Colliding Love - Tucker Billi...

Watching him play has become one of the great joys in my life. He's so fast, so skilled, so confident that it's hard to tear my gaze away from him the minute his skate hits the slick surface. Luckily, working with him has meant that I don't have to focus on anyone but him.

As the clock on the third period ticks down, it's hard to reconcile that this might be the last game I watch him play in person. I checked the standings a few minutes ago, and all the dominoes that needed to knock each other to put the Bullets in the playoffs haven't happened. The opposite, actually.

There's a last-minute rush as Logan, Radek, and Auston fly down the ice together headed for the opposition's goal. Their line is actually spectacular. If the whole team didn't fall apart the minute their line sat on the bench, this team might be something. And as the season has worn on, Logan's become more frustrated that he can't be on the ice all the time, that many of his teammates haven't stepped up, that the coaching staff hasn't been able to get the team to level up.

Radek passes to Auston, who chips the puck over another player's stick to hit Logan's at exactly the right moment for Logan to flick it into the top corner before he runs into the net.

The crowd goes wild—noisemakers, screams of joy—even though we're still one goal down with only seconds left in the game. Perhaps that's the nice part about representing a country with very few who followed hockey before this year. Having a star player, one who scores as often as Logan and with so much flourish, is enough. The spectacle is more impressive than the standings. If only Logan and I lived in that world too.

The buzzer sounds to end the game, and as the players are shaking hands, Tamiko sends me a text.

They're talking trade up here in the box. Brace yourself. Dalton wants a deal with Oregon.

I'd heard rumblings of where Logan might go, but Oregon is the worst case scenario. A new conference. No games in or against Bellerive unless both teams somehow make it to the cup finals. Otherwise, they'll never face each other.

More than anything, I hate that Dalton is in control of Logan's career. That, somehow, that spiteful man is still determining aspects of my life. There are few things I regret in my life, but talking to Dalton at the first charity event, being charmed by him, seeing flags that looked more orange than red and ignoring them until the red was leaking out of my head in the form of blood is the greatest regret of my life.

Instead of going into the dressing rooms, Logan comes back to the bench and he beckons me down. There's a side entrance into the bench, and he unlocks the door to bring me in. We've never done this transition before during a game, but I've been through this way during a practice or when Logan's just come here to skate.

He holds up a puck. "For your collection."

"I have a collection?" I ask with a hint of a smile.

"First goal I scored with you at an away game. And this is the last goal I'll score as a Bullet."

"Logan," I say, and I can hear the watery nature of his name.

"If this is the last time I get to skate off this ice, I'm taking you with me," he says, passing me the puck.

"What does that mean?" I ask, clutching the puck harder than necessary to keep from crying.

He steps out onto the ice and offers his hand. "Put your feet on top of mine."

I do as he suggests, and my chin is almost even with his shoulder, and then we're skating toward the player exit. A gentle breeze ruffles strands of my hair, and the crowd begins to clap and cheer. Maybe it's for us. Maybe it's for him. Maybe it's for the team in their last regular season game. But it fills my heart with sorrow to be acknowledging the end. Somehow, I never really believed we'd get here.

"Thanks for making this the best season of my life," he says in my ear, his voice gruff just before he steps off the ice into the hallway that'll take us to the player dressing rooms.

"You worked for that season," I say, a lump in my throat as I regain my feet on solid ground.

"It's not the hockey I'm talking about, doc," he says, taking my hand and leading me past clapping fans who are still crowding the stands.

We're at the dressing room door, and Logan turns to face me, smoothing my hair back behind my ears. "I don't know how long I'll be. Might be better if we just meet at my apartment."

"No," I say, and that lump is back. "I'll wait here. I don't care how long you take." Because I don't want to miss my last chance to wait for him, to walk out of here hand-in-hand with him. If I went to his apartment alone, I'd just sit on his couch crying, or curl up under the quilt his mother made and wish that our lives were different.

