Chapter 28 #2
The door opened immediately.
étienne stood there in sleep pants and a T-shirt, his hair mussed as if he’d been running his fingers through it, his eyes dark and troubled. He stepped back without a word, letting me in.
I moved inside quickly, and he closed the door behind me and engaged the security latch.
For a long moment, we just looked at each other.
“What’s wrong?” I kept my voice low, even though we were alone.
étienne’s room was identical to mine—two beds, standard hotel furniture, the impersonal feeling of a space designed to be temporary. He moved to the far bed, the one by the window, and sat on the edge.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he said quietly.
My stomach dropped. “Can’t do what?”
“This. All of this.” He gestured vaguely at the room, the hotel, everything. “Pretending we’re nothing. Playing together like that tonight and then acting like we’re just best friends. Sharing a bed at home and then coming here and sleeping in separate rooms.”
“étienne—”
“I love you.” The words came out raw, desperate.
“I’m in love with you. And I can’t keep pretending I’m not.
I can’t keep swallowing it every time I want to touch you the way I really want to.
Every time I have to make sure a look is friendly instead of intimate, make sure sitting beside you doesn’t look like anything more than friendship.
I can’t keep pretending we’re roommates when you’re everything to me. It’s suffocating me, Marco.”
Everything in my chest seized. He loved me. He’d said it. And the way he was looking at me—like he was drowning and I was the only one who could save him—made my hands shake.
“I love you too,” I whispered, and watched something crack in his expression. “You know I do.”
“Then why are we doing this? Why are we living like this?”
“Because we have to.” I moved closer, needing to be near him, but afraid of what that meant. “Because the alternative—”
“Is what? Being honest? Being together openly?”
“Is losing everything.” The words came out harder than I intended. “My family, étienne. Your father. Maybe being separated by a trade.”
“That might happen anyway.” His voice broke. “But I also know that I can’t keep living like this. I can’t watch you get hit into the boards and not be able to react. Can’t go home to our bed and then come here and sleep alone and pretend it doesn’t tear me apart.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I don’t know either.” He dragged a hand through his hair, his eyes wet. “I’m not asking you to come out tomorrow. I’m not even asking you to make a decision. I just… I needed you to know. That I love you. And that this is slowly killing me.”
I crossed the space between us and sat beside him on the bed, close enough that our shoulders touched. “I’m sorry. God, étienne, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” His voice was low, small, unsure. “Just tell me there’s an endpoint. Tell me we’re not going to hide like this forever.”
I wanted to. Wanted to promise him we’d figure it out, that we’d find a way to be together openly without losing everything else.
But I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t imagine standing in front of my mother and telling her I was in love with a man.
Couldn’t imagine the locker room knowing, the media coverage, the constant attention.
And worst of all—couldn’t imagine the front office deciding we were too much of a distraction and trading him away.
“What if they separate us?” I asked quietly. “What if coming out means they trade you to Boston or Toronto? I can’t lose you, but I can’t—I don’t know how to choose between loving you and losing everything else.”
étienne turned his head and his eyes searched mine. “I’m not asking you to choose tonight. But eventually… Marco, eventually we’re going to have to figure out how to live. Really live. Not just survive.”
He was right. I knew he was right. But knowing it and being able to act on it were two different things.
“I need time,” I said. “To think. To figure out—”
He leaned against me, his weight familiar and comforting. “I can’t tell you what to do. But something has to change.”
The words hung in the air like a threat and a promise.
We sat there for a long time, not talking. Eventually, étienne’s breathing evened out, and I realized he’d fallen asleep against my shoulder.
I shifted him carefully and laid him back on the bed. I pulled the duvet over him and tucked it around his shoulders. He murmured something in his sleep and rolled onto his side.
I stood there for a moment, just watching him, then forced myself to move. I checked the hallway through the peephole—empty—and slipped quietly back to my room. When I closed my door behind me, relief flooded through me.
I’d gotten away with it. I climbed into bed, but sleep wouldn’t come.
He loved me. I loved him.
And neither of us knew how to make that enough.
The game that night was ugly.
