“Lily Rivers! Lily Rivers!”

I smiled at the people yelling my name as I so very carefully stepped out of the car. It’d been ages since I’d had to deal with so many paparazzi paying this much and this close attention to me in one place. I reminded myself to stay calm and smile. At the same time, I had so many urges in my body I was fighting. Not at the forefront, but one of the primary urges was to cover my chest with my hands. But I had to trust in the ridiculous amount of double side sticky tape the stylist had used to make sure a nip slip would be impossible.

And God, I was wearing a dress. Or the dress was wearing me. I wasn’t quite sure which was happening. And these heels. If I made it through the night without dying, it would be a miracle. If it’d been my choice, I would have chosen something much more simple, both dress and heels, hell, I would have gone barefoot. But both Bethany and the stylist had determined that this was right for the night. Tonight would require a ridiculous amount of focus on my composure to keep myself upright and elegant. It wasn’t Bethany or the stylist’s fault that they didn’t know about about the forefront urge surging through my entire body like an electric current. Really, it was all I could do to keep myself from running past the red carpet filled with all the paparazzi, through the venue filled with celebrities of all walks of life here for all the fundraising Gala for several important charities and hunt down Sidney Crosby.

Sidney who was somewhere in this museum waiting for me.

Months. It’d been months since I’d seen the Canadian.

The last time we’d been together was our week and a half hide away in Colorado. After that, we both had to return to the drudges of real life. He had to begin training again while I had to start my summer travels and actually get back on real powder.

It had been a very long, painfully slow summer. We had kept in contact every single day. Yet, it didn’t seem like a chore. I looked forward to every text, every call, every facetime, every and any shred of contact. Sometimes it was hard because of the timezone differences; there had been several occasions where I had fallen asleep on a call. But we were alway patient with each other.

We had planned for him to come back to Colorado for a little over a week at the end of July, right before this event here in New York City. The plan was for us to relax in Colorado, make sure things were still, fluttery between us, attend this event, and then head to Halifax to spend his birthday at his house on the lake. And tell his parents we were, together. However all good things we planned seemed to be interrupted by others.

While I was in Russia with Geno for a long weekend, I had received a demanding phone call from Bethany. Bethany had informed me that she had signed me up for some sort of Olympic athlete exchange publicity tv show called “Citius, Altius, Fortius”. When it came down to it, publicity for snowboarding had to come first as much as I would have preferred to be selfish. My plans had to be changed.

Evidently, I was initially paired with some other athlete, a volleyball player or something, but apparently Bethany nixed that before that had even reached me, requesting (demanding), a partner from a sport that would allow me to practice my skill set. Thus, they set me up with a gold medalist in diving from the previous summer Olympics named David Boudia.

Bethany set up the plan, saying it was simple (ish): Go to Mt. Hood for a couple of days to teach the guy how to snowboard, make a pit-stop in Colorado to show my ‘softer and more personal side’ (or attempt to do my best to do so), and then head to somewhere in Indiana where this Boudia lived and train for a few days and share what his life is like. Unlike most of the other athletes involved with the show, our time together would be condensed because of our hectic schedules: my snowboarding and he was getting ready to do some other show about diving.

As planned, I left Europe with Jen but instead of heading back to Colorado first, we headed to Oregon to meet this gold medalist diver. Since the show was all about American Olympic athletes, they wanted to keep the program in the states; thus one of the only places to find snow in the States during the summer, Mt. Hood, Oregon.

Jen and my flight arrived later than his. Instead of heading for the hotel, surprisingly, he waited for us at the airport. He was taller than I thought he would be, he was about my height, and when we approached each other, I was quite startled when he pulled me into a friendly hug; the cameras weren’t even on yet, Jen was having issues with her camera and was fumbling around with it.

Part of the deal coming from my end of everything, negotiated by Bethany of course, was that Jen would do the filming for our segment. The Olympic committee had eagerly agreed to this stipulation partially because they were thrilled I had, or rather Bethany, agreed to do this program so easily. In addition, they knew Jen could get all the shots and keep up with the snowboarding without any problem. Plus she already had been hired to go to Sochi for the Olympics. But now she was laughing as she caught the end of the hug on film.

It surprised me that our 2 days of snowboarding was actually a lot of fun. David had never been on a board before, but was eager and open to learn. By the end of the time in Oregon, he could stay on the board and felt comfortable turning, slowing down, and stopping. There was absolutely no way that I was going to risk anything more complicated with him; I wasn’t about to try to injure or kill the world class diver.

