Chapter 2 Kieran
TWO
KIERAN
Kieran glanced at his vibrating phone, already knowing who’d be on the other end when he finally picked up.
He wasn’t ready for that conversation, especially not in front of last night’s hookup, who, despite agreeing to a casual, one-time thing when Kieran picked him up, was now taking an awfully long time to leave.
“You gonna get that?” the guy, Kieran thought his name was John, asked from the foot of the bed, tugging his pants back over his ankles. “Is it your partner back home?”
Kieran didn’t bother responding. He grabbed his briefs from the floor, pulled them on, then helped John gather the last few items of clothing he'd left scattered around the room.
“I can be discreet,” John, or maybe it was James, added unnecessarily.
“No partner,” Kieran grunted, tossing the guy’s last sock toward him.
He fought the urge to point out that he’d already seen him text at least three people this morning about spending the night with Kieran Lloyd. Yeah, really discreet. A quick Google search would tell Jack that Kieran was chronically single.
“But I do need to return the call, so…”
Kieran hovered awkwardly by the door, unsure how to handle the situation.
He was fine picking people up. Getting them to leave afterward was a different story.
Over the years, he’d learned guys would say almost anything to come home with him.
By dawn, most had already forgotten their promises not to want anything more.
Maybe it was time for a new policy: no sleepovers. Hit it and quit it. Goodbye, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred…
“Will you be back in New York soon?” Jones asked hopefully.
“Not unless we face them in the playoffs.”
The way this season was going, that didn’t look likely.
New York and Seattle were in different conferences, meaning if they met in the playoffs, it wouldn’t be until the Stanley Cup Final, a long shot.
Seattle wasn’t having a terrible season, and neither was New York, but no one expected either team to make it all the way this year.
“Pity.” John—he’d decided it was definitely John—drawled, still not moving toward the door.
Kieran considered holding it open and waving him through with glowing orange sticks like an airport traffic controller. Instead, he went for something less rude, but hopefully no less subtle.
“Do you need money for a cab?”
The question earned him a disapproving look. Kieran pinched the bridge of his nose, summoning what was left of his patience. This guy was really starting to get on his nerves. He hated clingy hookups, especially when the sex hadn’t even been that great. Luckily, his phone rang again.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to take this. It’s my agent.”
John finally seemed to get the importance of Kieran taking the call in private. “Ah,” he exhaled. “I imagine he has a lot to say after last night.”
Kieran nodded, hopeful, as John finally moved toward the door.
“Look me up the next time you’re in town,” he said. “I left my number on the—”
Kieran didn’t wait for the rest. As soon as John crossed the threshold, he shut the door behind him.
The nerve of some people. He walked to the hotel notepad, where John—Ah, Jason—had scrawled his number, tore off the sheet, crumpled it, and tossed it toward the trash can.
He missed. Of course. He played hockey, not basketball.
Kieran decided he’d let Cole suffer enough and picked up the phone.
“Jesus Christ, Kieran. You trying to give me a heart attack?” It was exactly the greeting Kieran had expected. Cole always answered the phone like he was in the middle of saving the world, and Kieran had ruined it by calling.
“Sorry it took so long to answer. Room service was taking their sweet time.”
“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Kieran could practically hear Cole’s eyes rolling through the phone.
“Well, we were in my room, and I was serviced.” He chuckled, knowing it would push Cole a little closer to the stroke he’d been working up to for some time now. “Is there another term you’d prefer I use?”
“This wasn’t the main reason I called, but while we’re on the topic…” Cole’s tone shifted, and Kieran braced himself.
“Don’t you think you should be more careful?” They said in tandem, Cole in his stern business tone, Kieran in mocking imitation.
“Stop with that,” Cole snapped, though he didn’t mean it.
Although highly strung, Cole was a good guy and a damn good agent.
He’d been with Kieran since he was drafted ten years ago.
Kieran liked to think they were close. Cole probably preferred to pretend he didn’t exist, so Kieran made that as difficult as possible by creating little problems for Cole to solve.
“You know I’ve always supported your… your…”
“You can say it, Cole.”
