Chapter 9 #2
I met his eyes. “It means we make it clear that if they try to use any of that, I’ll come forward.
Explain how it was set up, and that any implication about Matt’s sexuality is just clever staging.
Turn it into evidence for how they operate.
” My whole body felt cold, but I continued anyway.
“If they drag me to court, I mean, that’s probably not prison.
Right? Just money I don’t have. Not ideal, but… well.”
Matt’s face went through a quick flash of something I couldn’t read—focused, gaze hot on me. It hit somewhere behind my ribs, low and a little fragile. I didn’t dare move.
Reid broke the moment. “Terrible branding for a discretion business,” he said, with a thoroughly pleased lift of his eyebrows.
“It won’t come to that.” Matt sounded confident, locked in, the same way I’d seen him on the ice.
“Agreed,” Reid said. “They don’t strike me as stupid.
But then, regrettably, I’ve been wrong about that kind of thing before.
So if they are, if they still decide to push, well, they’d be airing a great deal of dirty laundry in front of a judge.
Which I doubt appeals.” He took a sip of wine, his smile benevolent.
“And if they need further discouragement, I’ve got a lawyer friend on speed dial. He can help them see the light.”
“So,” Naomi said. “What’s the plan? Concretely.”
To my surprise, it was Matt who answered. “We stop treating this like something they get to manage from a distance. Reid sets a meeting. Stellan and I go in together.”
Go there. Something in me pulled tight.
“You mean, like—actually talk to them? In person?” I stared at him. “You and me?”
“Yes,” Matt said, like it was obvious. “They think you’re isolated, scared, easy to push around. I want them looking right at me when they realize that’s not true.”
Naomi tilted her head. “I like it. They do better when people stay in neat little boxes. Former contractor here, former target there, nobody comparing notes.”
“And nobody with money, reach, and a reason to get angry deciding to involve himself,” Reid added. “Sorry for their loss.”
Matt didn’t look away from me. “They don’t get to threaten you in private and hope I stay out of it.”
God. Okay, that… Just—I wasn’t used to people caring. Or maybe taking care of me.
“That’s the legal side,” Reid said right into my thought.
“Oooh.” Naomi sat up, interest sharp like a knife. “Please say there’s a social side.”
“There’s a social side,” Reid told her.
“Excellent.” She sounded deeply satisfied. “Bring it.”
“If they try anything stupid, event invites for their people dry up. Nobody says blacklist out loud because that’s so…” Reid waved a hand to convey the general idea.
“Gauche?” Naomi suggested.
Reid pointed at her. “That’s the word.”
This was… a lot. It felt like I’d walked out of the elevator and into a strange, parallel universe where other people stepped up to help solve my problems. Surreal.
Almost as surreal as the thought of walking right back into my past with Matt beside me—right back into the kind of place that had sucked me in young and trained me into a worse version of myself, into someone useful and ethically flexible.
In a weird, twisted way, Matt was the reason I’d found the emergency exit.
“You can actually do that?” I asked Reid. “Make their network dry up?”
He slid me a haughty look. “Stellan. I’m Matt Harkins’s manager. I know people.” He paused. Next to me, Matt puffed out a small laugh, as if the idea was ridiculous yet somehow true.
“Additionally,” Matt added, “Reid has always had a flair for both drama and business. He’s my friend, yeah, but he’s also really fucking good at what he does.”
“Thank you,” Reid told him. “Even if sometimes, that includes bullying you into shopping for a suit. And look how that’s turned out.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, voice dropping a notch, a half smile on his face as he glanced at me. “Well.”
Not casual at all.
I smiled back even with my balance strangely off.
“Text me if they make a move,” Reid said.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Naomi said.
“That’s a pretty broad frame,” I told her, and she slipped me a bright smile, the kind I’d seen on posters.
“That’s the point, babe.”
And then they were gone, the elevator closing behind them. Just Matt and me now, silence settling as jazz hummed faintly from somewhere and the nighttime city breathed behind glass. My own pulse felt too loud.
I took a moment to quiet my nerves. Stupid, why, wasn’t like I hadn’t been alone with him before. Only this felt different somehow. Bigger, less transactional and more… Just more. Felt like Matt was looking at me as if he’d made up his mind about something.
“So,” I said, a little too loudly.
“So,” he echoed with a tiny smile, not really amused, more assessing. He stayed on the other side of the island, one hand loose on the countertop, light playing over his face and arms. Good arms. The kind that could pin me to a wall if he wanted to. Yep. Probably where this was headed.
