Unsteady

Three Years Later

If I thought the press would be worse with me officially in the NHL alone, it doesn’t compare in the slightest to when my father and I are in the same vicinity.

His fame will never wear off. He still holds the record for most Stanley Cup wins. And while this is my third year with the New York Rangers, the rumors of a trade are endless, which means I’m being hounded by sports broadcasters constantly.

Yet, somehow, my dad has managed to keep Waterfell’s local rink and the First Line Foundation it houses there, away from it all.

Entering my hometown rink feels like a little slice of privacy.

Privacy and utter happiness, thanks to the girl dressed in my old Waterfell University sweatshirt and leggings, looking a bit more like a sleepy college student and not the current head coach for the new figure skating sector of my family’s charity.

Sadie Brown will always be the only thing I want to look at, shining and blazing like fire on ice. She’s always been beautiful, but I think my attraction to her grows with every day.

She cut her hair recently and didn’t tell me before, just showed up at my apartment with her dark shiny hair in a blunt chop dusting her shoulders, skin pink from the New York winter winds and I nearly attacked her in the hallway.

I’ve turned into an animal when it comes to her, with no signs of stopping.

“Was that good?” a reluctant little voice asks.

While I should be in my apartment, sleeping as much as possible before my next string of three away games—this time to Montreal and Florida in the same week—I took the train straight here. Because even if it means a few days of minor exhaustion, I’ll do anything for just an hour with her.

I hang back near the cluster of parents waiting for their children to be dismissed, watching her.

I could watch her every minute and it would never be enough.

“Great, Tiff.” She nods towards the slender young girl dressed in all pinks and golds. “You’ll be spinning even faster in no time.”

The words of praise practically send the girl glowing as she darts off for another lap.

A loud thump followed by a frustrated little scream draws the entire rink’s attention to the shorter girl in a pair of older, tan skates and a big t-shirt. It’s the girl Sadie talks about, complains about, and defends in the same breath. Looks like her mini-me if you ask me, but I keep my mouth shut.

The girl fights tooth and nail with Sadie’s corrections, but dresses like her, and—no matter how reluctantly—does everything she’s asked. I can tell she’s just like my pretty girlfriend. A little prickly, but soft underneath; just needs the right care and attention. The right type of guidance.

And as much as she might not see it, Sadie is that guidance.

“Everly,” she snaps at her. “You don’t have to make a scene every time you don’t do what I say.” She crosses her arms and skates a little closer to the girl. “Now, try it again. You’re so close.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Language,” she snaps, like she doesn’t have the mouth of a sailor most of the time. I can see the little threats of a smirk from here. “Please.”

“Whatever.”

Sadie sighs and cups her hands around her mouth. “Okay, circle up.”

She dismisses them all, ignorant as usual to the way her little protégés watch her with stars in their eyes. They all exit quickly and Sadie starts to gather her mini cones and erase the whiteboard marker from the ice.

I’m smiling and probably looking obviously lovesick as I lean against the open board entry and wait for her to notice me.

She does, eyes shooting wide, a smile quickly following as she races towards me, tossing everything over the threshold before grabbing my jacket and jerking me almost onto the ice. I grab tight to the glass on the side, letting her devour my mouth for a moment, before I reach for her waist and pick her up.

“I missed you,” she murmurs into my neck as I carry her to the bleachers.

“I missed you more, Gray.” I kiss the top of her head. “Where’s your bag?”

She points to it, and I grab it, undoing her skates and massaging her little feet before slipping them into her sneakers. All the while, she keeps staring at me like I might disappear.

The distance isn’t too much, but it’s enough that it’s hard—especially my first year.

I wanted her to come with me to New York when they drafted me, but I knew she wouldn’t leave Oliver and Liam behind. I also knew she wanted to take care of them, and was too scared to rely completely on my parents.

My rookie year had been tough and a learning process, especially on how little time I would have during the season, but it also came with a lot of rewards. Not only did we make it to the playoffs, despite getting knocked in the first round, I made friends. One, who opened up to me about his own struggles with an injury and mental health.

We even co-wrote an article for Sports Illustrated about men’s mental health and how to ask for help when you need it. I’d almost say that was more successful than any of my plays during that first year, garnering world-wide media attention, interviews, TikTok fan accounts and the works.

It also garnered enough attention to leave me with a jealous Sadie ready to pounce and devour me every time I picked her up from the train station, or after games that she could come to, and especially coming home to where she’d moved into my old room at my parents’ house.

Which, made my protective instincts at not being near her feel calm, settling some strange primal part of me, knowing she was falling asleep each night in my bed.

She ended up graduating late, finishing the next fall after everyone graduated in the spring. It helped her graduate with more pride in herself and her work, and to have another round of competitive skating without the pressure of her abusive coach.

“I can’t believe you’re here. I thought you only had like two days before you travel.”

I wince, pressing a few circles into her legging-clad calves. “I do. But I’d rather be here, than there.”

Sadie took the job my dad offered when she graduated, wanting her to help him open up an entire sector of the First Line Foundation dedicated to figure skaters in need.

She is happy now, helping and still doing what she loves.

“Did you drive?”

She shakes her head. “Your dad picked me up this morning before our meeting with the Trust executives. So, I’m all yours.”

We drive back to her new apartment—a beautiful development slightly outside of Waterfell, on the road leading into Boston. It’s only a few minutes walk to the train there, where our small university town is starting to really grow.

But we don’t make it into the house before Sadie is climbing the console of my rented car, into my lap, hands in my hair and lips pressed hard to mine. It’s borderline freezing outside, but I’m sweating, panting beneath her by the time she releases me.

