Page 33 of Cross Check
He straightened to his full height, six-five, two-forty, the kind of physical presence that made the parking lot feel smaller. "I'm going to say something, and you're going to listen, and then neither of us is going to mention this conversation again."
"That's an aggressive opening."
"You drive here together. You sit together on the bus. You look at him like he's the only thing in the room when you think nobody's watching." Bishop's voice was flat and direct, the same tone he used when telling a rookie where to stand during a penalty kill. "I'm not blind."
I said nothing. The cold November air pressed against my face.
"I didn't like him when he got here," Bishop continued. "You know that. I thought he was a liability and a distraction, and I tested him, and he took every hit I gave him without complaining. That earned my respect." He paused. "And what you did in that parking lot with Brue, that earned something else."
"What's your point?"
"My point is that whatever's happening between you two, be smart about it. The team doesn't need another scandal, and youdon't need Jerry Brue deciding that the starting goalie's personal life is the next headline." He held my gaze. "I've got your back on the ice. Don't make me regret it off the ice."
He walked away, his boots crunching on the pavement, his breath steaming in the air.
I sat in the car for five minutes before starting the engine. Luca. Bishop. Two men who saw what I'd been trying to hide, approaching from opposite directions but arriving at the same conclusion.Be careful.
The problem was that being careful had a ceiling. You could be careful about the distance at the facility, the professional posture on the bus, the interactions in front of the team. But you couldn't be careful about the way your chest constricted when he walked into a room, or the way his name in your mouth felt like a homecoming, or the 3 AM silence that had become the most honest part of your day.
Nico was packing when I got home.
Not the duffel bag—but he'd pulled his toothbrush from my bathroom, his charger from my nightstand, the hoodie from my desk chair. They sat in a neat pile on the guest room bed. Small objects, carefully ordered. The archaeology of a retreat.
"What are you doing?" I asked from the doorway.
He didn't look up. "Moving back."
"Nico—"
"Luca talked to you. I saw you in the hallway." His voice was flat, the survival blank, the locked jaw, the wall going up in real time. "He's right. This is a risk you can't afford, and I'm not going to be the reason you lose everything you've built."
"That's not your decision to make."
"It's the smart decision." He picked up the hoodie and folded it. His hands weren't shaking, he was too controlled for that, but his movements were too careful, the overcorrection of a manforcing himself to be steady. "You should have made it weeks ago. I should have—"
"Nico. Stop."
He stopped. He stood in the center of the guest room with the folded hoodie in his hands. His face locked down, his eyes bright with tears he refused to let fall.
I crossed the room. I took the hoodie out of his hands and dropped it on the bed. I cupped his face the way I had in Detroit, both hands, palms against his jaw. His skin was warm. His pulse raced against my fingertips.
"I need you to hear me," I said. "Not the version of me that's careful. Not the version that calculates risk. The real one."
He stared at me. The wall was shaking. I could see the fractures spreading.
"I'm in love with you," I said. "I've been in love with you since the night you rearranged my mugs. I'm in love with the man who reads Finnish epics on my couch and puts dill in everything and sleeps on the floor because the world taught him that beds are temporary. And I'm not going to let you move back to the guest room because you think you're protecting me."
His breath hitched. I felt the wall crack, audible and physical, the sound of a man's defenses giving way.
"I don't—" His voice fractured. "I don't know how to do this, Kieran. Everyone has given up on me when things are hard."
"I'm keeping you." I pressed my forehead against his. "Stay."
He stood very still. The hoodie lay on the bed. The duffel bag sat in the corner, perpetually half-packed. The guest room, the room where he'd slept on the floor for seven weeks, where I'd sat beside him while the light changed, where he'd told me to call him Nico, held its breath.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay."
His hands came up and gripped my wrists. Not pulling away, holding on. Anchoring himself to the only thing that felt real.
