Something warm bloomed behind my sternum—not the cold retreating, but something existing alongside it. Coexisting. Like maybe there was room for both.
During video review, while Coach Kinkaid broke down L.A.'s power play entries and I pretended to take notes:
Cinder:Can I ask you something?
My stomach tightened.
Me:Always.
Cinder:Last night. When you were sleeping. Your skin temperature actually rose. Not a lot—maybe a degree. But I noticed because I had my hand on your chest, and it was warmer than I've ever felt you. Comfortable.
I stared at the message, my throat constricting.
Cinder:You don't have to explain. I just wanted you to know I noticed. And that it made me happy, unrealistically, like I was responsible for it.
I closed my eyes. The cold inside me pressed against my ribs, curious, almost tentative—like it was testing boundaries it had held for decades.
Me:There are things I need to tell you. About why that happens. About all of it.
Cinder:I know.
Me:When we get home. I want to do it properly. Not in a hotel corridor between games.
Cinder:Whenever you're ready, Taz. I'm not going anywhere.
I read that last line four times. Then I locked my phone and sat in the dark of the video room while Kinkaid's voice washed overme, and I let myself believe—for the first time in thirty years—that maybe I could tell someone the truth and they wouldn't run.
The afternoon dragged. Game-day naps were mandatory, and I lay in my hotel room with the curtains drawn, staring at the ceiling while my body refused to cooperate with rest. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Cinder's face—his expression when he'd kissed me last night, soft and certain, like I was something worth choosing. The way he'd traced patterns on my back until I fell asleep. The careful, deliberate way he'd slipped out before dawn, protecting both of us without being asked.
My phone buzzed again.
Cinder:Pre-game question: on a scale of 1 to "Shackleton trapped in Antarctic ice," how nervous are you?
Me:About 4. Maybe a 5. I’m trying to nap and it isn’t working.
Cinder:Sorry, but you'll stop them. Because that's what you do.
Me:Your confidence in me is medically unsupported.
Cinder:Most of what you do is medically unsupported. I've learned to adapt.
I grinned at the ceiling.
Me:Are you saying I'm beyond medical explanation?
A longer pause this time. Then:
Cinder:I'm saying you're beyond anything I've encountered. And I've encountered a lot.
The words sat in my chest like a coal that wouldn't cool. I wanted to type something back—something honest, something that matched the weight of what he'd given me. But everything I thought of felt too small or too large, and in the end I just sent:
Me:I'll look for you behind the bench tonight.
Cinder:I'll be there. I'm always there.
I set the phone down and pressed both hands over my face, breathing slowly, feeling the cold settle into something manageable. Something almost calm.
He didn't know what I was. Not yet. Didn't know about the dragon coiled beneath my ribs, about ice that could kill, about a father who walked into the snow and never came back. He didn't know that what he felt when he touched my skin—that impossible chill, that frequency he couldn't name—was the dormant power of something ancient and dangerous and desperately, terribly lonely.