"My mom used to say something too," I say, eventually.
He looks at me immediately.
"Before games." I pause. "Every time." The words come out before I've decided to say them, words I’ve never told anyone else before. "Just — you're ready. Not good luck. Not be careful. Just that.”
"Were you, ready?"
"Mostly." The corner of my mouth moves. "Mostly I was."
Rhys is still. When I glance over he's looking at me with an expression I've started recognizing. The one that appears when his guard is dropped, where he softens around the edges, eyes fixed on me like he’s trying to hold onto the small pieces of me I hand over. I recognize it because I keep my walls up every second of every day. So I know what it looks like when someone lets theirs down, even an inch.
"That's a good thing to say to a kid," he says.
"Yeah. It was. It helped."
We finish practice. Drills, sequences, the last twenty minutes running a play we've been building toward that finally clicks into something clean and sharp and both of us know it landed right. We step off the ice and I reach for my water bottle at the same time he reaches for his, eyes locked. The cold boards at our backs, both of us breathing, the heat of the hour still on our skin.
"Nash," he says, pulling me out of whatever that was.
He's right there.
Close the way we've been getting close lately without deciding to — close enough that I can see the cold flushing his cheeks pink, the rink lights catching in his dark eyes, the faint sheenof sweat along his neck. Then I notice the curve of his mouth that means he’s about to say something specifically designed to piss me off.
"You're ready," he says in this low, mock-serious voice that immediately makes me regret telling him that story.
"Don't," I warn, trying my best to stifle my laugh.
"I'm being sincere."
"You're absolutely not, dick."
"I am. I'm a very sincere person." He's fighting the grin too. He puts his hand on my shoulder — warm, solid, the weight of it landing through my jacket — and looks at me with those dark glittering eyes, still completely straight-faced.
"You're ready, Jamie."
"Callahan, I swear to god—"
He loses the fight. The grin breaks through completely, wide and real and directed entirely at me, and before I can stop it — before I have time to catch it or redirect it or put it somewhere safe — I smile back. Real. Brief.
Fucking asshole.
Gone in about two seconds when I realize what's happened.
But he saw it.
"There it is again," he says, softly.
"Fuck you.” But I'm looking at my water bottle when I say it and I'm not quite fast enough to be sure my voice comes out as flat as I wanted. I grab my bag.
“Same time Tuesday,” he calls behind me.
“You’ll be late,” I say, glancing back over my shoulder.
"Four minutes. Five max."
"That's still late."
"It's barely late. It's on time for me. Learn to accept it, Captain,” he says with a salute.
