Chapter 11 Jayden
JAYDEN
Fact: If you make enough people uncomfortable with who you are, eventually it becomes irrelevant what they think.
I reached that point early. Building a career around boys and men who weren’t raised like me made sure of it.
Sometimes I wished my family fit the status quo. Sometimes I debated being normal, like the guys who called me out for innocently looking their way in the locker room—the ones whose parents complained to coaches about me being on the team because I might “confuse” their kids.
Also fact: people are afraid of what they don’t know.
If that ‘what’ is a person, they disguise fear as discomfort or concern for the wider populace.
It’s bullshit, and I want to protect Eli and Finley from all of it. That’s how I end up sitting beside Eli with Finley on my lap while Taylor and Lex watch us from across the table.
“I won’t make a statement.” Eli’s foot brushes mine as he sits straighter. “What the three of us have isn’t anyone else’s business, and I’m not opening us up to outside scrutiny because of fake news.”
Lex makes a point of showing us the photos on The Chronicle’s site. “A false story with photos can look a lot like the truth if we don’t fix the narrative. Set it straight.”
Fuck this.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” I snap, banding my arm tighter around Finley’s waist. My patience is thinner than I thought, and with everything I know, it makes me sick that we’re even discussing that horseshit.
“And what does it fucking matter if a group of teenagers were drinking together? Happens every fucking day all across America. What does it fucking matter that Eli isn’t straight like everyone assumes? Why does he have to comment on it?”
“JJ…” Finley cups my face, trying to calm me, but the crack in the dam splits wide, and I can’t hold it in anymore. “Breathe, Honey,” she whispers, pleading.
“No. This shouldn’t be a big deal. He’s still Eli.
Still one of the best goddamn defensemen in the league.
He’s still the same person. Fuck, I don’t see all the straight assholes having to announce their sexuality.
It’s… It’s… Fuck! It’s fucking gross that this is even a discussion.
Like, we’re normal people. We’re just fucking people with feelings like everyone else.
Eli’s not… we’re not… this isn’t wrong. We’re not doing anything wrong. ”
I’m certain my brain’s about to explode. My chest threatens to split under the weight of the truth I know and what we just did. The heady taste of them is still ripe on my tongue. I smell Eli on Finley every time she moves.
Coupled with those photos, I’m unhinged—the afterglow of our kiss dwindling fast.
“Hey…” Eli leans in, tilting his face into my line of sight. One hand grips mine between us; the other rests over Finley’s thigh, like he’s trying to soothe us both.
What is wrong with me?
I should be comforting him—holding his hand, telling him how proud I am of his strength—reminding him it isn’t too late to take the bastards who hurt him to the edge of the world and drop them into the abyss. Fuck. Them. Up.
Because that’s where my mind is right now: ruin. I want to wreck the cunts who touched him, who violated his trust and boundaries, who took what wasn’t theirs, and walked on like it was nothing—when, to me, every crumb of Eli is everything.
“Relax, JJ,” he offers with a reassuring smile that chokes me all the way down to the pit of my stomach.
“I can’t, Eli. I’m trying, but I can’t. That night does not get to dictate the rest of your life.” Fuck, I realize I’ve said too much too late, and everyone is looking at me quizzically like I’m speaking in tongues.
Well, not everyone. Finley and Lex. They’re looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, and I can’t say that I’m not losing it when Taylor gives me a look of pity and resignation.
What the fuck?
He knows. And he did nothing. How can he love Eli and not see how deep the hurt runs?
Eli’s hand grips mine tighter, anchoring me before I tear the jet apart.
“There will be no statement. We’re going to keep going about our lives like we always have.” Eli leaves no room for negotiation. “There is no room for anyone else’s opinions or judgments.”
Lex nods. “I admire that… the three of you…” Brown eyes track between Eli and me, flick to Finley, then land on Eli. “And if silence is how you want to handle it, then I respect that. Even if it makes my job a helluva lot harder.”
A thick brow hikes up his forehead as he sits back into his seat. Meanwhile, Taylor studies us for a beat, a slow grin quivering at the corners of his mouth. He’s about to speak when Lex’s phone detonates into an alarm-toned ring that jerks all of us upright.
“Fuck! What now?” Lex barks.
Eli tenses against me. Lex answers with a weary “give it to me,” eyes pinned to the three of us.
Something comes over his face, a choked kind of expression that shoots a bolt of nausea through me.
Eli crushes my hand in his as Finley tucks deeper into me, her arm hooking awkwardly around Eli’s nape until we’re a knot of tense limbs.
The longest minute of my life unspools amid grunts and hushed demands for more information that are punctuated by gutsy curses.
When Lex ends the call, he gives us an appraising glance.
“Relax, that call wasn’t about you,” he says, sitting straighter as his phone keeps pinging.
“Here’s the deal: we’ll handle this your way.
No statement, no big deal—” He spears me with a narrowed look.
“—you do you and carry on as you are. But the instant it comes out, I handle it my way. I don’t want you to hide, to waste bandwidth on worrying about being outed.
Now is the time to up your game and make sure it’s your talent that outweighs the bullshit. Got it?”
“Yes,” Eli replies.
“Okay. Meanwhile, I’ll have my PR team set up some low-key opportunities for the three of you to show your faces together.
It’s important that we navigate this with caution and grace.
” He checks his watch and buckles up just before the pilot announces we’re preparing to land.
