Page 77 of Two for Roughing

“Yes. I will see you.” In a fluid motion, Valeria bent down, unlaced her skates, and removed them. She slipped into heavy, warm boots and zipped a thick parka that went past her knees over her skating dress. Then she muttered a Russian goodbye and was gone.

“Wow,” Kilian said to the slam of the locker room door. “Rude.”

“Very,” Damir agreed. “You had fun?”

“I’m sorry I lost track of the time. You don’t have to bring me next time. I can—”

“Are you kidding?” Damir shook his head. “I haven’t seen you so happy to be on the ice in—ever, I think. You’re coming back. If I can learn something watching the two of you, good, but even if it’s just for you, I would pay for a year’s worth of skating lessons.”

Kilian looked down at the damp spots on the linoleum where his skates had dripped melted ice shavings.

Damir wasn’t making it easy to avoid feeling things.

“Do you have plans for the day?” Damir asked after they’d changed into street clothes and were leaving the rink. He got into the passenger seat as a matter of course, allowing Kilian to drive again.

Kilian blew out a long breath through his teeth. “I think I need to call my agent.”

Damir nodded once. “Maybe shower first. Put on something nice.”

Kilian rolled his eyes. “Stop taking care of me. I’ll be fine.”

He would be. So what if Derek dumped him off the client list? So what if the Firecrackers sent him down or kicked him out of the organization entirely? What was the worst that could happen? He’d have to stop playing hockey and figure out a real job? Him and every other twenty-year-old on the planet. He knew who he was and what he wanted to say, and no one could take either of those from him.

At Damir’s, Kilian set his phone to charge in the built-in charging station at the desk in his room. After three days of constant notifications and zero attention from him, it had shut down in self-defense. Kilian eyed it with trepidation. The phone didn’t look scary, all alone on the empty desk. Not when contrasted with the clutter covering every other surface of the room. The boxes Breezy had express-shipped to Kilian lined the floor. Clothes hung off the edges of the cartons instead of the hangers in the closet. The stack of papers he’d signed when he joined the team sat on the nightstand, and his duvet lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed.

Damir always made his bed.

Of course he did. He hated mess, another reason he was out of Kilian’s league.

With a sigh, Kilian dumped his workout gear in the shipping box he used as a laundry basket and headed for the shower. When he was scrubbed clean and dressed in his favorite jeans and, after some deliberation, the light blue crop top, Kilian turned his phone on.

Immediately, the chimes and buzzes of a million messages on every app under the sun started pouring in. It would be a while until the phone had processed everything. Kilian turned off the sound and sat at the desk. On his first day here, he’d spent some time snooping and had noticed the notepad and pens Damir kept in the top drawer for his guests. Typical Damir—understated, practical, and classy. They were really nice pens, too, and they matched the detailing on the desk. Damir had such an eye for aesthetics. Kilian had guessed as much from his suits and shirts, but his apartment was impeccable. If Kilian stayed here, he’d have to level up so he wouldn’t get on Damir’s nerves. Or—no.

He couldn’t follow that line of thinking.

Not when what he was about to do meant there’d be no future for them. When Christmas break ended, he would need to find his own place.

Kilian tapped his pen against the pad for a few moments, gathering his thoughts, and then he started writing.

He looked up from the pad an hour later to find the sun already going down outside his window, because it was Chicago and December. Before him on the desk lay three pages filled with his rounded cursive letters. He read them back, just to make sure he hadn’t imagined how right it felt to say those things, to put them out there in the world.

He hadn’t.

His phone had finished its full system reboot at some point in the interim. Kilian swiped away all the notifications from the lockscreen, barely registering them. His sisters. Breezy. Tom. His mom. A zillion random people he’d met once or twice, hadn’t seen in years, or didn’t know at all.

Derek’s number was listed under his missed calls twenty-seven times.

Kilian winced as he hit the call button.

It only rang once.

“Kilian! Thank God.”

Not the response Kilian was expecting. “Hi, Derek. Sorry about…everything.”

“All you have to be sorry for is not picking up the damn phone, kid. How are you holding up?”

Kilian frowned. That wasn’t right. “No, I mean…I’m sorry I didn’t let you know things weren’t going great with the Sea Lions, and I’m sorry I was stupid and I got photographed, and I totally get if you don’t want to be my rep now that I’m—now that people know about me.”