Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Jari
The locker room was loud in that loose, post-practice way—music thumping, tape ripping, someone chirping about a missed open net.
“Four times,” Noah said, voice smug as he leaned back against his stall. “You fell four times. That’s not bad ice, that’s bad skating.”
Trick scoffed, wrestling with his elbow pads. “It was three. And one of those was intentional.”
“Sure, it was,” Becks said. “Very advanced technique. Fall early so expectations stay low.”
Mules laughed, tossing a towel that hit Trick square in the chest. “Coach should put that in the drills.”
I sat on the bench, re-taping my stick, listening more than talking. It felt… normal.
“Hey, Jari,” Noah said, nudging my knee with his stick, late back to the room as usual, always the last off the ice with Cap. “What is jo-loo-turtle?”
“Huh?” I blinked up at him.
“On the sign-up shit for the Christmas thing at ours.”
“Joulutorttu,” I corrected him. “Puff pastry, folded into stars. You bake them and dust them with sugar. Proper ones. We’ve made them four times now, just to get them right.” I swallowed. We? Shit.
“‘We’?” Noah chuckled. “Does that mean you're bringing a plus-one?”
“I meant Google and me,” I blustered, and Noah stared down at me as if he’d clocked something I hadn’t meant to show. “I've never baked anything from Finland before.”
Mules leaned across from his stall, eyebrows waggling. “So, it's a no on the plus-one then, because Susie has this cousin and—”
“I don’t need a plus-one,” I said, too quickly.
Becks snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Sure, you don’t.”
Mules grinned. “That’s what everyone says right before they show up with someone hot.”
I snorted. “Define ‘hot’,” I said. “Because if you’re talking about yourself, we have very different standards.”
“Hey,” Mules protested, clutching his chest in fake horror. “Rude.”
Becks laughed. “He’s got you there, buddy.”
For the first time in my career, I didn’t feel like I was standing on the outside of everything. I leaned back in my stall and watched them. My team. Not just in the PR sense. Not just in the “say the right thing to the media” way. I felt settled, and I certainly wasn’t bracing for impact.
The confidential conversation with Noah’s agent, Mike Wells, kept replaying in my head.
He’d said moving on from my current agent, connected way too much to Aarni, would be easy. Like untying myself from an agent I’d been with for years was the same as switching sticks. He’d laughed when I told him I wasn’t sure it was possible and that my dad had too much sway.
“Anything’s possible if you want it enough, Jari,” he’d said with so much confidence.
He’d been direct. Calm. No hard sell. Just facts. He’d talked numbers, leverage, and timing. Said he’d followed my stats for years. Said Noah spoke highly of me. That I was under-marketed. Under-protected.
“I want you,” he’d added at the end.
No one had ever put it that way before. Not about my career. Not without strings.
I’d almost said it then.
Almost told him I was gay.
The word had sat right there, and I was automatically calculating sponsor fallout, locker-room issues, headlines… the wrong kind of attention. I’d told myself it wasn’t relevant. That we were discussing contracts, not my personal life.
But it felt relevant.
Because listening to Mike about untying myself from one version of my career made me feel as if I should untie everything.
I hadn’t said it.
I’d swallowed it down and kept the conversation professional. Safe.
Across the room, Noah threw a roll of tape at me and told me to stop looking like I was writing poetry in my head.
I flipped him off automatically, and the guys laughed.
The sound hit me square in the chest.
I didn’t want to live split in two anymore. Public and private. Player and secret.
Mike had said anything was possible.
For the first time, sitting there with my team, feeling steady instead of restless, I wondered if that might actually be true.
Could I be myself?
The door at the far end of the room opened, and the noise dipped. Coach Morin stepped inside and looked right at me.
“Jari?” he said. My stomach tightened. ”I need you in my office. Now.”
My stomach dropped before my brain caught up. I didn’t ask why. I just went. So much for hope. So much for a brighter future.
This was it. I was being traded. I’d improved, I knew that, but maybe not enough.
Maybe the team was tired of the boos that still followed my name some nights.
Worst-case scenario, if I were being traded again, I would be done.
I couldn’t do this anymore. Not when I’d just started to belong.
Not when I’d made friends. Not when I had Cam.
The walk down the corridor felt wrong, the quiet stretching out with every step. Coach opened the door and gestured me inside. “I’ll… give you some privacy,” he said, already stopping outside the door. “Take all the time you need.”
