Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Evan
Saturday afternoon, Danny came over with lattes and determination written all over his face.
“Okay.” He settled onto my couch. “Talk.”
I wrapped my hands around my cup and tried to figure out where to start. “I’ve been hooking up with someone.”
“The guy from the club.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah. Nico.”
“And?” Danny prompted when I didn’t continue.
“And… I don’t know. It’s been good. We’ve seen each other four times.”
Danny’s eyebrows rose. “Four times in eight days? Evan, that’s not hooking up. That’s dating.”
“I know.”
“Have you talked about it? About what you are?”
I shook my head. “Not really. We’re just… seeing each other. Spending time together.”
“And you’re okay with that? With not knowing?”
Was I? I took a sip of coffee to buy myself time. “I want to ask. But I’m afraid if I push, he’ll…”
“Run?” Danny finished gently.
“Yeah.”
Danny set his cup down. “Okay. Can I say something honest?”
“When do you not?”
“You’re not afraid he’ll run. You’re afraid that if you ask the right questions, you’ll get answers that mean you’ll have to decide whether this is worth the risk.” He watched my face. “There’s a difference.”
I opened my mouth to argue. Closed it.
“So ask him,” Danny said. “Before this goes any further.”
“I’m going to.” And saying it out loud made it feel true in a way it hadn’t before. Not I should, or I’m thinking about it. I was going to.
“Good.” Danny studied me. “Because this isn’t like you. You’re the guy who needs to know where he stands. The fact that you’ve been letting it slide tells me how much you like him. Can I say something else?”
“You’re going to anyway.”
“You don’t actually know what it looks like when someone asks a fair question and just…
gets an answer. No fight. No fallout.” He said it carefully, like he’d been sitting on it.
“From what you’ve told me, Ryan didn’t give you that.
So you don’t have a template for it. And I think part of you is afraid to find out if Nico will. ”
I didn’t say anything.
“That’s not paranoia,” Danny said. “That’s just not knowing what normal feels like.”
“He pulls me out of my head,” I admitted. “When I’m with him, I’m not cataloging worst-case scenarios. That’s new for me.”
“I get it.” His voice softened. “Just don’t let that become the reason you stop asking questions.”
“I won’t.” I meant it.
Danny seemed satisfied. He stood to leave a few minutes later and squeezed my shoulder at the door. “Ask your questions, Evan. You already know what they are.”
After he left, I sat at my desk without opening my laptop.
He was right. I knew what they were. I’d known for days—I’d just been letting the ease of being with Nico crowd them out. That wasn’t caution, it was avoidance, and I knew the difference.
I pulled the notebook I used for client work out of my desk drawer and opened it to a fresh page. Writing things down was how I thought clearly. How I separated what I felt from what I actually needed to know.
What do you actually do? Not “sports.” Specifically.
Hockey. You said it once and caught yourself. Why?
Why do we always meet at my place?
What does your life look like when I’m not in it?
I looked at the list. Four questions. Straightforward, specific, fair. The kind of questions any reasonable person would ask after four dates. I wasn’t demanding anything unreasonable. I was asking for the basic information required to decide whether to keep going.
I closed the notebook and put it back in the drawer.
Monday night, I would ask. Not aggressively, not apologetically. Just directly, because that’s what this situation required and what I should have done a week ago.
On Monday evening, Nico showed up at my door with his usual amiable smile.
“Hey,” he said, leaning in to kiss me.
“Hi yourself.” I stepped back to let him in, and that’s when I noticed it—the way he moved through the doorway. Carefully. Just a fraction slower than normal. “How was your day?”
“Good. Yours?” He shrugged off his jacket, and I caught the tiniest wince. There and gone in a second, but I saw it.
“Fine.” I moved closer. “You okay?”
“Yeah, why?” His smile didn’t waver, but his eyes were tired. Lines of tension around them that hadn’t been there Friday.
“You seem off.”
“Just tired. Long weekend.” He stretched casually, but I noticed he didn’t extend his right side fully. “What’s for dinner?”
“I was thinking pasta.” I studied him. “You’re moving like you’re sore.”
“I’m fine.” A laugh, easy and dismissive. “Just a hard workout. You know how it is.”
I didn’t, actually.
We made dinner together—or rather, I made dinner while he sat at the counter and talked. But when he reached for his beer bottle, I saw him favor his right side. When he laughed at something I said, he cut it short, like the movement hurt.
Small things. Things he was trying to hide.
After we ate, we moved to the couch. He pulled me against him, and I felt him tense when I accidentally pressed against his right side.
“Nico.” I sat up, turning to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Still smiling, still casual.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t.” I kept my voice gentle. “I can tell. You’ve been moving carefully all night. Every time you shift right, you tense up. You cut your laugh short earlier. Something’s wrong.”
His smile faded slightly. He studied me for a moment, then sighed. “It’s nothing serious. Just got knocked around a bit at work. Happens sometimes.”
“Knocked around.” I frowned. “What kind of work involves getting knocked around?”
