Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Leo woke up grinning and couldn’t figure out why until it all came back. The parking lot. The streetlight. Dawson’s rough hand on his neck, and then Dawson’s mouth. And then nothing. Just taillights pulling onto the county road and Leo standing there with his lips buzzing and his brain wiped clean.
He pressed his face into the pillow and his stomach flipped.
He couldn’t tell if it was the good kind or the bad kind because it felt like both at once.
Dawson had kissed him and then driven away before Leo could get his feet under him.
It was everything he wanted, other than the fact Dawson kept himself locked in the closet for reasons Leo couldn’t understand, and Leo had long ago promised himself he’d never close that door behind him again.
Leo rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, replaying the kiss for the dozenth time since he’d gotten into bed.
Dawson’s aim had been off at first, catching the corner of his mouth before correcting.
The grip on his neck, callused fingers against skin.
Leo couldn’t remember the last time he’d been kissed and left speechless.
That was the part he kept circling back to.
Not the kiss. The way it made him feel, the way it was still caught in his brain.
He laughed into the pillow, muffled and strange.
Half giddy, half rattled because this small-town mechanic affected him in ways no one that night in Milwaukee had been able to with nothing more than a single kiss.
Dawson had gotten under past Leo’s defenses without even trying, which meant Leo was either falling for someone who could actually see him or he was in serious trouble. Possibly both.
He got out of bed and stood in the kitchen for a full minute before remembering he was supposed to make coffee. The machine did its thing while he sat at the kitchen island in boxer briefs and a T-shirt. The coffee wasn’t good, but he hadn’t been bothered enough to order anything better online.
He’d texted Dawson when he got home last night, and Dawson hadn’t responded. Which was fine. It was fine. Leo picked up the phone, checked the screen, set it down, and then picked it up again.
He seriously needed to get a grip.
Leo grabbed the phone so fast he knocked his mug sideways when it buzzed with a notification, caught it with his other hand, and didn’t care about the splash across the tile.
Dawson
Hey. About last night. That shouldn’t have happened.
Leo read it three times. Then he set the phone down, pressed both palms flat on the granite, and exhaled through his teeth.
He was disappointed, but not surprised. Of course Dawson had spent all night building an escape route, and this was the best he’d come up with.
That shouldn’t have happened. Not I’m sorry, or I don’t know what I was thinking, just a flat denial, like if he said it with enough conviction, he could undo what had happened.
As if Leo hadn’t texted him a damn invitation for a repeat performance.
As if Dawson hadn’t felt Leo’s pulse hammering under his thumb and kissed him anyway.
The smart thing to do would’ve been to agree. You’re right, no big deal. Dawson would take the out, and they’d never mention it again. Leo would go back to being the new guy, and Dawson would go back to his garage, his books, and his careful, walled-off life.
Leo picked up the phone. He wasn’t a man who chased guys, but something told him Dawson would be worth the effort. He wasn’t going to give up without a fight this time.
You drove away before I could kiss you back.
He hit send. Then he cleaned up the coffee, poured what was left in the mug down the drain, and stood at the sink with his heart racing.
He watched the screen on the counter. It stayed dark, and he could picture Dawson somewhere—the garage, his truck, his kitchen—staring at the message and realizing Leo had just bricked over his exit.
This was stupid. He had shit to do, and pining wasn’t on that list.
He pulled eggs from the fridge, cracked two into a bowl, and whisked them with a fork. The motion was steadying. He could make a decent scramble. He could make a lot of things if someone let him into their kitchen long enough to prove it.
The phone buzzed.
Dawson
I didn’t plan that.
Leo: No shit. If you quit fighting what you want, you might realize the best things aren’t planned
He poured the eggs into the pan and pushed them around with a spatula. The response came faster this time. Thirty seconds, maybe.
You don’t get it. Not all of us can just say screw it.
Fine. Then quit thinking about it. It was one kiss, not a marriage proposal.
Leo watched the three dots appear and disappear at the bottom of the text window. He wondered what Dawson was typing and deleting as he tried to figure out how to respond.
You say that like it’s easy.
Leo scraped the eggs onto a plate and ate standing at the counter.
