Jaxson
“Dear God, woman — what the hell is that?”
Grace bounced on the toes of her dirty white canvas sneakers, holding a plastic bag of something absolutely foul like it was a hundred-pound fish she’d reeled in on her own. She’d opened it while I was pumping gas, and the stench alone had turned my stomach.
“Pork rinds!”
I unlatched the nozzle and replaced it on the pump, closing the gas tank door next. “That sounds as disgusting as it smells.”
“Come on — it’s all part of the experience,” she said, attempting to hand me one of the crisps.
“That’s a hell no from me, Nova.”
She shrugged, popping one in her mouth. She chewed it normally for a second before her movement slowed, and she grimaced, running to the trash can by the gas pump and spitting it out.
“Alright,” she said, tossing the opened bag in next. “They can’t all be winners. But look!” She dug into the bag slung around her arm and pulled out a small white pack of chocolates. “Valomilk cups!”
I blinked at her, rounding the SUV to open her door and help her climb in before I did the same. I fired up the engine, which was quiet and disappointing. I missed my Porsche.
“And what exactly are these?” I asked when Grace ripped open the packet and handed me a chocolate.
“Apparently, a famous Kansas candy. Marshmallow inside, I think.”
She bumped her piece against mine and shoved the whole thing in her mouth, which made my eyebrow tic up.
“Hmm,” I assessed, watching her chew. “Forgot just how much you can fit in that little mouth.”
Grace’s eyes shot open, and she laughed around a mouthful of chocolate and fluff, smacking my chest as a blush tinged her cheek.
“Ash-hole.”
I grinned, taking a bite of my own chocolate, which actually wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t great, either.
I kicked us into drive, hitting the open road — and it was quite open as we drove straight through the middle of Kansas.
“I need to take you to Canada,” I said. “We put your chocolate to shame. Everything we have is creamier, richer.”
“Including the men,” Grace piped up with a smile that told me she was proud of herself.
I took the wheel with my left hand and tickled her with the right until she was laughing and squealing and wiggling away from me.
When she was breathless, I stopped tickling her, and without me realizing what I was doing, I slid my hand between her thighs, hooking my fingers around the inside of her left one.
Fuck me.
Everything felt so good and right in that moment. I had one hand on the wheel, one wrapped around Grace’s thigh, and she was smiling at me with pink cheeks as we drove without a damn clue where we were going next.
My heart pitched into my throat, but I swallowed it down.
“You’ve never had chocolate until you’ve had a Caramilk bar. Or a Wunderbar. Or, fuck,” I dragged the word out, stomach grumbling. “A coffee crisp — with your coffee, naturally.”
Grace leaned an elbow on the console, chin in her palm as she watched me. “So, take me to Canada.”
I blinked. “Uh…”
“Come on,” she insisted. “We’re already halfway there, aren’t we? Take me to your hometown.”
I swallowed — not because I didn’t want to take her, because I did. In fact, I wanted to so badly that my heart was ready to leap out of my chest and scream yes for me.
But going to Canmore meant being close to my parents — which I tried to avoid at all costs.
They’d moved back to our hometown once I was in the professional circuit.
“We don’t have to tell anyone we’re there,” Grace said, like she was reading my thoughts. “We’re pretty good at keeping secrets.”
I thought about the video Will had seen, but decided Grace didn’t need to know about that.
“In a town that small, we won’t be,” I said. “Everyone knows me.”
Grace considered. “What if we just drove through it, then? These windows are tinted. You could show me around a little, and then we can run away farther north. Or west. Or whatever direction you want to. We can stay in a cabin in the mountains, order food in, and no one has to know.”
“You really want to go, don’t you?”
“I want to see where you’re from. I want to feel the place that made you.”
I looked at her then, at her wide green eyes and the way they assessed the world.
I’d never known anyone like her.
“Alright,” I said, swallowing the knot in my throat. “To Canada we go.”
“Really?!” Grace lit up like she thought she didn’t have a chance to convince me — as if she didn’t have me wrapped around her finger. “Yes!” She threw both fists into the air and did a little dance that had my hand sliding higher on her thigh. Then, she leaned into me, wrapping her arm around mine. “Okay, what other great snacks do you have?”
“Ever heard of All Dressed Chips?”
