Page 14 of Pucked Mountain Man
“If you keep letting me score and feeding me dinner,” she says, flicking on the tiny radio, “I’m going to think you like me.”
“Dangerous conclusion,” I say, sliding the pan into the oven.
“Is it wrong?” Light. Testing.
I wipe my hands, step close until the fridge hum is the only witness. “Ask me after I don’t kiss you again.”
Her smile is slow and a little shy. “So… never.”
“Yeah,” I admit, helpless. “Probably never.”
FIVE
STEVIE
The cabin is quiet in that way storms create—like the world is under a blanket.
After tidying up the kitchen, we said goodnight and went our separate ways. To separate rooms. Separate beds. Just like responsible adults.
I last ten minutes.
Because there’s light under the crack of the den door, blue and unkind, and a sound I recognize even before I see the remote in his hand: the soft click-drag of someone scrubbing through a video, then pausing at the same second over and over like repetition can change the ending.
I hover in the doorway. The TV glow cuts his jaw into planes and shadow, his hoodie pushed to his forearms. On screen, a rink—bright, pitiless—his number streaking across the blue line. A tangle of bodies. A split-second rut. A hit that changes everything.
“Grady.” My voice is quiet. The fire throws a last handful of sparks in the hearth, low and red.
He doesn’t look at me. He rewinds. Plays it again. I walk closer and ease onto the arm of the sofa, careful. He keeps his eyes on the screen like it owes him something.
“You don’t have to keep watching it,” I say.
He swallows. The tendons in his neck flex. “I need to know if it was my fault,” he says, voice scraped raw. “If I was a step too slow.”
“You didn’t lose,” I tell him. “You got hurt.”
“Same thing,” he says, bitter. Then, smaller: “Feels like the same thing.”
I pick up the remote, thumb the volume down until the arena sound is a memory. The fire settles. Wind noses the window. “You’re still here,” I say. “You’re still you.”
He huffs something that isn’t quite a laugh and rubs a hand over his face. “Some days I’m not sure who that is.”
“Then let’s learn him,” I say, and when he looks at me—really looks—something in my chest tugs loose.
We sit with it, the not-talking and the talking underneath. Finally he exhales and drops the remote on the cushion between us like surrender. The screen times out into the TV’s moody saver: stars sliding across a black field. It paints him softer. It paints me brave.
“Come here,” I say, and scoot down to the couch. He hesitates—old habit, new fear—and then he comes, careful with the knee, settling back so I can tuck myself against him. My hand finds the muscle above the brace and I squeeze, grounding. “How bad?”
“Not bad,” he says. “Just… talks.”
“Then listen,” I say, and slide my palm up to the quad, thumb pressing gently where the PT videos said to. “Bend?”
He moves slow, obedient. The joint creaks in protest, then eases. He groans—half pain, half something else—and my heart lurches.
“Again,” I say softly. “Don’t chase it. Just breathe.”
He does. In. Out. My breath syncs without asking. The fire lists, gives us a little more orange. The storm hushes the rest of the world and leaves us with the sound of his lungs and my pulse.
He tips his head, studying me. “You always like this?”
