7. Elio
Chapter Seven
ELIO
My head kept spinning for hours after I had left Jaxon’s room.
I had woken up with my arm around him, realizing that all he wore was a pair of briefs, and my entire body wanted to inch closer.
I’d resisted it, but it had been a hard fight between denying myself that indulgence and grabbing it by the throat.
Speaking of the throat, I thought miserably as I crossed the campus toward the rink. He had been so goddamn hard when I’d slammed him against the door, and it hadn’t surprised me at all.
That terrible, irresistible feeling still roared through me. The pulsing sensation deep inside my skull and the tingling rising from my toes, creeping higher and higher until it made my heart jolt, lingered long after I had left him.
Go back, it kept nagging me. He’ll open his door. He’ll fall on his knees. He’s been waiting for you all these years. And though I knew the truth was a little more complicated than that, it seemed as simple as giving him a nod.
It was like he was designed to lure me in. The number of obstacles between me and the thing my entire being screamed to own was nonexistent. He had undressed and slipped next to me in the bed. How much easier could it have been?
All I had to do was admit I wanted it. All I had to do was confirm to every mean-spirited, omniscient voice of my childhood that they were right when they called me all those slurs just because I wore my hair a little longer.
Their faces floated before my eyes. Just a few years older than me, they had already started growing little chin hairs and mustaches, their faces pocked with acne that plagued us all sooner or later, and their eyes shiny with delight when they humiliated me.
What was stopping me? That was. That was precisely how I managed to resist it.
I wasn’t gay. Something was in a tangle somewhere deep within me, and I had a weakness for Jaxon in particular, but I wasn’t into guys. Not in the way those bullies had said.
The locker room was more empty than full by the time I arrived.
Patrick, who had left much earlier, wasn’t there yet.
He had probably squeezed in a date with whoever his current girl was or a cup of coffee with the countless people trying to be friends with him.
Lennox lifted his head when I entered, curly, honey-brown locks bouncing wildly from the movement.
“Captain, oh Captain,” he said, lifting his eyebrows in greeting.
I clicked my fingers and shook my head. “Not yet, buddy.”
“I don’t think it’s a competition anymore,” Lennox said.
I still have time to fall from grace, I thought. The team couldn’t be led by a guy who used every chance he had to kiss other guys. And right now, I fit that description as well as Easton.
Bobby was on the far side of the locker room, putting on his gear. He glanced at Lennox when the words reached him, a scowl on his face. He was Kyle’s closest ally on the team.
I didn’t need to wonder. It was isolating to have your ally and friend be revealed as a liar and a fraud before the entire team.
Kyle’s suspension had been effective immediately, and we all still held our collective breaths, waiting for the results of his drug test. My friend’s deception was all too public, and ultimately, he had admitted it.
Patrick entered the locker room like a storm, tossing his backpack on the bench and mumbling a greeting to everyone. He didn’t have any extra words for me, but I had stopped expecting them.
The locker room filled up little by little.
Connor and Damon arrived in tandem, followed soon by a sight I hadn’t been expecting.
Bruised, injured in several spots, but holding his chin regally high, Easton entered the locker room, and silence fell.
For better or worse, he was technically still the captain.
He looked around the locker room, his intense green gaze scanning each of us while we all stood in stunned silence.
He’d missed yesterday’s drills, and the unspoken assumption was that Easton was unlikely to show up.
“Am I making you nervous?” Easton asked in a voice pitched to fill the room.
We collectively looked down in shame. Yeah. He made me nervous. He made me afraid that the ghosts of my bullies occupied new bodies and filled this locker room. He made me scared that I would never be free of the labels that were unjustly attached to my back.
Easton waited, then nodded, tossing his duffel on the bench. “If you think I’m going to offer an explanation, that’s never gonna happen,” he said. “What we do outside the rink is nobody’s business.”
A few people nodded. Rhett murmured a “hear, hear” under his breath, echoed by Patrick a moment later.
“I wouldn’t expect any one of you to give excuses for what you do when you’re off the ice, given it doesn’t affect the team,” Easton said, his voice so steady and authoritative that it never crossed my mind to argue.
