Doesn't mean I was wrong to report it. Doesn't mean I don't feel the weight of it sitting in my chest like something I can't put down.
I steal the last pancake off Blake’s plate and he doesn’t even fight me on it. That’s how I know he feels sorry for me.
Chapter 21
Rhys — Past
More months of me and Marcus went by and it was perfect. So perfect it almost scared me. We'd decided early on to keep it between us — the team was finally warming up to me, and Marcus had never been with a guy before. He wanted to make sure it was real before it became anyone else's business. I understood that.
I did.
I'd initially planned on being out once I settled in at Eldridge. Would've preferred not to hide. But being with Marcus was worth it — worth the careful distance in public, the secret looks across the locker room, the way we existed in two different versions depending on who was watching. When it was just us, there were no other versions. Just him and me and however many hours we could steal.
I was at his place every day or he was at mine. We found reasons. Film to watch, food to eat, homework neither of us actually did. Any excuse to be in the same room with the door closed. Kisses in empty corridors, hands that lingered a second too long when nobody was paying attention.
All of it careful. All of it ours.
The team had finally, finally started to feel like a team. They'd let me in — not all the way, not completely, but enough. Enough that I wasn't eating alone anymore. Enough that the locker room didn't go quiet when I walked in. That was all Marcus. They trusted him, so they extended a fraction of it to me,and I took it.
But there was a timer on all of it.
The NHL draft sat on the horizon like a countdown nobody wanted to look at directly. Still a ways off, but close enough to feel. Everything would change then. Marcus's whole future hinged on the next year and I wasn't going to be the thing that complicated it. His dream was NHL first, then nursing. So I decided not to waste whatever time we had.
He opened the door in a rush that night, slightly breathless, like he'd been waiting right on the other side.
"Hi."
Both of us smiling at each other.
"Hi."
The door wasn't fully closed before we collided — a tangle of arms and mouths and the precise urgency of two people who'd been apart for less than one day and felt every hour of it. It was always like that. All consuming. His hands found my face immediately, tilting me up, and I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in closer because there was no such thing as close enough with Marcus.
He kissed me slow and deep, unhurried despite the urgency of it, like he had a point to make. My back met the wall and I let it, hands sliding up into his hair, and he made a low sound against my mouth that did something catastrophic to my ability to think. We stayed there a while — just that, just his mouth and his hands and the taste of him — until I was dizzy with it.
I pulled back.
"Marcus. Wait." I pressed a hand flat to his chest. "I need to talk to you."
He blinked. Lips red and swollen. Slightly dazed. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, come."
He took my hand and I led him around the corner into the living room.
I stopped walking.
He'd moved the couch. The whole thing pushed back, leaving an open space on the floor covered in quilts and blankets layered over each other, pillows stacked at one end. A projector threw deep blue light across the ceiling and walls in swirls — the whole room underwater, swimming in it. Little fake flame candles lined the edges in a loose circle, flickering orange against the blue.
I stood there and looked at it for a long moment.
"Marcus."
"I know." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's a lot. It's extremely cheesy, I'm fully aware, before you say anything—"
"What is this?"
He took a breath. Stepped into the room and turned to face me, hands finding his pockets, looking at me the way he did sometimes when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