During the time away from the snow, David’s infectious personality made things go a lot smoother than I had thought possible. He was much more personable and much more open than I, being very open about his life and about diving. Both he and Jen seemed to be trying their damnedest to get me to open up. It wasn’t really working.

Well, until we got to Colorado.

It felt really good to get back to the house, I hadn’t been there since the start of the summer. It was my haven, my safe place. But I quickly found little oddities in being back. Everything kept reminding me of Sidney. Like, the stool on the right was the one Sidney always used in the morning. Or how different Jen or David stacked the dishes from how Crosby did. The worst was how huge my bed felt. And of course I felt like I turned bright red whenever I looked at certain places in the house. Such as the couch in the great room. Or the stairs. Or the kitchen counter. Or the couch in the basement. The list seemed endless.

But unlike the impersonal time we spent in Oregon, I think David could recognize my efforts increasing tenth-fold now that we were in my space. But I also recognized David’s surprise as I showed him around my house. It was like he was expecting a much different type of house than my peaceful, warm home. From the gym to the collection of movies to the kitchen to the lack of whatever he was expecting.

The first morning we were at the house, Jen followed us around filming as I showed him various awards, the many plaques indicating the variety of charity events I had been involved with or organized, the gold medals, and even some of my more personal pictures. It allowed me to give him personal accounts of important parts of my life.

“And this is picture was taken after the Vancouver medal ceremony,” I motioned to the picture of my mother and myself with the medal around her neck and the USA flag wrapped around the pair of us, as I smiled fondly at the picture, before I added, “She passed away a few months after this was taken.”

“I am so sorry,” David said, visibly upset.

I shook my head and padded my heart, “She is still here with me. And when I win my two golds this winter,” I shrugged my shoulders, “She will be with me there as well.”

“I love how you are already calling the medals yours,” he grinned at me his eyes twinkling.

“It’s like your sport I think. If you have any shred of doubt in you, the doubt just grows until it consumes you until you are incapable of doing anything.” I gave him a small smile back.

I fell silent for a bit thinking about the coming Olympics. It was going to be hard, the competition of course, but not having mom there. Everything seemed so impossible.

David could sense something was troubling me and obviously didn’t want me closing up again. He glanced towards the next picture, “Who are all of these people?”

I looked at the next picture to see what he was talking about and began to laugh. In the framed picture was a group of people covered in various amounts of paint, holding paint brushes; the people included Geno, myself, and his family. Geno actually had me in his arms and was in the middle dumping paint on me and his brother was dumping paint on the pair of us while his mother and father were looking on pretending to be cross though were failing in holding back their laughter.

“That’s a good friend of mine, Evgeni Malkin and his family and of course me. It was during one of my trips to visit him. We were, uh, attempting to paint one of the rooms of their house. As you can see, most of the paint got on Geno and myself.”

“Looks like fun? So he’s just a friend” He raised an eyebrow.

And I nodded, laughing still, confirming, “Just a very good friend.”

“How did you two meet?”

I snorted, and started giggling causing David gave me a weird look as if I just broke some illusion he held of me.

“Uhm, last Olympics in Vancouver. He plays hockey.”

“Really? Hockey?” He asked realizing that I could and would talk about this Geno for hours. At the same time, I realized he didn’t know who Geno was, which meant that he probably didn’t know much about hockey, which meant he probably wouldn’t know Crosby. I could feel myself relax a bit more with David and not have to be on my guard all the time about keeping Sid and me hidden.

“Yeah.”

“What team does he play for?”

“Pittsburgh Penguins.”

“Are you serious?” David exclaimed.

I nodded, slightly confused now about David’s sudden excitement.

“One of my favorite people, Tori, Victoria McKinley, she’s a diver,” he asked looking to see if I recognized the name, but I shook my head so he continued, “Tori is a big Penguins fan. Well, not just the Penguins, but any Pittsburgh sport. She’s from Pittsburgh.”

“Oh,” I nodded.

“She’s actually doing this program as well. Her partner is a hockey player, but I can’t think of who it is.”

I knew it wasn’t any a member of the Penguins. None of the guys were doing the show, otherwise I would have begged, pleaded or killed to be partnered with them. I briefly imagined Paul Martin on a snowboard and I coughed to hide a laugh. I refocused on David.

David was now studying another picture . Again, it was a picture of Geno and me.

“Uh, that one was taken at his birthday two years ago.”

