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.”