Chapter 48
THEO
The backlash hits like a tsunami. I watch Victor’s phone light up with notification after notification, each one another blow to everything he’s built.
“That’s five,” Victor says, his voice hollow as he reads the email. “MaxFit just pulled their equipment sponsorship. Along with Hydrate, Performance Plus, TKO Gear, and Fighter’s Edge.”
I slide my hand across the breakfast table to cover his. The muscles in his jaw work overtime, teeth grinding as he scrolls through his phone.
“Don’t read the comments,” I tell him, but it’s too late.
“Kaine’s Faggot Club,” he reads, his voice flat. “That’s what they’re calling it now. There’s a hashtag.”
The sports media coverage is particularly vicious.
BrawlZone runs a segment called “The Fall of a Legend,” painting Victor as some kind of fraud who deceived the fighting community.
SportsTalk Radio hosts spend hours debating whether gay men should even be allowed in contact sports, as if Victor’s sexuality somehow makes him contagious.
“Dawson called Jenkins this morning,” Victor says, putting down his coffee. “Offered him twice what I’m paying, plus a signing bonus. Traditional values gym, he’s calling it.”
“How many has he taken now?”
“Seven. Mostly the newer guys I just started developing.” Victor runs his hand through his hair, tugging slightly at the ends—a gesture I’ve come to recognize as barely contained panic. “But Williams had championship potential.”
Marco’s text comes through as we’re clearing dishes.
“The bank wants to meet today,” Victor reads aloud. “They’re concerned about cashflow projections now that the sponsorships are gone.”
I set down the plates and wrap my arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek between his shoulder blades. His body is wound tight, a coiled spring of tension and fear.
“They can’t foreclose on the loan that quickly,” I say, though I’m guessing.
“No, but they can refuse the expansion funding. And without that...” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to.
His phone rings again. Another fighter is leaving. Another media request for comment. Another piece of his world is crumbling while I hold him, powerless to stop it.
Victor pulls away from my embrace and texts Ray, his financial manager. The phone rings almost immediately.
I watch Victor’s face fall as he listens. When he hangs up, his shoulders slump.
“Ray already ran the numbers,” he says, staring down at the phone in his hand. “We’re looking at a 30% revenue drop minimum. And that’s before more fighters potentially follow Dawson.”
He sinks onto the edge of the bed, head in his hands. For a moment, I see the vulnerability behind the fighter—the man who built something from nothing, who survived career devastation once already, who fought for everything he has.
“Did I destroy what I built?” His voice breaks on the question, and something twists in my chest. “All those years of work, blood, sweat... gone because I couldn’t keep my personal life personal.”
I kneel in front of him, taking his face between my hands.
“No,” I say firmly. “You didn’t destroy anything. You transformed it into something better. Trust me.”
His eyes meet mine, searching for certainty.
“I have plans, Victor. Contacts. Especially in the LGBTQ community.” I feel energy building as I speak—this is my domain, where networks and influence matter more than muscle. “For every butthurt bigot that pulls out, there’ll be four LGBTQ-supportive ones ready to run to the aid. Trust me.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because the community rallies. When someone’s brave enough to stand up, people notice. And the LGBTQ sports community has been waiting for someone exactly like you—someone undeniably masculine, undeniably accomplished, undeniably a fighter.”
I see a flicker of hope in his eyes, the first since the photos leaked.
“Eclipse Records sponsors three major music festivals. I know ten fitness brands actively looking for LGBTQ representation. Julian’s family alone controls three investment groups that would back an inclusive gym over Dawson’s bigotry any day.”
Victor pulls me closer and kisses me, not desperate like before, but with something new. Trust.
“Work your magic then,” he says against my lips.
The moment Victor closes the door behind him, I dial Julian.
He picks up on the third ring. He’s at his apartment in the city; I can hear Elliot in the background, talking to someone on the kitchen end about the supplier they’ve been considering for the new club.
“Theo. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon after the hunt.”
I clear my throat. “We have a problem. I assume you’ve seen.”
“I’ve seen. Tell me what you need.”
“Frost Investments. Bridge financing for Victor’s gym. The bank is going to defer his expansion line, and the sponsors are bleeding faster than he knows. I need a number on the table by the end of today.”
