Page 41 of Cold Comeback
He ran his hands along the pipes, testing connections. When he pressed against the baseboard, it shifted.
"Hand me that screwdriver from your desk."
I passed it over, our fingers brushing in the exchange. The contact sent the usual jolt up my arm, made worse by the quiet intimacy of working together in my private space.
The baseboard came away easily, revealing a gap behind the wall that was bigger than it should be. Cold air poured through, sharp enough to raise goosebumps.
"That doesn't look right." I leaned forward and peered into the darkness.
Gideon reached into the space, feeling around for the pipe connection, and he blinked. "There's something in here."
He pulled out a small bundle wrapped in what looked like an old hockey sock, tied with a shoelace. The fabric was faded team colors—red and black that had probably once been bright.
"What is it?"
"Not sure." He handed it to me. "Your cursed room, your discovery."
I untied the shoelace carefully. It was stiff with age. The sock fell away to reveal three items: a puck, a ticket stub, and a small team photo.
The puck caught my attention first. Someone had taken the time to carve initials into the rubber—"J.M. + G.S."—surrounded by a rough heart. Below that, a date from three years ago and two words: "Last Game."
"Damn," I whispered.
The ticket stub was from the same date, a playoff game against Raleigh. On the back, written in faded blue ink:
Told coach I was injured. Couldn't watch you leave.
Gideon leaned closer. "What's the photo?"
I turned it over. It was a team picture, the kind they took every season. Most of the faces were unfamiliar, but someone had drawn a small, careful circle around one player in the back row. In a different ink, a different circle marked another player in the front.
"He saved this," I said, studying the faces. "Whoever J.M. was, he couldn't let go."
"G.S.," Gideon read from the puck, his voice quiet. "Those initials..."
We stared at each other. The possibility hung between us, unspoken but obvious.
"The guy who got traded," I said slowly. "The one Linc mentioned when I first moved in. Said he fell for someone completely inappropriate."
Gideon picked up the ticket stub, turning it over in his hands. "Three years ago. My first year. We made it into the playoffs."
"You remember him?"
"Maybe." He set the stub down carefully, almost reverently. "There was a guy—Jordan Mitchell—who played wing. Good hands, fast feet. Got called up to the AHL halfway through that playoff series."
"Called up—direct from Richmond?"
Gideon was quiet for a long moment. "At the time, we all thought called up. Now..." He gestured at the small shrine of hockey memorabilia. "Maybe it was more complicated."
I turned the puck over in my palm. The carved heart felt rough under my thumb, worn smooth in places like someone had touched it often.
"Fuck," I said. "Can you imagine? Carrying all of this around and never being able to tell anyone? Having to watch the person you—" I stopped, the words catching in my throat.
"Having to pretend it didn't matter when they got sent away," Gideon finished quietly.
The weight of recognition settled between us. It wasn't some random former tenant's abandoned belongings. It was proof that the thing growing between us—the careful glances, the lingering touches, and how we orbited each other—wasn't new to these walls.
I tossed the puck up once and caught it. "He carved the initials into a game puck. That's... that's not something you do lightly."
