Chapter 5
FIVE
STELLAN
My body was still humming.
Or maybe it was the train, all steel and cold lighting, a guy across the aisle slumped asleep against the window, two teenagers next to me sharing a pair of headphones like romance was measured in liking the same song. Cute. Naive, maybe, but cute.
I shifted on my seat and willed down the lingering warmth under my skin.
No problem. Just sex, hormones, an afterglow that clung a little longer than usual.
Didn’t mean a thing. Or if it did, then it meant only that Matt had a body built for poetry and knew how to use his hands.
That he had a way of looking at me that made my skin feel paper-thin, raw nerves running underneath.
No big deal.
The train slowed and pulled into the next station. On the platform, a digital ad flickered too bright, shouting in capital letters about home opener this saturday.
Seattle Cascades branding in electric blue and silver. Three players, all geared up. Matt was one of them, front and center with his jaw set, stick in hand, eyes fixed somewhere distant as if he’d shed the ordinary notion of mortality. Captain energy. Franchise face. Buy tickets now, Seattle.
Well. Fuck.
Since Chicago, once I’d started actually clocking his face, he’d begun turning up all over the place—here a clipped highlight on mute, there a headline.
A Seattle Cascades scarf in Ronan’s room, a little boy on the street wearing a Harkins jersey.
Like the world had quietly decided I needed a daily reminder.
The train jolted me through a quick, stupid lurch of my stomach.
I knew who he was. Yeah, sure, half an hour ago, he’d had me laid out on his couch with my hand down his jeans—but it was the same guy as this bigger-than-life version of him, draped in full team colors and asking the city to believe in him.
If I’d forgotten for even just a minute? Let myself believe his life was the same size as mine? My mistake.
We moved forward again, the ad sliding out of view, and I exhaled.
Fine. I was fine. Completely and totally fine.
Because, hey, I wasn’t trying to date a closeted hockey star.
I wasn’t an idiot, even if Naomi might dispute that claim.
So what if I liked him a little? Aesthetic appreciation. I was a man of refined taste.
I pulled out my phone and switched to Naomi’s chat. Strictly speaking, I should keep my mouth shut. But, well. She’d already figured out enough, and if I kept it all to myself, I’d start buzzing out of my skin.
Update, I typed. Tried hitting that. Wow.
She replied within seconds, the unofficial queen of juggling coffee, lipstick, and her phone. Details.
I don’t kiss and tell.
Tell me another one.
I snorted under my breath. Not this time.
You growing soft on me? she asked, and ha, as if.
Never, I replied and locked the screen.
Soft. Jesus. It was sex, not a personality transplant.
Announcements crackled overhead. I got off two stops later and climbed out of the station into cool, fresh air that helped clear my head.
Old brick buildings and neon beer signs, a rainbow flag hanging limp in the late afternoon lull.
I passed a shop that sold overpriced candles with long, handwritten scent descriptions and made my way up our road.
Home.
Third floor. I stepped into our own little kingdom with its secondhand furniture, chipped plates, and a kitchen close enough to the neighboring building that I could ask to borrow sugar by opening a window. Shoes off. Coat off. Casual face on.
Ronan looked up from the dinner table, a high-visibility work jacket slung over the back of his chair, digging into a container of leftover pasta.
Afternoon snack, then. Twenty-two now, he’d grown broader through the shoulders than me, his hair in need of a cut and his forearms dusted with drywall or sawdust or some other construction-site souvenir I wouldn’t know how to identify.
I knew clothes—natural fiber and cuts, colors.
My brother knew tools and how to build something that would last.
His phone was babbling sport commentary, all maximum excitement, and I caught yet another flash of Seattle blue and silver. Great. He glanced up from the screen, took one look at me, and narrowed his eyes. “Oh, gross.”
I paused, two steps into the kitchen. “Wow, hi. Hello to you, too.”
“You got laid.” He said it with his mouth open around a bite of pasta, something he wouldn’t do around anyone else, and I laughed despite myself.
“What gives, Sherlock?”
“It’s the way you walk.” He pointed his fork at me. “Like… smug. A little too loose.”
“You do realize that could mean more than one thing, right?”
“Nah.” He shoved another bite of pasta into his mouth and chewed with the supreme air of a younger sibling who knew he’d hit the mark. “You’re not walking sore. You’re walking smug. Big difference.”
Okay, but, like. What?
“And how would you know?” I asked.
“I pay attention.”
The Cascades clip on his phone listed stats as if they were a language.
