Page 59 of Shattered On Ice

“How is he doing?” Rook asks, the protective defenseman and best friend bleeding through the hurt. “Is he…going to be okay?”

My stomach jumps with the urge to comfort him, to tell him everything. But my jaw locks under the clinical obligation weighing me down. I grip the neck of the sweating beer bottle, condensation dripping over my fingers. “You know I can’t discuss his progress with you. The therapy stays in the room.”

Rook nods, head jerking erratically as he accepts the boundary. I think, in a way, it reassures him that I’m taking this seriously and not just playing a game. That I’m actually treating his best friend.

“Fuck, I’m not asking for your therapy notes, Knight. I just want to know if my friend is going to survive this.”

The therapist mask, the one I’ve held in place with a willful, white-knuckled desperation for the last hour, finally slips, shattering at my feet. I’m so unbelievably tired.

“He’s fighting,” I whisper, lip trembling along with my voice as my eyes begin to burn. “Whether he knows it or not, he’s doing the hardest work of his life. He’s going to beat this, Rook. He’ll get cleared, and he won't need me anymore.” A hot, mortifying tear slips past my lashes, tracing a jagged path down my cheek. “It’s working. And it’s killing me.”

Rook stares at me, eyes wide and pained. He sees it all. I can’t hide a thing from him. The devastation, the sacrifice, the sheer, torturous weight of being in love with someone you are ethically bound to keep at arm’s length.

The tension that’s held our house captive for the last two days snaps. The anger dissolves, overridden by the unshakeable bond we’ve shared since the womb. Rook rounds the island in three long strides, wraps his massive arms around me, and pulls me into his chest for a crushing hug.

I bury my face in his shoulder, gripping the back of his shirt as a ragged breath tears out of my throat.

“It’s fucking weird, Knight,” Rook mutters into my hair, tightening his grip. “My best friend and my twin brother. It’s a lot to wrap my head around.”

I sniffle. “I know,” I choke out.

He sighs, the big breath raising me along with his chest. “But he’s my guy. And you're my brother. So here’s the deal I made with Westy, and I’m gonna make you now. I’ll keep him from spiraling on the ice and in the locker room. You're going to fix the ghosts in his head. When you finally clear him, and you're just a guy who loves my best friend, I won't stand in your way.”

Twenty-three

Westin

“Exposure therapy.”

That’s what Knight called it when he texted to invite me over to watch the Hydras’ away game in Buffalo. According to Dr. Stephens, sitting down to watch my team take the ice without me is a necessary, controlled confrontation of a trigger. I need to observe the game, track my nervous system’s response to being sidelined, and practice my grounding techniques in real-time.

But as I sit here on the plush, oversized cushion of the sectional in his living room, the only thing I’m dangerously exposed to is him.

The clinical safety of his office with its mahogany desk, leather couch, and wingback chair is gone. We’re in enemy territory now. I know the familiar smells of this living room from our past hookups. It’s his bergamot cologne, expensive body wash, and the faint trace of woodsmoke from that one fire we lit and forgot to open the flue to the chimney. I know the exact dip in the couch cushions I’m sitting on because it’s where I used to pull him onto my lap. Every inch of this room is saturated with the ghost of our secret relationship, and my body is screaming for me to pick up right where we left off.

The lights are dimmed, the TV casting a dull glow over the room, yet he’s trying so damn hard to be the therapist. He even brought a small notebook to the couch that’s resting on his thigh like a shield. But the armor is incomplete and failing against the remnants of our past. He isn't wearing his pressed button-down and slacks. He’s in flannel sleep pants and an old University of Minnesota T-shirt that hangs softly over his shoulders. His bare feet are resting on the coffee table in front of him. He looks comfortable. He looks like home. It’s taking every ounce of willpower I possess not to cross the torturous two feet of distance between us that might as well be the Grand Canyon, bury my face in his neck, and breathe him in.

“Check your pulse,” Knight says, voice low and cutting through the commentary of the broadcasters. He taps his pen softly against his notebook, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the screen where the Hydras are lining up for a face-off. “Do you feel any tightness in your chest? Any shallow breathing?”

“Nope,” I answer honestly, voice coming out rougher than I intended.

My chest is tight, but it has nothing to do with hockey. It has everything to do with the way the dim light from the television catches the sharp line of his jaw. It’s the physical ache in my hands, the phantom pain from not being allowed to reach out and touch the man I love when he’s sitting next to me.

His gaze is focused on the screen, jaw set, pretending this is the clinical exercise he intended. But he keeps shifting, just as hyper-aware of the space between us.

On the screen, the puck drops. Buffalo wins the draw, and their massive defenseman enforcer smashes Monty into the boards with a brutal crunch that echoes through the speakers.

Knight shifts, pen pausing. I know what he’s waiting for. He’s waiting to see if I flinch, if my breathing goes ragged and shallow, for the revenant memory of Montreal to hijack my brain and send me spiraling into a panic due to watching a violent hit without doing anything to stop it.

I wait for it, too. I brace my socked feet against the floor, ready to deploy the grounding tactics he’s taught me. But the panic doesn't come. My heart rate stays perfectly level, my breathing even, and my hands steady. I glance away from the screen to watch Knight, the steady rise and fall of his chest under the soft cotton of his shirt. I listen to the gentle, intimate sound of his breathing in the dim room.

I don't need to practice a grounding technique because I’m sitting next to my anchor. The terrifying, chaotic noise of the hockey game doesn't stand a chance next to the sheer, overwhelming gravity of his physical proximity. The therapy is working, but not the way Dr. Stephens intended. I’m perfectly safe, perfectly grounded, simply because I’m in Knight's orbit.

Knight turns his head, catching me staring at him instead of the game. His breathing hitches. The clinical wall fractures just a little as he registers the heavy, electric yearning in the air between us. He clears his throat and looks down at his notebook, shifting awkwardly on the cushion.

“Your baseline seems stable. That’s, um, that’s a good thing.”

“Yeah,” I murmur, my voice dropping an octave until he’s forced to meet my eyes again. “I’m feeling really good, Doc.”