“Is he good?”

I grinned hugely at David knowing exactly what he meant, “Malkin is the best. He is incredible to watch on the ice. It’s like, it’s impossible to describe, you just have to watch him play.”

“So will he make the team for the Olympics?”

“Of course, he’ll be at Sochi. But he’ll be playing for Russia.”

“Really? He’s Russian? Will you be cheering for Russia?” His eyes got wide.

I looked right at the camera, “I will cheer for Russia except when they play us. USA first. Russia second. And Canada last.”

This caused Jen to laugh uncontrollably from behind the camera.

---

I kept opening up to David; it was getting easier. We talked a lot of our sports and the pressures and about Geno and Jen, which were easy topics. Everything else went very smoothly until the night before we were to leave Colorado.
“Lily, I found this when I was doing wash,” David had brought in a pair of men’s gym shorts to the kitchen. They were plain black with just a bold 87 on the left leg.

“They belong to my friend Geno,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. It was the first thing I could think of.

“Oh, from when you were in Russia training this summer?”

“Uh huh,” I hated this. I really liked David, but I couldn’t tell him that they were Crosby’s. I carefully took them and ran upstairs as I heard Jen laughing.

---

I loved diving.
Well, sorta.

I loved going up on the 10 meter, jumping off, doing flips and somersaults and landing on my feet. Non-surprising, all of the muscle memory built from a lifetime of snowboarding was easily transferred over to this sport.

However, it turned out that I was physically incapable of landing head first. I could do a simple dive off of the normal diving board and off of the side of the pool. That was easy and doable. But anything more complicated than that?

Hello bellyflop, faceplant, or backflop.

“Lily, really, you don’t have to keep doing it,” David was laughing after I backflopped for maybe the billionth time. Jen’s laughter was carrying around the entire outdoor pool.

“Can you take a picture of this?” I asked digging for my phone in my bag.

I wanted more pictorial evidence of the huge red splotches spreading across my back. Of course there were several people that were going to receive this. Bethany was going to get a nasty comment about what awful things she made me do, while Geno was going to get ((((((((((. Sid was going to get something along the lines of ‘I’d rather be touching fish than this.’ Which wasn’t actually completely true. I was having a lot of fun, I just wished that Sidney could be here with me while I did all of this craziness.

After David had taken the picture, I flung it back in my bag and headed back to climb up the hundred and one stairs to the top platform again.

---

But this all ended two days ago, as I stood now posing for the cameras. I felt nervous even though I had been coming to this particular fundraiser in New York City for years. After talking about it, Sidney and I figured he could easily blend in with the other athletes and range of celebrities. It’d give us an opportunity to spend even just an extra day together and then head up to Canada.
And yet. So much could change in a couple of months. Even with good communication, the feelings could be gone. ‘He could not like you anymore, or you him.‘ the snarky thought entered my mind. My smile falter for a second before I forced it back on.

It felt endless as I made my way through the entrance and greeting line and finally into the museum where the charity gala was being held.

I made casual conversation with people I knew and didn’t know all while keeping a very watchful eye on the busy room. The frustration was building in my stomach, or was it nerves? I couldn’t tell, but I also couldn’t find Sidney. I had to ask the person who I was talking to to repeat himself for I was so distracted.

And there he was.

He had traded his normally dark colors for a lighter tan linen suit with a crisp white shirt under it, which was all brought together with a purple tie. At some point I would need to thank James Neal for this fashion input because Sidney looked absolutely breathtaking. Sidney hadn’t seen me yet, because unlike me, he was a good human being and was actually paying attention to the people he was in the middle of a conversation with. My stomach started flipping and my heart clenched. ‘Yup, still got it,’ the little voice sang.

Casually, I said something to the man I was with, though, I wasn’t even sure if I was speaking English at that point; I actually think Russian or Norwegian slipped out. And I started to walk away.

‘Don’t forget to breathe,’ my head reminded me as I slowly and as calmly as I could made a slow, but determined path towards him. ‘And don’t fall.’

Somehow, I eventually made it to him.

“Crosby, I hadn’t realized you’d be here.” I neutrally greeted him when I reached this new group of people. But who was I kidding, it was Sidney I reached.

“Rivers,” he replied just as casually, turning to face me, “What a lovely surprise to see you.”

We kept the distance between us. I felt his sparkling amber eyes casually look at me in a friendly manner, lingering on parts of me that made me shiver.

