Chapter 82: The Night Before

CASSIAN’S POV

The first time I checked the clock, it was 11:17.

The second time, it was 11:23.

By midnight, I was still awake, staring at the ceiling of the hotel room with one arm over my face and my body too restless to settle. Game six was the next night. Elimination game for the other team. One win away from the thing we had spent the whole season chasing, and my brain had decided sleep was optional.

Torin shifted beside me.

I felt it before I looked.

He had been quiet for the last half hour, pretending to sleep while I kept turning over every possible version of tomorrow; winning, losing, messing up, not messing up and still losing anyway. The kind of thoughts that never stayed still once they got in your head.

He rolled onto his side and reached for me.

His hand landed on my waist first, then his fingers slid up my stomach and settled at my ribs.

“Still awake?” he murmured.

I turned my head towards him. He was propped on one elbow, hair messy from the pillow, eyes open and steady in the dark room. He looked tired too, which somehow made me feel worse.

“Obviously,” I said.

That got the smallest smile out of him. “You have been awake for an hour.”

“You have been counting?”

“I have been listening to you pretend not to move.”

I let out a breath through my nose and looked back at the ceiling. “That sounds invasive.”

“You are sharing a bed with me.”

“Does that make it less invasive?”

He leaned closer, his hand moving up my side in a slow line that made my whole body go more alert than I wanted it to. “No.”

I turned towards him then.

The room was dim except for the light leaking in through the gap in the curtains. Enough to see his face properly and catch the way his expression changed when he looked at me like this.

He knew I was winding myself up.

He also knew he could pull me out of it.

“That is not helping me sleep,” I said.

His mouth tilted. “You were not trying to sleep.”

I stared at him. “What am I trying to do, then?”

He moved closer until his forehead brushed mine lightly. “Think yourself into a panic.”

I almost laughed. “That sounds dramatic.”

“It is accurate.”

I closed my eyes for a second. His hand was still at my side, the other one slipping into my hair and stroking it once, slow enough to make my breathing change on its own.

The room felt too quiet again.

Too small.

Too full of tomorrow.

I opened my eyes and found him watching me. He had that look in his face that always got me when he was trying not to push too hard and still somehow ended up making me want him more. He had not said a word about the game yet.

“What if we lose?” I asked.

It came out rougher than I meant.

Torin did not flinch.

He kept stroking my hair, slow and steady, like he had all the time in the world and the answer was not going anywhere.

“Then we lose,” he said.

I stared at him.

He looked right back at me. “Together.”

The word hit me hard enough to make my throat tighten.

“You say that like it fixes it.”

His thumb brushed once along my temple. “It does not fix it.”

“Then why say it?”

“Because it is true.”

I held his gaze and felt the tension in my chest shift again, not gone, just moved into something sharper.

I wanted to kiss him.

I also wanted to ask him a hundred questions he could not answer for me.

“What if this is it?” I said quietly. “Our only chance?”

He stayed very still for a second.

Torin’s hand moved from my hair to the back of my neck. “Then we make sure we have no regrets.”

I swallowed.

He kept his voice low. “We leave everything on the ice. And whatever happens, you walk off that ice knowing we gave everything.”

That was the kind of answer that always made me want to stop thinking and start believing.

I looked at him for a long second and tried to hold onto the panic because it felt safer than hope.

“Easy for you to say,” I murmured.

His brow lifted slightly. “Because I am older?”

“No.”

“Because I am calmer?”

I snorted. “Absolutely not.”

That got a real smile out of him.

He brushed his nose lightly against mine and said, “You are staring.”

“I am thinking.”

“About me?”

I should have lied. I did not.

“Yes.”

His eyes darkened immediately, just enough to make the air between us feel warmer. “That is a problem?”

“It is a distraction.”

“Mm.” His hand slid lower from my neck to my jaw. “I think you were already distracted.”

I let out a breath through my nose and looked at him for a beat too long. “You are enjoying this.”

“Enjoying what?”

“Dragging me out of my own head.”

He did not answer immediately. He just kept looking at me with that same steady attention, thumb moving once along my jaw in a way that made it impossible to stay annoyed for long.

Then he said quietly, “Yes.”

The honesty of it got me.

I laughed once, short and quiet. “You are unbelievable.”

“I know.”

“You are supposed to tell me to relax.”

“I am,” he said. “I am doing it badly, apparently.”

I shook my head and let it fall back against the pillow for a second. “It is not working.”

He leaned over me then, one arm braced beside my shoulder, his body close enough to steal my attention completely. I could feel the heat of him, the weight of him, the pull of him that never seemed to care about timing.

“Then what will?” he asked.

I looked up at him.

The question hung there between us.

I knew what he meant. He meant what would stop the spiral. What would pull me out of the fear and the noise and the part of my brain that kept trying to build every bad ending before tomorrow even arrived.

The answer came to me fast enough to annoy me.

You.

I did not say it.

I watched his face instead. The line of his mouth. The way his eyes stayed on mine like he knew I was choosing my words carefully and wanted them anyway. That was another thing about him, he did not need me to say everything out loud before he understood the shape of it.

I reached up and grabbed the front of his shirt.

He went still.

I pulled him down just enough to kiss him.

It was not long or rough, it was just enough to make the point and calm the part of my body that had been too tense to settle for the last hour and a half. His mouth met mine immediately, no hesitation, no surprise, just that same easy certainty that always made me feel like I had been waiting for this even when I had not known I was.

His hand moved to the back of my neck and held on.

I kissed him back harder than I meant to.

The room changed immediately.

Not because anything dramatic happened. Because we were both awake now in the way that mattered. His breathing had shifted, mine had too. The game was still tomorrow, the Finals were still one day away. But in that second it was just the two of us in the dark hotel room and every ounce of tension I had been carrying all night suddenly had somewhere else to go.

When we broke apart, he stayed close.

His forehead rested against mine, his voice low when he spoke. “Better?”

I almost laughed because he knew the answer already.

“Not even close,” I said.

The corner of his mouth moved. “Liar.”

I exhaled and let my hand stay in his shirt for another second before loosening it. “Maybe a little.”

His hand returned to my hair, fingers combing through it once, and the gesture hit harder than it should have because it was so simple.

So familiar.

So him.

He was still looking at me like he could talk me down from tomorrow if I let him.

Maybe he could.

Maybe that was the problem.

“What if I am not enough tomorrow?” I asked quietly.

The question came out before I could stop it.

He did not answer fast. He never did when it mattered.

Then he said, “You will be.”

I held his gaze.

He kept going. “And if you are not, you will still be enough for me.”

That nearly wrecked me.

I stared at him for a second, the room gone still around the words, the tension between us changing shape again. Fear was still there. It was always going to be there now, I thought. But it did not feel as sharp with him holding me like this. With his hand in my hair and his voice low and steady and sure in the dark.

I swallowed hard. “You say things like that like they are easy.”

“They are not easy.”

“Then why do you say them?”

He looked at me like the answer was obvious. “Because you need to hear them.”

That got me.

I took a breath and let it out slowly,

“Together,” I said.

His expression softened.

“Together,” he answered.

I nodded once, then looked at him for another second before settling back against the pillow. He shifted with me, still close, one arm around my waist now, holding me in place as if he knew I was not fully out of the spiral yet.

Maybe I was not.

But I was closer.

The room stayed dark around us, the city outside kept moving. The championship still waited. Game six, elimination for the other team. One more chance to take the thing we had been chasing all season and one more chance to lose it.

I did not fall asleep right away.

I just laid still in the bed.

And for the first time all night, the fear did not feel bigger than us.