“Physical stuff. Sports related.” He said it like it was obvious, like it explained everything. “It’s part of the job. I’m fine, really.”
“Can I see?”
“Evan—”
“Please.”
He hesitated, then pulled up his shirt. A massive bruise bloomed across his right side—dark purple and angry looking, spanning from his ribs to his hip.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. My hand hovered over it, not quite touching. “Nico, that looks awful.”
“It looks worse than it is.” He pulled his shirt back down, that casual smile returning. “I saw a doctor. Just a bruise. I’ve had way worse.”
“How did it happen?”
“Got checked into the—” He stopped. “Got hit during an event. It’s part of the job.”
Vague again. The same careful category. I filed it with everything else and didn’t push—not yet, not about this. The bruise wasn’t a question I’d prepared for.
“Does it hurt?”
“Little bit.” He shifted me carefully to his other side. “But I’ve got you to distract me now.”
I settled against him. “Do you need ice? Ibuprofen?”
“Took something already. But ice would be good.”
I went to the kitchen and filled a bag with ice, wrapped it in a towel, and brought it back.
We settled on the couch with the TV playing quietly, and I held the ice pack to his side while he talked about his week.
After a few minutes, I felt him relax into it, the tension leaving his shoulders as the cold did its work.
“Thank you,” he said. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
He was quiet for a moment, his hand covering mine where I held the ice pack. “I’m leaving Wednesday morning,” he said. “Work trip. We’ll be gone until next Wednesday.”
I went still. “That’s a long time.”
“Yeah. Multiple cities.” He paused. “I wanted to tell you in person.”
I looked at him. “Will you text me? While you’re gone?”
“Every chance I get. Might be late sometimes, but yeah, I’ll text.”
The Ryan comparison came automatically—the disappearing acts, the radio silence, the way I’d trained myself not to expect contact because expecting it hurt too much. I pushed it aside. Nico wasn’t Ryan. But I also wasn’t going to know what he was until I asked.
“Nico.” I kept my voice steady. “I know I’ve been letting things go.
The vagueness about work, not knowing where you live, not really knowing what your life looks like.
I’ve been letting it slide because things between us have been good, and I didn’t want to disrupt that.
” I met his eyes. “But I need to know more than I know. Before you leave, and before this goes further.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he opened his mouth.
I watched something move across his face, not the careful composure he usually wore, but something underneath it. Raw and unsteady. He exhaled.
“My name is—” His jaw tightened.
I waited.
He looked down at his hands. A long moment passed. When he looked back up, something had shifted—not closed exactly, but steadied. Like he’d made a decision about a different decision.
“You’re right. And I’m going to tell you everything.
” His voice was calm and certain in a way that didn’t feel like deflection—more like someone who had thought about this and decided.
“There are things about my life that are complicated,” he said.
“And what I need to tell you isn’t small.
If I try to do it tonight, in the twenty minutes before I leave for a week, you’re going to have questions I can’t answer in person, in real time.
You’ll be sitting with it alone while I’m in a different city.
” He met my eyes steadily. “I don’t want to do that to you. ”
It was a better reason than I’d expected. I turned it over, looking for the angle, the way I used to do with everything Ryan said. I didn’t find one. What I found was someone who had thought about how this would land for me, not just for himself.
That should have reassured me. Instead, it made my stomach tighten.
Because if what he had to say was complicated enough to require careful timing—complicated enough that he was worried about leaving me alone with it—then whatever it was, it was significant.
Not a minor omission. Something that would change the shape of what I thought I understood.
“One week,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Not a rolling deferral. You come back, and we have the conversation. That’s the deal.”
“That’s the deal,” he agreed without hesitation.
I nodded. I was disappointed—I’d come into tonight ready, and I was leaving without the answers I needed.
But I’d made a conscious choice, with a concrete deadline, for a reason I understood.
That was different from Ryan. With Ryan there had been no deadline, no choice, just avoidance that I’d called patience until I couldn’t anymore.
I just hoped that whatever Nico was carrying was something I could actually handle hearing.
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, and I let myself lean into him. But I kept the questions in the notebook in my mind, in order, ready for his return.
Tuesday passed. I worked, checked in with clients, and went to the pool. He texted me at noon with nothing significant, just his name on my screen making me aware of how often I was checking for it.
Wednesday morning, my phone buzzed while I was making coffee.
Nico
At the airport. I’ll text you when I land.
I stared at the message. The familiar anxiety was there—the waiting to see if he’d follow through. But I noticed something alongside it that hadn’t been there with Ryan: I actually expected him to. Not hoped. Expected.
He texted from the terminal before boarding. He texted when he landed, six hours later, a single warm message asking how my day was, like a person who intended to keep doing this.
I texted back and put my phone down.
The relief I felt wasn’t the dizzy, disproportionate kind that meant I’d been bracing for abandonment. It was quieter than that. More like confirmation.
When he got back, we were going to talk. I’d made sure of that.