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It was hard to see the way Nolan looked when he showed up today. He seemed genuinely happy for Jesse and Andi. He even seemed a little hurt when everyone kept joking about how they thought he might not show up. None of that tracks with the heartless bad boy persona he seems to be projecting lately.
“Did you know?” I ask. It’s the first personal question I’ve asked in the twenty minutes or so we’ve been cooking together. The team is playing cards with Andi and Caroline. It’s sweet seeing how all the guys took their protectiveness of her to new heights as soon as they learned she was pregnant. They’re constantly pulling out chairs, bringing blankets, asking if she needs anything, and pampering her.
“That you’d be here?” he asks.
I grin with my back to him. Is that where his mind went when I asked? Somehow, that feels telling, but I can’t say how, exactly. “About the pregnancy.”
“Oh. No. Jesse called me yesterday and told me. I heard it took them like twenty minutes to make the guys understand what they were trying to announce. Something about a bear rug ritual and shirts off.”
I laugh at the memory. “I can confirm that,” I say. “It was ridiculous. Do they always jump into celebration mode so easily? Jesse came out with his shirt off and it was like they all turned into animals.”
“It’s a team thing,” Nolan explains. “You spend so much time with people. You put everything you have on the line so many times. You’re all constantly on the same wavelength, working toward the same goal. Sometimes all you really need to know is one of your brothers is excited, and you feel it, too.”
I lift a corner of the chicken with my tongs, checking the sear. It needs another minute or so.
The conversation so far with Nolan feels like some of the most normal words we’ve shared since he came back to Frosty Harbor. Maybe it’s our mutual, unspoken agreement not to fight and spoil today for Andi and Jesse. We both care about them and are happy about their pregnancy.
“So,” I say, stopping to wash some sauce off my hands by the sink. “If you had been here, would you have ripped off your shirt, too? For some reason, I can’t picture that.”
He doesn’t answer right away, so I steal a glance over my shoulder. I see his broad back in a black shirt. He’s wide in the shoulders and thick in the arms with a waist that tapers like a superhero’s build. His jeans are hugging his ass and thighs in a very distracting way, too. I look back at what I’m doing before he catches me peeking.
“What I’m getting is that you have been trying to picture me with my shirt off,” he says. “All you had to do was ask, Calloway.”
My cheeks flush. So much for our little cease-fire. “That’s not what I said.”
We fall into a not-so-comfortable silence as he continues to prep for me and I rotate the chicken out of the pan and bring in the next batch.
If I didn’t know Nolan was looming behind me with his massive presence, I could call the atmosphere in the cabin perfect.
The huge A-framed windows give a sweeping view of the Vermont mountains dusted with untouched, powdery snow and frozen trees. The fire is crackling and the sounds of laughter and conversation mingle with the rip of cards shuffling. Occasionally, everyone exclaims loudly as someone wins a hand.
It’s all warm furs, companionable conversation, and the protected knowledge of being in a space full of people who care about each other and enjoy the company. I can almost pretend there isn’t a dangerous spark between myself and Nolan today. Almost.
It feels like when I was just a kid and I was in our family home before everybody grew up. Those were the days when the weight of responsibility still hadn’t fallen on my shoulders–when I hadn’t had a chance to officially watch any of my dreams pass me by. I try not to, but I find myself speaking quietly. “Did you always want to be a hockey player?” I ask.
He looks up, surprised by the sudden change in topic. “Sort of,” he says. It feels like he’s dodging my question somehow, though. “What about you? I guess you knew you wanted to figure skate from a pretty young age, right?”
I nod, but feel a little odd as we dive into something so personal. Two years ago, when we sort of dated, we hardly ever talked about anything except cooking. It still felt like I barely knew him when I broke things off. Maybe it’s part of why things didn’t work between us. We both had our walls up the whole time.
“Figure skating was my first dream, yeah.” I smile, even though the memories are all bittersweet now. “I know I told you my dad wasn’t around, but he actually passed before I was born. And my mom was always sick. That’s why I got so close with Grams. But back before mom passed, she used to love to skate with me. We’d go out every year as soon as the harbor froze. I remember how much we loved putting the first marks on the fresh ice. It was kind of our thing–no matter how she was feeling that day, we always made it out there together.”
He’s looking at me seriously now, arms folded and eyebrows drawn together so his forehead creases. “I didn’t know.”
I shrug. “I don’t talk about it much, I guess. Nobody likes to hear sob stories, right? We’ve all got something sad in our past, and I don’t like pretending mine is more sad than someone else's.”
“Losing your parents… that’s not small.”
I shrug. “Plenty of people have lost more.”
“Grief isn’t a competitive sport. You’re allowed to be sad or accept sympathy.”
I brush his words off with a smile and a shrug, eager to push the topic to something else. “After… it happened, I think skating felt like my way to connect with her. I’d go out as much as I could. I found any excuse to be on the ice. Eventually, people started telling me how good I was and pushing me to train for something. So I channeled that into figure skating and started dreaming about how far I could go. And then I took that fall during practice. It was just a random thing. The same move I’ve landed thousands of times. But that time, I guess my skate was at the wrong angle or my ankle was more tired than I realized.” I shrug and brush at my eyes, which I’m embarrassed to realize are wet.
“I’m sorry,” Nolan says, sounding genuine. “I didn’t mean to dredge all that up.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I say. “I’m the one who started rambling about myself like anyone cares.”
He hesitates, jaw ticking. “I don’t like seeing you cry,” he says.