He tilts my chin and gives me a lingering kiss. "Fuck, I love you. Part of me can't believe this is how we end, you know? It's bullshit."

"We'll talk at your apartment," I say.

Hope sparks in his eyes, and I immediately regret that I've led him to some other conclusion. I just don't want to be bawling in the hallways of the arena while members of his team pass me, confused about why I'm crying over their shitty season.

"Yeah?" he asks.

"I just... I don't think here is the place."

His expression closes again, and my heart squeezes at the immediate shift from the Logan who loves me to the guy I met at the start of the season. The difference is that stark. And I know he's just protecting himself—in my own way, I'm doing that too—but it doesn't stop the ache from coming. The realization that this might be the end of me seeing the Logan who loves me. That we might return to a place where I don't know him, not even a little bit, not even at all.

The urge to cling onto him, to tell him to quit, to say any number of things that are impossible or improbable surfaces. Rather than saying any of it, I give him a gentle push toward the dressing rooms. "I'll see you when you get out."

He gives a sharp nod before kissing my temple and then shoving open the door to the dressing rooms. The buzz that filters through when the door opens is surprising, but it shouldn't be, I guess. Logan is still one of the top scorers in the league. His potential is limitless, and I should be happy for him that he might end up with a team where that potential leads to even greater things.

It's hard right now to think like that—to be happy for him—when my heart is cracking in two. If Logan ends up somewhere that wins a cup, Dalton doesn't get to make us both miserable. At least there's that.

***

Logan's quiet on the car ride home. Unlike normal, Tamiko didn't text me clips of whatever he said in the dressing room to the press, and I didn't go looking for anything hopeful or inspiring he might have said. Misery is really my best friend.

At the front desk, the concierge hands Logan an envelope that required a signature to receive, and as we take the stairs up to his apartment—never the elevator—he rips it open.

"They finally sent it," he says in a hushed almost whisper.

"Your bio family?"

"Yeah." He fingers the second envelope, as though he's afraid to open it. But then he taps it, so the paper falls to one end, and he rips the top of the short end, tugging the pages out.

When I glance over, the handwriting on the pages is visible, and he's already absorbed as we climb. At his apartment door, I use my key to get us in, and then he takes my hand and leads me to the living room couch while he continues reading.

Each page he finishes, he passes to me, silently, and then I read them before setting them on the side table.

After he finishes the final page and has passed it to me. He yanks off his tie, discards his suit jacket, and then he leans back in the couch and releases a deep sigh. It's not until I've finished and set the last page on top of the others that he speaks.

"Part of me hoped it didn't match."

"Why?"

"I don't know," he says. "I want to belong. I've wanted to belong for so long. Maybe it was easier to believe they didn't want me than to believe that they didn't know about me."

Grief streaks through me at his words. Who finds it easier to believe they're unwanted?

"They knew she left, but they never knew for sure that she had the baby. No one ever tracked them down to tell them she died because she had the neighbor who watched me as next of kin. They were pretty honest in there, don't you think?"

"I didn't read all of your mom's diaries, but they didn't seem to paint themselves as in the right with all the decisions that were made. Seems like they have a lot of regrets." And if there's one thing I can understand, it's how badly one misguided decision can snowball, take you in directions you'd never have wanted to go. "Might be worth talking to them?"

He seems lost in thought for a beat, and then he tugs me over against his side, tucking me close.

"We both know what happens next for me, right?" he murmurs against the top of my head.

"A trade."

"Might come fast. Might come slow. But at some point in the next couple of weeks, it's coming."

A lump forms in my throat, and I try to swallow it down instead of letting the sob escape. The idea of never being like this with him again causes my stomach to drop out.

"Would you," he says, clearing his throat. "Is there a world where you consider going with me? Coming with me wherever I'm traded?"

