Page 104 of Hearts on Ice
He exhaled slowly, like he’d been bracing for it. “I figured.”
“They didn’t say your name.” My voice cracked on the last word. “But they didn’t have to.”
He looked past me toward the hallway, then back. “What now?”
I swallowed. The answer felt too big for the space between us.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But whatever happens, you can’t—” I stopped myself. My heart was so full, I wasn’t sure if I could articulate myself in a way that wouldn’t make things worse.
He tilted his head slightly. “Can’t what?”
I sighed. “You can’t take the fall for me.”
His brow furrowed. “That what you think I’d do?”
“I think you’d walk through fire if you thought it would help,” I said quietly. “And I can’t let you. You’ve worked too hard for this—your shot at the naff, everything you’ve fought for.”
He drew a long, unsteady breath. “You think that’s what this is about? That I’d ruin my career to prove something?”
“I think you’d do it because you care too damn much.”
He leaned back, shaking his head. “Then maybe caring isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s hiding that is.”
“Miguel—”
He lifted his hand, stopping me. “If this gets worse… if the league breathes down your neck, I could ask for a trade. I’d start over somewhere else.”
The thought hollowed me out. “You shouldn’t have to leave Grizzlies to protect me.”
“And you shouldn’t have to quit to protect me,” he countered, voice breaking just slightly. “You’d resign, wouldn’t you?”
I hesitated. “If it meant keeping you safe? Yeah.”
He gave a small, disbelieving laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. “That’s not safety, Drew. That’s you throwing yourself on a grenade that hasn’t even gone off yet.”
“I just don’t want to cost you everything,” I said.
He stood then, slow and restless, running a hand over his face. “You still don’t get it. You’re not the thing that ruins me. You’re the reason I keep trying.”
The words hit like a punch and a prayer all at once.
He turned toward me, eyes bright. “I love you.”
The air seemed to still.
“I don’t care who knows,” he went on, voice shaking but steady. “I don’t care what it costs. I’ve spent my whole life playing it safe, waiting for the right time that never comes. You’re it. You’re the right time.”
I stared at him, trying to swallow the lump that formed in my throat.
“I love you too,” I said, the words falling out on a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I’ve loved you for a while now. I just kept waiting—for the right moment to tell you, the right chance, the right everything. But there’s never going to be one, is there?”
He shook his head slowly, a tear catching in the corner of his eye. “No. Just this one.”
I crossed the distance between us and caught his face in my hands. “Then I choose this one.”
The kiss that followed wasn’t frantic. It started softly, almost tentative, like we were both afraid of breaking what had just been spoken aloud.
Then it deepened—slow, trembling at the edges, the kind of kiss that asked a hundred questions and answered all of them at once.
