But I was here.

  And everything about this was the best place I’d been in a long, long time.

  Chapter 27

  Anthony

  The Seattle Bobcats utterly stomped Portland on their own ice. It was always satisfying to beat a rival in front of their fans, especially when it was a decisive 6-3 win. Games like that were spectacular for morale.

  It was a great game for me, too. My season had started out as a shitshow, but I was finally finding my footing. I’d racked up two assists, and Nova had almost knocked me out when he’d hugged me to celebrate my second goal of the season. I’d wound up on my ass, laughing my head off before I got up to fist bump the rest of my team.

  When Coach handed me my goal puck after the game, he’d said, “Tonight should have the commentators eating their words.” With a clap to my shoulder, he’d added, “I’m sure eating mine.”

  I’d just laughed, holding on to that puck like it was the very first of my career. It wasn’t even my first of the season, but I appreciated that he’d thought to hang on to it for me. I wasn’t stupid—I knew Coach had been concerned about me, and there’d been rumblings of sending me down or trading me. Hopefully tonight, not to mention my last three games, would put all that to bed. All I needed to do now was keep this up for the rest of the season and prove it wasn’t a fluky lucky streak. I wasn’t worried. I felt so much more like me out there than I had in a long time. That wasn’t going away.

  By the time we all poured into the hotel lobby afterward, everyone was pumped and ready to stay up late celebrating. As luck would have it, there was an awesome bar across the street that we usually visited when we were in town, and they had pretty good food, too.

  As the guys started filtering back outside to head over, D’Angelo looked at Simon and me. “Hey, you guys coming?”

  I opened my mouth to ask Simon if we were, but he spoke first.

  “No, not tonight.” Wrapping his arm around my shoulders, he smiled. “It’s date night.”

  A playful “Aww” went up from our teammates at the same time my heart sank into my stomach.

  What could I do, though? We had to keep up this stupid act, and it would raise a lot of questions if I looked at Simon and said, “What the hell do you mean we’re doing date night?” Even if I did it in a joking way.

  The guys continued outside, and Simon and I headed for the elevators. All my exuberance from the game drained away as we waited for the doors to open. I wanted to be out celebrating with my team. Not… holing up in the room because Simon was using “date night” as an excuse not to go out. What the fuck, anyway? Sometimes he didn’t feel like joining the team, and in the past, he’d just kiss me on the cheek, tell me to have a good time, and send me on my way. Why were we doing this bullshit?

  But what the hell could I do? Argue with him? Storm out and join the team at the bar, raising all kinds of questions about why I’d bailed on date night?

  We stepped into the elevator, and even before the doors shut, I was almost overcome with claustrophobia. It had little to do with the box we were encased in, though. That just underscored this suffocating, closed-in feeling of being unable to escape. We could’ve been standing alone at center ice in a deserted arena, and my skin still would’ve been crawling as my heart pounded behind my shirt and tie.

  I can’t get away from you.

  I can’t get away from this illusion we have to maintain.

  I can’t fucking breathe.

  Staring at the numbers steadily ticking up toward our room, I exhaled slowly. The weirdest thing was that even though I was trapped with Simon like this, I also felt freer than I had in a long time. At least we weren’t pretending anymore. Not behind these tightly closed doors, anyway. Everyone else thought we were together, but we knew the truth, and once we were alone, we could drop the act. It was like sucking in our stomachs whenever we were around people, and then as soon as there was no one else around, we could release our breath and not bother pretending anymore.

  I still couldn’t breathe as easily as I wished I could. I was still suffocating under the weight of the secret we had to keep. But at least I didn’t have to fake anything when it was just the two of us.

  We should’ve broken up ages ago.

  As much as I was relieved to be able to drop the façade, I was still pissed that Simon had declared this date night and yanked away any chance I had of a night out with the guys. And on a night when I actually had something to celebrate, too! Come on, Simon. What the fuck? All the way up to our floor and down the hall to our room, I stewed quietly. I didn’t dare start something out here. Too many cameras. Too much potential for someone to walk in on us. Too many ways our secret could get away from us.

