Page 14 of Cold Comeback (Richmond Reapers #1)

I passed it over, our fingers brushing in the exchange. The contact sent the usual jolt up my arm, made worse by the quiet intimacy of working together in my private space.

The baseboard came away easily, revealing a gap behind the wall that was bigger than it should be. Cold air poured through, sharp enough to raise goosebumps.

"That doesn't look right." I leaned forward and peered into the darkness.

Gideon reached into the space, feeling around for the pipe connection, and he blinked. "There's something in here."

He pulled out a small bundle wrapped in what looked like an old hockey sock, tied with a shoelace. The fabric was faded team colors—red and black that had probably once been bright.

"What is it?"

"Not sure." He handed it to me. "Your cursed room, your discovery."

I untied the shoelace carefully. It was stiff with age. The sock fell away to reveal three items: a puck, a ticket stub, and a small team photo.

The puck caught my attention first. Someone had taken the time to carve initials into the rubber—"J.M. + G.S."—surrounded by a rough heart. Below that, a date from three years ago and two words: "Last Game."

"Damn," I whispered.

The ticket stub was from the same date, a playoff game against Raleigh. On the back, written in faded blue ink:

Told coach I was injured. Couldn't watch you leave.

Gideon leaned closer. "What's the photo?"

I turned it over. It was a team picture, the kind they took every season. Most of the faces were unfamiliar, but someone had drawn a small, careful circle around one player in the back row. In a different ink, a different circle marked another player in the front.

"He saved this," I said, studying the faces. "Whoever J.M. was, he couldn't let go."

"G.S.," Gideon read from the puck, his voice quiet. "Those initials..."

We stared at each other. The possibility hung between us, unspoken but obvious.

"The guy who got traded," I said slowly. "The one Linc mentioned when I first moved in. Said he fell for someone completely inappropriate."

Gideon picked up the ticket stub, turning it over in his hands. "Three years ago. My first year. We made it into the playoffs."

"You remember him?"

"Maybe." He set the stub down carefully, almost reverently. "There was a guy—Jordan Mitchell—who played wing. Good hands, fast feet. Got called up to the AHL halfway through that playoff series."

"Called up—direct from Richmond?"

Gideon was quiet for a long moment. "At the time, we all thought called up. Now..." He gestured at the small shrine of hockey memorabilia. "Maybe it was more complicated."

I turned the puck over in my palm. The carved heart felt rough under my thumb, worn smooth in places like someone had touched it often.

"Fuck," I said. "Can you imagine? Carrying all of this around and never being able to tell anyone? Having to watch the person you—" I stopped, the words catching in my throat.

"Having to pretend it didn't matter when they got sent away," Gideon finished quietly.

The weight of recognition settled between us. It wasn't some random former tenant's abandoned belongings. It was proof that the thing growing between us—the careful glances, the lingering touches, and how we orbited each other—wasn't new to these walls.

I tossed the puck up once and caught it. "He carved the initials into a game puck. That's... that's not something you do lightly."

"No," Gideon agreed. "It's not."

We eased the baseboard back and bled the valve for good measure. The radiator coughed up a thread of warmth before turning stubborn again.

"I'll bring the wrench set tomorrow," Gideon said. "Extra quilt tonight."

When we returned to the living room, they'd landed on The Shining as the compromise. My teammates packed the living room.

Pluto had claimed the recliner with his infamous hot sauce popcorn. Bricks wedged himself into the corner of the couch, already jumpy during the opening credits. Knox sprawled on the floor with a pillow, muttering commentary that was funnier than the actual movie.

Linc and I shared the main couch, with enough room for one more person if they didn't mind being cozy.

When Gideon appeared in the doorway, scanning the room for available seating, Linc immediately scooted closer to me. "Cap, there's room here."

Gideon hesitated. At that moment, I saw him weighing the optics—sitting against me in front of the entire team versus finding somewhere else to watch.

"Unless you want to sit on the floor with Knox," I said. "He's been saving those complaints about property taxes for a special occasion."

"I heard that."

