"Forty-three saves."
"Forty-four. They credited one late."
"Forty-four." I shook my head. "That's—Taz, that's insane."
The shy smile deepened, and a flush crept up his neck that I was almost certain had nothing to do with temperature dysregulation. "It felt good," he admitted quietly. "The best I've felt on the ice in years."
I should have said congratulations and gone back to my room. Should have maintained the careful, measured distance that kept my heart intact and my career uncomplicated.
Instead, I said, "Can I come in?"
He stepped back so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing, but he must have caught it because he groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. "I'm usually more coordinated than this."
"I know. I watched you defy physics for an hour tonight."
"That's different. That's hockey." He closed the door behind me and stood there, hands hanging at his sides like he'd forgotten what they were for. His room was identical to mine—same layout, same bland hotel furniture—except that his bed was already rumpled on one side, the covers pulled back, and there was a book face-down on the pillow. An actual, physical book. Something thick and old-looking with a wrinkled spine.
"What are you reading?" I asked, because I was stalling and we both knew it.
He glanced at the bed and went even pinker. "It's, um. It's about Arctic exploration. Shackleton."
"Of course it is," I murmured, something unbearably fond swelling in my chest. "Of course you read about ice in your free time."
"It's not—" He ran his hand through his damp hair, making it stand up worse. "It's about survival. Endurance. How people keep going when everything is frozen and impossible."
The words landed somewhere tender, and I stopped stalling.
I crossed the room, took his face in both hands, and kissed him.
He made a small, startled sound against my mouth—like he genuinely hadn't expected it, like despite everything we'd shared, he still couldn't quite believe someone would choose to touch him. His skin was cool under my palms, that familiar impossible chill that should have alarmed me and instead just felt like him.
His hands found my waist, tentative at first, then firmer as I deepened the kiss. Not hungry—not like the first time at my apartment. This was slower. Softer. The kind of kiss that said I'm here and I'm not leaving, and you did something extraordinary tonight, and I want you to feel it.
He tasted like toothpaste and something clean, and when I tilted my head to get a better angle, he sighed into my mouth—this quiet, shuddering exhale that sounded like relief. Like he'd been holding his breath since the final buzzer and only now remembered how to let it go.
"Cinder," he murmured against my lips, and the way he said my name—careful, reverent, like it was something precious—made my eyes sting.
"Shh." I kissed him again, lighter this time. The corner of his mouth. His jaw. The spot just below his ear where his pulse beat steady and slow. "You were incredible tonight."
"It was just hockey."
"It wasn't just anything." I pulled back enough to look at him properly. His eyes were that soft gray-blue I'd cataloged as his baseline—content, present, open in a way that made my medical brain go quiet and something older and more instinctive takeover. "I've never seen anyone move the way you do. It's like the ice belongs to you."
Something flickered across his face—recognition, maybe, or the edge of a secret he wasn't ready to share. But he didn't deflect. Didn't joke. Just looked at me with those impossible eyes and said, very quietly, "Stay tonight?"
"I shouldn't."
"I know."
"The team—"
"I know."
"If someone sees me leaving your room in the morning—"
"I know." His hands tightened fractionally on my waist, then loosened, giving me room to leave if I needed to. "I'm not asking for anything except you being here. I just..." He swallowed, and the vulnerability in it nearly broke me. "I don't want to be cold tonight."