“This is Lily Rivers. I’m sure you know she’s the a prodigy in the snowboarding world,” Sidney supplied to the people he was standing with.

“Hardly a prodigy,” I scoffed at Sidney, making a face at him. I realized that in these heels, we were the same height.

“How do you two know each other?” the attractive female named asked.

“His teammate, Evgeni Malkin and I are good friends.” I said as Sidney supplied, “She is really close with Evgeni Malkin my teammate.”

The woman raised an eyebrow.

“Do you have a drink yet?” Sidney asked me.

“I just got here,” I shook my head.

“Oh, just arrived? Did you know there is apparently an exceptional dinosaur exhibit here?” to the people around us, Sid was completely just being a polite chitchat.

Sidney’s poker face was incredible. Mine needed a helluva lot of work.

“Really? I love dinosaurs,” I grinned at Sidney my heart doing its best to not explode at this ver moment.

“We shall have to go check it out then. I was wondering if there are pterodactyls in the show. See, those are my favorite. Would you all excuse us?” and he steered me away from the group.

“Are those the ones that swim?” we heard one of the men of the group ask as we walked away quickly.

“We need to work on that,” he muttered as we made our way to the bar.

“Our twinsy routine isn’t cute? And I can’t believe you said that about the pterodactyls” I asked looking at him sideways as we paused at the bar waiting our turn. I started giggling.

“Mmm,” he was clearly worried we were once again in ear shot of people, “Two champagnes, please.”

He left a sizable tip and we headed toward a tall table off to the side to lean against.

I drained the glass in one solid go.

“Hey, hey, you okay?” Sidney’s eyes were full of concern as he watched me.

“Mhmm, I’m just not a fan of these things.”

“I’m not either,” he sighed, but he stopped mid sighed and was looking at me, really looking at me.

“What?” I asked alarmed, “Is there something on the dress? I knew I shouldn’t ever wear a dress with this much white in it, too dangerous--”

“No, I just haven’t gotten the chance to tell you how incredibly beautiful you look.” Sidney’s amber eyes were as intense as I’d ever seen them before.

I could feel my heart slow as I looked at him, it was if my entire being was starting to calm just by being near him.

“It’s the dress,” I muttered.

“It’s not the dress,” Sidney assured me, “I’m glad I came to this.”

“I’m glad you’re here too,” I held back a smirk the best I could, “Cause I’m going to need your help getting off about six feet of tape keeping my breasts in place.”

Sidney snorted some of the champagne up he had been drinking.

“Oh,” a voice said behind us.

We both stiffened, terrified of how much we had been overheard.

“Are you alright?” the stranger said giving us both looks like we were children acting inappropriately.

Sidney and I looked at each other, and for a moment it was as if we were both puzzling over this question.

But then we both started laughing; we were alright.

---

“So what are we doing today?” Sidney asked tracing soft circles with one of his large fingers onto my back. It never ceased to amaze me that his hands, which he spent his entire life working and building up calluses, were so gentle and could send so many shivers throughout my body.
We were lazing about in bed still, myself laying on my stomach while my head was turned towards Sidney, and Sid was on his side. Both of us were very pleasantly naked.

“Mmm whatever, I’m all yours until your training camp begins,” I muttered. I was turning into putty as he traced his fingertip along me.

“All mine, eh?” Sid’s voice perked up suddenly, “I like that.”

I felt his finger withdraw from my back and I began to protest. I protested even more when I felt him leaving his spot on the bed next to me.

“What are you--”

Whatever I was saying was cut off as both of his hands took my hips and flipped me onto my back as if I were weightless.

“Oh,” I breathed realizing what he was doing.

Sidney moved in, pushing my legs up and apart my legs over his shoulders so he could gain better access between my legs. He found he found zero resistance from me.

Sid kissed the inside of my thigh as his fingers gently slid along my slit as if testing to see how excited I already was for him.

“Crosby!” I propped myself up on my elbows glaring as he teased me.

Sidney just grinned up at me and kept contact as he slowly, and exaggeratedly took his pointer finger and middle finger, separated my folds, moved his mouth down a few inches and began sucking on my clit.

I fell back knowing I would be at his mercy in a few minutes. What was I kidding, this way never took minutes and the smug bastard knew it. My hand found his head and firmly gripped his hair.

“Call from Director Michaels,” my phone chirped very loudly from nearby.

“No,” I moaned, “I have to--”

Sidney stopped what he was doing and looked up at me in disbelief as I pushed my self up and away from him.