The door shut behind him with a quiet click, and I stopped dead.
She was here. My vision narrowed, breath stalling hard in my chest as if my body had recognized her before my mind could catch up. My knees went weak, a sharp, dizzy rush flooding me, and for a split second I thought I might hit the floor right there.
Small in a wheelchair. Wrapped in a soft grey coat. On the other side of an ocean from everything she knew.
“Mom?” The word felt wrong in my mouth here, in a rink office after so long not saying it out loud.
She smiled up at me, tired but happy, so pretty it caught at my breath.
Real. Not brittle, not bracing herself. Just…
here. I went to my knees in front of her, my forehead pressed to her stomach, arms locked around her as if letting her go meant she’d vanish.
I felt her hand immediately—warm, familiar—sliding into my hair, stroking slow, steady, grounding me the way she always had when I was a kid.
“It’s okay, Jari,” she murmured. “I’ve got you.”
I shook. Hard. In front of Coach’s desk, the team logo staring up from the carpet, the faint smell of ice and sweat still clinging to the room. I didn’t care who saw.
I pulled back just enough to look at her face, to make sure she was real.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said with another smile, this one more gentle.
Only then did I notice the man standing beside her, one hand resting lightly on the arm of her chair.
He was older, silver at the temples, dressed too well for Harrisburg.
Calm. Watching me with something like respect.
Mikko Salonen. National sports hero. The name that had been on my posters growing up before my father ripped them down, the player I’d tried to skate like in the driveway, but just in my head.
“This is my Mikko,” she said.
“Mikko Salonen,” he said, and held out a hand which I shook. I was starstruck; this man was a Finnish legend.
“You own the Oulu Northstars,” I blurted. “And you used to play center for Vancouver,” I added, as though he might not know that about himself.
He inclined his head. “A long time ago,” he added.
“Mikko flew me here,” my mother went on, squeezing his hand. “Private jet. Very dramatic. I told him it was unnecessary, but he insisted he wanted to come with me when we tell you face-to-face.”
I stared at her, my brain still catching up. “Tell me what? Why are you here, Mom? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I promise,” she said quickly. “I went to your hotel first, but they told me you’d checked out, so I came here instead. I’m sorry to spring this on you at work, but your coach is a wonderful man. So kind.”
“Mom, you're scaring me.”
She leaned forward slightly, her hand still in my hair, thumb brushing my temple. “I'm free of your father, Jari, the divorce papers will be delivered tomorrow, and I didn’t want you hearing it over the phone,” she added.
Something inside my chest cracked open—fear, relief, grief, all tangled together. Was this why Dad had been hassling me, demanding money? Had he realized he was losing his grip on one of his possessions and decided to tighten it on me instead?
“Okay. We can do this,” I said, more to myself than her.
“You can stay with me, I'll find you somewhere to get help…” Panic struck me.
How was I supposed to do anything? Maybe Cam would let her live in the pool house.
After all, I spent most nights in his big bedroom with him. I needed to get myself together.
I'm a grown fucking man; I can fix this. I can tell my mom I'm with Cam. Tell her I'm gay.
“I won't stay here in the US, sweetheart, my Mikko has a home in Oulu, right by the water.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘my Mikko’?”
“Mikko is my…” She glanced up at him, her lips curving soft and sure, and the way he looked back at her—open, unguarded—hit me harder than anything else in the room.
“Boyfriend,” he said easily. “Now the paperwork is done, soon-to-be fiancé, I hope. Husband, if I’m very lucky and her son approves.” He bent and kissed Mom's forehead with quiet reverence. “Rakkaani,” he murmured. He called her My love and my heart melted.
They smiled at each other as if the rest of the world had already fallen away, and my heart hurt. It was the same as when Cam gazed at me, that quiet devotion that meant everything.
“How, I mean… when… I… does Aarni know about Mikko? Is he fighting this?”
Mom nodded. “Yes.” She glanced up at Mikko, who stared back at her steadily. “But he will not win, because he has nothing to contest, and I asked for nothing.”
“I will give your mother everything I have,” Mikko said. “The best care, love, vacations, happiness. If that is okay with you,” he added, and I took a moment to stand up and brush my pants, aware I was still sweaty from practice.