  But the second we were in our room and the door was locked behind us, I whirled on him. “What the hell, Simon?”

  He blinked, showing his palms. “What?”

  “Date night?” I rolled my eyes. “If you don’t want to go out with the guys tonight, fine. Just say so.” I loosened my tie and turned away from him. “Do we really have to fake date night just because you want to—”

  I froze, my finger still hooked in my tie, when my gaze landed on the wine bottle and two glasses on the table.

  Simon’s hands slid over my waist, and his stubbled jaw brushed the side of my neck. “I was thinking it wouldn’t be a fake date night.”

  “Wouldn’t—” I stepped out of his grasp and faced him. “Simon. We’re not—”

  “You don’t want to try again?”

  I blinked, and for a few seconds, I was completely speechless. “I… You wanted this! You ended things.” I threw up my hands. “I spent a whole damn year trying to get us back on the rails, but now that you called it quits, you want—I don’t understand.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe that was a mistake.”

  I gaped at him, wondering how I didn’t have literal whiplash after his sudden shift from coldly ending things to… this. “A mistake?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged, sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “We had a good thing, you know?”

  “We did. But then it wasn’t. And it wasn’t for a long time.” I crossed my arms, knowing damn well it made me look defensive, but I didn’t know what else to do with my hands that wouldn’t give away my sudden nerves. “We tried. It’s…” I trailed off, shaking my head.

  Simon sighed and scratched the back of his neck. “And we’re stuck doing this”—he gestured around the room—“for the rest of the season. We might as well use that time to give it another shot.”

  I clenched my jaw and looked away from him. He was deploying those soft eyes that had won me over in the beginning and were so damn good at disarming me during a fight. “Or we’ll just break up again, and it’ll be worse this time.”

  He stepped closer, making my spine prickle unpleasantly. “You wanted to fix us before.” His hand landed softly on my shoulder, and it took all I had not to jerk away from his touch. “You’re right—you tried before and I… All I did was avoid it.” He sighed, squeezing my shoulder. “I didn’t put in the work like you did. I should have.”

  I closed my eyes, pressing my lips together. There should’ve a deep ache of emotions cracking loose inside me. I should’ve been breathing a long overdue sigh of relief that he’d finally recognized that I’d been the only one actually breaking a sweat to fix our relationship.

  But all I felt in that moment was the long simmering anger beneath the surface shifting to a rolling boil. The last year’s worth of frustration swelled at the same time exhaustion tried to push me right down to the carpet at our feet.

  In the same moment Simon admitted that he finally got it, I truly understood what “too little too late” really meant.

  I shook my head slowly. “We can’t, Simon.”

  “Why not?” He stepped closer, though I still refused to look at him. “I love you, Anthony. I was wrong. We… Neither of us did anything, you know? No one cheated. No one crossed any lines.” He touched my cheek in that way I’d always loved, and his voice was soft and pleading as he said, “We can go back.”

  I sighed, wondering if the only reason I hadn’t broken down in tears was because I was just too damned tired. Not from the game, either. I’d played twenty-seven hard minutes just a couple of hours ago, but the fatigue that kept my eyes dry tonight had nothing to do with hockey.

  “Please, Anthony,” he whispered, running his thumb along my cheekbone. “We can do this.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “Why not?” Panic rose in his voice. “We’ll see a counselor. I’ll move back in. Anything you want. We can—”

  “Simon. No. We can’t go back to—” The words halted in my throat. They felt like a lie. I’d been tiptoeing on all the eggshells he’d laid down for all this time, and I just… I couldn’t keep doing that. I was tired. I was done.

  So, I uncrossed my arms, looked him in the eye, and told him the truth:

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  His lips parted. For a long time, there was nothing but confusion in his expression. He withdrew his hands and stared at me as if he didn’t understand what I’d said.

