her disappointment.
Still, Nate hadn’t expected her to aim that disappointment at Holly.
He’d always thought the scrutiny stopped at bloodlines.
Turns out, he was wrong. Every time Holly fielded one of his mom’s precision-aimed questions about her family or upbringing with charm and grace, Nate felt something coil a little tighter in his chest. Like he was watching someone try to waltz across a minefield barefoot just to earn a seat at a table that didn’t deserve her.
And yeah. It made him want to break something.
He thought Denmark would be safe. Familiar. He hadn’t counted on how sharp that safety could feel when it was wrapped in crystal glassware and his mother’s condescension. He brought her here because he loved her. Because somewhere, deep down, he wanted this to be the place she said yes.
Sigrid did her best to keep things buoyant, chirping in Danish and English, leaning across the table to ask Holly about LA and makeup tips and whether the male dancers were really as dramatic as the memes made them look.
His stoic father just sat back with his quiet glass and his quiet eyes, present in body and somewhere else entirely in spirit, until he looked across the table at his son once the main course was done.
“When will you be going back to hockey, Nate?”
Nate felt the weight in his words as he finished chewing his mouthful to respond.
“I’m still suspended for almost two months,” he said, feeling that familiar tight sensation lingering in his chest that he always got when he’d been off the ice for too long. “Then it’s up to Delaney, I guess.”
“That man,” his mother huffed derisively. “All new money and no intelligence. I wish you’d traded out to New York when you’d had the chance, Nathanael.”
He flexed his jaw. Because of course she did. New York was a much better story at the country club than New Haven, with its run-down arena and proximity to nothing but a whole pile of ocean.
“I like New Haven,” he reminded her, wishing they weren’t having this conversation right now. Especially not in front of Holly, who was already worried he was going to vanish back to Connecticut and never be seen again.
His mother fixed him with a tight smile, reaching for her wine glass like it was signaling a change in the conversation… and target.
“So, Holly,” she smiled, sounding intrigued. “Dancing. Such a… vivid career path. Was it something you always intended to pursue, or more of a detour?”
A detour? Something in Nate’s chest went hot and violent, like iron sinking into his bloodstream.
His mother had just dismissed Holly like she was entertainment and not the most disciplined person Nate had ever met.
Like she wasn’t the reason he’d started believing he could be more than his worst moments.
Nate felt Holly’s leg twitch next to his at the table.
Just a brief flicker, but it didn’t show above the snowy tablecloth.
“A bit of both,” she replied with an easy smile he’d seem her slip into just for the cameras.
“I started dancing young. Fell in love with it before I was old enough to know how impractical it might be.”
Helene raised a brow. “Yes, I imagine it’s very taxing. Hard to maintain as one gets older.
Holly just shrugged, as though all the finery in the world wouldn’t be enough to make her speak differently to the way she usually did. And fuck, he loved her for it.
“It’s demanding, definitely,” she admitted.
“And there are injuries. Exhibit A.” She nods at her crutches.
“But I’ve built a life around it. Not in spite of the challenges, because of them.
You’d be surprised how remaining active can improve your quality of life as you get older.
I’ll bet there are some senior classes here in the city somewhere, if you’re that interested. ”
Sigrid coughed into her wine, while Nate bit back a wickedly impressed grin.
Helene didn’t even blink. In a world of socialites, and manners and people who seem like one thing but are really another… she was a master.
“Ah, but your biggest challenge is yet to come my dear. What happens after the curtain falls? Once you’re done dancing? You know,” she added, like the thought had only just occurred to her. “A rich husband could solve that pesky no-skills-to-fall-back-on issue.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Nate said, his gaze turning icy as he glared across the table at his mother.
Holly’s knee brushed his under the table. Light, accidental, or maybe not. Nate felt it like a promise. Not asking for rescue or reassurance. Just the smallest signal that she was still here, still refusing to crumble.
“I’m sorry, was that wrong?” Helene gave a soft breathy laugh, like she couldn’t believe she had given offense. “Mila Sorenson’s daughter just married up, and is doing very well for herself. And Filippa Jans has practically made a career of it. She’s on husband number three!”
Nate looked at Holly, shocked and embarrassed that his mom would actually cross that line, but Holly hadn’t flinched. She didn’t even blink too hard. She just smiled, small and unfazed, and lifted her fork again like she’d been complimented instead of cut open.
“I don’t plan on fading with the curtain, Mrs. Eriksson,” she shrugged.
“I’ve always preferred writing my own finales, but I do know one thing for sure.
I won’t need to rely on a man for anything.
Ever.” Her gaze darted to him for a second.
“No offense,” she added under her breath, in a way that made him want to laugh at how brilliant she was.
Holly’s look switched then, Nate clocking just enough pity in her brown eyes to make it believable as she looked back at his mother. “But I’m so sorry you come from a world where your friends’ worth is determined by who their husbands are.”
He felt the tension in the air like a live electrical current, as Holly managed to not glance in his father’s direction as though she hadn’t made the same connection there, too. But it seemed the LA firecracker wasn’t done yet.
“Did you go to college, Mrs. Eriksson?” she asked politely, echoing one of Helene’s questions to her earlier.
Fuck, Nate’s brain exhaled. She’s a god damn machine of mass maternal destruction.
“I had private tutors,” Helene said indulgently with a soft smile, before sipping her wine again and turning to Sigrid to ask about her next semester.
Nate couldn’t help himself then. He found Holly’s hand under the table, wrapping it in his and resting them both in her lap. Her hand tightened in his like she’d been holding herself together with thread, and he was the first solid thing she’d touched all night.
And if his mom didn’t like it? Nate didn’t really give a fuck.
He met her eyes across the table with a calm that felt dangerous.
Helene’s expression flickered, just the faintest crack in her composure, as if she realized for the first time that this wasn’t some fling he’d grown bored with.
This wasn’t an American scandal romance he’d forget when the cameras stopped rolling.
This was Nate, changed at the marrow, sitting at her table with a woman he’d bleed for. And he couldn’t stop thinking, with a fierce ache that nearly split him in two, that Holly didn’t deserve to be cut down for loving him. If anyone in this room should feel unworthy, it wasn’t her.
It was him.
And he was going to make damn sure she never felt that way again.