Page 16

Chapter sixteen

Noah

T he cabin's wooden bones creaked under winter's pressure, settling sounds that rippled through the predawn darkness. I woke to the weight of Micah's arm slung across my chest—heavy and signifying half-ownership and half-protection. Outside, snow had fallen again during the night, blanketing the world in a profound hush.

I watched Micah sleep, taking in details I'd never seen before. The permanent crease between his eyebrows had smoothed away. His jaw hung slack, no longer braced against invisible blows. His stubble had grown thicker, salt-and-pepper at the temples—a detail the harsh stadium lights never revealed.

In sleep, the enforcer vanished, leaving behind someone I barely recognized. Someone without armor.

This thing between us wasn't merely an obsession anymore. It was something quieter now. It was something that might thrive in the daylight.

I eased myself from beneath his arm, careful not to disturb the quiet. His fingers twitched, seeking warmth as I slipped away, but he didn't wake. The floorboards whispered beneath my feet as I navigated the narrow path to the kitchen.

The coffee tin was nearly empty, the last grounds clinging to the bottom corners. I scraped together enough for a pot. Water gurgled through the ancient machine, its rhythm matching the pulse in my veins.

Something shifted in the atmosphere—not a sound or a sight. It was more like a change in air pressure.

I poured a mug and cupped it between my palms, absorbing heat into my hands. The coffee tasted bitter. Grounds had slipped past the filter to coat my tongue. I swallowed anyway.

Beyond the windows, the forest watched over us, each branch weighed down with fresh snow. Perfect, pristine. Undisturbed.

It wouldn't last. Nothing that perfect ever did.

Heavy footsteps announced Micah's approach before he appeared. He entered the kitchen with a towel draped around his neck, hair damp and skin flushed from washing up. Beads of water clung to his shoulders, darkening his thermal shirt in uneven patches.

"Made you coffee." I handed him a mug.

He grunted his thanks, a sound I'd learned to interpret as gratitude. Our fingers brushed during the exchange. We moved around each other with the unconscious choreography of bodies growing accustomed to sharing space.

Micah reached for the sugar while I stepped aside to let him pass. I popped up two slices of toast while he retrieved the butter from the counter. No collisions.

He settled at the kitchen table and reached for his laptop—a beast of a machine, scarred and stickered, its once-silver surface dulled to gunmetal gray. He hadn't touched it since I'd arrived. He kept it hidden in a drawer like a piece of the outside world he didn't want to face.

"Just checking whether the power's still on," he muttered, more to himself than to me.

The laptop whirred to life, the screen bathing his face in ghostly blue. I watched him, pretending to focus on my coffee while monitoring the subtle changes in his expression. His inbox populated with messages—hundreds, probably—but his eyes fixed on one.

The quiet that followed wasn't peaceful.

Micah's face drained of color.

"What is it?" I asked, though I already could make a strong educated guess

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "They want me to explain myself."

I moved around the table, ignoring any boundaries. The email filled the center of the screen: "DISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE REINSTATEMENT HEARING - ATTENDANCE REQUIRED." It was on official NHL letterhead.

I read the cold, professional words. Phrases like "conduct hearing," "clarification of intent," and "future eligibility" spilled across the screen.

They'd scheduled the hearing for next week.

"Fuck." The word escaped Micah as an exhale rather than a curse. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, trembling slightly before curling into a fist.

Outside, a branch surrendered to the weight of snow, cracking and falling somewhere in the forest. The sound emphasized the isolation that had sheltered us until now.

The world had found us. Or perhaps it had never lost track of us at all.

Micah's shoulders drew inward, contracting like a wound stitching itself closed. I watched the transformation with trepidation. The enforcer returned. The new version of Micah I'd glimpsed earlier receded behind familiar barricades. His fingers moved to close the laptop but paused, hovering over the keyboard as if he could somehow delete the message and its implications.

I settled into the chair across from him, deliberately keeping my movements slow and non-threatening. "You don't owe them anything." My voice was firm.

"It's not optional. It's a summons."

"I know, but what they're looking for—remorse, explanations, promises—you don't owe them that."

The coffee in my mug had gone cold, forgotten. Outside, the sun had breached the treeline, casting long shadows across the virgin snow. Light spilled through the kitchen window.

"What exactly am I supposed to tell them?" Micah's voice was rough around the edges. He pushed back from the table, the chair legs scraping against worn floorboards. "Sorry, I nearly paralyzed the rookie? Sorry, I lost control? Sorry, I can't remember what I was thinking in that split second because all I saw was—"

He cut himself off. His fist came down on the table hard enough to make our mugs jump, coffee sloshing over the rims.

I waited for the vibrations to settle, both in the coffee and in him. When I spoke again, it was in a softer tone. "If you don't face them, part of you stays frozen here."

His eyes met mine. For a moment, he appeared lost. I didn't see anger or defiance. I saw the confusion of a man confronted with the consequences of a moment he couldn't take back.

"What if I fuck it up?"

The naked vulnerability stunned me. It wasn't the voice of Micah Keller, the infamous enforcer known for ruthlessness on the ice. It was merely a man afraid of failing at something that mattered.

I leaned forward, arms braced on the table. "Then I'll be there when it hits."

Something shifted in his expression, perhaps a ghost of hope.

"Why?" It was so many questions wrapped into one word. Why would I stand by him? Why would I support the man who'd broken me? Why would I put myself through the spectacle of a hearing when I could be rebuilding my career far from the forests of northern Michigan?