Because it is. If it was really a mistake, let it go. There’s no sense beating yourself up about it. Have you considered you’re still thinking about it because it wasn’t a mistake? Because you did exactly what you wanted to do and now you’re trying to figure out what comes next?
That doesn’t change the fact I’m not out. I can’t be. Not right now.
Why? I think you’re making this bigger than it needs to be. I might be the new guy in town, but I don’t get the impression the locals would get out the torches and pitchforks the second they realize you’re not straight.
So much for not pushing. But dammit, it wasn’t like he’d be the first gay guy in town. From the looks of things, Gunnar’s business hadn’t suffered when he and Wes started dating.
Leo wasn’t surprised when the screen of his phone went dark. All he could do now was hope Dawson was really thinking about what he’d said and wasn’t so pissed off he would never speak to Leo again.
After breakfast, he showered, dressed, and checked the screen once more before heading out. Nothing from Dawson. But the conversation was still open, one short exchange that added up to more than Dawson had probably said aloud about his own wanting in years.
The Icehouse hit him with cold air, the smell of fresh ice, and Jonesy’s warm-up playlist bleeding through the locker room walls, something with too much bass and not enough melody that Jonesy would defend to the death. Leo dropped his bag at his stall and started pulling on base layers.
Carter was already half-dressed across the room, wrapping fresh tape onto his stick blade without looking up.
Novo sat next to him, earbuds in. Riggs was telling a story about his daughter’s soccer game to anyone who’d listen, which at the moment was Novo, whose expression suggested he was trying to decide whether this qualified as entertainment.
“So she’s standing at midfield, right? Full kit. Shin guards, the whole deal. Ball comes to her, and she just…picks it up. Hands. Picks it up, looks at the ref, says ‘I don’t want it.’ Coach about had a stroke.”
“She’s six,” Novo said. “She plays when she wants, and she wasn’t interested.”
“She knows the rules! We practiced!”
Leo laced his right skate and heard his phone buzz in the jacket hanging on the hook above his stall.
His fingers stilled. He didn’t reach for it.
Not yet. He finished the lace, pulled the left skate on, tied it.
Flexed his ankles. Then he stood, casual, stretched his arms overhead, and pulled the jacket toward him just enough to slide the phone from the pocket.
You’re not going to give up, are you?
Leo bit the inside of his cheek. The locker room was chaotic enough that no one was looking at him.
What can I say? That was one hell of a kiss. But even without that, I think you’ve been hiding for so long you’re scared to be honest. That’s no way to live.
Before putting his phone away, he couldn’t help pushing just a bit more. There was a crack in Dawson’s wall and Leo could almost see light through it.
You don’t have to make some huge proclamation. I don’t need to make out in public or hold hands walking down the street, but I would like to get to know you better. If that’s something you want, too, you know where to find me.
He slid the phone back into the jacket and grabbed his helmet. The buzz he felt had nothing to do with the cold rink air filtering through the doorway.
On the ice, Deluca ran them through breakout drills, and Leo’s feet were fast, but his head was somewhere else. He caught Carter’s pass along the boards and held it a half-second too long before moving it to Novo, and the timing was off enough that Novo had to reach back for it.
“Wake up, Vargas.” Carter’s voice carried, not sharp but not gentle either. His linemate had every reason to be irritated with him.
Leo reset. Pushed harder on the next rep, drove wide, hit the seam pass that Novo buried in the top corner.
Better. He could feel the rhythm trying to lock in, the way it did when he stopped thinking and let his body take over.
On the ice was the one place the mask dropped.
No polish, no audience, just instinct and speed and the puck doing what he told it.
Deluca blew the whistle. “Line rushes, three-on-two. Vargas, you’re with Walsh and Novak.”
They set up at center ice. Carter won the draw and fed Leo at the hash marks, and Leo saw the lane, the gap between the D-men where a quick release would hit Ford glove side.
But Novo was cutting backdoor, and Carter was banging his stick on the ice, and for once, Leo held the puck long enough to find the better play.
Slid it across to Novo. Tape-to-tape. Novo one-timed it past Marshy’s blocker, and the net rippled.
