Page 56 of Cold Comeback
The guys were still, letting the melody linger. No jokes. No shoving. A sudden, unplanned quiet.
I glanced across the aisle. Knox had his head tipped back, eyes closed. Even Linc wasn't smirking.
And the sound wrapped around us when Gideon turned to look at me. Not performance or banter. Just being.
My phone felt heavy in my pocket. It held Gideon's text from two nights ago:wish you were here. Four words that had rewired something in my brain and kept me staring at the ceiling until dawn.
Now, we'd be sharing a room again—only the two of us and whatever conversation we'd been circling for weeks.
He glanced back again during the ride, meeting my eyes for half a second before turning away. Not avoidance this time—more like he was gathering himself for something.
The hotel elevator moved with all the urgency of a glacier, numbers crawling upward. The hotel was standard road trip accommodations: beige everything and industrial carpet.
"She's not subtle," I said, because someone had to acknowledge what the entire team already knew.
"No." He watched the elevator numbers change. "But maybe we're past subtle."
Room 412 sat at the end of the hallway, tucked away from the rest of the team. Wren had obviously planned that way.
It was smaller than our last shared room, if that were possible. Two beds with maybe three feet between them, a desk that had seen better decades, and a bathroom I'd need to navigate sideways. The heating unit under the window wheezed like it was on life support.
We moved around each other carefully. The space forced us together, but it was different now; it was less like avoiding contact and more like nervous energy before something significant happened.
I pulled out tomorrow's game clothes and folded them. Gideon sat on his bed, no longer pretending to organize anything. Waiting.
"So." I couldn't take the silence anymore. "Your text."
He looked up. "I meant it."
It sounded like a confession.
I sat across from him, our knees almost touching in the narrow space. "What brought that on?"
He dragged both hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. "That disaster against Norfolk. I kept second-guessing every instinct, worried about what it meant to support and trust you..." He trailed off.
"To what?"
"To let myself want this. Want you. In front of everyone." His voice stayed steady despite the admission. "I kept thinking aboutJordan Mitchell and how he tried to hold onto something in secret. Maybe the secret is what killed it, not the wanting."
The reference to my cursed room's hidden shrine hit hard. Jordan, carving initials into rubber and hiding love behind a baseboard like contraband.
"You think that's what happened to him?"
"I think he spent so much energy hiding what he felt that he forgot to actually feel it." Gideon leaned forward. "I did the same thing once. With someone who mattered."
I waited.
"College. My teammate, David." He stared at his hands. "We played together for three years, roomed together for two. Somewhere in there, it became something more."
"What happened?"
"He wanted to build something real. I wanted to protect my draft prospects." The bitterness in his voice revealed buried pain. "He asked me to spend Christmas with his family. Said his parents wanted to meet me. And I..." Gideon shook his head. "I asked what people would think if they saw us together outside hockey."
"Fuck."
"He looked at me like I'd hit him. Said, 'You're not protecting your career, you're hiding from your life.'" No humor in his laugh. "Then he transferred schools. I've spent eight years proving him right."
Raw pain threaded through his words. I wanted to reach for him, but something in his posture made me wait.
