Page 52 of Shattered On Ice

I stride inside, forcing him to take a step back so I can close the door behind us. “I’m not here for a session,” I say, voice low and rumbling with the need I’ve been suppressing. “I’m here for you. For us.”

Knight bites his lip and slowly shakes his head. Pain flashes across his face before he inhales deeply and Dr. Stephens settles in, calm and collected. “You know there’s no us, Wes. There can't be.”

He backs away, retreating into the house, and I follow, intent on convincing him otherwise. We make it to his office, and he slips inside before I can stop him. I follow and shut the door so he has nowhere left to run. We’re doing this one way or another. He leans back against his desk and crosses his arms over his chest, ready for me.

“I had a great practice. Everything you're teaching me is working. I’m not as broken as I thought, or you’re just that good.” I smirk at him, hoping for a break in his armor, but he just stares back, face impassive. “I’m playing the way I should, so we can end our sessions and go back to what we had now,” I argue, beginning my tactical strike.

I’m determined to get through to him, to get my Knight back.

His eyes brighten momentarily when I mention the practice and his methods working, but he quickly schools his features into a professional mask. “That’s incredible, and I’m so proud of you. But one practice is just the beginning. You have a lot of work ahead to ensure you don't regress, and you need to work through everything you’ve kept hidden for a decade. It takes time and repetition. We have to continue with our sessions for that to happen.”

His words hit me with the weight of a defenseman slamming me into the boards. I want to be fixed and done with this so we can get back to what we’re good at. I shake my head in frustration. “Drop me as a patient. Find someone else to continue the sessions if I need them so badly. I just want to be with you,” I plead, my voice thickening with intensity. “Give us a real chance before the distance suffocates me more than the panic ever could.”

“Westin,” he says, his voice a quiet plea for my understanding.

Fuck this clinical distance and unaffected bullshit. I take three strides across the room to take him in my arms. I just need to hold him. He stiffens at first, but even he can't fight the perfect fit of us together, and the hands that press against my chest to push me away curl into my shirt, keeping me close as I tip my forehead against his.

“I’m doing the work. My hands are steady. I’m past the yips now,” I say gently, inhaling his scent that I’ve craved like a drug. “Just drop me as a patient. Please, Knight, I love you. You have to know that. Just let me come home.”

His eyes shut as his clinical mask shatters, and his hands flex against me. He rolls his forehead against mine gently.

This is it. I finally got through to him. He’s going to do it, and I’ll get him back.

But instead of brushing a kiss over my lips and agreeing, he slides out from between my body and the desk, his face showing only the smallest hint of the agony I’m enduring.

“I can't,” he says flatly. “I cannot legally transfer you mid-crisis without flagging all sorts of things that would be bad for us both. If I drop you, you could regress and lose your contract.”

“I don’t care abo—” I start to say, but he cuts me off with a raised hand as he shakes his head violently.

“Do you think I want this? I love you, Wes. I love you so much I can't breathe when you're in the room and I'm not touching you. But I won't let you destroy your sanctuary and your career for me.”

I step back, gripping my head as I’m staggered by his firm stance in the face of my declaration. How can he say he loves me too and not want to do whatever it takes to be with me? “So that’s it? We just bleed out wanting what we can't have?” I hate the pain and accusation in my voice, but fuck, this is going off the rails so fast.

“We do the work. You survive. That’s all we can do, Wes,” he whispers, voice broken, but resolute.

The walls are closing in on me, my lungs too tight as I fight to get a full breath. I have to get out of this fucking beige box of an office. I turn and stumble to the door, fumbling for the handle that slips through my fingers until it finally opens. I fall through the doorway…and smack directly into the hard, unyielding chest of my best friend.

No. Not now. Tabarnak.

I start shaking as I stare directly into his green eyes, so similar to Knight’s but full of shock and betrayal. He knows. He fucking knows.

Rook untangles himself from my trembling hands and steps back. He stares at me like I’m a stranger he’s never met before, and I brace for the inevitable. This is when he turns on me, like hockey always has. This is when he’ll sneer and call me names, the disgust clear on his face. Not only am I losing the man I love, but I’m losing my best friend.

“How long?” he asks, his voice vibrating with hurt as he looks from me to his twin standing behind me in the doorway.

My throat is thick, my breath coming in shallow gasps. “A few months,” I manage, looking at my feet as I downplay the six months of our secret hookups.

“No, not that,” he says, fighting his frustration. “How long have you been gay?”

I look up, startled by the question, and meet his gaze. “As long as I can remember,” I mumble, struggling to say the words out loud to a friend for the first time.

Rook rubs both hands into his eyes and drags his fingers down his face until they're steepled under his chin. His nostrils flare, and he stares at me point-blank with his most serious expression. “You didn't trust me enough to tell me something this important, Westy? We bleed for each other on the same ice, but you thought I’d care that you're gay? That I wouldn't have your back about something this important because you what? Thought I wouldn't support it?” His voice breaks with the accusation, emotion spilling from every word until I’m swept away in the tsunami of them.

I feel about two feet tall under his simple outlining of the facts as he sees them. I should have trusted him. He’s been nothing but a good friend to me, and here I am keeping secrets and lying to him about the most fundamental parts of myself.

“I don't tell anyone, ever,” I begin. “No one in the hockey world knows. You don't understand how hard it is for me.”

“What makes you think I’m not capable of compassion and empathy? I would have understood. Fuck, Westy, I would have celebrated with you for how hard it is even to say the words, if you’d let me, but you didn't even give me the chance.” He shakes his head, disappointment coming off him in waves.