Page 132 of Secrets on Ice

Ember: I know I was worried, but now I feel better after speaking to you.

Sully: Me too.

Ember: Night.

Sully: Night.

I lie there in the dark with the ice melting on my hand, my face on fire, and a stupid feeling in my chest.

And that's how it starts. This away trip, we start talking regularly, memes are sent, and then she shows me a photo from her run club around Central Park, it’s sunlight coming through the oak trees. Then images of the office and her day, and I send her photos of Bouch asleep on the plane, training, and photos of whatever city we are in.

As the games progress, so do we through our texts. We talk all the time about anything and everything, and I enjoy the companionship.

Two weeks.

That's how long the trip is. It's the longest stretch of the season, and it's brutal. Six cities, back-to-back. We win some, we lose some, we claw a couple back in the third that we had no business winning. And every night, wherever I am, my phone goes. By the end of it, I'm not even pretending anymore, not to myself. I stop going out with the boys. I go back to the room, and I call her, and we talk until one of us falls asleep. It's the best part of every single day. The last leg home, I sit on the plane and watch the city come up out of the dark, and I feel it in my chest, that pull, and it isn't the apartment I'm thinking about, or my own bed, or a decent shower.

It's her.

I grab a cab from the arena and head home. I'm tired, looking forward to a shower and getting into my own bed after two weeks of hotels. I get out of the elevator and tap my card against the keypad, and I’m let into my apartment.

She's there as soon as I open the door. She comes around the corner from the kitchen the second she hears the door, and when she sees me, her whole face changes, this smile breaking across it. She crosses the room and wraps her arms around my neck before I've even got my bag off my shoulder.

“You're home,” she says into my neck.

I drop the bag, and I get both arms around her and hold on.

“Yeah, I'm home.” The air between us crackles, and I’m seconds away from leaning forward and kissing her, but then I still. “Um, where’s Cass?” I ask her.

“She’s on a date.”

My brows rise high. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she says, disentangling herself. “You must be beat. Did you want to go have a shower while I prepare some dinner for you?”

“Have you eaten?” I ask.

“Yeah, earlier, but I’m happy to warm up some leftovers. I attempted a stew the other night, it’s okay,” she explains.

“Sounds good,” I tell her.

I shower off two weeks of planes and hotels and come out to the smell of something warm. She's got a bowl on the counter, and a beer open next to it. She did this for me. I haven’t had anyone look after me when I get home as I’ve always lived by myself.

We take it to the couch, and I dig in. The stew is actually good, better than she's letting on, and I tell her so. She waves me off, and I eat two bowls of it. We fall into an easy rhythm chatting. I sit there with an empty bowl and listen to what she is chatting about, and I don't want it to be over. That's the thing. I've been up since five, I've played a game, I've flown across the country, and the last thing I want is for her to say she's going to bed because I like this domestic bliss I have walked into. But eventually she yawns, and then she catches me watching her, and something shifts in the air. She stands up quickly and takes my bowl to the kitchen.

“You must be exhausted, and here I am chatting away. I’ll clean up,” she tells me.

“Thanks,” I mumble, disappointed because I was kind of hoping she would rip my clothes off as soon as I walked in the door. “Night.”

I walk away.

“Night,” she calls out.

I crash onto my bed, and it feels divine after all those nights in hotel beds. It's comfortable, it’s mine, and it's quiet, and I lie there wide awake. I can hear her, not loudly, just the small sounds of her walking around down the hall, a tap, a door, the creak of her getting into bed. I lie in the dark listening to it, wondering what she is thinking, and I know I'm not sleeping.

I last fifteen minutes, pathetic really. I just don't want to be in this room when she's in that one. I'm up and out my door and head down the hall, my heart thumping wildly in my chest. I stop outside her door feeling like a desperate idiot, and it’s honestly not about sex, but I don’t know what it is.

I knock, so quietly it barely counts.