Page 34 of Blind Side
My throat was tight. My hands were steady—goalies always had steady hands—but the rest of me was far from it.
"I accepted the trade," I said.
"I know. Theo said you planned to."
"The paperwork is filed."
"I don't care," he said with raw certainty. "I don't care about the paperwork. I care about you. I'm asking you—" He swallowed. "I'm asking you, Abbott. I have never in my life asked anyone like this. Don't go."
I stepped back from the doorway.
Jamie stepped in.
The door closed behind him.
The apartment was quiet. We stood in my hallway two feet apart with everything we'd built was falling away.
What was left was just us. Just the thing we'd both known and neither of us had been willing to acknowledge out loud.
"I've been watching you for years," I said quietly. "I know how your laugh sounds when it's real. I know how your face changes when you're tired versus when you're acting like you have energy you don't. I know which shoulder gets tight after long games and I know you go quiet in cars. I know the exact moment you decided that what we had was enough, because I saw it happen. I've been waiting for you to change your mind ever since."
"I'm here now."
"Jamie." I said his name. "I accepted the trade because you didn't ask me not to. That's the only reason."
He looked at me for a long moment. The distance between us was two feet and closing.
"I'm asking," he said. "Don't go."
The distance between us closed. His hand came up and touched the side of my face with shaking fingers. I turned my head into his palm and relished in the warmth of it against my jaw, closing my eyes.
He leaned his forehead against mine. We stood there, the sound of our breathing the only noise in the apartment.
"Stay," he whispered, his mouth almost against mine.
"I'm staying."
He kissed me.
The first time Jamie Hayes kissed me, it was with the gentleness of a man who was doing something for the first time he'd been wanting to do for years. His lips were soft, his hand still on my face, and he pulled back half an inch.
"Hi," he said, like we were meeting for the first time.
"Hi."
"I should have done this a long time ago."
"Yeah," I said. "You should have."
He laughed. It started in his chest and filled the room.
I kissed him again, because the sound of Jamie Hayes laughing in my apartment was the best sound I'd ever heard—and I was done, permanently and completely done, with pretending otherwise.
18
Jamie
I was kissing Clay Abbott and the world hadn't ended.
