Page 19 of Cold Comeback (Richmond Reapers #1)

Chapter thirteen

Thatcher

T he team bus rolled toward Norfolk through late afternoon light, but our usual road trip energy was muted. Guys dozed against windows or scrolled through phones. Even Pluto's legendary pre-game chatter had died down to murmurs about line combinations and whether the hotel would have decent coffee.

The driver's radio crackled, and Grimmy's voice burst through, loud enough to make half the team jump: "Don't touch my skull!"

A ripple of laughter moved through the rows, then faded just as quickly. The quiet that followed felt heavier. Even Grimmy couldn't keep the mood afloat this time.

I sat three rows back from the coaching staff, watching Gideon's profile when he turned to answer Coach's questions.

He was worn thin—dark circles under his eyes and tension in his shoulders.

But something had shifted since that collapse in Norfolk.

He wasn't battling himself anymore—only carrying the wreckage on his shoulders.

"Room assignments." Wren appeared in the aisle with her clipboard. "Sawyer, Drake—412. Leadership continuity."

About as subtle as a bench-clearing brawl. Half the team turned to stare. Knox caught my eye and gave me the slightest nod, like he wanted to say, "About time."

"Leadership continuity?" Linc whispered. "Is that what we're calling it?"

Pluto elbowed him. "Shut up."

The bus quieted again, with the steady sound of rubber on the road filling the silence. Then, from the back, Bricks started humming. Low, rough-edged, but recognizable.

"Shenandoah."

My grandmother sang it while she cooked, her voice softer but no less steady.

I could almost smell the cornbread she always had in the oven and hear the wooden spoon tapping the side of a mixing bowl.

I hadn't thought about it in years, and now here it was, spilling through a dimly lit team bus headed toward Norfolk.

The guys were still, letting the melody linger. No jokes. No shoving. A sudden, unplanned quiet.

I glanced across the aisle. Knox had his head tipped back, eyes closed. Even Linc wasn't smirking.

And the sound wrapped around us when Gideon turned to look at me. Not performance or banter. Just being.

My phone felt heavy in my pocket. It held Gideon's text from two nights ago: wish you were here . Four words that had rewired something in my brain and kept me staring at the ceiling until dawn.

Now, we'd be sharing a room again—only the two of us and whatever conversation we'd been circling for weeks.

He glanced back again during the ride, meeting my eyes for half a second before turning away. Not avoidance this time—more like he was gathering himself for something.

The hotel elevator moved with all the urgency of a glacier, numbers crawling upward. The hotel was standard road trip accommodations: beige everything and industrial carpet.

"She's not subtle," I said, because someone had to acknowledge what the entire team already knew.

"No." He watched the elevator numbers change. "But maybe we're past subtle."

Room 412 sat at the end of the hallway, tucked away from the rest of the team. Wren had obviously planned that way.

It was smaller than our last shared room, if that were possible. Two beds with maybe three feet between them, a desk that had seen better decades, and a bathroom I'd need to navigate sideways. The heating unit under the window wheezed like it was on life support.

We moved around each other carefully. The space forced us together, but it was different now; it was less like avoiding contact and more like nervous energy before something significant happened.

I pulled out tomorrow's game clothes and folded them. Gideon sat on his bed, no longer pretending to organize anything. Waiting.

"So." I couldn't take the silence anymore. "Your text."

He looked up. "I meant it."

It sounded like a confession.

I sat across from him, our knees almost touching in the narrow space. "What brought that on?"

He dragged both hands through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. "That disaster against Norfolk. I kept second-guessing every instinct, worried about what it meant to support and trust you..." He trailed off.

"To what?"

"To let myself want this. Want you. In front of everyone." His voice stayed steady despite the admission. "I kept thinking about Jordan Mitchell and how he tried to hold onto something in secret. Maybe the secret is what killed it, not the wanting."

The reference to my cursed room's hidden shrine hit hard. Jordan, carving initials into rubber and hiding love behind a baseboard like contraband.

"You think that's what happened to him?"

"I think he spent so much energy hiding what he felt that he forgot to actually feel it." Gideon leaned forward. "I did the same thing once. With someone who mattered."

I waited.

"College. My teammate, David." He stared at his hands. "We played together for three years, roomed together for two. Somewhere in there, it became something more."

"What happened?"

"He wanted to build something real. I wanted to protect my draft prospects.

" The bitterness in his voice revealed buried pain.

"He asked me to spend Christmas with his family.

Said his parents wanted to meet me. And I.

.." Gideon shook his head. "I asked what people would think if they saw us together outside hockey. "

"Fuck."

"He looked at me like I'd hit him. Said, 'You're not protecting your career, you're hiding from your life.'" No humor in his laugh. "Then he transferred schools. I've spent eight years proving him right."

Raw pain threaded through his words. I wanted to reach for him, but something in his posture made me wait.

Instead, I said, "That's why you keep running. From me and from everything that matters."

"Yeah. The minute you want something, it owns you. And then it breaks you."

I turned his words over, testing their weight.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Has your family been supportive? Through all this?" I gestured vaguely at everything—Richmond, us, the conversation we were finally having.

His eyebrows rose. "Have yours?"

My laugh came out sharp. "My dad calls Richmond' the situation.' Like it's a temporary embarrassment I'm inflicting on the family reputation."

"What do you mean?"

"He called after I got here. Wanted to make sure this wasn't permanent." I could still hear the controlled disappointment in his voice. "Told me happiness is for people who've earned it. And that I haven't. Not yet."

"He said that?"

