The simplicity of the explanation knocked the wind out of me. Jake had thrown away his shot at the AHL because someone had been cruel about me. He couldn't stand to hear me reduced to a stereotype.
"You lost everything for that?"
"I didn't lose everything." His voice was fierce and confident. "I lost a two-week tryout with a team full of assholes who think casual homophobia is locker room banter. That's not everything. That's not even close to everything."
"But it was your chance," I said. "Your shot at moving up."
"There'll be other chances. Other teams." Jake finally looked at me, and his eyes were bright. "But there's only one you. And I wasn't gonna sit there and let some piece of shit talk about you like you were a fucking meme."
That's when it hit me—the full weight of his actions. Jake Riley, who'd spent his entire adult life chasing hockey opportunities, had walked away from the biggest one he'd ever known because someone had been cruel about his boyfriend.
His boyfriend. Was that what I was?
Three months ago, the idea of anyone fighting for my honor would have sent me running for the nearest spreadsheet to organize my feelings into manageable categories. Standing in our kitchen, watching Jake's face cycle through hurt, defiance, and something that could have been love, all I felt was overwhelmed.
And then, without warning, I started crying.
Not the neat, controlled tears of someone processing difficult information. Ugly, messy crying from somewhere deep in my chest caught me entirely off guard.
"Shit," I gasped, swiping at my eyes with the back of my hand. "Sorry, I don't know why—"
Jake reached for the nearest thing—Hog's knitted glove cozy—and pressed it gently to my face.
"Soft hands," he murmured.
I sniffled.
"Hey. Hey, it's okay."
It wasn't okay. It was the opposite of okay. Someone had reduced me to a caricature for the entertainment of strangers, and Jake had sacrificed his future to defend me, and I was crying in our kitchen like a broken sprinkler system.
"I'm not sad," I said into his shoulder, the words muffled by his t-shirt. "I'm not upset about the comments or the gossip or any of that bullshit. I'm just..."
"What?"
I pulled back enough to look at him, tears starting to stream down my face again like I'd lost control of my own plumbing. "No one's ever done that for me before. Fought for me. Put me first."
Jake, for once, was speechless.
"And you didn't even think about it, did you? You just reacted because someone was hurting me."
"Of course I did. Of course I fucking did."
He held me while I cried. His arms were solid around me, steady and warm, and he didn't try to fix it, make jokes, or turn the moment into something lighter.
He held on.
The apartment settled into its usual evening quiet—the refrigerator's hum, soft tick of the wall clock, and the distant sound of traffic on Memorial Avenue.
None of it mattered. What mattered was Jake's heartbeat under my ear and how his hand moved in slow circles between my shoulder blades. What mattered was that he'd chosen me over everything else, and for the first time in my life, I didn't have to wonder if I was worth staying for.
I was.
And maybe that was everything.
Chapter twenty-three
Jake