  I didn’t repeat myself. I didn’t try to apologize or clarify. If anything, I just tried to stay on my feet as my own words threw off my balance. They hadn’t even crossed my mind until the moment I’d breathed them to life, but now it was like I’d finally said something that had been trying to burst out for longer than I could remember.

  After God knew how long, Simon asked, “What do you mean, you don’t want to go back?”

  “I mean exactly what I said.” I stepped away just to put some space between us, and I finished taking off my tie. “We’re done, and I don’t want to go back. Let’s just get through this season, let the team know, and move on.”

  “So… that’s it. You just… We invested all that time and energy into us, and now you’re done.”

  I couldn’t stop the caustic laugh that escaped. “Didn’t you just admit that I’m the one who did all the work trying to save us?” I shrugged out of my jacket and yanked a hanger out of the closet. “You checked out. And you took so damn long to come around that by the time you did, I’d already moved on.” I focused on putting the jacket on the hanger. “How long did you think I was going to wait?”

  The bewilderment in his voice shifted to anger. “You really are fucking Wyatt, aren’t you?”

  I laughed again and rolled my eyes. “Seriously, Simon?” I faced him again, folding my arms as I tilted my head. “Really? That’s the only possible explanation you can find for—”

  “You can’t tell me it’s not convenient as hell,” he growled. “We break up, you’ve already got a guy living in our house, and now you have no interest in me.” He narrowed his eyes. “How am I supposed to interpret that?”

  “You can interpret it however you want.” God, I was so done with this. “I haven’t laid a hand on Wyatt. He has nothing to do with this. I don’t even know if he’s queer, for fuck’s sake!” A lie, yes, but I didn’t feel bad about it. I wasn’t going to out Wyatt to my ex, and the smokescreen would throw Simon off the scent that I was somehow involved with Wyatt.

  Simon eyed me like he didn’t buy it, and my usual frustration just… wasn’t there. I could argue with him for hours, trying desperately to change his warped perspective of something I did or thought. He knew I hated when he told me what I thought or felt or wanted, especially when he was wrong, and it never failed to get under my skin.

  Tonight, I just didn’t care. He could think whatever the fuck he wanted. If he slept better believing that I was getting railed by Wyatt every time we were alone, then fine. He could enjoy making himself miserable with his own mental porno.

  “Whatever.” I shrugged and headed for the minibar in search of something that wasn’t the wine he expected us to drink.

  Simon was silent for a minute or so. Long enough for me to find a bottle of some local microbrew. I had enough time to get the bottle open and take a deep pull before he spoke, his voice colder than the beer on my tongue:

  “What’s to stop me from letting the team know about us sooner than later?”

  Icy panic stopped the breath in my throat. “Are you…” I put the bottle down with a shaky clink. “Are you threatening to out us?”

  He shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I? Do you think I want to keep this up”—he gestured around the room again—“with someone who obviously doesn’t want to be in the same room as me?”

  I wanted to remind him again that he was the one who’d broken up with me and put us in this position, but I was suddenly hyperaware of the thin ice beneath my feet. “Simon. We can’t tell the team. Not yet. You said yourself we need to ride out the season and—”

  “Yeah, I did. But now…” Another shrug, this one even more dismissive than before.

  It took a moment to fully process what he was saying.

  “Are you blackmailing me?” I stepped closer and glared hard at him. “I either get back together with you, or you drop the bomb and get me traded out of Seattle?”

  “I’m not blackmailing you. I just don’t have any incentive to keep it quiet, do I?”

  I swallowed, not sure if I was more hurt, angry, or scared now. “Simon. Please. I want to stay here. In Seattle, I mean. And didn’t you say you don’t want to fuck things up for future couples?”

  “Maybe they need to see how badly it can blow up in their faces,” he growled. “So they know what they’re getting into.”

  My lips parted. Had he always been this manipulative?

