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I hold my breath. I better not be traded. That would be so like her.

“The Mules are offering you six point five for five more years.”

My jaw drops, my eyes open wide, and my phone falls from my hand. Thirty-two and a half million dollars. That’s more than I thought anyone would ever give me after all the struggles I’ve had before I came to the Mules. But as I’ve known for a while now, St. Louis is my home. The Mules are my team, and now with this contract, I’m not going anywhere.

“Tell them I accept,” I say. “And Sofia, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Nikolai,” she says, sounding genuinely happy for me. “Start building your life in St. Louis. Find your happiness there.”

“I will,” I say, even though, right now, my happiness is on his way back to Buffalo.

Ander

“Walk me through this,” Connor says, looking at me, disheartened. He and Gavin are cuddled up beside each other on my couch while I sit across from them on my armchair with Shutzie on my lap. “I thought things were going well between you and Nikolai.”

“They were.” I slump in my chair. But then what he said causes me to perk up. “Wait. How do you know things were going well between us?”

Connor grabs his phone. “Ryan told me.” He flashes the screen at me to show me a picture. It’s from Christmas morning, the one Ryan took of me the moment I entered the family room wearing Nikolai’s Mules t-shirt.

“Traitor,” Gavin says, smirking.

“How can you accuse me of being a traitor?” I ask. “You’re the one who had your boyfriend traded like eight minutes before the deadline so he could wear a whole ass Blizzards kit.”

“You’re not going to ask for a trade, are you?” Connor asks. He looks very nervous.

“Hell, no!” I exclaim. Shutzie barks along with my declaration.

“What about him?” Gavin asks.

“He doesn’t want to leave St. Louis,” I say. “And I’d never ask him to.”

Which, now that I’ve had some time to sit with all of this, might be why he said there is no future for us.

“It’s not fair,” Connor says.

“Look,” I say, thinking back on everything that I experienced with Nikolai. The intense kisses. The toe-curling orgasms. The companionship during the quiet moments. His warm body against mine while we slept. I let out a heavy sigh. “It is what it is. We had three great days. That doesn’t mean we need to blow our lives up and demand trades and rearrange everything we’ve worked for just because the sex was mind-blowing.”

“Mind-blowing?” Gavin raises one eyebrow.

“Fucking incredible,” I say. My dick partially hardens just thinking about it. I adjust the way I’m sitting.

“You’re describing what we did.” Connor blushes.

Gavin pulls him in closer. “Our situation was different though.”

Connor looks back at me. “But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a solution now.”

“Nikolai made it pretty clear that there is no situation.” It’s not like I could have gotten his words confused. He said what he said. Sure, he looked as miserable as I felt, but he still meant what he said. There is no us.

“Gavin tried telling me once that there was no us either,” Connor says.

“I did not,” Gavin denies, emphatically.

Connor looks up at him. “Okay, not in those exact words. But you did tell me that once the Olympics were over, we were over, too.”

Gavin clutches Connor and pulls him on top of him to straddle his lap. He brushes the side of Connor’s face with his knuckles. “And I was wrong. Dead wrong.”

Connor gives Gavin a quick kiss, then rolls off his lap to sit beside him again. He focuses his attention back on me. “Do you like him?”