40. Buzz
BUZZ
NOW
Iwoke up at four because my body had no concept of sleeping in.
It did not matter that it was Sunday. It did not matter that the season was over, that I did not have a workout I was required to drag myself through before sunrise, or that I had spent most of the night learning every new and familiar thing about Lucy Thomas in my bed.
Four o’clock arrived, and my eyes opened.
For one second, I forgot how to breathe.
Lucy was asleep against me. Curled into my side with one bare leg tangled in the sheets and one hand resting over my stomach like she had put it there and trusted it to stay.
Her face was tucked close to my chest. Her dark red-brown curls were all over my pillow, my arm, my skin.
She was wearing my shirt, one of the old gray ones from training camp, the collar stretched loose enough that it had slid down one shoulder while she slept.
The room was barely lit. The world beyond the windows was still black around the edges, the lake hidden in the dark except for the faint shift of water against the shore. The ceiling fan moved slowly overhead. Somewhere in the house, the air kicked on with a low hum.
Lucy slept through it.
Her fingers flexed and something in my chest went soft and stupid.
I get to keep this, I thought.
Last night, she had looked up at me in this bed with her hair spread across my pillow and her eyes too bright in the dark.
I’m not going anywhere.
I believed her.
I slid my hand over her back, barely touching her through the cotton of my shirt. She made a small sound in her sleep and pressed closer, her knee brushing my thigh. Every muscle in my body locked.
I had fought through double coverage with a bruised rib.
I had taken hits from defensemen who seemed personally offended by my existence.
I had once stood between Alois Müller and an opposing forward who had called Bea something stupid, which remained one of the boldest and least intelligent choices of my professional life.
None of that compared to the discipline it took not to wake Lucy up just because I wanted to hear her voice.
I watched morning gather at the window.
I listened to her breathe.
I tried to understand that she had come back to me without letting it swallow me whole.
After a while, Lucy shifted. Her cheek moved against my chest. Her fingers curled, then flattened.
I looked down as her lashes fluttered. She blinked once.
For a second, she seemed caught between sleep and the room around her. Then her body went still, and I felt the exact moment she remembered where she was.
Her face went pink before she even lifted her head. “Why are you awake?” she rasped.
“My body wakes up at four.”
She pushed herself up on one elbow, still half draped over me, curls falling around her face in a way that would have made every rational thought in my head pack a bag and leave if I had possessed many rational thoughts to begin with. “That is horrible,” she said.
“I’m an athlete.”
“You are a problem.”
I smiled before I could stop myself. “Good morning to you too, Shortcake.”
“You are very brave for a man in elbow range.” Her eyes narrowed. She was too sleepy for the full effect. But she tried, and that almost killed me.
“I like to live dangerously.” I chuckled.
Her gaze moved over my face, then down to where her hand still rested against my stomach. She did not pull it away, but her fingers tensed.
The blush in her cheeks deepened. “Hi,” she muttered.
“Hi,” I repeated.
Her eyes flicked around the room. “I did mean it,” she said.
I knew exactly what she meant. I still asked, because I wanted to hear her say anything at all. “Which part?”
Her mouth pulled to the side. “Do not get greedy before sunrise.”
“Too late.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling now. “I meant I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I know last night was… big.”
“Huge,” I corrected. “Life-altering. Historically significant. Put it in the arena rafters.”
She pressed her lips together, fighting a smile. “You are impossible.”
“I’ve been told.”
She laughed then, quiet and sleepy, and the sound moved through my whole body.
I wanted to roll her under me and make her laugh again and then make her stop laughing for better reasons. I wanted to keep her in this bed until noon and then order food and then convince her the rest of the world had been canceled.
Instead, I brushed my thumb once over her shoulder where my shirt had slipped. “I know last night was big,” I said.
For a second, she just looked at me.
Then she leaned down and kissed me.
Her hand slid from my stomach to my chest. Mine settled at her waist, over the cotton of my shirt. She made a faint sound when I kissed her back, and I felt it everywhere.
When she pulled away, her cheeks were pink again. “I need to brush my teeth,” she muttered.
I laughed into the inch of space between us. “Romantic.”
“I am being practical.”
