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“Okay, maybe I had some help to see my part in it. I shut you down every time you tried to tell me anything. I gave you hell for your role in our marriage, and the reality was I was hurt. I thought you’d protect me, keep me from being stupid, because even then I loved you. Trusted you.”
“I don’t care about any of that.” Vic presses his forehead to mine. He’s pumping out heat like a furnace. “Say it again. Please.”
“I love you,” I say, and he fuses his mouth to mine. It’s not a real kiss, not with the way our mouths fall open, inhaling each other's breath, but it’s everything all the same. “I love you Victor Varg. I love you. I love you. I love you.” I press each word to his lips and he swallows them down like they’re the air he needs to live.
“I would give up my life to make you happy, Tristan. God, I love you so fucking much, kitty cat. I want to be yours. I want you to wear my ring for real. I want to live in your cozy apartment surrounded by our cat and our siblings. I want to wake up every morning with my arms around you, and I want to call you every night that we spend apart. I want to hold the Stanley Cup over my head and have you run out to kiss me at center ice.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say, smiling until my cheeks hurt. “You know how I feel about skating.”
“Marry me. For real this time,” Vic says as I throw my arms around his shoulders and he boosts me up into his arms. In skates, the man is a behemoth, and his pads are cutting into odd parts of my body as I wrap myself around him like a koala, but I’m not letting go. I don’t think the jaws of life could pry me free. “I love you, Tristan.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I press the words into the sweat-soaked mesh of his jersey.
“Right,” he says, “I need to earn it.”
“I think it’s time for you to come home and we can sort through what comes next. I missed you. So does Hela.”
His nose skates down the line of my cheek.
“You just want her to have another moving target to attack.”
“I do,” I say, “But I want you back more.”
Vic doesn’t bother grabbing his stick or his gloves, he just carries me down the hall, headed for the locker room. I have no intention of letting go. He can drop his pads and uniform off and grab his keys and we can shower together at home. Water conservation and all that. It’s only been a day, but it feels like a year.
“Hey Vic?” I say as the locker room comes into view and I can hear an excited team stripping down and getting ready to see their families. “Ask me again soon. I’m pretty sure I’ll have a different answer.”
“You got it, kitty cat.”
He thinks the night air is probably too cold for her, especially with so much creamy skin on display, but she doesn’t seem cold. He’s had his fingers along the curve of her spine and her skin was smooth and warm to the touch. That might have something to do with the fizzy pink drink she’d commandeered from him. And the yellow and orange one he bought for her afterward. That one came with a tiny umbrella that she’d tucked behind her ear like a paper hibiscus flower.
It’s easy to turn and offer his back as she reaches down to unbuckle her fancy shoes. Her slim hands wrap over the top of his shoulders, sliding across the bulge of his trapezius muscles. He has to bend his knees so she can reach, careful not to lean his chest forward. The sharp points of her heels bang against his pecs as they dangle off her fingers.
Her thighs are smooth under his palms as he helps boost her up. It takes a few tries. She’s giggling into his shirt as he counts down from three. Lagging as he tries to help and she jumps too late. Finally he lifts on two, her weight slight enough that he has her high on his back before she can think to help.
His hands drag down the length of her legs and he knows he’s probably taking advantage of the situation but her skin is like silk against his fingertips and her quads tremble under his touch. He has to help her wrap her legs above his belt buckle, pushing his hips back so her heels don’t touch the bulge he’s trying to will away.
“Please,” she whispers against the shell of his ear, her arms tightening until he can barely breathe, and he wouldn’t change a second of this moment, not for all the air in the world. Anything that is in his power to give… it’s hers. He’ll find a way.
It’s a short walk to the chapel and he wishes it were longer.
“I just want to see one.” She’d said in the club, tugging on his shirt sleeve until he leaned down so her breath could break over his skin. “With Elvis.”
So here he is, letting her slip down the length of his body as he hands her tiny shoes to her and holds open the old wooden door. The paint is chipped and there are only two cars in the parking lot, and even if it weren’t the closest place to their hotel, he thinks it’s probably the best choice because no one will see them here.
Not that he’s embarrassed, but he’s pretty sure she would be. He doesn’t want to think about that at all. It makes his stomach hurt. An aching coil of ice that slowly wraps around his intestines.
The chapel is dated but clean, and there’s a small woman standing behind a glass counter with beige curls that add at least four inches to her height. She’s snapping bubblegum, as she scrolls through a phone in a sparkly pink case. A small bell announces their arrival and he assumes she’ll look up at the couple who just walked in, welcome them, try to upsell luxury rose petals, something, but she doesn’t lift her eyes from the screen.
“You boys are in luck,” she calls out, still glued to a game with matching candy pieces, swiping, swiping, swiping with a tap tap tap of lime green nails.
He’s doesn’t even think about correcting her. Mostly because they aren’t looking to enter wedded bliss with Elvis at the helm of the ship. No matter what she says into the skin of his neck, no matter how big her eyes get as she looks up from under her thick lashes, no matter how much he likes the idea of branding her with his name so everyone who looks at her will back right off. She is drunk. He is going to keep his dick and his name away from her because he told himself he’d take care of her. It feels like his most important job.
Even last season, his biggest dream was to hoist Sir Stanley’s cup over his head as he took a victory lap around the ice. Now… dreams change. He doesn’t care about the win, or the ring, or the cup, unless she’s at the center line to press her mouth to his in congratulations. With his name draped across her back in big block letters.
But the woman isn’t talking to them, she’s talking to two very familiar faces peeking around the white door that leads to the chapel and, hopefully, to Elvis.
“Cap?” The kid says, eyes wide. “What are you doing here?”
