Page 44 of Much Ado About Hockey

“Exactly.”

The words, the moment, the connection. It all settled around her like a well-worn coat.

“I’m glad you wore pink tonight. I’d like to think that was for me…” His voice softened even more, trailing off, but not before she heard it—the unspoken hope threaded through his words like he was testing the water with a trembling hand.

“It was,” she confessed, her gaze steady and open. “I mentioned the car door, and you did it. You mentioned this color… and this is me, showing you that I listened.”

“I love that we can talk and hear each other.” Jett’s voice was laced with awe, like the idea of mutual understanding still stunned him – and with his past, his father’s disappearance, Karen understood on a deeper level what this meant to him, to them.

“Even if sometimes it’s shouting?” Karen winced, the memory of past arguments creeping in, brushing shame along her cheeks.

“That’s just a barometer to tell me how much it means to you,” he replied, the corner of his mouth lifting, offering her a soft escape from her embarrassment. He was letting her off the hook—and meeting her halfway.

“I don’t like yelling. That’s not me deep down inside,” she whispered, her voice cracking slightly with the weight of honesty. “You have a way of getting under my skin, of reaching me, and it was frightening at first.”

“Not anymore?” he asked gently, a current of hope running beneath the quiet.

“No…”

It was a confession more than an answer—an exhale, a surrender to something neither of them had expected but both had clearly needed.

“Then maybe those things that mean a lot to you, you could just whisper them to me—so I hear you and can take note of them…” Jett’s voice was low and full of care, the offer landing softly in the space between them like an outstretched hand.

“And you could whisper to me…” Karen replied, her voice thick with emotion. Her eyes shimmered, not with tears, but with a depth of feeling she hadn’t dared to voice until now.

“I’d love that.”

“Me too.”

Karen sat at one end of the old couch, her fingers nervously picking at a frayed seam in the cushion. The silence between them was thick, not awkward, but charged with something else—something fragile and reverent. Across from her, Jett mirrored her posture, quiet and still, and yet somehow…not.

He wasn’t just sitting there—he wasspeaking, not with words, but with his whole presence. His face was so open, so achingly expressive, it was like watching a song unfold without hearing the melody. His eyes locked on hers, intense and unflinching, and Karen felt the impact in her chest like a struckbell. Her heart was listening to his eyes, responding to his unspoken message with a silent symphony of its own. She felt it flutter, stir, and reach toward him—drawn by the unmistakable gravity that had always lived between them, even when they'd been too stubborn or scared to give it a name.

Now, though—now they weren’t resisting it. They weren’t pulling away or covering up their feelings with sharp words or awkward silences. The current between them had always existed, but this was the first time it felt like they were letting it pull them closer and closer.

And she was doing exactly that… drifting toward him. She didn’t realize she’d moved until she was a few inches closer to the center of the couch. Just a small shift, a quiet surrender. But it felt monumental. Her gaze never left his. And when she saw him mirror her movement, the corners of her lips twitched upward in something like awe and disbelief.

Their magnets were moving together. Those polarized personalities that fought against one another had finally flipped, pulling and drawing together to becomethis, to share this moment.

“This is better,” His voice was low, warm—like coffee on a cold morning.

“Much.”

“We don’t have to talk as loudly.”

“We could just whisper.”

Her heart skipped. It was such a simple exchange, and yet it felt monumental. Sacred.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered to her, his voice barely audible but loaded with emotion. His eyes searched hers like he was trying to memorize her, capture every flicker of expression on her face. “I think you are incredibly beautiful, and it meant a lot to me to see you when I got off the bus today.”

Karen felt her breath catch. The tenderness in his voice, the sincerity in his gaze—it cracked something open inside her, something fragile and wary but waiting.

“I think you are gorgeous – and it meant a lot for me tobethere. I felt like your friend, your partner, your wife, for the first time since we’ve said our vows.”

The words came out shakier than she intended, but it didn’t matter. They were true. All of it. For the first time in so long, she had felt a part of something special. She felt needed,chosen.

“I was so proud to have my wife waiting – and that’s why I’ve kept asking you to come to the get-togethers and the meetings. I want my friends to see this amazing woman I somehow lucked out in marrying.”

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