I didn't have a simple answer, but I voiced my truth.

"Because that's what we're doing now. We're standing in the impact zone together."

He studied my face, searching for the lie, angle, or hidden agenda. I waited and kept my expression open, hiding nothing.

Finally, he nodded—a barely perceptible dip of his chin that acknowledged what I'd offered.

"I need air," he said abruptly, pushing back from the table. The chair teetered for a moment before righting itself.

I watched him grab his coat from the hook by the door. He let in a blast of frigid air that stung my cheeks, followed by a slam that rattled the windows.

Through the frost-edged glass, I watched his broad form trudge through knee-deep snow toward the woodpile. He didn't look back.

Micah returned in the early afternoon, his skin wind-chapped and raw, exhaustion etched into the hollows beneath his eyes. He'd been out for hours, and we now had a woodpile stacked high enough to survive the apocalypse. He stood in the doorway, shedding snow from his boots, his breath coming in shallow bursts that clouded the air between us.

The fire I'd built cast the cabin in amber light. I'd spent the hours waiting, alternating between pacing and stillness, rehearsing words that dissolved on my tongue before I could speak them.

He moved past me and headed for the shower. I gave him his space. Time stretched, and the pipes rattled as water flowed, then stopped. More silence.

When he emerged, his hair was damp, and his skin flushed. He wore clean clothes—soft flannel pants and a thermal shirt worn thin at the elbows. He sank onto the couch, spine rigid, eyes fixed on the dancing flames.

I approached slowly, not wanting to startle him. The floorboards announced my presence with characteristic creaks and sighs. He didn't turn, but a muscle in his jaw tightened, acknowledging my approach without welcoming it.

Rather than sitting beside him, I moved behind the couch. Deliberate. Unhurried. I placed my hands on his shoulders, feeling the knots of tension beneath my palms. He stiffened but didn't shake me off.

I slid my arms around his chest from behind, a loose embrace that offered escape if he needed it. My cheek rested lightly against his back, where the damp thermal clung to his skin. His heartbeat thundered beneath my ear.

"Don't," he whispered, but his hands remained at his sides. He didn't pull away.

I stayed where I was, breathing him in—soap and pine. Heat radiated from his skin through the thin fabric, warming my forearms where they crossed his chest.

He trembled for a moment.

I rubbed his chest. "I'm not asking for anything. Only this."

His body went rigid beneath my touch, muscles coiled so tight I feared they might snap. I started to pull back, giving him space, but his hands caught mine, keeping them in place.

His voice was raw as he spoke. "I can throw someone against a wall. I can pin you. But lying still? Feeling you breathe?" He exhaled shakily. "I don't know how to do that."

A heartbeat passed.

"I worry that I'll fall apart."

His confession cut deeply. It wasn't unexpected, but hearing it out loud turned my guess into reality.

I pressed closer, tightening my arms around him. "Then fall." My lips brushed the nape of his neck. "I'm right here."

The fire popped, sending out a shower of sparks. Outside, darkness began to claim the forest, pressing against the windows like a living thing seeking entry.

I held Micah, steady and sure, while the clock on the mantel ticked away seconds that stretched into minutes. I didn't speak again. There was nothing to say that my body couldn't express more clearly.

I wasn't leaving. Not when the league came for him and not when the world expected me to hate him.

A seismic shift happened beneath my hands—imperceptible at first, then unmistakable. Micah's shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. The coiled tension in his spine unspooled one vertebra at a time. He leaned back, not all at once, but in increments so small I might have missed them if I hadn't been pressed against him.

He was falling. Defenses built over decades were collapsing.

A low exhale shuddered through him. Then another, less ragged than the first.

I tightened my hold, molding myself to the contours of his back, my cheek still pressed between his shoulder blades. His heartbeat slowed, no longer beating at the frantic pace of trapped prey.

I whispered into the fabric of his shirt. "You don't have to be steel all the time."

He didn't respond verbally, but his fingers curled around mine where they rested against his chest. The calluses on his palm rasped against my knuckles.

We stayed like that, suspended in amber light, while the fire burned lower. The simple act of breathing together became a conversation more honest than any we could have with words. Inhale. Exhale. The rise and fall of his chest beneath my arms told me everything his voice couldn't.

Micah's head tipped back, coming to rest against my shoulder. His weight was substantial and real—a deliberate surrender of control I didn't take lightly. His eyes remained closed, dark lashes casting shadows against his cheeks in the firelight.

He didn't say thank you. He didn't need to. Letting me hold him was more than that—it was trust distilled to its purest form, offered without reservation for perhaps the first time since I'd arrived.

Tomorrow would come with its own challenges. The hearing loomed, ready to drag us back into a world that demanded explanations, apologies, and performances of remorse. The bubble we'd constructed in the woods would rupture, exposing us to the kind of scrutiny neither of us was prepared for.

Still, tonight, we'd found something neither of us had been looking for. It wasn't resolution yet—the ragged edges of our wounds were still too raw for that. It was the shape of something new forming from the broken pieces we'd brought to each other.

I pressed my lips to the nape of his neck, not quite a kiss—more an acknowledgment.

His fingers tightened around mine, and I felt rather than heard his response: I know .

The fire crackled low, nearly spent. Neither of us moved to feed it.

We had found enough warmth in each other to last until morning.