Page 132 of Cross Ice

Really?

Nico

Yeah. I want to see you too.

Evan

I’ll be there around seven. I love you.

Nico

I love you too.

I put my phone away and sat there for a moment, feeling something that wasn’t quite resolution but was next to it. We still had things to say. Hard things, specific things, the conversation we’d been circling for weeks that needed to actually happen.

But I was showing up to practice, keeping my head down, getting ready to have the conversation instead of avoiding it.

That was enough to start with.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Evan

I stood outside Nico’s house and tried to remember how to breathe. I rang the doorbell.

Nico opened it almost immediately, like he’d been waiting on the other side.

We stood there, taking each other in.

I could see the toll of the past four days in the dark circles under his eyes, the way he held his shoulders tight. His torn jeans and faded Lasers T-shirt looked like what he wore when he needed something familiar and comforting. He was barefoot, hair still damp from a shower.

“Hey.” His voice was quiet, hesitant. He stepped forward, pulled me into a hug, and I could breathe again.

His arms wrapped around me tight and certain, the way they always did. His chin rested on top of my head. The steady rhythm of his breath wafted against my hair. This still made sense.

“I missed you,” he said quietly.

“I missed you too.”

We stood there in his doorway for a long moment before he pulled back.

“Come in.”

The house looked like the past days had been as rough for him as they’d been for me—dishes in the sink, empty water bottles on the coffee table, a sweatshirt crumpled on the back of a chair.

We sat on opposite ends of his couch.

“I’m sorry I pulled away,” Nico said. “After Saturday. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I’m sorry I kept saying I don’t know,” I said. “That wasn’t fair to you.”

“It wasn’t fair to either of us.”

“I hate this.” My shoulders slumped. “I hate that we’re sitting here like strangers when three weeks ago everything felt easy.”

“It wasn’t easy three weeks ago either. We just didn’t know it yet.”

He wasn’t wrong.