Page 120 of On Thin Ice

I blew out a breath, adjusted the lapels of my tux, and followed him inside. I still wasn’t sure what we were walking into. But Bell was with me, and Silas had voiced his support. Maybe that was enough for now. It was certainly more than I had ever hoped for or thought I deserved.

* * *

“No one cared,”I said, still in disbelief as I unfastened the last button of my tuxedo shirt and let it hang open. “Not one weird look. Not one comment. Nothing.”

Bell leaned against the bedroom doorway, barefoot, his tux jacket abandoned in the living room the second we walked through the door. His shirt was wrinkled and half-untucked, his bowtie hanging loose around his neck. Even rumpled after schmoozing team sponsors for hours on end, he looked effortlessly hot.

“I’m starting to wonder if holding you back the way I did maybe looked worse in our heads.” He pushed off the jamb and sauntered into the room with that loose-limbed grace he was known for, both on and off the ice. “Maybe the guys were in too much shock over what Chet said to even notice what I did or how I did it.”

Even if that was true, what that fucker had said was enough to set tongues wagging. The way Bell had held onto me and the way I’d melted against him for a brief, insane second would have only served as confirmation that his words were true.

I let out a breath that might’ve passed for a laugh if it hadn’t been soaked in disbelief. My brow pulled tight, my mouth curving into a flat, skeptical line as I met his gaze head-on. “Chet called us lovers. He flat-out said I was your boyfriend. Do you really believe no one picked up on that?”

Bell hesitated for half a second—just enough for me to catch the flicker of something behind his eyes. Guilt, maybe. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he veered toward the walk-in closet, a slight stiffness appearing in his shoulders that hadn’t been there a second ago.

“What was that look?” I asked, stepping into the doorway.

I raised an expectant eyebrow when he glanced my way.

“What look?” He worked the rest of his shirt buttons free and shrugged out of it. He lifted the fabric to his nose, sniffed once, then shook his head and tossed it somewhere in the vicinity of my hamper.

“The one that said you suddenly remembered you had to hang up your tuxright this secondwhen you never hang anything up,” I answered, my tone saying, “Don’t you dare lie to me right now.”

Bell let out a slow breath, his head falling back to stare up at the ceiling for three long beats. When he dropped his face forward and turned to me, I realized he looked tired.

Not physically, but emotionally spent.

My feet moved of their own volition as I stepped into the closet to stand next to him. I twined my fingers with his and raised his hand up to my mouth. Pressing a kiss to his knuckles, I said, “Talk to me, Bell. What’s going on?”

He pulled a deep breath into his lungs and pushed the words out, fast, like he was rushing to head my impending panic off at the pass.

“Miller cornered me when I got to the arena last night. He wanted to know … he asked me what was going on with us. I didn’t tell him anything specific.”

Bell might have expected me to panic, but I wasn’t.

At least not like I would have been even a week ago.

Miller was a supremely decent guy, and I knew anything he learned—inadvertently or not—would be kept in the strictest confidence.

I’d promised Bell I’d explore coming out. This wasn’t that, but it might be a start.

“And what’d you say?”

I studied his expression, raw and off-balance in a way I wasn’t used to seeing. The ever-present knot of anxiety in my stomach twisted tighter.

“That I’m in love with you.” He met my eyes, his gaze pleading with me to understand as he rushed to continue. “I wasn’t trying to out us or pressure you. I just … I figured it explained my reaction. That he’d get it—why I reached for you like that.”

It explained his reaction, sure. But notmine.

And where this was when I would normally shut down, retreat behind my walls, I didn’t feel those old instincts rising to the fore.

Instead, something inside my chest loosened.

Like Silas’s assurance earlier tonight—None of the guys care one way or the other—had cracked open a door I’d kept locked so long, I’d forgotten there was even a key.

“How’d he respond?”

I didn’t know what I wanted Miller to have said. There wasn’t any one thing I could pinpoint as being therightthing. All I knew was that while I had Bell to lean on as we navigated our situation, he didn’t have anyone tolean on himself. Our relationship was a burden he couldn’t lay down for even a moment.

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