“It’s like,” I groaned, not able to explain as I wriggled off the bed hunting for my phone which kept squawking.

“Hello?” I grabbed the phone on the second to last ring trying calm myself by walking away from the naked man in the bed and myself who was so close and focus on the head of USA snowboarding and skiing.

“Lily, are you alright?” Director Michaels’s voice sounded concerned.

“Absolutely--I mean no--I mean you aren’t interrupting and I am fine. I mean, is everything okay?” I couldn’t look at Sidney, I knew my face was bright red as I rambled.

“Oh, of course it is. We were just reviewing all of the team captain applications for the snowboarding team for Sochi and found that you hadn’t submitted yours,” he paused waiting for me to reply. When I didn’t, he continued, “Since you hadn’t, I thought it best to call you and check in to make sure everything was alright.”

“Uh, oh,” I frowned, furrowing my brow. I hadn’t really thought about that position. Normally it was given an older member of the team, not to a 22 year old coming off of an injury. I guess I had assumed Shaun would get it this year.

I had also missed 4 of the 8 qualifying runs so I had to come back this winter win everything I had. It wasn’t something I was wanting to think about.

“Lily?” His voice broke me out of my thoughts.

“I am so sorry sir,” I shook my head. I felt a soft hand on my back. I turned my head and saw a worried Sidney. Of course perfect Sidney was there comforting me. He didn’t realize what was going on, just that something was wrong. I shrugged him off and took another couple of steps away.

“We would strongly like to advise you to submit an application. Advise would be the wrong word. We want you to submit an application. And we need it by Monday morning.” his tone was so thick with implications I was totally caught off guard.

“Oh, okay.”

“Great! We look forward to reviewing the document and seeing you in competition! Take care Ms. Rivers!”

I lowered my phone, “Fuck.”

“Hey,” Sidney’s voice was gentle.

“Can we not talk now?” I shook my head. Instead I jerked my head back towards the bed suggestively as I tossed my phone onto the armchair in the corner.

Sidney hesitated for a moment.

“It’s just Olympic stuff,” I waved it off, as I pushed him to the bed. He didn’t protest so I pushed him back onto the bed. He watched as I slowly climbed onto the bed, slowly making my way toward him.

“Call from Bethany Rodgers,” my phone chirped loudly interrupting us for the second time this morning.

“Nooooo!” I whine very highly pitched.

Sidney sighed, his voice very gritty, “You better get that.”

I detached myself from Sidney and stomped to the chair I had thrown my phone maybe a minute before.

“What?”

There is a pause on the other end, “Well that is some greeting for your favorite agent, I should just call later”

I made yet another unintelligible sound before I answered, “Yeah, maybe you should?”

“Well! That would be pointless!”

“What? Why?” My tone was flat. Already there was quite the unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach; I didn’t like where this was going.

“I’ll explain it to you all now, just open the door to your room, I’m here!”

I whipped around and stared at Sidney horrified, “I swear, I thought you just said that you were here?”

I heard a banging from the other room, clearing coming on the door to the room, “Yeah, and I brought the vegan-gluten free scones from that bakery you like so much. As well as tea.”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” my voice sounded like a foreign entity as I slowly pulled the phone away from my ear and hung up.

The moment of inaction lasted only a split second before we were both running around the bedroom like insane people. Clothes were being flung everywhere, I was trying to put on a bra while hanging up my dress from last night while Sidney was trying to dig through my suitcase in attempts to find one of his shirts or sweatshirts so it didn’t look like he had stayed overnight. I threw on a plain white v-neck tshirt and a pair of jean shorts.

“This is where these went!”

I turned around and saw him slipping on a pair of his 87 gym shorts, and I gave him a flash of a grin as I headed out of the bedroom and into the living room of the suite and toward the door. Before I opened the door, I took a beat and a deep breath.

“Bethany!” I said excitedly as I opened the door.

“What took you?” she frowned taking me in.

“Oh, you know,” I waved a hand.

She bustled in handing me the large bag of delicacies.

“Already there’s so much incredible buzz about you last night! That dress went over huge! I have gotten so many calls about having you doing photo shoots and appearances and the like! Such perfection!” Bethany was firing on all cylinders as she pushed past me, “And where and who is the man? Or is it better to ask what state of dress he’s in?”

“Uh?”

Bethany arched a delicate eyebrow and glanced at the pair of men’s dress shoes sitting neatly by the door next to my heels which had been haphazardly tossed next to them.