"Word for word. Then he started talking about putting me in touch with people who matter and getting back to real hockey." I picked at the bedspread. "I tried to tell him this was real, that the guys here were good people, and maybe I was already happy for the first time in years."

"And?"

"He said I was settling for less than my potential."

The words had been poison rattling around in my head. Out loud, they landed with twice the weight.

"That wasn't the worst part. He never called after the viral moment—radio silence for months. Then, suddenly, he's worried Richmond might stick, and that's when he checks in. Not because he cared if I was okay. Because he cared about damage control."

"Fuck, Thatcher."

"Sitting in Dot's afterward, watching the guys just live their lives—Pluto with his coupons, Knox solving the world's problems one complaint at a time—I realized Dad's never going to think I've earned enough.

There's no finish line with him." I looked up.

"I've been performing for someone who was never watching.

He only shows up when he's disappointed. "

Silence stretched between us, filled only by the heating unit's mechanical breathing.

Gideon finally spoke. "We're both pretty fucked up, aren't we?"

"Spectacularly."

"I can't even want coffee without worrying it'll ruin me."

"At least you want things. I just... perform until someone claps." I picked at the bedspread. "But Bricks didn't need me to earn helping him, you know? It just was."

Gideon added, "But the guys here don't need me to earn anything. They just let me exist."

I thought about Knox defending me to reporters, and Pluto automatically including me in his coupon conspiracy.

"I keep thinking about that night with Bricks," Gideon said. "You chose to help him because you wanted to, not because it would benefit you."

"So?"

"Maybe that's it. Choice. Staying. Choosing you. Choosing happy. No permission slip required."

The words resonated with me. "I've been trying to earn everything—Dad's approval, hockey success, the right to be happy. But you can't earn those things."

"No?"

"The team didn't make me audition to belong. You didn't make me prove I deserved that first kiss." I gazed at him. "You just wanted me. And I wanted you. No transaction required."

He stood slowly and crossed to my bed, sitting close. "I don't know how to do this without fear of losing it."

"Then we'll be terrified together."

He reached for my hand tentatively, fingers brushing mine before intertwining. His palms were warm, rough with hockey calluses.

"I see you," he said quietly.

"I see you, too."

The kiss started tentatively, like we were testing the edges of something fragile. His lips brushed mine once, then lingered, patient instead of demanding. His heat seeped into me in slow increments, as if he wanted me to notice every shift, every breath.

When I leaned in and parted my lips for him, his tongue touched mine—slow, tasting—and he made a sound low in his throat that went straight through me, half groan, half surrender.

My pulse kicked hard, but neither of us rushed.

We let the kiss grow by degrees, building like we had all night to burn.

It wasn't the desperate urgency of storage closets or clumsy stolen moments. This was different—deliberate, reverent. Every brush of his thumb across my cheekbone felt like a vow he hadn't yet said out loud.

We tipped sideways onto the narrow bed, still fully dressed, but tangled close. My fingers traced his jaw and the scar at his chin I'd wondered about since day one. He tugged at my hair, coaxing a sound out of me I'd never make on the ice.

"Thatcher," he breathed against my mouth.

I shifted, and my hand slid lower, landing at the small of his back. He went rigid.

"Sorry," I murmured, starting to pull away.

"No, it's—" He caught my wrist, holding me there. He lowered his voice. "It's just…"

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he rolled onto his stomach and tugged his shirt up to his shoulders.

"Here."

At first, I didn't understand. Then, the light from the parking lot caught the skin differently, and I realized what I was looking at. A constellation of surgical scars, faded to thin white lines, scattered across his lower back like someone had tried to put him back together with careful stitches.

"Jesus, Gideon."

"Juniors," he muttered into the pillow. "Bad check into the boards. Compression fracture. Two herniated discs. They told me I'd never play again."

I let my fingertip trace one of the longer lines, feather-light. He shivered beneath me.

"Does it still hurt?"

"Some mornings I can barely stand. Good days, it's just a dull ache." He turned his head, eyes catching mine. "Trainers don't know. The team doctor doesn't know. You're the first person I've let touch it in eight years."

The weight of that trust landed hard. I spread my palm flat against the scars, feeling his heat and the steady rhythm of his breathing.

"Why now?" I whispered.

"Because hiding it is exhausting. Because you're looking at me like—" He swallowed. "Like it doesn't change anything."

"It doesn't."

"It should. I'm held together with screws and stubbornness, Thatcher. Some days I take enough ibuprofen to kill a horse just to get through practice."

I bent and pressed my lips to the scar, soft as a prayer. He made a sound that was part groan and part sob.

"Don't," he whispered, but his body arched toward me.

"Why not?"

"Because if you keep doing that, I'm going to come apart."

"Maybe that's not the worst thing," I said. "Maybe coming apart is another way of letting someone hold you together."

"Thatcher," he breathed against my mouth.

"Yeah?"

"I can't promise I won't get scared again."

"I can't promise I won't need you to choose me over and over."

"Then that's what we'll do." He pulled back enough to look at me. "Choose each other every day until it gets easier."

"No more hiding?"

"No more hiding. No more performing for approval we'll never get."

We stayed tangled together until he eventually shifted back to his bed, though he left the space between us smaller than before. We talked as darkness settled—tomorrow's game, line combinations, whether Coach would start Bricks or a veteran.

Standard team stuff, but underneath, something fundamental had changed.

"Thatcher?"

"Yeah?"

"Tomorrow, when we play—I want to trust you completely. No hesitation."

"Good. I want to be trusted."

I let my eyes drift shut, following the rhythm of Gideon's breathing until it steadied mine. We'd both been hiding, both been chasing ghosts. But now it was simple: one choice, over and over. Him. Us.