• • •
We drove until we hit a sign for Wilson State Park, and Grace insisted it was our home for the night.
It was a different kind of beautiful than the beaches of Florida, an almost barren piece of land surrounding the Wilson reservoir. The shoreline was rugged and colorful, with gorgeous cliffs and rock formations unlike anything I’d ever seen.
We got lucky, snagging up an empty campsite that someone had canceled their reservation for that afternoon. We were right on the water, the soft sounds of the waves lapping at the shore our background music as we set up camp.
There was still plenty of sunlight left before we needed to build a fire, so I grabbed Grace by the hand and we walked the shoreline. It was so peacefully quiet and serene, like all the campers were afraid to disturb Mother Nature. There weren’t many of them, and I doubted anyone out here would know who I was. Still, I wore my hat and sunglasses just in case.
We hadn’t made it more than a hundred feet from our campsite when my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I frowned at my father’s name and photograph filling the screen. I pushed him to voicemail — a move I knew I’d pay for the next time I picked up. But for now, I didn’t want to deal with it. With him.
Grace squeezed my hand as I slid my phone into my back pocket again. “He’s persistent,” she mused.
“This is nothing compared to the season.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re a professional defenseman, in the highest professional league, for a great team with a high likelihood of making the playoffs this season. You scored twenty-two points last season — as a defenseman. I mean, your plus-minus is twenty-five, for fuck’s sake. That’s like… stupid. Insane.”
She shook her head, face reddening like it pissed her off that anyone would come for me. And that was almost as hot as the fact that this girl had just shot off my stats for the season like she was telling me the weather report.
“Little Nova,” I said, stopping us and turning her to face me. I slid my hands to frame her face. “You googled me.”
She flushed but tilted her chin higher. “And what about it? I was getting in the car with you. The least I could do was make sure you weren’t a serial killer — or, worse, a shitty defenseman.”
I tried to fight it, but I barked out a laugh before pulling her into my chest.
“You are so fucking cute,” I said into her hair. Then, I spanked her ass and gripped it in a hearty handful. “But stop listing my stats, or I’m going to lose control and fuck you right here for the whole park to watch.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, seventy-seven.”
My fucking number.
Christ.
“Woman,” I threatened, picking her up and throwing her over my shoulder. But she laughed and promised to behave, and I dropped her again, threading my fingers through hers as we continued our walk.
“I just don’t know what more he expects of you,” she said, and my chest tightened with the conversation swinging back to my father.
“Perfection.”
“Well, that’s stupid. No one is perfect.”
I nodded, a flash of my father’s signature scowl striking like a branding iron.
“You do like it, right?” she asked. “Hockey, I mean. I feel like there’s no way you fake playing as well as you do and looking like you’re having fun while doing it.”
“I love it.”
The words rode out on a longing breath. It was true, but it hurt to admit.
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t,” I said. “Because he…” I paused, forcing a breath that I needed to loosen my chest. “He makes it so fucking hard sometimes. He makes me hate it, hate myself, even. I’ll come out of a game on this… God, this unexplainable high.” I shook my head. “And then he’ll grab me by the throat and throw me to the ground.”
“Jaxson…”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“No, it’s not. I know this was his dream, and I understand that he helped you a lot with it. I’m sure he was a great coach, a great trainer. But he has no right to taint something that means so much to both of you. It’s like he…”
She swallowed, biting back her words, and when I looked at her, I saw the regret on her face.
“Like he’s jealous?”
“I didn’t want to say it.”
“Me either,” I admitted. “But I’ve always wondered.”
We walked in silence for a bit.
“It makes me sad,” I confessed, chest tight again. “Because I love him. I care for him. I fucking hate that his career, hell, his way of life, got taken the way it did. I can’t imagine having an injury like that. And I want his approval. I want him to be proud of me. But… fuck.” I kicked a rock, cracking my neck. “I hate that when he calls me, my stomach drops. I hate that even when I play my best, I know he’s on social media just looking for someone talking shit about me so he can rub it in my face and tell me how I fucked up.”
Grace pulled me to a stop this time, and she placed her hands on my chest, right over where my heart felt like it was about to burst.
“Look, I’m not one to talk,” she said. “But, for what it’s worth, I think you’re amazing. And I also think your father is hurting and doesn’t know how to properly handle it. And I also think,” she said, smiling a little, but it fell just as quickly. “That you are not the one who has to help him figure that out, nor do you have to be his punching bag.”