Carter tapped his shin pads with his stick as they circled back. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.
During the water break, Jonesy skated up and bumped Leo’s shoulder. “Who is she?”
Leo squirted water into his mouth. “What?”
“You’ve been smiling like an idiot. You’ve had that look since you walked in.” Jonesy pointed his water bottle at Leo. “That’s an ‘I’m gonna get laid’ glow.”
“There’s no girl.” It annoyed Leo that even though he was out, the default in the locker room was still to think there was a woman involved.
“Uh-huh.” Jonesy was already skating backward, loud enough for half the team. “Vargas has got a girl, boys. Look at him. Must be hot if she’s left him flustered.”
“That’s not— Jonesy, shut up.”
“I will not shut up. This is the most personality you’ve shown since you got here. I’m celebrating.”
Ski drifted over, interested. “Who’s the girl?”
“There’s no girl.” He wanted to crawl in a hole just to escape this conversation.
“Then why are you still smiling?” Jonesy said, and Leo realized his face had betrayed him because the corner of his mouth was twitching, and there was nothing he could do about it that wouldn’t make it worse.
“I’m smiling because your defensive coverage is bad enough to be funny,” Leo said, and Jonesy clutched his chest and called him a monster. “And for the record, if I was going to get laid, it wouldn’t be a woman.”
The locker room didn’t stop. Jonesy blinked, shrugged as if Leo hadn’t just come out to his teammates, and poked him in the chest. “Noted. Who’s the guy?”
“There’s no guy.”
“Uh-huh,” Jonesy said, already skating off, and the moment passed.
Just like that. Maybe he’d heard through the grapevine that Leo was queer and this had been his way of trying to verify the rumors without asking him outright.
Or maybe it wasn’t as big of a deal here as it was with other teams. Either way, the lack of reaction left Leo feeling off-kilter.
The rest of practice came in pieces. A give-and-go with Novo that clicked, a board battle with Sully that Leo lost because Sully outweighed him by forty pounds and didn’t believe in going easy just because this wasn’t an actual game, a breakaway drill where he went five-hole on Ford and heard the veteran goalie swear as the whacked the post with his stick.
In the locker room after, Leo sat in his stall peeling tape off his shins and half-listening to the noise around him.
Jonesy had the speaker going again. Riggs was busy explaining something about investments to one of the rookies.
Sully sat in the corner with his eyes closed.
Leo’d asked about it once, and Carter had explained that Sully meditated after every practice, saying it helped him commit what he’d worked on to memory.
Weird, but not the weirdest ritual he’d seen from a player.
“Hey, Vargas.” Carter, from two stalls down, low and unhurried, the way Carter said everything.
Leo glanced over.
“Good pass on that three-on-two. You see the ice well.” Carter pulled his jersey over his head, folded it with the precision of someone who’d done it ten thousand times. “Keep finding Novo. He knows how to get the puck through insane traffic.”
“Yeah.” Leo nodded. “I’m figuring that out.”
“You’ll figure the rest out too.” Carter didn’t look at him when he said it. Just matter-of-fact, already moving on, and Leo sat with it for a second because he didn’t know what else to do.
He showered. Stood under water pressure that was better than his apartment’s, letting the heat work into his shoulders. The bruise from the deer strike had faded to a dull yellow-green across his sternum, almost gone. He pressed his fingers to it out of habit, and the ache was barely there.
He grabbed his bag and walked out of the Icehouse into thin September sun, the parking lot half-empty, the lake visible past the tree line in a flat steel band.
He unlocked the car, sat behind the wheel. He almost didn’t check his phone when it buzzed in the cup holder. His mom was being a pain in his ass, still demanding he pressure Phil to get him traded again. He was glad he’d checked.
Dawson
Have a good practice?
It didn’t matter that Dawson had completely ignored what Leo’d said. The fact he texted for something as mundane as checking in felt like progress.
Better now
As Leo pulled out of his parking spot, he decided that he’d play the long game for a change. Take things at a glacial pace if that’s what Dawson needed because it was time someone prove to Dawson that he deserved to be happy.