Chapter 74 CHAPTER 74

Chapter 74 CHAPTER 74
Jax’s POV 

The red neon sign outside didn’t just flicker; it let out a low, irregular buzz-hiss that vibrated through the warped pine frame of the window and settled straight into the iron springs beneath the mattress.

Every three seconds, the pink glare from the broken letters of the M-O-T-E- sign threw a narrow grid of long, glowing bars across the faded birch wallpaper, illuminating the water stains near the ceiling line before dropping the room back into a heavy, suffocating shadow that smelled of stale pine disinfectant, marsh fog, and wet wool.

I didn't move my arm.

I stayed on my side, my left forearm pinned beneath Julian’s head to hold his jaw away from the cold draft coming under the door. My right hand was flat against the front of his chest, my large, grease-darkened palm spanning the gap between his sternum and the first thick layer of white zinc tape wrapped around his floating ribs. I could feel every single hit of his heart: a fast, shallow, and irregular thud against the bone that felt like a loose piston sloshing around in an empty block.

Julian was staring straight up at the pink lines on the ceiling. His blue eyes were wide, brilliant, and unblinking, reflecting the red light like two cold sheets of river ice. His lips were chapped, split near the left corner where a gold defenseman's elbow had caught him during the second period, but the rigid, royal steel in his jaw line had softened into something raw, fragile, and completely unarmored.

"Jax," he whispered.

The word didn't carry any volume; it was just a dry, whistling breath that made his chest pull against the adhesive of the tape.

"Don't move, Jules," I growled, my voice rough, heavy with the grit of forty miles of dirt road and the cold grease from Fin's garage bay. "Fin said the three-line needs eight hours flat before the muscle sets. You shift your shoulder now, the bone catches the slot again."

"I don't care about the slot," he murmured.

He turned his head slowly, careful, his long neck arching just enough to clear the leather pad of my forearm, until his face was three inches from mine in the pink dark. His blonde hair was still damp at the roots, smelling of the harsh bar soap from the arena washroom and the sour sweat of a sixty-minute shift, the wet strands sticking to his forehead in delicate, gold-and-gray mats.

He didn't reach for his jersey. He reached for my hand, the right one, the one where the skin over the middle joint was split wide open, the scab dark and stiff with the brown, dried dust of Liam’s blood. His fingers were long, cold, and trembling, but when he closed them over my split knuckles, he didn't pull back. He pressed his palm flat against my raw skin, his thumb tracing the jagged edge of the tear with a slow, agonizing reverence that made my breath catch straight in my collarbone.

"Look at me, Jaxom," he whispered.

I looked at him.

I didn't see the "Disgraced Prince" from the morning wire, and I didn't see the captain who had unpinned his silver "C" in front of thirty board members in Ann Arbor. I saw the boy who had sat next to me on the stone wall behind the greenhouse when we were twelve years old, his knees raw from the gravel, his hands tucked into his sleeves to hide the cold.

The anger that had been driving my boots since I dropped my gloves at the red line, the cold, mechanical fury that wanted to tear the oak boards out of the arena wall just to clear his lane, didn't break. It melted. It turned into a heavy, suffocating weight in the center of my chest that felt heavier than two hundred pounds of canvas and iron.

I didn't pull him violently. I shifted my hips forward by an inch, my big knee sliding between his legs, my right arm coming around his waist with a slow, terrifying caution that made my big knuckles shake against the sheets. I pulled his body down against mine until his cheek was resting flat against the rough, gray wool of my undershirt, his shallow breath running straight into the skin of my throat like warm steam from an unsealed line.

The iron frame of the bed let out a single, long creak-whine as I shifted my weight, but the sound died instantly under the steady buzz-hiss of the neon sign outside.

I didn't hurry. For eleven years, every touch between us had been fast, violent, or hidden in the shadows of the gatehouse and the back seats of broken-down cars, short, desperate rushes of adrenaline while we listened for Coach Clain’s boots on the concrete or Arthur’s lawyers clearing their throats down the hall.

Tonight, there was no clock on the wall. There were no scouts sitting in box four, no linesmen waiting with a silver whistle, and no father standing in the corridor with a black calfskin folder.

I unbuttoned his flannel shirt one horn button at a time. My fingers were large, calloused, and stained with the black coal grease that never quite washed out from under my fingernails, but I handled the cloth like it was thin glass. Every time a button cleared the loop, I laid my mouth against the newly exposed skin, starting at the small, pale hollow right above his collarbone where his pulse was still hammering at that frantic, high-frequency rate.

