Chapter 12
NICO
When the alarm went off at six, I was already awake. I'd been awake for hours, lying in the dark, tracing the memory of his hands on my face.
My shoulder throbbed. The bruise had deepened overnight, spreading in a stain of purple and black that I could feel when I breathed. But the shoulder wasn't what kept me awake.
Kieran sat up in the opposite bed in one fluid motion, instantly alert. He looked at me across the gap between the beds.
For a long beat, we just stared.
The Detroit morning light was grey and flat, filtering through curtains that weren't quite closed.
In it, Kieran looked different, softer and younger, the sharp angles of his face blurred by sleep.
His hair was flattened on one side. His T-shirt was twisted.
He looked real, not the immovable wall of composure I'd been living with for six weeks.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning."
"How's the shoulder?"
I rotated the joint. It throbbed, but it worked. "Functional."
"Good."
He headed for the shower. I waited for the usual panic to set in, the one I'd trained myself to expect.
Good thing happens, bad thing follows. That was my law, the pattern my life had confirmed so many times it had graduated from suspicion to certainty.
I'd kissed Kieran Walsh. I'd let him see me. The universe owed me a catastrophe.
But as the water hissed behind the bathroom door, the panic didn't come.
The team bus to Columbus was where the panic finally arrived, just not the kind I'd expected.
Kieran sat three rows ahead of me. Standard arrangement, goalies with goalies, forwards with forwards. Abbott was beside him, their conversation a low murmur about save percentages and rebound control. This was exactly the distance that was supposed to exist between us during daylight hours.
He didn't look at me. Not once.
Not when I boarded the bus. Not during the two-hour drive. Not when we stopped for gas and everyone filed into a rest stop. I stood six feet behind him in line at the coffee counter. He ordered his drink and walked past me like I was wallpaper.
By the time we reached Columbus, I'd constructed a narrative so thorough it could have won a Pulitzer.
He regretted it. The kiss had been a mistake, the adrenaline of a win, the vulnerability of the conversation about Finland.
He'd woken up, seen the morning light, and realized that kissing the player he was supposed to be monitoring was the stupidest thing he'd ever done.
The silence wasn't professionalism. It was retreat.
I'd lived this story before. The people who got close always found a reason to pull back. The distance they created was always proportional to how much they'd let themselves feel.
The Columbus hotel was a Hilton with the same anonymous rooms. Same two queen beds, same view of nothing. Kieran dropped his bag on the far bed and immediately opened his laptop.
"Film session at three," he said, not looking up. "Reeves wants the forwards in the auxiliary room."
"Got it."
I stood in the doorway with my bag on my shoulder and felt the distance between us like a chasm, invisible and absolute.
"Kieran."
"Yeah?"
"Are we going to talk about it?"
He stopped typing. His hands hovered over the keyboard. He didn't look up for a long time.
"Not here," he said.
"Then when?"
"Home."
That word again. The same one he'd used last night when he'd pulled away from kissing me. It was starting to feel less like a promise and more like a deferral, an elegant way of saying not now, not yet, not where it counts.
I went to the auxiliary film room and tried to focus on breakout patterns.
Theo found me after the Columbus game, a 3-1 win that felt mechanical—the kind of victory you grind out when everyone's tired and the bus schedule is more enemy than the opponent.
I was sitting in an empty equipment room, my skates still on, my helmet in my lap.
The door opened and Theo slipped in, closing it behind him.
"You look terrible," he said cheerfully.
"Thanks."
"Not your game. Your game was fine. Two points, good defensive effort." He dropped onto the bench across from me. "You look like someone stole your dog."
"I don't have a dog."
"It's a figure of speech." Theo cocked his head, studying me with a disarming directness that made him impossible to deflect. "What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"Nico."
I looked at him. Theo Callahan, the man who'd come out publicly during his rookie year and somehow made it look effortless.
Who'd fallen in love with his captain and navigated the media storm—and the team dynamics and the league politics—and emerged on the other side engaged and happy, apparently bulletproof.
I wanted to ask him how. How do you let yourself want something when wanting has only ever been the prelude to losing?
"How did you know?" I asked instead.
Theo's expression shifted. Not surprise, recognition. He'd been expecting this question, or one like it. "Know what?"
"With Luca. How did you know it was worth the risk?"
He leaned back against the wall. His dimples disappeared for once, his face settling into something more serious. "I didn't. That's the point. You don't get to know in advance. You just, you feel it, and you decide whether the feeling is worth being terrified."
"And if it goes wrong?"
"Then it goes wrong, and you survive it, because you've survived worse." He met my eyes. "You've survived a hell of a lot worse, Nico."
My throat tightened. "It's complicated."
"It's always complicated. Luca was my captain, my mentor, and closeted for sixteen years. He had a contract that could've been voided. He had a father in the Hall of Fame who didn't know his son was gay. Complicated is just the word people use when they're scared."
"I'm not scared."
Theo smiled. It was gentler than his usual grin, quieter and more knowing. "You're terrified. And so is he, by the way. I watched him on the bus today, and he was staring at the back of your head for two hours while pretending to watch film on his laptop."
Something cracked in my chest. "He has?"
"The man's a mess. He's just better at hiding it than you are, because goalies are freaks who process everything internally.
" Theo leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"Look, I'm not going to pretend I know what's going on between you two.
It's not my business. But I know what it looks like when someone's trying to talk themselves out of something good because they think they don't deserve it. "
The words landed in the center of my chest and dug in.
"The people who matter won't let you ruin it alone," Theo said. "That's all I'm saying."
He stood, grabbed his gear bag, and paused at the door. "Also, if you hurt Walsh, Luca will literally murder you."
He flashed his dimples and left.
I sat in the empty equipment room and thought about what Theo had said. So is he, by the way. He was staring at the back of your head for two hours.
The bus ride home was overnight. I found my seat, row eleven, window side. Two rows ahead, Kieran sat with Abbott, their heads bent over a tablet.
Just before the lights dimmed for the drive, Kieran turned in his seat. His eyes found mine across the dark bus. The look lasted two seconds, maybe three. Long enough to say everything that daylight and the presence of twenty-two teammates wouldn't let him say out loud.
I'm not retreating. I'm waiting.
I turned toward the window and pressed my forehead against the cold glass and let myself feel, for the first time in a year, the terrifying, annihilating hope that I might be allowed to keep something.