I breathe him in, let the words sink deep. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying.” He pauses, choosing his next words carefully. “Whether you’re on the ice next month or next year or never again, you don’t disappear. You don’t become less. And I don’t love youbecauseof hockey.” He doesn’t say it like reassurance, he says it like an easy fact to say.
My heart skips right along with my pulse. I search his face, my vulnerability bare and terrifying. “You love me anyway?”
“I love youspecifically,” he corrects. “The man who stayed when everything was on fire. The one who didn’t run. The one who holds space instead of trying to own it.” His voice drops. “I don’t want you measuring your worth against someone else’s career timeline, or bank balance, or record of achievement. Not Roman’s. Not mine. Not anyone’s.”
My eyes burn. “You’re supposed to be celebrating. This isn’t supposed to be about me.”
He shrugs like he’s picking pizza toppings. “This feels more important.”
That does it. I pull him into a careful hug, breathing through the ache in my shoulder because this matters more. And he lets himself be held, a rare fucking gift. When he finally exhales, it feels softer.
“I didn’t beat him today. I just decided to stop letting him be the reason I exist.”
I smile against his neck. “That sounds like a win to me.” Maybe not the loud kind of win, the newsworthy kind, but the kind that lasts.
“Maybe you need to stop letting hockey be the reason you exist, too.”
I open my mouth to object—to tell him hockey is all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever wanted—but I don’t. The thoughtdoesn’t feel so much like a threat anymore. It feels like an unopened door. Instead of pushing back, I let my inner little boy sit quietly for once, wondering who he might become if his dreams didn’t belong to anyone else.
Artemis breathes slow and steady against my chest. “What would you be if you could be anything you want to be?”
I have no fucking clue. But maybe it’s time to find out.
CHAPTER 52
Artemis
Ifeel like I could sleep for a month. Maybe two. And yet, I’ve been up since five at the kitchen table drafting contingency plans for problems that no longer exist.
It’s a little after seven. My phone has been silent all night and what little of the morning I’ve seen. There have been no crises, no emergencies, no abusive bullshit from Alonso. Just… quiet. What the fuck do I do with quiet?
I press the bridge of my nose with a firm finger and thumb, trying to make the words on the screen in front of me move into focus. I’m trying to do something useful—emails… contracts… something, anything that isn’t sit in the silence and think.
Dios mío. Anything but that.
Part of me wants to put together a ten-point plan for my boyfriend, give him a list of things he could do if hockey doesn’t work out for him for whatever reason. This injury has really given him pause, put things in perspective, and scared the ever-living shit out of him.
It’s nowhere near as serious as Apollo’s better half, Edith’s, car crash—though it could have been—I watchedher tear her life apart trying to get back to dancing, because she didn’t know who she was without it. I recognize that panic now. In Xavier. Even in myself.
Xavier doesn’t know who he is without hockey, without his brother’s shadow, and while there’s a parallel here with my own situation—that I’m strategically avoiding for right now—I want to help.
I know Icouldhelp. I could work with him on a multi-pronged strategy to figure out what he might see himself doing after college. I know exactly how to do it, too: Flowcharts, decision trees, options that look neutral but subtly guide him toward outcomes I’d feel safer living with.
That’s where the problem lies, it would be for me, not for him.
So, I can’t do anything. I need to sit on my hands and be patient. Patient. Me. Ha! Except I don’t want him to think I love him despite something. Or because I can solve him. I want him to know I chose him as he is, not as a project with a timeline.
Just as I need to figure out who I am when my life isn’t a battlefield—who the fuck am I between the business battles?—Xavier needs to dig deep and find his worth outside of the Martinez name and the game of hockey.
I guess this will be a test of whether or not I can sit on my hands. Can I support someone I love without directing? Without taking charge and fixing things for them? I’m game to find out.
A sound from behind me snaps my eyes off the screen—not that I was paying attention to it anyway.
My gorgeous man pads towards me, shirtless, a smattering of dark hair dusting his chest. The navy fabric of the sling contrasts against his skin. The bruising on his collarbone and shoulder has faded to a yellow green from the dark purples and blues of lastweek.
He’s carrying two sloshing, steaming mugs in his uninjured hand. His grin is blinding. “Don’t worry, it’s fresh.” He doesn’t ask why I’m up. He probably already knows. And I’ve been so out of it that he’s had time to brew a fresh pot of bean juice.
