Page 13 of Cold Comeback
Delete.
Don't do this.
Delete.
It meant something and you know it.
Delete.
Finally, I called Linc because I needed to hear a friendly voice; he was the safest option.
"Drake! What's up, man?"
"Nothing much. Just... settling in."
"Yeah? Richmond still treating you okay?"
I thought about Gideon's mouth on my neck. "Yeah. Learning the ropes."
Linc rambled about his day, complained about his landlord, and asked if I wanted to hit up a movie tomorrow—regular stuff. Friendly stuff. It helped a little.
After I hung up, I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
I kept replaying Gideon's words. I got hung up on one thing. Mistakes usually felt wrong when you were making them. That hadn't felt wrong. It was the most right thing I'd done in months.
Before falling asleep, I whispered to the empty room: "Try telling my body what we did was wrong."
I woke up to my phone buzzing. The Bone Yard group chat lit up with a message from Wren: "Team dinner tomorrow night. Mandatory. Bring your appetites and your best behavior. Local press will be there. Angelo's on Main Street, 7 PM. Don't embarrass me."
Someone had already responded with a GIF of a dancing skeleton. Pluto asked if there was a dress code. Knox complained about "performing like a trained seal."
I stared at the restaurant name. It was on the route between the hotel and the practice facility. Angelo's was small. Intimate. The kind of place where you couldn't hide in a corner booth.
Every conversation would be audible, and Wren would seat us strategically for photos. Gideon and I would have to sit at the same table. Make small talk. Pretend that a day earlier, I hadn't been pinned against a wall with his tongue in my mouth.
I sat up, instantly wide awake. My phone showed Gideon had been active in the chat thirty seconds ago. So he was awake too, probably thinking the same thing I was.
Seeing him was going to be hard enough. Seeing him and acting like everything was normal in front of the team AND media?
I was so fucked.
Chapter four
Gideon
It wouldn't happen again.
I'd told myself that approximately forty-seven times since yesterday's practice, and the number kept climbing.
The number forty-seven felt conservative. Every routine task triggered the same spiral - shower, workout, getting dressed.
Then, I walked into Angelo's and saw Thatcher Drake in dark jeans and a fitted button-down that made his shoulders look like a sculptor carved them from marble. Static flooded my brain.
The restaurant was exactly what I'd feared—cramped, intimate, loud. Exposed brick walls bounced sound around like a pinball machine. Mason jar light fixtures cast everything in warm amber.
It was a place where you could hear the couple three tables over arguing about their mortgage. The air was thick with garlic, basil, and the competing colognes of twenty hockey players trying to cover sweat.
"Sawyer!" Wren appeared at my elbow like a well-dressed vulture, clipboard in one hand, phone in the other. "You're at table two with Drake, Linc, Pluto, and Janet from theObserver.Smile pretty. And for God's sake, don't let Knox order the lobster—we're not made of money."
