Chapter 11
Abbott
It was our last stop on the road. The last game was tomorrow, and after that, the buses and the planes would take us back to Chicago. We'd return to a world where the old status quo would assert itself.
But tonight, the hotel room was comfortable and warm.
We were sitting on the bed with the TV on mute and the remains of room service on the desk.
Jamie was telling me a story about his sister's wedding—something about a best man speech and a fire extinguisher and his brother-in-law's face.
I was laughing, the quiet kind that started low and built.
Jamie Hayes was the only person alive who could reliably break through my composure.
"He grabbed the wrong end," Jamie said, leaning back against the headboard, his shoulder three inches from mine. "The wrong end, Abbott. Of the fire extinguisher. And instead of putting out the tablecloth he sprayed the wedding cake. Straight on, from four feet away."
"How do you grab the wrong end of a fire extinguisher?"
"Under pressure, people do incredible things." He was grinning. It made his whole face come alive. It turned him from handsome into something nearly impossible to look away from. "The cake was a total loss. My sister still has the photo."
"Your family sounds chaotic."
"My family is wonderful and completely insane.
They would love you." He said it like it was obvious that Clay Abbott would fit into the Hayes family the way he fit into Jamie's life.
"You'd sit in the corner and observe and my mom would try to feed you.
My dad would ask you about hockey and you'd say the perfect thing and they'd want to adopt you. "
I didn't say anything at first. The image he'd painted, me at his family's table, being folded into the warmth that Jamie carried with him everywhere, felt so easy my throat tightened.
"Maybe someday," I said.
"Maybe someday." He looked at me. The grin softened. The expression underneath was pure Jamie—the Jamie who existed when he stopped managing the rest of the world and just sat next to someone he trusted.
I thought about my cousin Marcus again. The version of himself he'd shown the world for so long, optimized for acceptability, until the real Marcus emerged at thirty.
He'd told me once, a few months after coming out, that the hardest part wasn't how people reacted.
The hardest part was realizing how much energy he'd spent on hiding.
You don't know how heavy it is until you put it down.
I hadn't put anything down yet. I was still holding it.
The TV flickered. Blue light moved across the walls. The room was quiet, the way hotels got quiet late at night.
We'd stopped talking. Not because we'd run out of things to say, the conversation had simply reached the place where words were no longer necessary.
The silence was doing the work now. Jamie was close enough that I could smell his soap and the scent of his skin.
I'd spent this entire road trip trying to ignore it.
His hand was on the blanket between us, resting palm down, fingers loose.
I looked at his hand. I'd looked at his hand every night of this trip.
I had memorized it—the calluses from his stick, the width of his knuckles, the way his fingers curled when he was relaxed.
I had done nothing for nine nights, and it was more stifling by the hour.
"Abbott."
His voice was quiet, stripped raw.
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you're my roommate on these trips."
"Booking error."
"Sure. Booking error." He paused. "I'm glad anyway."
I turned my head to see him looking at me.
The distance between us was so small. I could see the color of his eyes in the low light, burning with intensity. He'd stopped pretending he wasn't looking at me..
His hand moved half an inch toward mine on the blanket.
I didn't move away.
He didn't reach for me. He let his hand rest there, half an inch closer, and looked at me with an expression that I would remember for the rest of my life—not wanting, not pleading. Just open. For one unguarded moment, he stopped hiding.
I could have closed it. I could have put my hand on his and what we'd been building toward for nine nights—for years—would have been real and tangible, existing in the physical world instead of the private one where I kept it.
One of us shifted, the distance falling away. His face was right there, close enough to read every microexpression. Close enough I could feel his breath against my mouth.
My phone rang.
The screen lit up on the nightstand. MARTY. 11:47 PM.
Jamie blinked. His open expression held for two more seconds. Then he pulled back.
I looked at the phone. I looked at Jamie. I looked at the phone.
"You should get that," Jamie said. His voice was strained.
Our connection vanished.
I answered.
"Clay." Marty's voice was alert. He wasn't apologetic about the hour. Agents didn't apologize for phone calls that changed careers. "Denver's formalizing the offer. Two years, three point five million per. Starter guaranteed. NMC for the first year. They want an answer before you fly home."
I said the right things. I asked the right questions—cap implications, bonus structure, the trade mechanics from Chicago's end. My voice was as steady as my hands. I was a goalie and goalies kept their hands steady.
Jamie sat next to me on the bed, listening to my half of the conversation. I could feel him there, his warmth and stillness, his undivided attention when he was listening.
I hung up and put the phone down. I stared at the blank screen.
The room was silent. Two minutes ago, we'd been close enough to feel each other's breath. Now we were sitting on a bed in a hotel room in a city neither of us lived in, and the distance between us was the widest it had ever been.
"Congratulations," Jamie said, his voice steady. "That's an amazing offer."
"Yeah."
"You deserve it. You know you deserve it. After what you did two nights ago—thirty-one saves, first star—any team in the league should want you."
"Yeah."
"Starter money. A contender, Abbott. Denver has a window.
You'd walk into that building and you'd be the guy.
" He was doing his thing, building me up, saying the right words—using his social skill to make me feel seen and valued and supported.
He was doing it perfectly. "That's everything you wanted. "
He was looking straight ahead, at the muted TV, where a late-night show was playing. He wouldn't look at me. He was composed, being perfectly supportive because that's what Jamie Hayes did.
But I had seen his face.
In the moment before I answered the phone, in that suspended second where we were both in the same space, I had seen his face. Jamie, raw and exposed, and it was so clear and unmistakable that nothing could make me unsee it.
"We should sleep," Jamie said. "Big game tomorrow."
"Yeah."
He turned off the lamp. We lay down, him on his side, me on mine. This shared bed had become, over the course of this trip, the most honest space in our lives.
Neither of us slept.
I lay in the dark and listened to Jamie's breathing.
It wasn't the even rhythm of sleep but the controlled measure of a man who was awake and working very hard to sound like he wasn't.
I thought about his face. I thought about Denver. I thought about Kieran's question. What are you waiting for him to do?
I was waiting for him to ask. But Jamie was never going to ask. Jamie Hayes had spent his entire life making sure everyone else was okay. Asking for something would mean admitting that he wasn't.
Tomorrow we would go home, and I would have to decide what to do with the fact that Jamie Hayes loved me, and I loved him, and neither of us had said it.
And the phone call that had arrived at the moment when we might have.
I didn't sleep.
At 4 AM, I heard Jamie turn toward me. His breathing was uneven, the sound of a man who'd given up on pretending.
I lay still and let him think I was sleeping.