Gideon settled onto the couch beside me, close enough that our thighs touched. He sat carefully at first, maintaining a perfect posture, as if he were attending a team meeting instead of watching a horror movie.

As the movie progressed and Jack Torrance slowly descended into madness while the Overlook Hotel revealed its secrets, Gideon relaxed. His shoulder rested against mine, and his breathing slowed.

Somewhere around the moment Danny discovered REDRUM written on the bathroom door, I realized Gideon had fallen asleep.

His head had tilted sideways. His face was relaxed in sleep, free of the tense control he wore like armor during waking hours.

I sat very still, afraid to move and break whatever spell had allowed him to trust me this completely.

A sudden flash lit the room. Grimmy stood in the doorway in full mascot gear, with a Polaroid camera in hand.

"Don't mind me," he stage-whispered, holding the photo like he was documenting evidence.

"Seriously?" I hissed.

"For the archives." He tucked the photo under his arm.

Linc's hand shot out. "Archives means Bone Yard, not Instagram." Grimmy saluted before vanishing back toward the kitchen.

Around us, my teammates provided running commentary on Stanley Kubrick's cinematography and debated whether the hotel was haunted or Jack was having a psychotic break.

When I shifted slightly to ease a cramp in my leg, Linc grunted, "Don't move."

"What?"

"Don't wake Cap," Pluto whispered from the recliner. "He never relaxes like this."

Even Knox looked back from his floor position. "Kid's right. Sawyer hasn't slept properly since he put the C on his jersey."

I glanced around at my teammates, who focused on protecting Gideon's sacred rest. Nobody moved.

He trusted me enough to fall asleep against my shoulder in front of all of them. I spent the rest of the movie hyperaware of every breath he took and every slight shift of his body against mine.

Gideon stirred as the credits rolled and the guys started a post-movie debate about whether the ending was genius or pretentious. His eyes opened slowly, unfocused momentarily before awareness crept back in.

He realized where he was—where his head was resting—and sat up quickly.

"Sorry." He raked fingers through his hair. "I didn't mean to—"

I did my best to sound casual. "No problem. You only missed the part where Jack freezes to death in the maze."

"Spoilers," Knox complained.

"It's from 1980," Linc pointed out.

"Some of us have lives that don't revolve around classic cinema," Knox shot back.

While the guys submerged themselves in playful bickering, Gideon caught my eye. His expression was vulnerable, like he was waiting for me to make it weird or awkward.

I didn't.

"Thanks for the radiator help, even if we didn't actually fix anything."

"We'll figure it out tomorrow."

"Yeah. We will."

The conversation was perfectly normal and professional.

The guys headed to bed one by one, leaving Gideon and me in the living room with the remnants of movie night.

"About the hotel," Gideon said quietly.

My pulse jumped. "What about it?"

"I won't try to take it back."

All evening—hell, all week—I'd been bracing for him to decide the road trip was a mistake.

"Good," I said. "Because I'm not letting you."

He smiled and rubbed his chin. "The guy who carved that puck. What he felt?"

"Yeah?"

"He wasn't wrong."

Before I could parse all the implications of that statement and respond, he stood.

"Try to get some sleep, even if the heat's still broken," Gideon said. "Early practice tomorrow."

I watched him head upstairs as my heart hammered against my ribs. Only when I heard his door close did I allow myself to fully process what had just happened.

Gideon Sawyer, Mr. Perfect Control, had fallen asleep on my shoulder in front of our entire team.

He'd helped me discover Jordan Mitchell's hidden shrine and admitted that the guy who carved those initials "wasn't wrong.

" He'd looked me in the eye and said he wasn't taking back what happened in that hotel room.

Back in my room, I rewrapped the hockey memorabilia in the old sock and slid the bundle into my nightstand drawer. The puck's carved heart caught the lamplight before disappearing into darkness.

Tomorrow we'd figure the heat out. Tonight, I listened to the radiator wheeze and thought about courage—the kind it took to carve your feelings into something permanent, and the kind it took to trust someone enough to fall asleep in their arms.