Goals, assists, ice time, plus-minus—numbers that clearly meant something to Ronan and absolutely nothing to me.
Matt’s name sat there with a neat little stack of expectations beside it, like last season had already signed him up to drag the team into the playoffs again before this one had even properly started while I was still stuck at okay, but he has a face and hands.
I crossed red-brown kitchen tiles that shouted the seventies at anyone who’d listen and opened the fridge, talking over my shoulder. “Or maybe you just make it up as you go.”
“Did you know you’ve got a red spot on your throat?” Ronan gave me time to react, then continued when I didn’t. “So, odd time to be hitting a club. Did a little swiping? Or is it someone I know?”
“You seem weirdly invested in my sex life.”
“I am when you look like you just spent some time with that skincare stuff Naomi used to advertise. Find your glow, or whatever the fuck it was.”
“Language, Ronan.”
“Not my dad, Stellan.”
“Easy to forget.” The truth dressed as a joke.
“Like when you made me a packed lunch on Thursday?” he asked, dry as dust.
“You were running late.”
“You wrote ‘eat me first’ on the yogurt.”
It cracked a laugh out of me, sharp and helpless, carrying just a hint of leftover buzz from the couch and Matt’s teeth just under my jaw. “Fine. Next time, I’ll let you starve.”
“You do that.” He paused. “So. Do I know him?”
Sort of. Not really. Bigger-than-life promo and on the ice didn’t count.
“No.” I said it a little too fast and told myself it mostly wasn’t a lie because I’d tried to leave that part of my life behind.
Yeah, I still fibbed sometimes, but they were white lies that softened good advice into something people were likely to accept.
It’s nice but not quite you, if you know what I mean.
Absolutely, yeah, this brand’s known for trending small in sizes, why don’t we go up one?
“No?” Ronan asked, like he’d caught the faintest edge of hesitation in my voice. “You sure?”
A six-pack of sparkling water on the bottom shelf, two eggs, four beers that belonged to Ronan, and a tub of hummus I couldn’t remember opening, which made it unsafe. I reached for the water.
“No answer means there’s a story,” Ronan said from behind me.
“No answer means mind your own business.” I glanced over just as he rolled his eyes, a brief flash of the teenager I’d tried so hard to protect.
“Fine. Keep your secrets.”
I am the secret.
“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”
“Surprise.” His sarcasm was half-hearted, different from that stretch when he’d known I was evasive about the money I was making for us both, about the nicer clothes and occasional business trips.
I’d told him eventually, just the rough shape of it.
When I’d gotten myself fired, his first reaction had been, “Finally.” Then he’d reminded me he could carry us both for a while, if he had to.
I wasn’t the only one who felt responsible.
“So,” he said, finally pausing the clip just as I twisted open the water. His tone was casual in a way that instantly got my attention. “Claire asked if I wanted to go to San Jose with her for Christmas.”
Ah. I looked at him. “Sounds nice.”
“Not for long.” It came out a little rushed. “Just a few days. I told her I wasn’t sure.”
“Why not?” I asked around a sip of water.
“Because,” he said, pointed.
“That’s a compelling reason. I’m sure she was impressed.”
He stabbed another bite of pasta. “I’m not going to leave you here by yourself over Christmas.”
Something in my chest tightened. For one quick, nauseating moment, I was back in a different kitchen—Christmas music bleeding through the wall, some neighbor hovering by the doorway while a social worker talked in a calm voice.
Ronan crying because he couldn’t find his hoodie, me checking for shoes, backpack, anything we’d need if they took us right then.
Fear had translated into logistics so fast it barely felt like fear at all.
Just a list. Just make sure we have what we need.
Ronan had managed to move past the shambles of our childhood, past transient places and parents who were only ever stable until the next hit, the next fix.
He’d been with Claire for more than a year now and mentioned the idea of marriage like it didn’t scare him.
Meanwhile, I was the king of keeping it casual.
“Aww.” I reached for something suitably saccharine. “You love me.”
“I tolerate you, at best.”
“Lies.” I pulled out a chair, but not before I lightly flicked the side of his head. “Go to San Jose. Eat whatever her family puts on the table. Wear a festive sweater. Live your best life.”
He fixed me with a look. “While you eat crackers for dinner before crying over some rom-com with a lot of dancing and pretty dresses?”
Not entirely inaccurate.
“I’ll be working anyway,” I told him. “Shop’s busy around the holidays. So—go.”