“Let’s go inside, hotshot,” she murmurs, laying her head on my chest, underneath my chin. I squeeze her a little tighter and smile. “I need more of you.”

“Okay, Gray.”

SADIE

I wake up to a loud bang, and turn over to cold sheets.

Both which prick my irritation. But mostly, at the lack of 6’3” muscle that should be naked and curled around me asleep.

Instead of shouting for him, I roll out of bed and into my little bathroom, slipping on one of his old t-shirts that I practically live in now, and a pair of long pajama pants because it’s freezing.

Born and raised in the northeast and still, I’ll never get used to how cold it can feel.

After brushing my teeth and combing through my shortened hair, I bump up the heat a little as I pad towards the kitchen, pausing when I hear a familiar giggle.

I hover just around the cover, seeing Rhys in sweatpants and a navy Rangers sweatshirt that’s big enough for the renewed broadness of his shoulders, setting plates onto my little breakfast table right outside the green tiled kitchen that sold me on the entire apartment.

He looks larger than life, just like I’ve always thought he would. The NHL has beefed him up even more, his body in peak condition, and my mouth waters despite still feeling the ache from the multiple times he took me last night.

But with him, it’ll never be enough. I’ll crave every part of him inside and out forever.

Oliver, fifteen and so tall he towers over me now, sits at one of the chairs, shaking his head at eight-year-old Liam grabbing pancakes with his bare hands and ripping into them like a dog with a steak.

He laughs and looks up at Rhys, making sure the guy he idolizes more than anyone is still watching. Rhys laughs wholeheartedly, mussing his auburn curls playfully.

It doesn’t matter that Liam doesn’t play hockey anymore—now fully obsessed with Marvel comics and art, spending most of his time drawing his own superhero stories onto endless art pads provided by Anna Koteskiy—he still looks at Rhys like he put the stars in the sky.

Our therapist believes the hero-worship comes from Rhys’ treatment of me in front of the boys, the way he cares for me. For Liam, he’s the first male role model he ever had; the first adult man to take care of him. To say I love you to him.

Oliver is different. He loves Rhys, and since Oliver is still playing hockey, he sees him as someone to look up to, something to aspire to be. But it’s the Koteskiys who’ve made him feel safe for the first time in his life.

Which I’ve had to learn doesn’t mean I did a bad job with them. I did the best I could; I protected them. But Oliver was too old, and he understood everything—which meant that he wanted to protect me. So he always lived on edge, ready to fight for me.

When my father went to jail over the drunk driving incident, and a backlog of warrants that I had no clue about, he gave up custody easily. I signed as the primary guardian, with Anna and Max at my side.

From there, after several months of discussions—and a promise that no matter what, I would always be their real guardian, Anna and Max Koteskiy adopted my brothers.

Still, it’s been a journey for the three of us, and therapy has made it better.

But now, I get to be their sister. Love them, lift them up, watch them grow up—and not worry about where their next meal comes from or how I’ll pay for our rent.

Now, Oliver gets to go to private hockey academies and training camps, if he wants. Now, Liam gets to see his grades and art projects displayed on a fridge that doesn’t contain beer bottles and empty promises.

Now, I can watch them flourish and know that when I sleep at night, they’re happy.

That I did it. I got them out.

I lean against the entryway arch, relaxed while I watch my brothers ask question after question about his games, which they watch on TV religiously, decked out in his jersey—his jersey that’s been a top seller everywhere. They nearly rival Rhys’ dad in their energy level on the couch, when he’s not traveling to Rhys’ games.

“Pancakes today, huh?” I ask, smiling as I come up behind Oliver and comb my hands through his shaggy dark hair.

“Means it’s gonna be a good day,” Rhys answers, leaning over to kiss my cheek. “Right, boys?”

“Yep,” Liam sings, taking a gargantuan bite of pancakes dripping with syrup, bopping in his seat like he’s dancing to music that’s not playing. “Gonna be a good day cause Rhys is asking you to marry—”

Rhys’ hand plops over Liam’s mouth, while I feel a thud of Oliver kicking Liam under the table. Liam looks thoroughly embarrassed and apologetic as he swallows and ducks his head.

“Sorry.”

A smile slips across my skin, happiness bubbling in my stomach until I’m practically giggling, watching as Rhys rubs the back of his neck anxiously, but fights a laugh himself.

“Let me get your pancakes,” he mumbles, turning towards the alcove of the little kitchen.

I follow behind him, quietly and quickly slipping my arms around his trim waist from the back, my face pressed into the middle of his back and inhaling his clean summer rain scent.

“Rhys is going to do what?” I ask, pressing kisses between words.

I’m almost certain I know, but I’m bursting with a desperate need for him to say it now. I don’t want to wait. I want to be his Gray forever.

He sighs and slumps forward before turning around in my arms, tilting my chin up in a light grasp.

“Marry me,” he breathes out, cheeks pink and a little tremor in his hand. He’s nervous.

It makes me feel warm, so warm I’m sure my cheeks are flushed darker than his but I pull his hand up to my lips and kiss his palm.

“Yes, hotshot,” I say into his skin, like telling a secret. “Forever, yes.”

He shouts, “She said yes!” at the top of his lungs, before hoisting me into the air with a yelp. And while Oliver smiles and claps, and Liam howls like a little wolf, I stare right down into the eyes of my golden boy, whose sad eyes aren’t sad anymore.

And if I have anything to do with it, they never will be again.