“You’re in my shirt, in my bed, after telling me you love me. I think we passed practical somewhere around midnight.”
She looked at me for another long second, and this time when she smiled, it was not careful.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, keeping the sheet wrapped around her like a queen who had been mildly inconvenienced by romance.
Her purse sat on the dresser beside the dress. Her overnight bag from the wedding weekend was on the chair, right where she had dropped it last night after we had come in from the lake air and stopped pretending we were not going straight upstairs.
I reached for the sweatpants on the floor and pulled them on before I stood. Lucy’s gaze dipped, then snapped away with a blush that made my morning immediately better.
I walked to the hall bathroom and opened the drawer under the sink. “I have an unopened toothbrush,” I called.
“Why?”
“Because I am a responsible adult.”
She appeared in the doorway wrapped in my sheet, unimpressed. “Try again.”
“Because my mom buys practical things in bulk and puts them in places when she visits.”
“That I believe.”
I handed her the toothbrush. She took it, and for a second we both looked at it.
A toothbrush should not have felt like anything. It was plastic. Blue. Still in the package. Completely ordinary.
But Lucy stared at it like it was a step. Then she looked up at me. “Thank you.”
I kept my voice easy. “Anytime.”
By the time we made it downstairs, the sun had started to come up properly.
Pale gold touched the lake through the windows, sliding over the floorboards and the kitchen island.
Lucy had changed into black leggings, white sneakers, and a soft green tank top that made the brown in her eyes look warmer even behind the emerald glasses she had pushed onto her face upstairs.
Her hair was still a disaster. I loved it. I wisely did not say that out loud though.
For a few minutes, we drank coffee in the quiet. No arena. No wedding guests. No loading dock. No past pressing its hands against the windows.
Just her at my kitchen island. Me across from her. The lake waking up beyond the glass.
She opened her purse, shook one pill from a small prescription case into her palm, and took it with her coffee like it was part of any normal morning. No ceremony. No comment. She capped the case and put it away, then wrapped both hands around her mug. “You’re being weirdly quiet.”
I leaned against the counter. “I’m enjoying you in my kitchen.”
Her expression changed. Then she hid it behind a sip of coffee because she was still Lucy and there were rules. “Careful,” she said.
“I am.”
Her fingers tightened around the mug. “I need this to be ours first.” She looked down at her coffee, then back up at me.
“While we figure out what this is. Not because I want to pretend it isn’t happening.
I just…” She exhaled. “I spent months with people watching me bleed around you, and I do not want the first real thing we get to become everyone else’s entertainment. ”
“I know.”
Her eyes held mine. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
I could have told her that I wanted to walk into the arena with her hand in mine and let everyone deal with it.
I could have told her that some awful, healed-wrong part of me wanted the whole world to know she had chosen me again.
I could have told her that the idea of hiding anything after losing her once made my chest tighten.
But none of those things were more important than Lucy feeling safe.
She looked out at the lake, and the morning settled around us again.
“What time are you picking up Dottie?” I asked, needing to shift to light and happy before the heaviness in the room choked out the magic lingering between us.
“Ten.”
“At the pet resort?”
She nodded. “Her luxury vacation palace.”
“Is that the official name?”
“It should be. She gets a raised bed, frozen treats, supervised playtime, and a spa bath before checkout.”
“Dottie is living better than I am.”
She traced her thumb along the side of her mug. “I should probably go get her and then head home.”
The words were reasonable. They were also a cold draft through the morning.
I kept my face steady. “I can come with you.”
Lucy looked up. Her lips parted, then closed again. For a second, I thought she would tell me it was too much. Then she said, “Okay.”
At ten, we picked up Dottie from a pet resort that looked nicer than half the hotels I had stayed in during juniors.
The building sat behind a tidy stone sign and a row of flower beds that had clearly been chosen by someone who knew how to make rich people feel calm about leaving their pets somewhere.
The lobby smelled like lavender, clean floors, and money.
There were framed photos of dogs in seasonal bandanas on the walls.
A receptionist with perfect hair greeted Lucy by name, which did not surprise me at all.
“Miss Thomas,” the receptionist said brightly. “Dottie had a wonderful weekend.”