He didn’t scramble. Didn’t reach. He simply raised his hand and caught it out of the air like it had been falling gently instead of screaming toward the corner of the net.
The crowd went quiet.
I forgot how to breathe.
Nancy leaned over and nudged me. “You’re doing the thing again.”
“What thing?”
“That look. Like you’re about to write a paper on him.”
“Heismedically fascinating.”
She snorted. “He’s also your boyfriend. Or whatever we’re calling this. You’re allowed to just be impressed.”
I wanted to argue. The part of me trained to question and catalog and understand everything that could go wrongneededanswers.
But another part of me—the part that had kissed him under flickering parking lot lights, that had slept against his cold chest and felt safe—didn’t need them.
Whatever he was, it wasn’t broken.
It washim.
And he trusted me. Not with explanations yet, but with his pulse beneath my fingers. With the way he asked me about his temperature like my answer mattered more than anyone else’s.
The final period was chaos. L.A. came out desperate, throwing everything they had left. The noise was relentless. The pressure constant.
Taranis never broke.
With minutes left, they pulled their goalie, flooding the ice with attackers. The puck bounced wildly. Shots came from everywhere. Rebounds. Scrambles. The crowd screamed like they could force it across the line by sheer will.
They couldn’t.
When the final horn sounded and the score held at one-zero, the bench erupted. Players poured onto the ice, surrounding Taranis, lifting him, pounding his back in celebration.
In the middle of it all, helmet gone, hair damp and wild, he smiled—wide and genuine and unguarded.
And I knew, with a certainty that had nothing to do with data or diagnoses—
Whatever he was, he was extraordinary.
And if I wanted him, he was mine.
I told myself I wouldn't go to his room.
I told myself that three times in the elevator, twice in the corridor, and once more with my hand raised to knock. Professional distance. Boundaries. All the smart, sensible things I'd promised myself I'd maintain after Gavin, after the hospital, after every time I'd let someone past my defenses and paid for it in blood.
Then Taz opened the door, and every rational thought I'd ever had evaporated like frost on warm glass.
He was wearing sweatpants. Just sweatpants. His hair was still damp from the shower, sticking up in unruly tufts that made him look about ten years younger than he was. There was a pillow crease on his cheek—he'd already been lying down—and he blinked at me with that slow, unfocused confusion of someone who'd been halfway to sleep.
"Cinder?" His voice was rough. Soft. "Is everything—"
"You got a shutout," I said stupidly.
He stared at me. Then the corner of his mouth curled up, and God help me, he looked shy. Actually shy. This man who'd hauled Brady Collins off his rookie like a ragdoll, who'd stopped forty-three shots tonight without breaking a sweat, who radiated cold the way other people radiated warmth—he was standing in his doorway looking at me like he couldn't believe I'd shown up.
"I did," he said. "Yeah."