Seattle came out hard and fast, and we were flat from the first drop of the puck. Back-to-backs were always tough—the body doesn’t recover fully in twenty-four hours—but this was worse than usual. We looked disconnected, sluggish, half a step behind on every play.
I was a full step behind.
The turnover came midway through the second period.
I had the puck behind our net and should have made a simple pass to étienne at the blue line.
But I hesitated, second-guessing, and their forward read it perfectly.
He stepped into the passing lane, picked off the puck, and fed it across to his teammate in the slot.
2–0 Seattle.
Entirely my fault.
“Shake it off,” Kinnunen said as we skated back for the faceoff. But I couldn’t shake it off. That turnover was the kind of mistake I never made. The kind of mental error that came from being completely unfocused. Unprofessional.
We lost 4–1. One of our worst games of the season.
The atmosphere was grim in the locker room. Coach kept his postgame talk short. “Tough back-to-back. Get some rest. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”
I showered quickly, trying to shake off the disaster of the game. By the time I got back to my stall, étienne was already there, sitting on the bench with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
He looked up when I approached, and I saw my own exhaustion reflected in his eyes.
I sat down heavily beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. Around us, the dressing room was subdued—guys packing up quietly, a few muttered conversations about the loss, but mostly just the sounds of zippers and bags being shuffled.
“You played like I felt,” étienne said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. He wasn’t looking at me, just staring straight ahead. “Like you didn’t sleep.”
“I didn’t.”
“Me neither.”
“I’m sorry about tonight. That turnover—”
“Don’t.” He glanced around quickly, making sure no one was close enough to overhear, then leaned in slightly. “Everyone has bad games.”
“This one was on me.”
“It was on both of us. We were both off.” His knee pressed against mine for just a second—brief contact that could have been accidental but wasn’t. “You know why.”
I did know. We’d both played poorly, distracted by the weight of everything unsaid, by the restless night, by the conversation we’d had in his hotel room that had resolved nothing.
This was what hiding did—it didn’t just suffocate us emotionally, it bled into our performance, our jobs, everything.
Kinnunen walked past, and we both went quiet, shifting apart slightly. He nodded at us but kept moving toward the door.
When he was gone, I stood and dressed. étienne stood too, and grabbed his bag.
I lay in bed that night, alone in my too-quiet room, and let my mind work through the problem methodically.
Option one: keep hiding, keep pretending, keep living the way we’d been living.
Result: étienne slowly breaks, our relationship deteriorates, eventually he leaves—not because he doesn’t love me, but because he can’t survive the hiding. I lose him.
Option two: come out, face the consequences.
Result: unknown. Could lose everything. Could lose my family, his father, each other if they trade him, or… we could find a way forward. We could build something real.
The problem was that option two had too many variables. Too many unknowns. And I’d spent seventeen years minimizing risk, calculating odds, making the safe choice.
But the safe choice was killing us both.
I thought about Griffin Lapierre. About Wesley Hutton, his partner. Griffin had come out over two months ago. And they’d survived. Were still together. Griffin was still playing, still respected.
How had they done it? How had they navigated coming out in professional hockey and not lost everything?
I pulled out my phone—11:53 p.m. Late, but maybe étienne was still awake.
Marco
Are you awake?
The reply came immediately.
étienne
Yes.
Marco
Can I come up?
A long pause.
étienne
Okay.
I pulled on my hoodie—hood up—checked the hallway, and headed for the stairs.
When étienne opened the door this time, his expression was wary, hopeful, scared. I stepped inside, and he closed the door behind me, engaging the security latch again.
“What is it?” he asked quietly.
I looked at him—exhausted, beautiful, waiting—and my gut settled.
“I can’t lose you,” I said. “And I can’t keep doing this either.”
His eyes widened slightly. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” I took a breath. “We play Portland on Sunday. Griffin Lapierre. Wesley Hutton. What if we talk to them? Ask them how they did it. How Griffin came out, how they made it work.”
étienne went still. “Not a bad idea.”
“I don’t know if I can do what they did. I don’t know if I’m brave enough. But I think… I think we need help. We need someone who’s been through this to tell us if there’s a way forward.”
“You’re not saying we’re coming out.”
“No. I’m saying we’re asking for help. Asking if it’s even possible. And then we decide together what to do with that information.”