I swallowed, covering her hands with my own.
“I know he’s your dad, so I won’t pretend like it would be easy to do. But… if you ever decided to draw a boundary, just know I would understand it. And you’d, at the very least, have me supporting you in that.”
Fucking hell.
My chest hurt even more, and for a completely different reason.
“No fucking way are you just twenty-two,” I said.
She laughed, and we started walking again. “Oh, trust me. I’m great at giving advice. Just don’t ask me to take any for myself.”
“You do really suck at talking about your feelings.”
“Gee, thanks.” She laughed, but then let out a long sigh. “I want to get better at that.”
“Let’s start now, then.”
“Uh-oh.” She looked at the lake, then up at the sky. “You know, I think we should head back, get the fire started. We—”
I grabbed her and pretended to drag her toward the water, which made her squeal and thrash until I set her back down. Then, I sat on a flat rock along the shoreline and pulled her into my lap. I turned my hat around backward and took my sunglasses off so I could see her better, so she could see me.
“You’re not getting out of this.”
She sighed, staring at where her hands were folded in her lap. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
“Just start talking. Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, and she swallowed, shaking her head.
“Okay,” I said on a chuckle. “How about the second thing?”
Grace was quiet for a while, her eyes on the lake. Then, she did exactly what I’d asked her to do. She started talking.
And the words spilled out like she’d had them dammed up her whole life and I’d just busted the thing down.
“I’m so grateful,” she started. “For everything in my life. I’m thankful for my parents, for how hard they worked to set me and my brother up with a life most people could only dream of. I’m thankful for the experiences I’ve already had, and I still have a whole life ahead of me. I’m thankful for Vince, for what he’s done for our family, and for how he’s always protected me.”
I smiled, because I’d asked her to share something with me, and the first thing she’d thought of was to tell me everything good in her life. I didn’t know a single other person who would have done the same. Not one.
But then, her eyes glossed, and she pressed a hand to her chest, letting out a shaky breath. “God, I hate this feeling.”
“What feeling?”
She shook her head. “When my chest feels heavy and fluttery at the same time, when my throat closes in on itself and my nose stings.”
“So… when you need to cry?”
She sucked in a breath, and her bottom lip trembled when she let it out. “No, no, no, I don’t want to cry.”
She fought it, and seeing that emotion choke her was like smoke in my lungs. I turned her in my lap, so she had no choice but to face me. “Why? Let it happen, Nova. Let it out.”
She bit her lip and shook her head, holding her eyes open wide so they brimmed with the tears she refused to shed. “I’m scared that if I do, I’ll never feel happy again. I’m so afraid this feeling will swallow me whole.”
And with that, she broke.
The first tears slipped free, and she buried her face in her hands like she was ashamed.
That broke me.
I pulled her into my chest, covering her head with my hand and cradling her against me. I rocked her like a small child, soothing her with a hand on her back and my voice in her ear.
“You won’t get lost in this feeling,” I promised her. “As long as you allow it to exist, it will do just that — and then it will pass. Just like everything else in life.”
She sobbed.
The girl full-on sobbed, clutching me to her and crying into my chest.
It killed me to feel that emotion escaping her, to know she was hurting. But I was also proud of her for letting it all be felt. It wasn’t easy to do for anyone, least of all her.
I felt honored to be the one she could break with.
I held her for a long while, and then she sat up, her face red and streaked with tears. She batted them away. “I just… I feel like the only thing I’m good for is to make the other people in my life happy. When Vince was upset after a game, or before a game, or even in the off-season… whenever he’d beat himself up, I was always there to remind him how great he was, to push him on, to tell him he could do anything he put his mind to.”
I thought about how Vince called her before every game so she could do some little dance she’d done one time in high school to cheer him up. He’d won that night, and so it had become a superstition, part of his routine.
He needed her, and she was there — every fucking time.
“And my parents,” she said, sniffing. “When they were worried about Vince, or about work, or about some stupid party they were hosting or — whatever.” She waved her hand in the air. “I loved to be the one to cheer them up. I loved to make a joke, to bring them comfort, to turn their anxiety into laughter. With my friends, it’s always felt… surface level. Like, if someone has a bad breakup, I’m the one they call for a good night out on the town. Or if we’re at a party and it’s dull, I’m the one they look to. I’m the one they expect to jump up and dance on the bar or challenge someone to a drinking game. And don’t get me wrong,” she said quickly. “I love to be that person. It feels natural to me. I enjoy being the life of the party. I just…”
She took a breath, fidgeting with her hands.
