Chapter 23
Rhys
Much later that night, Blake gets back home. He takes one look at me pacing and stops in the doorway.
“What happened to you?”
“Nothing.” I hold up a hand and continue pacing. “Give me a second. I’m still processing.”
Jamie Nash stood in my living room. Furious. Flustered. Threatening me with one breath and barely holding himself together with the next. And underneath all of it — underneath every single wall he’s built to keep me out since the moment I walked onto this team —
He’s gay. Or close enough to it that he’s driving almost an hour, anonymously, at night, trying to find someone who won’t blow up his life. And he swiped right on me.
I start laughing.
Not the kind I use when I want to get under his skin. The actual kind, the kind that comes from somewhere real, because this is the funniest fucking thing that has ever happened to me and also somehow the most satisfying.
“Okay you’re scaring me,” Blake says.
“Jamie Nash is on Grindr.”
Blake stares at me. “Jamie Nash? The captain? Who punched you—while yelling at you about not being gay?” His eyes are wide in disbelief.
I’m barely controlling my laughter. “He matched with me. Drove here. Saw it was me.” I press a hand to my mouth still laughing. “Threatened me. Then left.”
“Wait—” Blake sits down slowly. “So he’s—”
“Definitely in the closet.” I drop onto the couch and stare at the ceiling with a grin I’m not even trying to contain. “And I have everything. I’m free of his bullshit.”
Because here’s the thing. Here’s the thing I’m sitting with right now that feels like finally, finally getting to the top of something I’ve been climbing since I got here.
Jamie Nash has been making me feel like a problem since the day I got here.
Something beneath him. He has been on my case every single day for reasons I thought I understood and really didn’t.
Every flinch. Every reddened neck. The yelling and the punch and the hand against my throat — that wasn’t hatred of what I am. That was wanting what I am and hating himself for it.
And maybe even wanting me.
And now I know.
I’m not going to out him. I’m not that person and I never will be.
What happens in someone’s closet is theirs until they’re ready.
I know that better than anyone. The only reason I’m even telling Blake is I trust him with my life.
He doesn’t even know Jamie, but he won’t say anything to anyone anyway.
But making Jamie’s life a little more uncomfortable?
After all that happened? Watching him try to hold himself together every time I get close knowing what I know now?
That I can absolutely do. And it is a just reward for all he has put me through.
He thought he had leverage over me with Eldridge.
Even though he doesn’t know anything about what happened, not really.
Now we’re finally even and I intend to enjoy every single second of it.
Blake is watching me with an expression somewhere between amused and worried. “You’ve got that look,” he says.
“What look?”
“The one that means someone’s about to have a very bad time.”
I continue smile at the ceiling.
“Go to bed, Blake.”
――――――――
I wake up earlier than usual. I just lie there feeling it.
Light. Genuinely, light. Like the weight that’s been sitting on my chest since I enrolled here just got up and walked out the door along with Jamie Nash last night. Like the sun is shining on me.
I get up. I make breakfast. I flip bacon with the energy of a man who has been handed exactly what he deserves after a very long time of deserving it.
Because let’s review one more time, for funsies.
Jamie Nash has been on my case since day one.
Rides me constantly. Benches me in the tunnel in front of the whole team.
Puts his hands on me in a coffee shop. On my ass at every single turn.
Ran away after we kissed. And this whole time — this entire time — I’ve been carrying around the idea that maybe he hated me for being gay. That I was the problem.
And that man was on Grindr.
He swiped right on me.
I flip the bacon and start laughing again, diabolically, like a crazy person.
Blake comes out of his room all sleepy and squinting and just stares at me. “Good morning, sunshine!” I point the spatula at him. “It’s a beautiful day. Do a twirl for me.”
“No.”
“Blake, come on.”
A very long pause. A lot of silence and glaring.
He finally does one slow defeated turn.
“YES! That paid for your breakfast right there.”
We eat fast because I’m in a genuine rush — me, Rhys Callahan, rushing to get to practice early — which has never happened once in my entire life and probably won’t happen again after today.
But today, Jamie Nash is going to walk into that rink and see me there first. And he’s going to know that I know.
And I’m going to give him the biggest smile he’s ever seen before.
There’s not a single thing he can do about it.
I know I sat at this same table yesterday feeling bad about what happened with Jamie. I know I meant it when I said it. But that was yesterday. Because immediately after, Jamie Nash drove almost an hour to my house after matching with me on Grindr, and I am only human.
Who am I to look a gift in the face? Or whatever the saying is.
Payback, as it turns out, is a really beautiful thing.
But also a bitch.
So fuck him.