I’d had this idea of how Christmas would go since Ten and I had fallen in love. The Railers were at an away game in Vancouver on the twenty-second, then nothing until the twenty-seventh, when we had Florida visiting us. Five whole days, me and Ten, obviously interspersed with family time, but mostly it was going to be about the two of us. Everything was planned.

See, there was something really important supposed to happen Christmas Day. I had this whole montage going on in my head, delicately orchestrated and timed, to the nearest second. There we would be, surrounded by gifts, with coffee and Santa cookies, Christmas music on the iPod, and I would pretend that I had forgotten a gift. Nothing big, I would tell Ten. Nothing that he’d miss if I didn’t go and get it for him. He would tease me, demand his gift, and I would make him wait until kissing turned to more, and finally, I would get the gift from the drawer where it was hidden, and I would take it out and fall to one knee.

And ask Ten to marry me.

That was how it was supposed to go. I even had the music reaching a crescendo when he said yes.

But I didn’t know if that would happen now. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to ask him because I did more than anything. Only, I wanted it to be special. I wanted music and lighting and mood, and most of all I wanted Ten not to be battling a headache or be spaced out or a million of the other things he was fighting at the moment. I wanted his answer to be real and right, and I wanted the moment to be something he remembered for the rest of his life.

So, yeah, the proposal might not happen that way, but unless I had the rings, it wouldn’t be happening at all.

Which was why I was standing outside Rose’s jewelry shop, in the sleet and snow, staring at the door as if it had poison on the handle, and touching it would kill me. I slouched into my huge puffy coat even more, yanking at my beanie, cursing at the freezing air as it bit sharply at every sliver of bare skin. I’d allowed two hours for this visit. Parking, walking through the mall, maybe getting a coffee, holding on to that delicious feeling of anticipation that I knew I would feel. But I’d used up half of that time standing at various points outside, wondering why the hell everything had gone wrong for Ten. For me. For us. I cycled from selfish feelings to having hope to experiencing despair, and as if Mother Nature knew my thoughts, she was throwing every single icy dart to get me to move inside.

Finally, when I’d moved past selfish and onto acceptance, I pushed the door open and stood inside.

And I didn’t move.

The warmth burned those parts of my exposed skin that had frozen, my nose was running, my head pounding, and the garish lights on tiny trees assaulted my eyes. I nearly turned and ran.

Or at least I would have if I wasn’t stuck to the floor as if there was lead in my boots.

“Can I help you?” a short woman asked me. Her badge said her name was Alyssa. Her pretty name matched her perky nose, ready smile, and long, blonde, hair that formed an angelic cloud around her shoulders. She wore the requisite holiday holly in her curls, and in each ear she had a sparkling LED Santa flashing in a discordant rhythm that made me twitch.

I wish Ten was here. Then I listened to myself. Ten wouldn’t be here anyway. I’m picking up the damn rings. I don’t need Ten by my side in every difficult situation.

“Sir?” she asked again, and there was a small frown of concern right between her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “Do you want to sit down? Shall I take your coat? It’s wet through. Hang on.”

She vanished then, but I still didn’t move, and she was back in a flash with a mug. “Coffee, black, but we have cream. Would you like some cream? Sugar?”

All I could think at that moment was that the coffee was hot and I was way past cold.

“You should take off your coat,” she said when I didn’t answer and held on to the lifesaving caffeine as a hostage until I unzipped my jacket, which took forever with frozen fingers.

I’d seen Ten struggle with zips and buttons. Apparently his fine motor skills were, for want of a better word, bruised. Or at least all the nerves and synapses were bruised. I listened to the experts explain that, but I’d never understood. Not until that moment when my fingers scrambled to get the right hold.

“Cream, please,” I said. Anything to get her away from me so she didn’t watch me act like a freaking idiot.

She disappeared again, and by the time she was back, I was out of my coat, gloves, hat, semi-solid iced-over scarf, and stood just in my jeans and my Railers hoodie.

