"I don't regret it," he said.
"Good."
"I should probably regret it."
"Probably. But you don't."
"No." And then, impossibly, he smiled. The real one. The full one. The smile that I had first seen in my kitchen on a recovery day and had been collecting ever since. "No, I don't."
The team reached us. The pile-on was immediate and total. Bodies crashing together, helmets flying, sticks clattering on the ice. Jonah was screaming something incoherent. Wes was grinning, actually grinning, which might have been the most shocking thing that happened all night. Someone poured water on both of us. Someone else was crying. The celebration was chaos and it was beautiful and Mik and I were at the center of it, soaking wet and surrounded by the men who had become our family over the course of a season that had changed everything.
In the locker room, the celebration continued. Champagne that was definitely not sanctioned by the team. Music so loud the walls vibrated. Coach Callahan in the corner, arms crossed, fighting a smile so hard that the effort was visible from across the room.
I found Mik at his stall. He was sitting quietly, still in his gear, watching the celebration with an expression of wonder. Like a man who had walked out of a cave after years in the dark and was seeing daylight for the first time and was not yet sure his eyes could be trusted.
"Hey," I said. "How are you?"
He looked up at me. The scar through his eyebrow. The grey eyes with the green flecks. The face I had memorized in a hotel room in Carolina at 4:47 in the morning and had been studying ever since.
"I am terrified," he said. "And I am happy. I did not know these could coexist."
"They can. They do. Welcome to being a person."
"It is very uncomfortable."
"Yeah. But look around." I gestured at the room. At Jonah, who was attempting to drink champagne through his helmet cage. At Wes, who was letting Luca spray him with a water bottle and not even flinching. At the rookies and the veterans and the coaches and the staff, all of them celebrating together, none of them looking at us with anything other than joy. "This is what it looks like on the other side."
Mik looked around the room. His eyes were bright. Not wet. Bright. The brightness of a man who was seeing his life with new resolution, every pixel sharp, every color saturated, the full picture visible for the first time.
"It looks loud," he said.
"It is loud."
"I think I might like loud."
I kissed him. In the locker room. In front of the team. A quick, stupid, champagne-soaked kiss that made Jonah whistle and Wes roll his eyes and Coach Callahan mutter something about professionalism that was undermined by the fact that he was definitely smiling.
Mik kissed me back.
Later that night, in my apartment, we barely made it through the door.
The adrenaline from the game, from the goal, from the kiss, from the arena chanting Mik's name as we left the ice, had been building for hours with no outlet, and the moment the apartment door closed behind us, it found one.
Mik pressed me against the wall of the hallway. His mouth was on mine before I'd finished turning the deadbolt, and the kiss was nothing like the careful, controlled kisses we'd builtour relationship on. This was hunger. This was a man who had kissed another man on national television two hours ago and had been vibrating with the aftermath ever since.
"I need you," he said against my mouth. "Now. Here."
"We have a bed."
"The bed is far away."
"The bed is twelve feet away."
"Twelve feet too many."
We made it to the bed. Barely. We left a trail of clothing down the hallway like evidence at a crime scene. His suit jacket on the floor by the bathroom. My tie draped over a doorknob. One of his shoes in the hall, the other somewhere in the living room. By the time we reached the mattress we were down to skin and adrenaline and the specific, electric urgency of two bodies that had spent three hours in a hockey arena and needed a different kind of release.
He pushed me onto the bed and climbed over me and the energy was different from every other time. Not desperate like the first. Not tender like the second. Not playful like the third. This was triumphant. This was two men who had won something bigger than a hockey game and were celebrating with their bodies because words were insufficient.