As Finley gets up to wake Christina, Lex tells her, “My people are going to reach out to brief you on how to handle the press, and I know you don’t have social media, but that has to change. ”
“Jesus Christ,” Eli groans beside me, “what happened to carrying on as we are?”
Lex’s gaze runs the length of us and lands back on Eli. “Your social media manager is going to put a new agenda together. It’s all being organized as we speak. I’ll be leaving for LA as soon as I pick up Weismann from your hotel.”
“Oliver?” I stand, following Finley toward the berths as Eli falls in behind me.
“Is everything okay with him?” Eli asks.
Now is not the time for us to lose him. Who the fuck fills in now?
“Yeah, his wife had an accident—”
“What?” I glance at Eli, and he frowns in my direction.
“Oliver’s married?”
Lex’s eyes bug like he can’t work out why we’re so surprised. Then, shaking his head, he tells Eli, “You need to rest up and be prepared to get back on the ice.”
Eli nods, grasping my shoulders and spinning me on the spot before I have a chance to go back to the whole Oliver having a wife ‘what the fuck.’ We head to the lounge area where the girls are already buckled in. Christina still looks half-asleep, her paper-pale skin making her freckles stand out.
We sit. I take a breath and study Eli. At a glance, he’s serene, but the closer I look, I notice the minute divots between his brows and the tense clench of his throat, hollowing out the bottom of his jaw.
“You good?” I ask as his head tips back and he lolls it toward me.
Eli nods. “You?”
“Yeah,” I start, but that heavy churn roils in my gut, and I can’t continue with the lie. “I’m trying.”
With another nod, Eli presses his thigh to mine and lays his forearm along it with his palm up. Opening himself to my touch. Maybe because he needs it. Maybe because he knows I do. Either way, I set my hand in his and lean my temple against his. Across from us, Finley and Christina whisper-giggle.
“Do you wish I hadn’t told you?” Eli whispers, the rough pad of his thumb tracing the side of my index finger, knuckle to knuckle, again and again.
“No,” I murmur. “I’m glad you told me. I just wish I could do more than carry that memory with you. I wish I could erase it or at least make it better…”
He sighs, shoulder sinking into mine. “Telling you has made it more bearable. Like I’ve been holding my breath all this time, and now I can finally let it go. Like I won’t be so empty that I’ll crumple into nothing.”
“But Taylor knows.” The edge in my voice is a blade. Every time I line up the facts, I see a trail of people who could have, should have, and didn’t do more to help Eli and Finley. And since the first second I saw him, that the urge to protect him was born in me, I became one of those people.
For years, I have done nothing because I was too afraid of pushing him away from me.“Telling Taylor was a necessity,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “Telling you was a choice.”
My ribs cinch around my lungs. When he lifts his head, his soft smile breaks me open. This man has no idea what he does to me when he looks at me like I’m hanging his moon and painting the stars in his sky.
Fuck. How do you fall in love again when you’re already gone?
As if he’s said everything he needed to with that one look, he rests his head on my shoulder again, nuzzling into the crook of my neck while I press a kiss to the top of his forehead.
“Think Coach will actually let me play?” He asks, carrying on the conversation as we would any other day.
“If Weismann is out, I don’t think he has a choice. Besides, you're still the best defenseman on the team.” I shrug and he asks with a throaty chuckle, “You’re not blowing smoke up my ass, right?”
“Listen, Sweetheart…” I rest my lips on his forehead and squeeze his hand.
“Just because you called me your boyfriend doesn’t mean I won’t give it to you straight anymore.
If you suck, I’m going to tell you so, and then I’m going to taunt you until you do something about it.
How else are you going to keep up with me? ”
Eli laughs, loud and bright, so that Finley and Christina glance over. The sound loosens the vice around my chest and the knots in my stomach as Finley’s smile beams at us from the opposite couch. The hand on my thigh aches to hold hers while my other is laced with Eli’s.
“What are the two of you tittle-tattling about?” Finley levels us with a mock glare.
Her hair is messy and frizzy from both our hands. Her eyes sparkle like her wishes are finally real.
“The audacity of this man,” I chuff, “thinks I’m going to paint him in rainbows even though I’m the fucking unicorn here.”
Christina snorts. “Oh my God, if I ever peg a guy, I’m so using that.”
“Ewww…” Finley grimaces, nudging her, and I add, “That is not where I was going with that.”
“Sister!” Christina nudges her back. “Your toast is buttered on both sides, you don’t get to yuck anyone’s yum.”
“Touché,” Finley giggles, rubbing her flushed cheeks. “Still, I already know way too much about you and—”
“Nope,” Eli cuts her off.
“We don’t need to know what Rio’s into. Fuck, we definitely don’t need that picture in our heads,” I say, slinging an arm around Eli’s shoulders. “Speaking of Matheo, maybe you can turn his frown upside down. He’s a miserable asshole.”
“No. No, no, no… just because you’re fucking my best friend doesn’t mean you can pimp me out to your man.”
“Jesus H Christ,” Eli groans as the wheels kiss tarmac. “Don’t get her started.”
“Does it count as pimping if you’ve already put out for said man? Also, the tattoos, the piercings…” Finley chokes on a laugh.
“If fucking was a religion, Matty’s cock would be the totem pole for it,” Christina says, rolling her eyes back with a theatrical groan.
If we needed a mood shift, we just got it. Even if Finley’s cringing and Eli has his face partly buried in my chest with embarrassment. It’s cute, and I’m so here for it.
The instant the jet taxis towards the apron, he breathes out a sigh of relief. “And thank God we’re over and out.”