She handed me the coffee and second-looked the logo on the front of my hoodie and then up at my face.

“Oh my,” she announced. “Coach Madsen.” She held out a hand. “I am a huge Railers fan, the biggest.”

I shook it as best I could, my skin prickling and numb in different places. I waited for her to make connections and for the sympathy that was being thrown at me from all sides.

God, listen to me. People just care, okay. You’re a fucking idiot, Madsen.

It was just so painful to be the focus of attention when all I wanted to do was get the job done on the ice. I steeled myself for the usual, but she didn’t go there at all, at least not all the way through to stammering and not knowing where to look.

“I’m so excited to see Ten back on the ice,” she began, then dragged a chair out from the corner. “Have a seat. I loved the way you paired Arvy and Luka or at least, I know you don’t have the final say, but we are so forwards-heavy, and sometimes it isn’t all about the forwards, you know. I mean, flashy goal scoring is one thing, but when you have leaks in front of the net like the Boston game, then it doesn’t matter what Stan does. He’ll never be able to stop them all.”

She pulled the other chair over and sat opposite me as if she had all the time in the day to talk to a half-frozen defensive coach.

“But Andrew, he’s my husband, he’s a Boston fan, so he loved that they shot us down so badly.” She laughed then. “Of course, with all the money tied up at the front, the D is going to suffer, so I like that you’re working to bring guys up from the Rush. Have you seen Taz play recently? He’s on fire.”

“Sorry about the Boston game,” I offered because that defensive mess was on me. I know I’d taken care of it, but to hear all of this from a fan, that was pretty damn cool. The pairs had worked well, and after my admission of how I was fucking up, it seemed as if my D-Corp was going above and beyond to keep their shit together.

“It’s one game, and we’re still Stanley Cup champions.” She held out her hand to fist pump me, and there was something about her, something infectious, friendliness, talking about the game, not about me and Ten, but about hockey. She’d grown up a Vancouver fan, having lived there as a child, but as soon as the Railers franchise happened, she was one hundred percent behind her home team. I found out she was a big Stan fan, but our goalie attracted fans wherever he went, and that she had cried buckets of tears when we’d lifted the cup in the summer.

You and me both, Alyssa.

I don’t know how long we sat and talked hockey, but it was for at least two coffees, and only when I felt human did she ask me how she could help me.

“I came in to pick up rings I’d ordered online. They’re under the name Jared Smith.”

She grinned so wide it had to hurt. “Oh, we wondered who that would be. Never put my money on you though. Thought it might be Jared Leto, but then why would he be ordering from us in Harrisburg? Hang on a minute, and I’ll go to the safe and get them. Let me take your mug.”

I passed her my empty coffee cup, and she left me sitting under the blowing air. I was toasty warm, and outside the glass door, the wind howled, and the snow fell, and somewhere out there, miles away in Arizona, Ten was probably in PT or drawing pictures or practicing walking backwards.

I love him so much it hurts.

“Here you go,” she said and gestured for me to join her at the counter.

I stood, and miraculously all my limbs had unfrozen, and the short walk didn’t hurt one little bit. She’d unrolled a square of black velvet and carefully placed the two rings on the small piece of fabric. They were exactly as I had imagined. Custom designed with help from Gatlin Pearce, at first glance, they appeared to be simple platinum bands. Solid and secure, they would last forever. But when I tilted them to the light, the subtly engraved J and T, and the tiniest of hockey pucks, joined by miniature hearts, were easily seen. Inside was a message, exactly the same on each. Tennant & Jared Forever.

Tears choked my throat, and I forced them back. Tears had no place in this moment when I first saw the evidence of what I wanted to do.

“Ten will be so happy with them,” she murmured, then blushed when I glanced up at her.

I’d deliberately chosen this jeweler because of how my hockey friends said it was high end and that they dealt with every purchase with discretion. But I guess she could’ve Tweeted this right then, and Ten would’ve found out, and then everything would’ve been ruined.