What Easton and I had between us was our business.
We would settle it one way or another, but it wouldn’t be in front of the Saints.
“Although, I will offer you one assurance. If you’re scared a gay guy is around when you’re showering or changing, if you’re scared a gay guy hugs you when you score a point, if you’re scared a gay guy can see you in your underwear, remember this.
I’m not the first gay guy you’ve met. You don’t know us because we live in fear and in secret.
We lie to you every day you see us. We pretend we’re like you so you’d be our friend.
Well, I’m done with that bullshit. You’re welcome to keep your opinion to yourself.
And if you still have a problem with a gay teammate because he might hit on you, don’t flatter yourself too much. This one’s taken.”
Lennox picked up his hockey stick and began clacking the butt against the floor, the sound filling the room with a steady, upbeat rhythm.
Patrick followed a heartbeat later, then Rhett, Connor, Damon, and the whole bunch of them.
I glanced around, finding Bobby focused on his phone as if nothing was going on and a couple more wary looks being exchanged.
And me? I had no goddamn idea what to do.
He had practically called me out without giving me a single glance.
After the thunderous clash of wood against the tiled floor, the team settled down, and Easton gave a firm nod. “I figured you’d be cool if I had the balls to speak up.” He hesitated, then shook his head. “Should have done this years ago.”
Many of our teammates tapped his shoulder or patted his back, giving him a few passing words of encouragement while I withdrew deeper into the dead husk of my soul.
I looked away. The air grew too stuffy and hot for me, and I wondered if Easton had just turned things around for himself.
Whatever this feeling eating me from the inside was, it couldn’t have been jealousy.
The drills were once again a regular affair.
With the recent events, there was still a fair share of confusion.
The teams were split into smaller groups for an entire hour, each practicing individually with one of the assistant coaches.
Then, in the second half, we simulated a few common skirmish strategies.
When it was over, I was the first one out of the door, and nobody stopped me from leaving. There were no announcements, and nobody voiced the many questions they had.
As I lifted my duffel, I passed by Patrick and Easton, not slowing down. “What the hell happened to your face?” Patrick asked.
Easton shook his head. “It’s a long story.”
Patrick shrugged and threw his arm over Easton’s shoulders. “Then it’s lucky we’re going for a beer or two. Right, Captain?”
Before I left the locker room, I looked over my shoulder and found Easton fighting against a rising smile.
My fist was heavy when it landed. The contact sent a thin bolt of pain through my hand. The wooden surface of his door muffled the sounds coming from the inside, but there was a clear scrambling around the room.
“Who is it?” the voice came.
“Let me in, Jax,” I called.
The night had already deepened, and I hadn’t expected to find him awake, but a restlessness had settled in me throughout the evening, and this place was the song of the sirens deep inside my mind.
“A minute,” he said, his voice bitchy the way only I could cause. This seemed to be the pattern with people around me.
I pressed my brow against the door as Jaxon paced around the room. Doors opened and shut in there, and several minutes passed before his footsteps neared the door. He hesitated, then opened it and looked at me with a mixture of expectation and apprehension.
His eyebrows lay flat over his brown eyes, and he stared at me as if words weren’t so necessary between us. Perhaps they indeed weren’t.
What do you want?
You know what I want.
Do I?
Don’t make me say it.
His chest rose and fell with deep breaths, his gaze locked onto mine.
He didn’t move away from the middle of the door, but he didn’t move to shut it in my face, either.
It was a moment that stretched into an eternity, and I knew that coming here had been the right thing to do.
The perfect storm of guilt and shame had wrapped itself around me, and few people were able to see through all that, let alone still find a sliver of affection for me.
Jaxon cocked his head, demanding an answer for this late-night visit, but I only pressed my lips tighter.
Between us, the air crackled with tension.
I could see the battle play across his face just as clearly as he could see my pleas. I was here for a reason, after all, and Jaxon had to make the call.
Finally, as he held his breath, his eyebrows lifted a little, and he stepped aside, letting me into his room.