Cole stumbled over his words before finally getting it out. “Orientation. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to be flaunting your—”
“Raging homosexuality?” Kieran added, helpfully, he thought.
Cole, as usual, chose to ignore him. “All eyes are on you after that stunt last night. Every news station is playing clips of you getting punched by a damn referee and your little declaration that you deserved it. The last thing you need is a sexual scandal on top of that.”
Kieran scrunched his nose. Why’d Cole have to say it like that? All slow and awkward: sex-u-al scandal.
“I know you're sick of hearing this,” Cole continued. “The truth is, while the NHL’s more accepting of…”
“The gay agenda?”
“…queer players in the league, there’s still a long way to go when it comes to support from the fans.
Teams will do anything to avoid bad press, and this is a critical year for you.
You’re a free agent at the end of this season.
I’ve got a few potential offers in the works, but nothing’s set in stone until the paperwork’s signed.
Any of those teams could back out at a moment’s notice. ”
Kieran felt his mood sour. “I understand,” he grumbled. “I can be gay or in the media, not both.”
Cole sighed audibly. Kieran pictured him shifting on his feet, trying to work out the tension in his stiff shoulders as his face turned beet red.
“You know I don’t feel that way,” Cole said at last. “It’s my job as your agent to make you aware of potential risks to your career.”
“I’m pretty sure your job is to make sure those ‘potential risks’ don’t impact my career,” Kieran shot back. “But I’ll do a better job keeping it in my pants. Can we move on to the main reason you called?”
Kieran didn’t want the conversation to drag on any longer. He knew Cole wasn’t homophobic. He’d known Kieran was gay when he signed him, and despite the complaints, he’d always supported Kieran being out.
It had been Kieran’s only condition when choosing an agent.
He refused to stay in the closet just because he was joining the NHL.
Cole had handled the media storm with grace, shutting down stories that painted Kieran in a bad light and made sure the only time his sexuality came up was in connection to one of the LGBTQ+ charities he supported.
Cole seemed to need a moment to recenter, so Kieran stayed quiet on the hotel bed, waiting for him to gather his thoughts and get to the point. After a few moments, Cole finally continued. “So, what happened last night?”
“I ran my mouth, said something I shouldn’t have, and got punched in the face for my trouble.”
“Yes, I watched the press conference. Thanks for consulting me beforehand, by the way. Glad I was prepared.” Cole's words dripped with sarcasm. “I’m asking now, off the record, what really happened out there?”
Kieran didn’t bother hiding his frustration. “What did it look like happened?”
“It looked like Matthieu Bouchard lost his damn mind, and then you put your career on the line to cover for him. What I don’t understand is why.”
Kieran’s heart skipped at the mention of Bouchard’s name. He tried not to dwell on why it still affected him after all these years.
“I might be a hothead,” Kieran said, a little rough, “but I’m not a liar. I provoked the guy, knowing it would set him off. I wasn’t about to let him lose his job over it, so I told the media the truth.”
Cole paused. “I’ve watched the footage and listened to the sound bite from Bouchard’s mic a hundred times. I still have no idea what this supposedly horrendous thing you said even was.”
He wouldn’t have. The video showed Kieran knocking his helmet into Matthieu’s.
Unprofessional, sure, but not unheard of when a player was pissed about a bad call.
The sound bite caught the only two words Kieran had said before Bouchard’s fist collided with his face.
You’re crazy. However, neither video nor audio could capture the mile-long backstory that led them to that moment, or the painful history that made “crazy,” falling from Kieran’s lips, the most hurtful thing he could’ve said to Matthieu Bouchard.
Kieran knew exactly what he was doing when he said it.
That didn’t stop the guilt from twisting in almost immediately.
So he let Matthieu lash out. Welcomed the bruises and barely fought back, just enough to look like an active participant, not enough to stop Bouchard from overpowering him and driving him to the ice.
He wanted to take the words back the second they left his mouth. Since he couldn’t, he did the only thing he could think of: he took the fall.
“You really won’t tell me.” Cole’s persistence was relentless.
“There’s history there.”