"Jax..." he gasped, his fingers tangling in the dark, damp hair at the back of my neck, his nails digging into my skin with a soft, desperate pressure.

"I’ve got you, King," I breathed against his throat.

When the shirt fell away, the harsh, pink light from the window illuminated the white zinc tape wrapped around his torso. It looked like an iron harness against his pale skin, the edges frayed, the white cloth stained yellow near his hip where the cold sweat had soaked through the adhesive. Right above the top line of the wrap, the upper edge of the bruise showed, a deep, mottled purple that turned dark green around the margins, swelling two inches above the natural alignment of his ribs.

I didn't turn away from it.

I dropped my head down, my mouth finding the edge of that dark, damaged flesh. I laid my lips against the purple ridge—soft, so soft, barely brushing the skin, and felt his whole body give a long, shuddering gasp. It wasn't a flinch of pain; it was a deep, somatic release of the tension that had been holding his spine rigid since he took Geller's slapshot on his bare chest.

"You're safe," I whispered into his skin, my mouth moving slowly down the white tape line, kissing the cold, smooth cotton above his floating ribs, mapping out the shape of his body through the heavy bandage. "No one touches this side, Jules. No one gets near this lane."

Julian’s eyes were closed now, his blonde lashes casting long, delicate shadows across his cheekbones in the pink glow. His breath came out in slow, ragged waves that expanded his chest just enough to meet my mouth, his long fingers trailing up my arm, over the thick shoulder pads of my muscles, until his palm rested flat against the back of my neck, holding me close.

He didn't hide his face in the pillow. He turned his head into my shoulder, his chapped lips finding the column of my throat, leaving small, wet kisses along my jawline while I undressed him with painstaking care.

When I moved over him, bracing my entire weight on my left elbow so my chest protector wouldn't press into his injury, he opened up to me completely. There was no hesitation, no aristocratic reserve, no shield. He looked up into my face through the dark shadow of my brow, his blue eyes soft, wet, and completely wide open, his voice a quiet, broken murmur that filled the small space between our mouths with every movement we made together.

"Jaxom... please," he breathed, his hips lifting an inch off the thin mattress to meet mine, his hands locking onto the small of my back, pulling me into him until there wasn't a single millimeter of cold air left between our bodies.

It wasn't fast, and it wasn't quiet. It was a slow, agonizingly deep rhythm that matched the steady pulse of the neon sign, a silent, sacred vow spoken without a single word of legal language or contract text, written entirely in the heat of our skin and the quiet, desperate holding of two boys who had built their own world in the middle of a ditch.

Afterward, the room went completely still, save for the heavy, synchronized sound of our breathing and the low hum of the marsh wind against the glass.

We lay tangled together under the thin wool blanket, the blue polyester of our jerseys pulled over our legs to keep out the chill that was rising off the uninsulated floorboards. My right arm was wrapped tight around his waist, holding him flush against my side, my thumb continuing its slow, mechanical motion over the white athletic tape on his ribs to check for any sudden swelling.

Julian’s head was resting on my chest, his ear pressed right over my heart, his long fingers absentmindedly playing with the frayed cuff of my undershirt.

"Jax?" he murmured into the dark.

"Yeah, Jules?"

"What happens if the board pulls the registry forms tomorrow?" His voice was clear, quiet, and completely devoid of the panic that had been sitting in his throat all morning. "What if Arthur’s lawyers call the Detroit offices and the draft line is closed for good?"

I looked at the pink light filtering through the blinds, throwing its regular bars across the ceiling.

"Then we don't go to Detroit," I said flatly.

Julian didn't move. He waited, his breathing slow against my ribs, listening for the rest of it.

"There's a town forty miles north of the border," I growled, my fingers sliding into his hair, untangling the damp blonde strands. "A place called Copper Cliff. They’ve got a secondary smelting plant and an unpaved rink behind the high school. They don't have a regional board, they don't have an alumni committee, and nobody up there gives a damn about the Thorne name or the Flint options."

A small, quiet sound came out of Julian’s throat, a tiny, breathless laugh that felt warm against my collarbone.

"A smelting town?" he asked softly.

"A smelting town," I repeated. "I can get a shift on the midnight maintenance crew. Eighteen dollars an hour, cash on Fridays. We find a two-room apartment over the bakery on Main Street, one with an iron stove that actually holds heat and a landlord who doesn't check the probate records."

"And the ice?" Julian whispered, his blue eyes looking up at my jawline through the shadow.