The pause is exactly as long as I expected.
“Theo.”
“I know.”
“My father will ask me three questions. I need to know how to answer them,” he says, voice devoid of all emotion.
“Ask.”
The conversation goes quiet. I picture Elliot stepping outside to give Julian the room.
Julian’s voice settles into the register he uses when he’s negotiating, which is also the register he used to use with me at three in the morning, ten years ago, in a different kind of conversation. “First. How exposed is the gym? Not the rumor exposure. The number.”
“Thirty percent drop in revenue minimum, that’s what Ray ran. I haven’t seen the spreadsheet, but I trust Ray.”
“Second. Your relationship to him.”
I close my eyes. Open them. “Over a year. We’ve been in love since before he could say it.”
“Third. What are you willing to lose, Theo? Tell me the real answer, not the easy version.”
There’s a chair I sit down on at this point in the conversation. I don’t remember crossing the room to it.
“Eclipse,” I say. “The brand, the buildings, the subscriber list. All of it, if it comes to that. I’ll put it up as collateral.”
“All of it?” he confirms.
“All of it, Julian.”
The pause is longer this time.
“And him. If he turns into someone you don’t recognize after this. If a year from now, he’s a different man because we yanked him through it. What then?”
A pain tightens in my chest. “Then I find out who that is.”
Julian doesn’t say anything for a count of three.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll get you a number by three. Bridge facility, three years, fixed at our internal rate. I’m putting you on the personal guarantee, not Eclipse’s corporate paper. You understand what that means.”
“Yes,” I say without a second thought.
“It means if his gym goes under, you go under. Frost will collect on you, not your business. Personally. I want that on the record between us.”
“Understood.”
Julian releases a sigh, clearly realizing he can’t talk me out of this. “Send me the sponsor list. The ones who pulled out, with timestamps. I want to know who got the calls and when.”
“You’ll have it in an hour.”
“Theo?”
“Yes.”
“This is a beautiful thing you’re doing. I want you to remember I said that. Because the next two days are going to be very ugly, and I want there to be a moment where someone said the kind thing out loud.”
“Thanks, Julian.”
I hang up. Sit there for a minute. Look at the window. I have just put my entire adult life on the line for a man who has only just learned, after more than a year, to tell me he loves me.
I open my laptop and start typing. And work through my contact list by priority. Pride Sports Coalition first, the executive director, Maya, whom I’ve known for six years, says yes within thirty seconds. Three more queer-owned equipment manufacturers say yes, yes, and send me everything you have.
The fourth call is to Cole Marek.
Cole runs Vault, the only queer-owned MMA-adjacent gym on the West Coast that’s pulling Guardian-tier sponsorship money.
He owes me a favor from 2019, one we both know about and have never put a price on.
We’ve shared meals. Slept together once, in Berlin, the kind of one-time thing that doesn’t disrupt a friendship.
He’s been on a podcast with me. I am calling him for the easiest thing on my list—a public-facing endorsement: what Kaine is doing matters.
Twitter, Instagram, and the OutSports interview Kennedy is going to publish on Friday.
Cole listens to my whole pitch. He doesn’t interrupt. That’s the first sign.
“Theo.” I know immediately from his tone he’s about to turn me down.
“Yeah.”
He blows out a breath. “I love you. I love you, and I love what you’re trying to do here, but I can’t put my name to this.”
“Cole.”
“Listen. Vault is twenty months from being acquired. The investors are queer, the deal is queer, the optics are everything. They have been very specific with me about contagion—that’s the word they used, contagion, the homophobes used it about us in the eighties, and now venture capital uses it about adjacent reputational risk—and I can’t be in a Twitter post next to a fight gym that’s currently the subject of seventeen syndicated bigotry segments. Not this week.”
“Three sentences, Cole.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“This is Victor Kaine you’re talking about,” I push, despite knowing once Cole’s mind is made up, he’s more fucking stubborn than me.
“I know who he is. I’m not the one with the problem here, Theo.
The investors are. You’ve sat on the other side of this conversation; you know how it works.
I’ll give you anything quietly. I’ll wire to a shell.
