So far, we’d said nothing about the elephant in the room. Honestly, we hadn’t had time for any of that. We’d been too busy giving interviews, reading everything the sports world was saying about us online, and watching replays of our kiss on ESPN again and again.
But eventually, we would have to talk about it. Reality could take a break but wouldn’t go aways forever.
I leaned over and kissed Kayden’s lips, which were still greasy from pizza and spicy from wings. He smiled and kissed me back. Tasting his lips and feeling his hard body against mine, I wanted to make it all worthwhile. But still, I had questions and couldn’t wait for the answers.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
He lifted an eyebrow and said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’s next? Where do we go from here?”
Then I picked up the remote and turned the TV off for the first time in what felt like days.
I made myself comfortable again, snuggling against Kayden, and draping his arm over me. I closed my eyes for a moment, soaking it all in. It felt normal again. It felt perfect. I could stay safe in his arms forever.
“We never said that we were a couple again,” I said. “I know that we’re hanging out at each other’s places, snuggling up, and kissing and everything. But we never actually said we were back together.”
“We never said we’d broken up either.”
“I know that, but…”
Kayden had a point there. We’d never broken up, but that was the reality of it, even if we hadn’t used words. On the other hand, we couldn’t share a kiss like that in front of America and not wind up back together.
Those were the rules.
“Okay,” I said, “so, we’re back together again?”
“Right. Only, this time, it’s going to be different than the first time around.”
“You’re only going to bottom?”
He laughed and shook his head. “No, it’ll be different because everyone knows. We don’t have to hide. We can just be ourselves.”
“Right. And being ourselves means we can be out on social media?”
“What does that mean?”
“Come on, Kayden, you know what I’m talking about. We can actually post our relationship status on social media, so everyone can know and we don’t have to care what they think.”
“I would’ve thought the kiss that keeps getting played on ESPN was a direct enough way of telling the world.”
“You know what I mean.”
I know it’s weird, but posting it on social media really meant something to me. I’d never done anything like that before. I’d had a girlfriend back home, but we’d never done that. Kayden had had his share of girlfriends, but none would’ve lasted long enough to announce anything publicly.
I hooked an arm around my boyfriend and realized that all of my previous failures had happened for a reason. Oh yeah, I’d felt crappy about breaking up with my girlfriend in Canada. I’d initially felt frightened about my connection with Kayden too. Now I knew that those things had happened for a reason.
“The team is okay with us,” he said.
“Yeah, I never would’ve expected things to ever work out that way.”
“But things could take a turn the second we get out there into the big pro hockey world.”
“In this case, our teammates are our teammates. They were gonna stick with us through thick and thin because that’s just how it works. But a new team might not see it that way. We’ll just be coming in new. They won’t owe a debt of loyalty to us. And they don’t have to?—”
Kayden leaned in and kissed my lips, soothing me. Not that I’d gotten all that worked up, but it’d stopped me before that could happen. It told me that my worries weren’t as big as I thought and they didn’t matter. So much of what we’d dealt with in all of this just didn’t matter anymore.
“You know you don’t have to care about any of that shit,” Kayden said. “All that matters is us.”