We had forgotten about his dress shoes.

I felt myself turn pale as I glanced back towards Bethany, who was now pinching the bridge of her nose as if I had cause her a new headache.

“Lily. If you bring home a guy from one of these events, or from any event with one night type of intentions, you have to remember to put the do not disturb sign up on the door. Otherwise, what if a maid or someone else comes in?” Bethany started to lecture.

“Hi!” Sidney had thought he’d waited long enough to come out from the bedroom.

I’d seen Bethany meet many, many incredibly famous people in hundreds of different, most often times unconventional circumstances. Out of all of these events, I had never seen her freeze up before. Though, I wasn’t sure if it was freezing up so much as her trying to pull as much information as possible in the situation and try to compute everything and not have everything make sense to her.
Bethany looked over Sidney very carefully and slowly, taking in all of the details of his wrinkled t-shirt and gym shorts as well as slightly damp hair. She then glanced back towards the door at the shoes before glancing back at me.

Finally she pursed her lips and spoke, “Lily Rivers, the next words out of your mouth better be the truth. This was not a one night stand, correct?”

“Correct.” I confirmed, my mouth dry.

“And the r and r trip to Canada you are leaving for tonight....” her sentence died off and her eyes bugged out as she watched Sidney watch over to my and take my hand in mine. It was as if she couldn’t actually believe what was actually happening before her eyes.

“I am actually going to stay at Sidney’s for a while.” I finished the sentence for her and then I added onto it, “Just like how Sidney stayed at my house at the beginning of the summer.”

“Beginning of--” her voice trailed off again and her eyebrows seemed to raise into her hair line, “You are telling me that you Lily Rivers, have been on several dates with the same man since the beginning of the summer?”

“I think you could say the relationship started before that, what in April?” Sidney spoke up, “Though it all really sorta started in February or really November?.”

I looked up at Sidney making a face, “Do we need to be that particular about that right now?”

“November and April. When things...” Bethany’s voice trailed off, this time because of anger, “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

I looked down at the ground knowing exactly what she meant.

“Crosby, can I talk to my client alone?”

“No-”

“Sidney,” I muttered not able to look at him now either.

“Lily,” even with the pleading in his voice I couldn’t look at him.

“Please, just, give us a couple of minutes.”

I didn’t hear him leave, but I did hear the door shut.

“What the hell are you doing?” Bethany’s voice wasn’t quiet.

“I--”

“Seriously Lily, what are you doing? Do you realize Sochi is months, MONTHS away. And you are busy playing with a boy. Where are your priorities?”

“Bethany,” I tried again.

“What would your mother say?”

And that was it.

“I think she would like Sidney” I yelled before I could stop myself.

The room was dead silent.

“And you know what, I’m happy.” I started laughing.

Bethany stared at me slack-jawed.

“I am really happy. I have incredible friends, I have an oddball Russian family, my snowboarding is coming back together, and I have this guy that gives me pterodactyls and who I really, really like.” I shrugged my shoulders, “And I just did something really stupid. Look, we can talk about this some other time but now I need you to leave.”

“But--”

I just shook my head. I had to go find Sidney. and left her in living room as I quickly ran into the bedroom to grab one of the key cards to my suite before leaving the area completely and as I reached the door I saw it hadn’t been shut completely. I frowned as I pushed it open.

Sidney was standing right outside of the room.

I grabbed his arm and yanked him back into the hotel room and then held the door open waiting for Bethany to leave. She took her time, glaring at Sidney on her way out.

“Lily--” Sidney started, but I didn’t let him.

“I am such an idiot.” I confessed, “But can we talk about this later? I just want to get out of New York now.”

“And go?”

I stared at him for a moment, “Your home. Halifax.”

Sidney gave me a small smile.

“You should check for earlier flights. I think I have more stuff to pack.” I rambled as I began to march back into the bedroom with the intent to throw things back in my suitcase.

Sidney let me, letting us both sit with the knowledge he had heard every word I had said to Bethany.

Notes

Hey friends!!!

Well, it's been a while. How are we all holding up? Hockey is almost back!

I have been playing around with chapters further in this story, along with chapters in the Russian Bear Chronicles as well as some other stories I am working on (which shall not be seeing the light of day until this story is finished). Bad author.

Just a reminder, this story is involved with the awesome story of Citius, Altius, Fortius. by Flyers_girl. That story that is going to drive everyone crazy in the best ways possible -.-