"The high school rink leaves the gate unlocked on Sunday mornings," I said, my mouth dropping down to catch his temple. "We sharpen our own blades on a hand-crank wheel in the kitchen. No press vans, no draft board scouts in box four, no lawyers standing in the tunnel with black calfskin folders. Just thirty yards of clean, unpainted sheet and two pairs of Graf skates."

Julian didn't answer for a long time. He closed his eyes, his forehead pressing deeper into the crook of my neck, his hand tightening over my hip until his knuckles clicked in the quiet room.

"That sounds like heaven, Jaxom," he breathed.

"It's not heaven," I muttered, kissing his hair. "It's just ours."

The dark didn't leave the room all at once; it turned slowly into a cold, flat gray that smelled of wet dirt, frozen grass, and the bitter exhaust of early-morning logging trucks rolling down the blacktop.

The neon sign outside let out a final, metallic clack-hiss as the automatic timer cut the power, leaving the room illuminated only by the thin, pale light coming through the plastic slats of the blinds.

At six-fifteen, the phone on the small pine nightstand began to vibrate.

It didn't ring, Julian had turned the bell off back at the arena but the low, continuous brrr-brrr-brrr against the unpainted wood was loud enough to wake me instantly. My eyes opened, my hand automatically tightening over Julian’s waist to hold him still while my other hand reached across the mattress to grab the black plastic casing.

The screen was bright, a harsh, blinding white light that cut through the gray shadows of the room like a flare.

It was an automated notification from the regional athletic wire, the primary draft projection sheet updated at six o'clock every Sunday morning before the Detroit sports papers hit the stands.

I sat up slowly, careful not to shift the blanket off Julian’s shoulders. He stirred beside me, his blue eyes opening sleepily, his blonde hair messy against the white pillow as he reached out to rub his face.

"What is it, Jax?" he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.

I didn't answer him right away. My dark eyes scanned the dense, blue-and-black text on the small glass screen.

The headline was bold, cold, and final:

NHL DRAFT PROJECTIONS: MIDWEST REGIONAL FINAL UPDATE

...Significant board adjustments following yesterday's disciplinary actions and probate court filings in Grand Rapids:

JAXOM MILLER (D) — NORTHWOOD: Slipped from Round 1 (Pick 14) to Round 4 (Pick 112). Notes: Severe character concerns cited by scouting directors following late-game line brawl and major penalty. Unmet financial guarantee requirements.

JULIAN THORNE (C) — NORTHWOOD: UNLISTED / REMOVED FROM DRAFT ELIGIBILITY BOARD. Notes: Registration waiver voided per family trust decree. Unspecified medical disqualification (uninsured).

The corporate machine had done its work.

Arthur Thorne hadn't needed a judge to stop us, and he hadn't needed the sheriff’s office to enforce the disclosure. With a few phone calls from box four and a missing signature on a piece of paper, they had erased eleven years of forty-mile drives through the freezing rain, eleven years of broken knuckles, and sixty minutes of taking a ninety-mile-per-hour piece of rubber directly to the ribs.

I stared at the screen, my grip on the plastic casing tightening until the glass let out a short, dry creak under my thumb.

Julian reached up, his long fingers taking the phone gently out of my hand. He looked at the white screen for three seconds, his eyes tracking his name down to that single, brutal word: UNLISTED.

He didn't cry. He didn't flinch.

He laid the phone face-down on the gray wool blanket, the white light dying instantly against the fabric, leaving nothing but the cold gray dawn filling the room.

He turned back to face me, his face completely calm, his blue eyes clear, level, and entirely empty of regret. He reached out, his long fingers catching the split skin of my right hand, pulling my knuckles up to his lips to lay a slow, gentle kiss against the scab.

"They didn't leave us much on paper, did they, Jaxom?" he whispered softly.

"They didn't leave us anything," I growled, the gravel in my throat thick and dark as river mud.

Julian looked toward the window, toward the cold gray light where the Cutlass was sitting in the gravel, ready for the final drive to the stadium. Then he looked back into my eyes, his jaw set into that flat, indestructible steel that no corporate ledger could ever purchase.

"Then let's go take the Championship," he said.

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A/N: I hope we liked it?

Totally unrelated but I had the worst shift today, I was on my feet for the whole 10+ hours and I had to scrub in for an emergency surgery and I’m not even an OR nurse… now you may be wondering why, well it’s only because we’re severely understaffed… AS USUAL!!! Ugghhh I’m so frustrated rn and I have so much shit to do I still had to go back and finish my actual assigned duties and I ended up leaving two hours later from when my shift ended …

Sorry for the yap.., I needed to vent.

Anyways, let me know all your thoughts in the comments! Like, subscribe and add to your library so you never miss an update!

See you in the next one!