I take a deep breath. “Being with you helps. But I’m scared. Everything changes in six months. Who knows where we’ll be. Not anywhere near each other. I want you. I want this. But how do we do that when we are who we are?”
I’m shaking when I look over at him. There’s pressure building behind my eyes and a weight in my throat. It’s so cold I can barely take it anymore, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. Dorian wanted the four of us to have lunch together to celebrate making it to our second semester. It’s gotta be close to that time now. How do I resolve this before we have to leave?
“Hey.” Cauler raises a hand to my face, letting it hover near my jaw, not quite touching. He waits for me to look him in the eye. “Can I?”
I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
He traces his cold fingers along my jawline, pushes them into the hair at the nape of my neck, and pulls me against his chest. I melt into him, wrap my arms around his waist and squeeze him tight.
“I don’t wanna be just another one of your former teammates,” he says into my hair. “I wanna be able to call you after your games and make fun of the faces you made on the bench or freak out about a sick play you made, and I want you to call and ask about mine and I want to wake up to texts from you. I want to be the one you call when you’re having a rough time.”
“You’ll have to take that one up with Nova,” I mutter into his chest.
“I’m not opposed to group video chats.”
I huff out a laugh. Cauler loosens his hold on me and pulls back enough for us to look at each other again. He keeps his hands on my shoulders.
“I want this, too,” he says. “And I know it’s gonna be hard, maybe even impossible, but I want to see where we can take it. There’s, like, eight teams within a five-hour drive of here, maybe we’ll get lucky and you’ll get drafted by one of them. We could see each other sometimes, at least. What do you think?”
He goes quiet, waiting for me to say something.
God, this feels almost exactly like Dad asking me if I want to play hockey. There’s way too much to think about before I can decide on something like that.
Cauler’s right. It is going to be damn near impossible, having any kind of relationship with him going forward. Especially when we’re both in the NHL. But it’ll be completely impossible if we don’t try at all.
Even if it only lasts through June, at least it’s something.
“Okay,” I say. I wipe my nose on the back of my hand and he doesn’t even flinch. “Yeah. Let’s try it.”
He smiles, so soft and beautiful it makes my heart stop for a second or two. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me like that before. If he keeps doing it, this might be easier than I thought.
“Then let’s do this right,” he says. He steps back enough to hold my hands between us. He lifts one up to brush his lips against my knuckles. My knees feel weak. “Mickey Liam James III. Will you be my boyfriend?”
I’m shaking, and I doubt it’s just from the cold. “Yeah,” I say, pulling him back to me, rising on my tiptoes to kiss him. Campus is empty. I’m with my favorite person, in my favorite spot at Hartland, kissing as snow starts to fall around us.
This was never how I thought college would go for me. But I wouldn’t dare complain.
Cauler breaks our kiss to hug me again, holding me tight until I say, “Alright, can we please go in before my balls freeze off?”
Cauler laughs. I smile.
We walk back to campus to meet Dorian and Barbie with our hands held between us. It feels so nice, I barely notice how cold our fingers are.
EPILOGUE
JUNE
I twirl my NCAA championship ring around my finger and stand on my toes to see through the crowd. It’s hopeless. I’m surrounded by giant-ass hockey players and their mostly equally giant-ass families, and I can’t see anything.
“You sure he’s here?” Nicolette asks.
“He texted me like five minutes ago saying his bus was pulling in,” I say.
Mom pulls on my tie, fixing the knot for the hundredth time in the half hour I’ve had it on. “Relax, topolino. This isn’t the last time you’ll see Jaysen.”
It sure feels like it.
“He probably got an interview request,” Dad says, smiling as a man approaches to give him a handshake and then me. I’ve already shaken hands with so many people I don’t know today and the draft hasn’t even started.
“Mikayla’s on the phone,” Madison says. “She says Jordan’s had the hiccups for half an hour and she doesn’t know what to do.”
“Burp her,” Mom suggests as she fixes my hair that looks fine as it is. “Or make her laugh. Don’t let her eat so fast.”
Delilah searches the crowd like me, but she’s got the height advantage. “Where’s this Alex Nakamoto guy? I want some words with him.”
“Leave the poor kid alone,” Bailey says. “Not his fault he had a popularity surge.”
“Um, yes it is?”
I need to sit down.
“Excuse me, Mr. James?” We all look over as a man with an all-access lanyard steps up to us, eyes on me. “NHL Network wants a word with you.”
“Sure.” I follow him off to the side, where another guy’s being interviewed by TSN a few feet away from Hugh and Alyssa. I’m kinda prepared for them, at least. During the Combine, Cauler and I tried to come up with a bunch of questions we figured they’d ask us and planned out our answers.
I stand with them in front of a backdrop with the NHL Network logo blown up in the center and share a few laughs about the criticism they had for me throughout the season before Alyssa says, “There’s been a lot of talk about your improvement with the Royals, mostly where it came from. Last summer most of the talk was that you’d hit your amateur peak and the only way for you to improve would be to play at a higher level. Where do you think it came from?”
I told myself I would be completely honest if they asked me something like this. I’ve been practicing my answer in my head for weeks. But now that it’s finally time to say it, it takes all my power to keep my voice from shaking.
“Well, a lot of it has to do with the guys I shared ice with,” I start. “It’s hard to be on a line with Luca Cicero and Jaysen Caulfield and stay stagnant as a player. They’d never let that happen, they’re all about continuous improvement. And then just the Royals as a whole, they’re such an amazing group of guys. I got along with them off the ice great, which makes it a lot easier to mesh well on the ice.” I swallow against the nervous lump in my throat. My voice is just a little strained when I add, “But I think the biggest factor was me getting a handle on my own mental health. I was diagnosed with clinical depression, and once I got on medication and started seeing a therapist, I was able to put so much more energy and passion into hockey. I was able to start liking it again, not just seeing it as something I had to do.”
Over the cameraman’s shoulder, I see Dad smiling crookedly. Mom with her hands clasped in front of her mouth, but her smile still present in her eyes. My sisters, minus Mikayla, watching on with pride.
To their credit, Hugh and Alyssa only look mildly surprised. “What would you say to other players going through similar circumstances?” Hugh asks.
“Honestly, don’t be ashamed. A lot more people deal with it than you think, and the best way to cope is to acknowledge it and ask for help. Don’t suffer alone.”
They move on to more hockey questions, my performance in the Combine, and then another big one. “This is probably one of the more unpredictable drafts we’ve had in recent memory,” Alyssa says. “Most analysts are sure the order of the top three is going to ride on what you intend to do next season. After you won an NCAA Championship with the Royals, there was a lot of speculation on if you’d choose to stick it out in college for another few years. What’s the plan?”