My entire caseload is almost all pro bono or low-income clients who wouldn't be able to afford physiotherapy without me. I can only afford to fund their care because I have ways to funnel the Tucker trust money into my business. Other clinics can't offer what I do at the scale I do.

But part of me still wants to say yes. To throw away everything I've built on the island. Follow Logan to the ends of the earth. The yearning streaking through my limbs to clutch him close, attach myself to him in some way is almost unbearable.

"My clients..." It's all I can get out around that stupid lump that keeps threatening to explode out of me.

"Yeah," he says, kissing the top of my head. "I figured. But I had to ask. I had to."

Sadness is settling over us, and if I sit here in it for a minute more, I'm going to release all my pent-up emotions. I'll beg him to stay. I'll agree to go. I'll forego all the things I want for whatever he needs, again.

So, I slip out of his embrace, and I staddle him while I start to unbutton his dress shirt. A hint of a smile tips one corner of his mouth, and his soft gaze is so full of love that it makes my heart ache again. Months ago, he was so closed off, I'm not sure I'd have believed that the expression on his face right now was even possible, let alone that it would be directed at me someday.

I frame his face, and I kiss him, gently, questioningly. While I know I can't sit in these complex emotions for even another beat, I don't know how he's feeling. But his large hands grip my ass and tug me closer, and it's immediately clear that I'm not the only one grateful for a distraction.

"I'm always going to be grateful for you," he murmurs against my lips. "Grateful to you."

I grip his face, and I press my forehead to his. "I don't want to be sad. There's so much time for sad."

"What do you want to feel instead?" he asks, voice gruff.

"You. Inside me."

"My favorite place," he says, kissing me again, one of his hands in my hair, while the other urges me to rock against him.

Then my shirt and bra are gone, and his dress shirt follows quickly, so we're chest to chest, kissing and grinding. It's the most PG we've been in a long time, but the simplicity suits my mood. Close to him is all I want—more than a release, more than a grand distraction—I want to savor being with him like this, loving him like this, knowing he's mine like this.

He kisses a line up my neck, and then he swirls his tongue around my earlobe before saying, "I need to get a condom."

"Unless you don't," I say on impulse.

He goes still and draws back to look me in the eye. "Doc?"

"Sorry. It was a stupid idea." I lift my leg to try to climb off him, and he tightens his grip keeping me in place.

"I'm down, if you are. But I'm not asking. I don't need that from you. You know that right?"

"Maybe I need it," I say.

He searches my face for a beat, as though trying to figure out if I'm being honest or maybe if I'm sure, but whatever he sees must be enough.

"Then that's what you'll get," he says, planting a kiss on my forehead before letting me stand up.

I take off my jeans and panties, letting them fall to the floor, while he shimmies out of his dress pants and boxer briefs. Then he beckons me forward, and I staddle him again, hovering.

"You're sure?" he asks, his tone hushed.

"Yes. You?"

"I'd do anything for you," he says, drawing me down until his tip is entering. "Oh, fuck," he says with a little chuckle. "I'm in trouble."

"Feels that good already?" It feels different for me too, a choice, a bond that I hadn't consciously realized I needed from him.

"You always feel good," he says, as I take him deeper. "But this is..." His voice is strained. "I need a minute. Don't move."

He kisses me, holding me in place with his hands on my hips for a couple of beats as our bodies get used to this new sensation. As he slowly lowers me more, a little whimper escapes him.

"I love you, Sawyer. I love you so much." Then his arms circle my back, keeping me tight as he starts the motion we both seem to need more tonight than at any other point in our relationship.

And as he thrusts, and I meet his motions with my own, I cherish the close contact, the connection, the way he listens to every sigh and moan, adjusting his pace to prolong both our releases.

It feels like goodbye, but also confirmation of what I've known for months and haven't fully let myself consider. If I was ten years younger, I'd go anywhere with him, do anything to keep him. Because what I finally allow myself to admit is that I've never loved anyone the way I love him, and I fear I never will again. 

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