"You played a hell of a game. That shift in the second. The lane you took."
"I saw it open."
"Two years ago you wouldn’t take that lane."
"Two years ago I probably wouldn’t."
"What changed?"
His forearms stay flat on the railing. The ocean keeps running underneath us.
"I don't know," he says. "I stopped thinking about it so much. The risk. Whether the safe play was the smarter play. I just started playing."
"And it's working?"
"Yeah. It's working. For now."
The ocean fills the silence between us. His breathing is steady. His weight is settled into the railing like he could stand here for hours.
"I can't play hockey forever, Luca."
He says it the way he says everything. Level. Simple. Like he is telling me what time it is.
"Nobody can," I say.
"No. Nobody can."
The ocean fills the silence between us. His breathing is steady. His weight is settled into the railing like he could stand here for hours. His hand finds mine on the railing. His fingers close around my knuckles. His grip is easy, the way his hands have been easy on everything tonight.
He is playing the best hockey I have seen from him. He started playing it the minute I left. The thought arrives and I do not look at it closely.
We stand on the balcony. The ocean underneath. Neither of us speaks for a long time and the silence is not empty. The silence is full of something I will think about on the plane tomorrow when his hand is not on mine and the thinking is harder to stop.
The apartment is quiet when we go inside. He sits on the couch and I sit next to him, close, his arm along the back of the cushion and my shoulder against his side. His hand comes to the back ofmy neck and his thumb traces behind my ear and his breathing is steady and slow.
"Luca?"
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you came tonight."
"I'm always going to come."
I press my face against his shoulder and his arm tightens around me and his mouth finds mine. In four hours I will get up and take an Uber back to the team hotel and be in my room before anyone is awake and the lie I told Marchetti will hold for another day. But for now the penthouse is quiet and the ocean is steady through the door and the man beside me is holding me the way I am holding him.
?
Chapter 11: Luca
THEN
Wes is tracing a line along my spine with his thumb. Slow, absent, the way he touches me when he's half-asleep and not thinking about it. The hotel room is warm and the sheets are kicked off. My left hand is flat against his ribs and I can feel his breathing slowing. His body settling into the mattress, and I close my eyes and let his heartbeat be the only sound in the room.
The road trips with separate rooms have a pattern now. I go to my room, drop my bag, wait twenty minutes, find his room with the deadbolt keeping the door open. Then I am in his arms, my mouth on his, his chest against mine. The drawn curtains make the world outside the door nonexistent.
Tonight was the same mechanics. Game, hotel, drop off my suitcase, then find his room.
His thumb pauses on my spine. "You're thinking," he says.
