Page 58 of Cold Comeback
"The team didn't make me audition to belong. You didn't make me prove I deserved that first kiss." I gazed at him. "You just wanted me. And I wanted you. No transaction required."
He stood slowly and crossed to my bed, sitting close. "I don't know how to do this without fear of losing it."
"Then we'll be terrified together."
He reached for my hand tentatively, fingers brushing mine before intertwining. His palms were warm, rough with hockey calluses.
"I see you," he said quietly.
"I see you, too."
The kiss started tentatively, like we were testing the edges of something fragile. His lips brushed mine once, then lingered, patient instead of demanding. His heat seeped into me in slow increments, as if he wanted me to notice every shift, every breath.
When I leaned in and parted my lips for him, his tongue touched mine—slow, tasting—and he made a sound low in his throat that went straight through me, half groan, half surrender. My pulse kicked hard, but neither of us rushed. We let the kiss grow by degrees, building like we had all night to burn.
It wasn't the desperate urgency of storage closets or clumsy stolen moments. This was different—deliberate, reverent. Every brush of his thumb across my cheekbone felt like a vow he hadn't yet said out loud.
We tipped sideways onto the narrow bed, still fully dressed, but tangled close. My fingers traced his jaw and the scar at his chin I'd wondered about since day one. He tugged at my hair, coaxing a sound out of me I'd never make on the ice.
"Thatcher," he breathed against my mouth.
I shifted, and my hand slid lower, landing at the small of his back. He went rigid.
"Sorry," I murmured, starting to pull away.
"No, it's—" He caught my wrist, holding me there. He lowered his voice. "It's just…"
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he rolled onto his stomach and tugged his shirt up to his shoulders.
"Here."
At first, I didn't understand. Then, the light from the parking lot caught the skin differently, and I realized what I was looking at. A constellation of surgical scars, faded to thin white lines, scattered across his lower back like someone had tried to put him back together with careful stitches.
"Jesus, Gideon."
"Juniors," he muttered into the pillow. "Bad check into the boards. Compression fracture. Two herniated discs. They told me I'd never play again."
I let my fingertip trace one of the longer lines, feather-light. He shivered beneath me.
"Does it still hurt?"
"Some mornings I can barely stand. Good days, it's just a dull ache." He turned his head, eyes catching mine. "Trainers don't know. The team doctor doesn't know. You're the first person I've let touch it in eight years."
The weight of that trust landed hard. I spread my palm flat against the scars, feeling his heat and the steady rhythm of his breathing.
"Why now?" I whispered.
"Because hiding it is exhausting. Because you're looking at me like—" He swallowed. "Like it doesn't change anything."
"It doesn't."
"It should. I'm held together with screws and stubbornness, Thatcher. Some days I take enough ibuprofen to kill a horse just to get through practice."
I bent and pressed my lips to the scar, soft as a prayer. He made a sound that was part groan and part sob.
"Don't," he whispered, but his body arched toward me.
"Why not?"
