When the car finally slowed to a stop, I blinked in surprise. I'd been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed where we were going.
"Where are we?" I asked, looking around at the quiet street.
"My house?" He replied, like it was obvious. Like I should have known.
I turned to stare out the window.
The house wasn't what I expected at all. No flashy mansion. No endless driveway lined with luxury cars. No gate with a security code or a guard stationed out front, like so many of my father's colleagues had. Just a cozy two-story home with warm amber lights glowing behind the windows and a neat front porch covered in potted plants.
A wooden swing hung from the ceiling of the porch, slightly crooked, like someone had installed it themselves and never quite gotten it right. There was a small garden to the side — not the kind a professional landscaper would design, but the kind someone worked on with their own hands. I could see the trellis, slightly lopsided, with climbing vines wrapped around it.
It looked lived-in.
"This is your place?" I asked, still staring.
"Yeah." He turned off the engine, and the sudden silence felt heavy. The ticking of the cooling engine. The distant bark of a dog somewhere down the street. "Why? You were expecting something bigger?"
I thought about lying. About saying something polite like it's perfect or it's very you. About keeping my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself.
But this was Rhett. I'd never been good at lying to him. And I'd never wanted to start.
"Honestly?" I smiled, turning in my seat to face him. "Yeah. I thought you'd be living in one of those places with a gate code and a guard. Maybe a moat of a dragon."
He laughed softly — a real laugh, not the tight, controlled one I'd seen him give reporters in post-game interviews. Not the polite chuckle he used with sponsors. A real, genuine, Rhett laugh.
"I spend most of my life around crowds," he said. "The ice rink, the stadiums, the press conferences, the meet-and-greets. I don't need to live in one too."
Fair point.
I understood that more than he probably realized. My father's world was full of crowds too — boardrooms full of sharks pretending to be colleagues, galas full of people pretending to like each other, charity events full of cameras and fake laughter. I'd grown up learning to smile through it, to shake hands with people whose names I'd forget by morning, to laugh at jokes that weren't funny.
Rhett had built himself a quiet place. A place where no one expected anything from him.
I couldn't blame him. I envied him, actually.
I unbuckled my seatbelt — the click was deafening in the silence — and followed him to the front door. The porch creaked under my feet, a low groan that seemed to say welcome. He held the door open for me, and as I stepped inside, the warmth hit me instantly.
Not just the heat from the furnace. Something softer. Something that smelled like cinnamon and coffee and a life lived slowly. The scent wrapped around me, familiar and foreign at the same time.
It wasn't what I imagined for a bachelor's house. No empty pizza boxes stacked on the counter. No piles of laundry draped over the furniture. No dirty dishes in the sink. Just... warmth. Comfort. Like someone actually lived here instead of just sleeping here.
"You can hang your coat there," he said, nodding toward a small closet by the door.
I shrugged off my coat and hung it up, taking my time. My fingers were still stiff from the cold, and I fumbled with the hanger for a second too long. I used the extra seconds to look around.
The living room was simple. A dark blue sofa with a throw blanket draped over one arm — slightly wrinkled, like someone had gotten up from a nap not long ago and hadn't bothered to fold it. A coffee table with a few magazines scattered across it — Hockey Weekly, Sports Illustrated, nothing too personal. A TV mounted on the wall, currently off, its dark screen reflecting the room back at me.
A bookshelf in the corner caught my eye. It was half-filled with paperback novels — thrillers, mostly, from the look of the spines — and half-filled with hockey trophies. Small ones. Big ones. Some with gold plastic figures on top, some with engraved plaques I couldn't read from here.
Nothing fancy. Nothing screaming famous hockey player. Just a home.
"I thought we'd go somewhere for dinner," I admitted, shoving my hands into my pockets. My palms were sweating now, despite the cold outside. "You know, a restaurant or something."
Rhett raised an eyebrow, a teasing smile playing at his lips. "You think I'd drag you out into the cold again after you were practically turning into an icicle outside the stadium?"
I thought about arguing. My fingers were still cold. My nose was still numb. The idea of going back out into that wind made me want to curl into a ball and cry.
"Touché," I said.
He smiled — that same lopsided grin that always used to make my chest ache. The one that said I know you better than you know yourself. The one that made me feel seen in a way no one else ever had.
"What do you want to drink?" he asked, already moving toward the kitchen. "Water?"
"Do you have wine?" The question came out before I could stop it.
I needed something. Not strong — just enough to take the edge off. My hands were still shaking slightly from the cold, or maybe from adrenaline, or maybe from being this close to him again after so long. The wine would help. It would loosen the knot in my chest. It would make the words come easier. It would quiet the voice in my head that kept asking what are you doing here?
His gaze flicked toward me, warm and teasing. "Or beer?"
"Eww, no." My nose wrinkled before I could stop it.
He laughed leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed. "You still hate it."
"I'll always hate it," I said firmly. "Beer tastes like shit."
"You've never even had good beer."
"All beer tastes like shit. That's not a quality issue. That's a fundamental flaw in the concept of beer."
He shook his head, still smiling, and pulled two glasses out of a cabinet. I watched his hands as he poured — the same hands that used to steal my fries, that used to ruffle my hair.
I looked away.
He poured the wine and handed me a glass. Our fingers brushed for half a second. I pretended not to notice.
"To... surprises, I guess?" he said, raising his glass.
I raised mine slightly, meeting his eyes. "To second chances."
The words hung in the air between us, heavier than I intended. I hadn't meant to say that. It had just come out — pulled from somewhere deep in my chest where I'd been hiding it for years. But I didn't take it back.
He clicked his glass to mine. "To second chances."
I smiled and took a long sip. The wine was good — rich and smooth, nothing like the cheap stuff I drank alone in my apartment. It warmed my throat going down, loosening something tight in my chest.
I looked up, and Rhett was watching me.