“Somewhere along the way, that’s what I became to everyone I loved. I was the one they went to when they wanted to feel better.” Her face crumpled. “But because I was always okay, because I was always happy… no one ever checked in on me.”
I swallowed the knot in my throat, pulling her to me again.
“I sound like such a brat.”
“No,” I said, pulling back so I could look her in the eyes. “You’re not a brat because you want someone to ask you how you are, Grace. And because I can feel it in how stiff you are right now, I’ll also tell you that it doesn’t make you selfish, either.” I took a breath, framing her face. “You are allowed to be sad. You’re allowed to not be okay. And you’re damn sure allowed to wish for someone to notice when you’re not.”
She nodded, eyes watering again. “I think sometimes I’m just a joke to them. Cute little Grace, always getting into something. I’m always on the go, always dating someone new and then heartbroken a week later. But the truth is…” She sucked in a breath like she just realized the truth she was speaking of, and it killed her. “The truth is I’m always on the go because I don’t feel like I have a safe place to land.”
I closed my eyes, suppressing a curse as my heart cracked at her admission.
Then, I tilted her chin, and I made sure she was looking at me when I said, “You always have a safe place to land with me.”
Her eyes flicked between mine, and then she crushed me in a hug, her arms winding around my neck as she buried her face in mine. I held her tight, letting her feel it, feel me.
After a while, she pulled back, and the tears seemed to be drying out. She let out a long sigh. “That actually felt good.”
“Told you so.”
She chuckled. “I love traveling, by the way,” she said. “I don’t want you to think I don’t.”
“You can love traveling and still want a place to call home.”
Her lips curled, and she didn’t have to say another word for me to hear her. She felt seen. She felt understood.
I knew, because I felt the same way.
“Give me your phone,” I said.
She handed it to me, wiping her nose with the back of her hand as I turned on the camera and faced it toward us.
“Today, Grace Tanev cried,” I said, looking at her as she let a laugh bubble up. She swatted my chest, but then leaned into me, looking up at the camera. “And it was the most beautiful thing,” I added.
I kissed her temple, and she tilted her chin up at me.
“Tell me something good,” she prompted — just like always.
A million things crossed my mind, but every single one of them felt too heavy. So, I sighed, pulling her under my arm as I pretended to think.
“Oh, I don’t know… that blowjob last night was pretty fucking great.”
She elbowed me, earning her a puff of a laugh as I cut the video. She tucked her phone away again and then wrapped her arms around my neck.
“Thank you,” I said, squeezing her leg. “For sharing all that with me.”
“Thanks for listening.”
“And see? It didn’t pull you under, you’re not a depressed dark cloud roaming the Earth.”
She laughed.
“Everyone gets sad sometimes,” I said, knuckling her chin.
“It’s nice when you don’t have to do it alone.”
I nodded.
And then my stomach twisted into the most awful knot.
I knew, right then, on that craggy shoreline in fucking Kansas, that I didn’t want her to ever have to do anything alone again. That I didn’t want to be alone.
That I wanted her — not just for the fucking summer, and not in secret.
I also realized I couldn’t have what I wanted.
It was like I was the moon wishing to be the sun.
It wasn’t just us that we had to think about. It was her brother, my teammate — my team. It was the fact that I was eight years older and in a literal contract that kept me in one city for the foreseeable future, and she was young and hungry and ready to see the world.
I could see the same thoughts tracking through Grace’s mind as we stared at each other.
We didn’t fit. We didn’t work.
Except right here, right now, in this eclipse of time.
“Take me to the tent, Jax,” she said, curling her fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck.
So I did.
I laid her down and stripped her bare, sinking inside her on a longing sigh we both released in sync.
We knew what we were, and what we were not, and what we could never be.
We understood the risk we took with our hearts, and yet we did it anyway.
One day, we’d have to walk away from each other. One day, we’d have to say goodbye.
But that day wasn’t today.
And we were going to make the most of every second we did have.
That was a promise we both could keep.