“We serve with the utmost discretion,” she said and laid a hand over mine, squeezing a little. “Nothing leaves this place.”

“Thank you.”

I picked up Ten’s. It was slightly smaller than mine. He had long, delicate hands for a hockey player, strong but slim, able to play a concerto as much as placing a wicked slapshot in the net. Still, these were men’s rings, sturdy, beautiful.

“I love them,” I said.

“Would you like me to put them in their box?”

I watched as she deftly gave them a once-over with a polishing cloth and placed them carefully in a single box with a double space. How stupid was it that I didn’t even want the rings separated?

I paid the balance and put the rings into the zip pocket of my hoodie; my coat was still too wet. I couldn’t avoid putting it back on though. Better a wet coat than nothing at all in this weather. The door opened as I left, a couple coming in, wide-eyed and full of excitement. Alyssa gave me one last smile and left me with two things.

“Make sure you take down Vancouver, right?”

“We will,” I said, defiant to any person who wanted to take the win off of us.

“Have a really good Christmas, Mr. Smith.”

The door shut behind me, thrusting me into the snow and ice, but I had this warmth inside me, a cautious flicker of happiness, and I hurried back to the car and home. Only after I buried the rings in with my socks, right at the back of the drawer, did I do what I really wanted to.

Ten answered on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting for my call.

“I love you,” I said, even before the hellos.

“I love you, too,” Ten said, clear as day, no stuttering, possibly one of the things he’d been practicing. “Why did you… say…?”

“I’ll always love you. You remember that, right?”

The line went quiet, and I cursed to myself. Of course he remembered I love him. Why was I so fucking needy? It wasn’t me in a facility getting my brain unscrambled.

“I will always love you too,” he spoke deliberately, slowly, and then laughed. “Guess what I just did.”

I slumped back on the sofa. “What?”

“That thing… with fingers… we had to build with plastic… bricks… the word…”

I so badly wanted to tell him that he meant dexterity, but I didn’t.

“Aha! Dexterity, that’s the word.”

“Ryker used to love brick building,” I said and chuckled. I remember huge great Death Stars and one particularly difficult castle with knights and horses. “What did you build?”

“A house,” he said with no stumbling. “Only it looked… bad.”

“How bad?”

“Dec said it was bad. That houses aren’t… green.”

It didn’t even matter that Declan was part of the story. Ten sounded as if he was smiling, and really that was all I wanted; for Ten to smile.

“I’ve seen green houses,” I pointed out. “I think Declan is talking out of his ass. I’ve seen pink houses, blue ones, I’ve even seen a few purple ones.”

“Is that a… thing… in Canada?”

I had to let him have those pauses, wait for his brain to catch up with everything going on in his head.

“Ha freaking ha, Southern boy. So the house was a good one?”

“As houses go. Next I have…” He paused, and there was some talking that was muffled as if he had his hand over the phone. “Macramé,” he announced with great enthusiasm. “Dec says two minutes.”

That chest tightening thing happened again, and I didn’t think it was jealousy of Ten talking to another man. Not quite jealousy, maybe envy that Dec could be in Ten’s periphery instead, even maybe helping Ten to heal. I’m a complicated mess of contradictions. I changed the subject so I could cover the important things in the last few minutes before I had to wait until tonight to talk to him again.

“Are you packed yet for the day after tomorrow?”

“Uhm… packed? Why would I be packed?”

Shit. Did he not remember he was coming home for Christmas? I looked at the decorations in the boxes, and my chest tightened even more. How could he forget coming home to me?

Then the fucker laughed. “Only joking. I’m so packed, and I… can’t wait.”

“You know you’re an asshole, and I really hate you,” I groused.

And Ten snorted a laugh; it had been a long time since I heard that laugh. “You’ll always love me.”

I gripped the phone, wanting to send all my love down the line to him, imagining it winding its way down the country taking a turn in the middle and heading for Arizona.

“Yes, babe. Always.”