I took a couple of steps toward him while he watched me, mouth curving up just a hint further.
“You had dinner yet?” he asked, and—huh. Dinner. Right, okay.
“Does a glass of wine count?”
He snorted, eyes steady on me, their dark brown warmed by the gentle flow of light. “I’ve got food.”
“Cool,” I said. “Good for you.”
“Don’t be an ass.” He laughed softly, though, almost like he’d surprised himself. “Point is, it’s enough for two. So, you want any?”
Something warm slid through my veins even as I told myself it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe he was hungry himself and wanted a bite before we got naked, and I just happened to be rolled into that because it’d be impolite to have me waiting while he ate. Yeah, made sense.
“Is it edible?” I asked. “Or is it, like, a kale protein shake? Or the kind of meal that caters to people who think butter is a moral weakness?”
It got another laugh out of him, and weirdly, I liked that—liked making him seem a little lighter, looser. “It’s nutritionist-approved, yeah, but edible. Chicken, rice, vegetables that aren’t kale.”
“You need to work on your elevator pitch.”
“You want food or not?”
I did, actually. Now that we had a plan, my stomach had woken up to the idea that there was more to life than coffee and adrenaline. “I’d love some,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Polite.” He pushed away from the kitchen island and crossed over to the fridge—loose T-shirt and gray sweats, bare feet. It echoed weirdly in my chest.
Whatever.
Dinner turned out to be grilled chicken, some kind of lemony rice thing, and roasted broccoli that came in labeled glass containers.
That tracked. Star athlete, heavy travel schedule, life segmented into practice, games, routine, nutrition, no alcohol during the season. I didn’t fit anywhere in that.
He heated it up in the microwave while I hovered a little awkwardly for a minute, then wandered over to a long, upholstered daybed by the windows that felt more like a hotel lounge than someone’s home, the city just a scatter of light beyond the glass.
“You ever sit here?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Occasionally.” Matt moved around the kitchen with practiced efficiency, opening drawers and getting plates. “Got a window seat in my bedroom with a view of the Space Needle, that’s the one I tend to use more.”
His bedroom. Which I’d yet to see.
Totally fine, though.
“Sit,” Matt said, sliding a plate toward me on the counter, and I took up one of the stools again, reached for a fork. This was normal, right. Just two guys having a pre-cooked meal so nobody passed out halfway through the naked part. Logic.
“This isn’t bad,” I said after the first bite. “Like your nutritionist has met spices and decided not to run from the experience.”
Matt grinned. “Such praise. I’ll let her know you said that.”
No, he probably wouldn’t. Or if he did, it’d be generic, some friend he’d had over. Not… this. Whatever this was—fuck buddies with a side of unusual history, maybe. Not simple, no, but neatly contained.
Which.
Was.
Fine.
Except, well. It didn’t exactly feel contained when he was heating up dinner for me in sweats and bare feet, like this could be a normal way to end a bad day.
I needed to get my head on straight. Just a short night, my past kicking me in the teeth.
“So,” I said, partly to sidetrack my own thoughts.
“Family. You’ve met my brother, so… What about you—any siblings? ”
His mouth tilted, faintly amused. “No siblings, no.”
“Weird cousins?”
“Not really.” He shrugged and forked another bite. “It’s mostly just me and my parents. Small town in northern Minnesota, like I told you.”
“That was the TED Talk version,” I said. “What’s the home edition?”
He was quiet for a second, chewing as he considered me—like if I pushed wrong, the whole thing could go skittering into silence.
“My mom talks,” he said at last. “A lot. Not in a bad way, just… if there’s silence at dinner, she treats it like a problem.
My dad’s the opposite. No filler. Just logistics. ”
I smiled into my plate. “Such as?”
“What time’s practice tomorrow?” Matt’s voice slipped into a flatter, older male cadence. “Did you get your skates sharpened? How long’s the drive?”
“Sounds like hockey defined your day even when you were a kid.”
“Yeah, well.” His mouth quirked without much humor. “Teenage years, definitely. Once people decided I had a future in it, everything else got figured out around the game.”
“That explains a lot,” I said after a beat.
His eyebrows lifted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You.” I nodded my chin at him. “Your whole… vibe. All the discipline and intensity, and then suddenly, it’s like, ‘You had dinner yet?’ ‘I’ve got food.’ ‘Come over tomorrow.’” I stole a glance. “Very logistics-forward.”
A hint of color sat at the tops of his cheeks. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” I told him, spreading the fingers of one hand. “Quite the opposite. It’s nice, kind of. You see a problem and you try to solve it.”