“History…” Cole said it like the word had a thousand layers he was trying to unravel. “Goddamnit, Kieran! Did you sleep with the guy?”
Kieran cringed. He hated reducing what he had with Matthieu to that, but he wasn’t about to give Cole more than he needed to know.
“It was a long time ago.” That much, at least, was true.
Cole muttered something under his breath, a curse, or maybe a prayer to some higher power neither of them believed in. Kieran let him finish.
“You will be the death of me, kid.”
A grin tugged at Kieran’s mouth at the affection slipping through the cracks of Cole’s usual gruffness. He might grumble and get frustrated with Kieran more than he’d admit, but Kieran knew how much he cared. These rare moments of genuine affection made the near-constant reprimanding worth it.
“I should probably get packing,” Kieran said, eager to steer the conversation away from squishy, uncomfortable territory.
“You flying with the team to DC?”
“Nah, they’re sending me back to Seattle early.”
Coach probably meant it as a punishment, cutting him from the rest of the road trip. He didn’t mind, though. He was more than happy to return to his own time zone and sleep in his own bed.
“Well, if you could get there without making the front pages again, I’d appreciate it.”
“Love you too, Cole.” Kieran hung up before he could respond, knowing full well it would make him grumble some more.
Six hours later, Kieran was wedged into a window seat far too small for his long frame—one more sign of how pissed off Coach was about what had happened. Getting sent back to Seattle early on a commercial flight was one thing; getting dumped into economy was something else entirely.
Kieran wasn’t the tallest guy on the team, but at six-foot-one, he was taller than average. Even if he wasn’t, the legroom still wouldn’t have been enough. Everyone else on the plane seemed just as uncomfortable.
After a lot of wiggling, Kieran finally found a position that didn’t completely cut off his circulation.
He popped in his earbuds, hoping to catch some much-needed sleep on the flight home.
He just had to pray the person in front of him didn’t recline their seat after takeoff, or he’d be right back where he started.
A woman across the aisle caught his eye as he slid his phone into his backpack, currently jammed onto his lap thanks to the lack of space. She kept glancing over before turning to her friend and whispering something excitedly.
Kieran figured it was one of three things.
First, maybe she was a Seattle hockey fan—this was a direct flight, after all.
Second, maybe she was curious about his bruised face. It hadn’t looked this bad last night or even this morning; now he looked like he’d been hit by a truck. At least he hadn’t lost a tooth.
Or third, his least favorite, she might find him attractive despite looking like he'd gone ten rounds and be trying to get his attention—or worse, his phone number. If it was the latter, she was barking up the wrong tree. Kieran hadn’t been with a woman in fifteen years, and even a Victoria’s Secret model couldn’t turn his head at this point.
After a few moments, she worked up the nerve to wave.
Kieran gave her his best “Hi, please don’t talk to me” head nod, making sure to keep a polite smile, like Cole had taught him.
When he first joined the league, he’d gotten plenty of lectures about not being rude to fans. Even the ones with vaginas. Ew.
The woman said something, but the music blasting in Kieran’s ears drowned her out. When she realized he hadn’t heard her, she motioned for him to take out his earbud, like she was entitled to his full attention. Kieran complied, not wanting to cause a scene.
“You’re that guy, the one from the fight last night.”
Ah. A fourth option after all. She recognized him as that guy.
“Yep, that was me,” Kieran said, keeping his tone as neutral as possible, hoping to shut the conversation down.
The two older women between him and the girl already looked irritated by the brief interaction. The flight was long enough as it was. He didn’t need to spend it trapped against the window by pissed-off seatmates.
“Damn, I thought so,” the girl said, nodding. She leaned in to whisper something to her friend again. “He really fucked you up.”
In more ways than one, sweetheart. In more ways than one.
Kieran kept the thought to himself and nodded again, this time more stiffly, before making a show of replacing his earbud and turning to the window.
For the next five hours, Kieran fought to push the image of Matthieu’s face from his mind; that look of betrayal and brokenness before it turned to rage. He kept seeing it, again and again, that haunting sadness, even as the plane’s wheels touched down in Seattle.