  Before I could say anything, though, he deflated and looked away. Then he brushed past me toward the closet, undoing his own tie. In a resigned voice, he said, “I won’t out us. I know you want to stay in Seattle.”

  I chewed my lip. “So why threaten me with it?”

  Simon’s shoulders sagged as he slipped his tie off his neck. He said nothing as he took off his jacket, and after he’d hung that up, he silently stared at it for a solid thirty seconds. “I’m sorry. I…” He shook his head and looked at me, all the anger absent from his expression. “I wouldn’t fuck with your career. I wouldn’t…” His shoulders drooped even more. “I’m sorry.”

  Disgust roiled in the pit of my stomach. I suddenly wanted to look back over our entire relationship and see if there were other moments like this. Other red flags he’d waved in my face that I’d fallen for instead of holding my ground.

  But I was too tired, and what good would it do anyway? We were still stuck in this room tonight and in way too many hotel rooms over the next few months. There was still no escape from him. From us. From all the ultimatums hanging over our heads.

  From his willingness, even when he was just lashing out at me in the heat of the moment, to torpedo my career when he didn’t get what he wanted.

  The conversation ended anticlimactically. Simon picked up the room service menu off the table. I drank my beer. Eventually, he passed the menu to me, and we ordered food. After that… silence. He put on a movie while I fucked around on my phone.

  It was weird to end an argument like this. No real end—we just sort of… stopped talking and moved on. In hindsight, that was how a lot of arguments had ended. Usually when I’d backed him into a corner and made him admit he was wrong. If I was wrong? Hoo boy. That would be a long and miserable comedown. The makeup sex had always been amazing, though looking back, I had to wonder if that was just because it signaled we were done fighting. Even the most tepid sex was better than sniping and shouting.

  There wouldn’t be any makeup sex tonight. There wouldn’t be any sex at all. I was too wrung out for it anyway, but admittedly, I caught myself wishing I could be having sex with someone. Not Simon, because holy fuck, I’d throw up if he touched me right now. But someone. Because… well, because even tepid sex with a random person was better than this bullshit.

  I was stuck here for the night, though. No hookups. No hanging out with our teammates across the street. At some point, we’d probably even pose for a selfie with that bottle of wine just to sell the charade.

  No one but us would know the truth.

  I glanced at Simon as I sipped my beer. Tonight, I’d played my best game so far this season. One of the best games I’d played in my professional career.

  And yet tonight would end the same way every away game night had recently and would for the rest of this season:

  With me trying and failing to sleep next to the man I’d once thought I knew.

  Fucking hell. I wiped a hand over my face. It’s definitely time to move on.

  I didn’t think I’d ever been so glad Simon and I had driven separately to the airport. Despite our efforts to maintain the charade of being joined at the hip, logistics were what they were sometimes, and on occasion, we took two cars. That didn’t turn any heads. Sometimes one of us had to go straight from the airport to physical therapy or a dentist appointment. Sometimes one of us was due at a photo shoot or an interview.

  In this case, Simon needed to take off for a signing up in Everett, so we’d driven in separately.

  Thank. God.

  I didn’t think I could handle slogging through morning traffic with him. Not after the whole date night fiasco.

  One thing that had stuck with me and kept me up most of the night was that it was time to move the hell on from Simon. Like, really move the hell on. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d do it without drawing attention to the fact that we’d broken up. Hookup apps were risky, since there was no telling who might see dollar signs in the juicy gossip of “Anthony Austin is screwing someone who isn’t Simon Caron.”

  But the fact was, most of my energy since we’d broken up had been focused on rethinking us. It was time to rethink me. I didn’t need a partner to be happy, and I was fine with not jumping into a relationship any time soon. In fact, that could definitely wait while I figured things out post-Simon.

  Sex, though? Hooking up? Remembering what it was like to be with other people? Oh, I could get on that. I still needed to figure out how to do it discreetly, but I’d figure it out. I just knew it was time to stop spinning my tires over Simon and start looking elsewhere.