I’ll talk to people you ask me to talk to.
I just can’t sign my name to it before the dust settles. ”
I close my eyes.
“Cole.”
“Yes?”
“You’re going to look back at this call and feel sick about it.”
A long pause. “I know,” he says. “I’ll take it.”
We hang up.
I sit with it for a minute. Don’t write it down. Don’t tell anyone. I have Maya and Kennedy and three manufacturers; I have Julian putting Frost on the line; I have Sloane about to walk through my door. The ledger says yes more than no. I don’t have to count Cole.
I open the next number on my list and dial.
Sloane arrives at one with two coffees, a laptop, and the kind of expression that tells me she has already drafted three different press strategies in the car ride over.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” She sets the coffee on the dining table, opens the laptop without sitting. “Tell me what you’ve already done.”
I run through it. Maya at Pride Sports said yes. Kennedy at OutSports is already drafting. Three manufacturers. Cole at Vault—I tell her he’s a no. Julian is getting Frost Capital ready. She nods through all of it, takes one note.
“Okay. Sit down.”
I sit.
“I want to argue with you about something before we do anything else.”
My brow furrows. “Go ahead.”
“You’re going to want to lead with the relationship,” she states.
“Yes.”
“I want to lead with the sport.”
I open my mouth. She raises one finger.
“I know what you’re going to say. The relationship is a sympathetic story. Public hearts move. Brand resilience comes from people falling in love with the love story. Yes. I’ve worked that play a hundred times. It’s a good play. It’s the wrong one for him.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because he’s a fighter. Two days ago, he was a fighter.
The thing under attack is his professional credibility, not his personal relationships.
If we lead with the love story, we hand his enemies the frame they want—a coach who lost his career to a relationship.
If we lead with the sport, the relationship becomes context.
Background. We protect the asset that’s being attacked. ”
I think about this. She watches me think.
“You’re right,” I say.
“I know I am.”
I run a hand through my hair. “But the love story is the human texture. We can’t lose it.”
“I’m not saying lose it. I’m saying don’t lead with it.
Bury it in the fifth paragraph, not the first. Kennedy at OutSports gets the long-form interview where it lives in the human texture.
BrawlZone gets a press release that talks about championship records and southern-region rankings and doesn’t mention you at all. ”
“You’re telling me to bore BrawlZone.”
“I’m telling you to give them nothing they can clip into a bigotry segment. Two paragraphs about win-loss. They print the win-loss. The win-loss does work that no rage clip can touch.”
I sit with it. She’s right. She’s always freaking right.
“Fine.” I nod in reply. “You’re running the strategy. Tell me what I do.”
“You write the OutSports interview prep. He’ll do the interview.
You won’t. You’ll be in the photo at the bottom of the piece, no quote in the body.
The piece is about him. You’re context. We don’t want to look like we’re using this to elevate Eclipse, and we don’t want him to look like a man being saved by a boyfriend. ”
“He is, a little,” I admit.
“He’s not a story like that. He’s a man who got hit by a wave and got up. We tell that story. We don’t tell the rescue story.”
“Okay.”
She pulls the laptop toward her. “Pride Sports does a same-day quote for Kennedy. Manufacturers post on Friday afternoon when the BrawlZone segment runs—we make their post the best thing in the feed at the same hour. Frost’s involvement we hold; we never confirm or deny capital sources, that’s Julian’s call.
Saturday morning, Victor posts an Instagram statement—you’ll write it, he won’t.
The hashtag #StandWithKaine is starting to organize itself; we don’t touch it; we let it grow. ”
“How do you know it’s organizing itself?”
“Because I built half of it from a coffee shop on Wednesday, and the other half is real.”
I look at her. “Sloane.”
“What?”
“Thank you.”
She doesn’t look up from the screen. “Don’t. We’re not done.”
By the time Sloane closes her laptop, Victor is on his way to the bank.
I text Victor before his bank meeting.
Walk in with your head high. You’re not alone in this fight. Not anymore.
His response is simple:
Thank you for believing when I couldn’t.
As I stare at those words, I realize something profound is happening. In trying to save what Victor built, we might be building something even stronger.