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Maybe everything.

So I did one of the hardest things I'd done in years and backed off.

“Okay. I'm not going to pretend I believe you when you say it's nothing, because I don't, but I'm not going to force you to tell me tonight.”

He stared at me as though that was the last response he'd expected. Some of the tension left his shoulders, although not nearly enough.

“I can handle him.”

I hated those words, not because I didn't believe Ash could handle himself. I had watched him take hits from men twice his size and get back up grinning with blood through his teeth.

I hated them because they sounded practiced, like something he'd been telling himself for years.

“I know you can. That doesn't mean you always have to.”

I reached across the space between us and held out my hand.

For a moment he simply stared at it before placing his hand in mine. I curled my fingers around his and tugged gently until he settled back against the couch, while the baking show continued unnoticed in front of us.

We didn't talk about his father again.

His phone remained in his other hand with the screen dark, but I could feel the tension running through him every time it shifted against his palm. Eventually his head came down against my shoulder, and I didn't comment or make a joke that might give him an excuse to move away.

I simply sat there with his hand in mine and his weight against my side while some woman on television cried because her pastry hadn't risen properly.

Ordinary.

The word came back to me.

Ash had said I didn't do normal, and maybe he was right. There was very little about my life that had ever qualified, even before hockey had turned me into somebody strangers recognized on the street.

Yet sitting there with cold pizza on the coffee table, a ridiculous baking show on television, and a man I'd spent years trying not to want slowly relaxing against me, normal felt less like something I'd avoided and more like something I hadn't known I was allowed to have.

His phone buzzed once more.

Ash didn't look at it.

Instead, his fingers tightened around mine, and my dragon stirred beneath my skin, warm and content and far too certain about things I was still terrified to name.

There were truths I still hadn't given Ash, and I knew that couldn't continue forever. In two days, we had Game Three with the series tied and no room left for either of us to drag our personal disasters onto the ice, while somewhere outside this apartment his father was paying enough attention to know when I stood beside his son.

I didn't know what the man wanted, but the fact that my protecting Ash mattered enough for him to mention it frightened me more than I wanted to admit.

Tomorrow would bring hockey, the inevitable questions about Melanie, and whatever fresh disaster Ash's father decided to create. All of it would still be waiting when we woke up.

For once, though, I didn't use tomorrow as an excuse to create distance tonight.

I rested my cheek against Ash’s hair and stayed exactly where I was.

Chapter ten

Faceoff - The method used to start or restart play, with an official dropping the puck between two opposing players.

Ash

“Welcome back to Denver, where the Colorado Dragons and the Las Vegas Vipers are tied at one game apiece in this best-of-seven series, although judging by the noise inside this building tonight, somebody might want to remind the twenty thousand people currently attempting to remove the roof that there could still be four games left to play.”

“That assumes anyone can hear you, Dave.”