Page 146 of Wicked Serve

“I’m serious.”

“We’re not breaking up,” he says, a bit of a growl in his voice. “Definitely not. But I can’t pretend I don’t need help. I can’t live like this anymore, shoving everything down and waiting for it to explode.”

“So let me help you.”

“I can’t put that responsibility on you. I need to sort myself out, and I can’t expect you to do that for me. I don’t want to.”

“Why? I’m not enough?”

My voice cracks at the admission, the vocalization of the thought that’s been echoing in my mind since the moment I left his room. Not enough. Never enough. I gave him everything, and he’s slipping through my fingers anyway.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?” I sniffle, pressing the heel of my hand against my nose. I shouldn’t make it about me, I know that, but I can’t help the jumbled feelings rising to the surface. California is one thing. Leaving me—even if he says it’s not forever—is another. “You know I trust you, right? I meant what I said. You’d never hurt me like that.”

“I need help, Isabelle. The professional kind.” He takes a breath, as if readying himself. “If I’m going to be a good partner for you—a man you can spend your life with—I need to learn how to manage my... my panic disorder. My past. And if I don’t have the distance, the space to reflect, I don’t know if I’ll really change.”

“So you’d rather be alone than with me.”

“Not forever.”

I laugh derisively. “Sure.”

“I’m doing it because I love you,” he says, voice thick with emotion. Quiet, intense. Just like him. “I’m doing it for us.”

I know him. I know when he’s made a decision, and I know how steadfast he can be when he sets his mind to something. I should be happy right now. This is what I’ve wanted for him. But he feels so far away, and he hasn’t even left New York yet.

“If you do this, you have to promise you’re coming back.” My voice breaks. “You have to promise.”

“I’m coming back. This isn’t goodbye.”

I hear it, but I hate it. I hate it so much I want to scream.

“When you do, it has to be for real.” I wipe roughly at my tears. Distantly, I notice the sounds of the gym. The world going on around us, as if this moment isn’t delicate and breakable and right on the edge of shattering. “You have to be coming home to me, Kolya. Not for now, not for a little while. It needs to be forever.”

Even over the phone, his voice is velvet soft. Russian first, then English. “I promise, solnishko.”

Our love has felt like springtime. Warmth chasing away shadows, light spilling into the open. I imagined sun-drenched days ahead, but the frost hasn’t left the ground. The flowers haven’t bloomed. I’ve never wished for his embrace more than right now. I’d hold on so tightly, he couldn’t pry me away.

But instead, I have to trust for both of us until he trusts himself.

Chapter 69

Nikolai

Another new team. Another facility tour. Only instead of a college rink, this one is SAP Center. And instead of a college team, it’s the San Jose Sharks.

The NHL. The National Hockey League.

Despite everything—despite leaving half of my heart three thousand miles away—I can’t deny the enormity of this moment. When I was little, I’d pretend I was Zdeno Chára, Ryan McDonagh, Pavel Datsyuk. I’d close my eyes on the bench and daydream about playing in the last period of a playoff game. Now I’m walking around as a rookie, about to be thrown into a late-season push for the postseason.

I trail after Hal, my new head coach. He’s been talking a mile a minute to get me up to speed before tonight’s game. His assistant offered to give me the tour instead, but he insisted. He hasn’t outright said it, but it sounds like he had been angling to get me on the team for a while.

“Let me show you the stage,” he says, clapping me on the back on the way out of the locker room. “I love when every seat is full, but there’s something about when it’s quiet.”

“It’s the fresh ice.”

He snaps his fingers. “I think we’re going to get along, kid.”

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