Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Evan
Nico had covered me before he left. That detail sat in my chest while I oriented myself in the dark—the TV off, the apartment quiet, the blanket pulled up to my shoulders.
He could have woken me. Could have made sure I knew that he’d taken care of me.
Instead, he’d tucked the blanket around me and let himself out.
Ryan had never done anything without claiming credit.
I lay there for a few minutes, staring into the dark, waiting to fall back asleep.
That wasn’t going to happen.
I got up, retrieved my MacBook from the office, and settled on the couch with it. I didn’t turn on a lamp. The screen light was enough. I sat there for a moment with the laptop open and the cursor blinking in the search bar.
Then I typed: Nicolás Briggs San Jose Lasers.
The results loaded instantly. Of course they did. There were hundreds of them.
I started with the Wikipedia page.
Nicolás Alejandro Briggs is an American professional ice hockey player and left winger for the San Jose Lasers of the National Hockey League. He is widely regarded as one of the premier power forwards of his generation.
One of the premier power forwards of his generation.
I read it twice. Then I kept going: draft history, career statistics, contract details. His current contract was listed. The number made me set the laptop on the cushion beside me and look at the ceiling for a moment.
Ryan had made that kind of money. I knew what came with it.
I picked the laptop back up.
The images were next. Nico in his jersey, number seventeen, mid-stride on the ice with an expression I’d never seen on his face—focused to the point of ferocity, nothing like the easy warmth I knew.
Nico at press conferences, patient and composed in Lasers-branded gear, answering questions with that half-smile.
Nico signing autographs outside an arena, a line of fans stretching out of frame, each one getting a moment of his full attention.
That last one was the one that stopped me.
I knew that posture. The slight lean forward, the pen in hand, the way he angled himself toward whoever was in front of him.
I’d seen Ryan do it a thousand times—the practiced performance of accessibility, the public-facing warmth that existed separately from anything private.
I’d spent years watching Ryan perform warmth to strangers and treating it as proof of something real.
It wasn’t proof of anything except that he was good at it.
I told myself Nico wasn’t Ryan.
I kept scrolling.
His Instagram was public. Of course it was, it was part of the job, he’d said that.
Seven hundred and fifty-three thousand followers.
The posts were mostly hockey: game highlights, practice clips, the occasional team event, a few sponsor posts, clearly marked.
Nothing personal—no apartments, no restaurants, no candid moments that might tell me what his life looked like when the cameras weren’t there.
He controlled his own feed carefully, that much was clear.
But Google was less curated. There were fan sightings—someone’s blurry phone photo outside an arena, a restaurant candid that had made a gossip site’s “spotted” column, a group photo from what looked like a charity event.
In all of them he was alone, or with teammates, or with fans.
Never with anyone who looked like more than that. Never with anyone who appeared twice.
That should have been reassuring. Partly it was. Years of nothing visible meant he’d been telling the truth about keeping his private life private.
But it also meant I had no idea what I was walking into. No ex who’d talked to a magazine. No relationship that had surfaced and shown me how he handled it when things got complicated. Just a clean slate that told me nothing about what came next.
I clicked on the most recent post of a game photo, Nico in mid-celebration after a goal, arms out, face open in a way that I recognized. That was Nico. Whatever else was on this page, that was actually him.
Then I made the mistake of reading the comments.
You can wreck me any day, number 17.
The way he moves on the ice should be illegal.
Marry me Nicolás
I would literally do anything.
Hundreds of them. Thousands, on some posts. Men and women both, all of them directed at a person I’d fallen asleep on four hours ago. A person whose laugh I knew, who made eggs and forgot everything else his mother taught him, who had covered me with a blanket when he left.
I closed the laptop.
Sat in the dark for a moment.
This was the part I hadn’t let myself think about while he was here, while his hand was in mine and his voice was careful and sincere and I was deciding to try.
This was the part that lived on the other side of that decision.
Three quarters of a million people who felt entitled to him in some way, who had an opinion about him, who would have an opinion about anyone he was with.
If this became public—when, not if, because I’d learned that lesson already—those comments would have a target.
That target would be me.
I’d been written about once. I hadn’t asked for it.
A gossip site had run a piece after Ryan and I broke up—Ryan Pierce’s mystery boyfriend—and within forty-eight hours strangers had found my LinkedIn, my old Twitter, a photo from a friend’s wedding where I was in the background.
They’d posted my workplace. They’d sent messages to my personal email.
I’d had to change my number. Change my name. Move to a different city and become someone new enough that the searches stopped finding me.
I sat on my couch at two forty-five in the morning and tried to be rational about the difference between then and now. Nico had said he wasn’t making any public statements about his personal life. He’d said he knew how to keep things separate. He’d been doing it for fourteen years.
He’d also said he couldn’t promise that nothing would ever get out.
I picked up my phone and texted Danny.
Evan
Are you awake?
Three minutes passed.
Danny
I am now. What happened?
Evan
He told me everything.
Danny
Everything?
Evan
He’s Nicolás Briggs. Number seventeen. San Jose Lasers.
A pause that was longer than typing time.
Then my phone rang.
“Say that again,” Danny said, his voice rough with sleep.
“Nico. The guy I’ve been seeing. He’s a professional hockey player. For the Lasers. He’s… Danny, he has a Wikipedia page. His contract is public record. He has three quarters of a million Instagram followers and women are leaving comments that…” I took a shuddering breath. “I’ve been here before.”
“You haven’t,” Danny said. “Listen to me. You haven’t been here before.”
“He’s famous. He’s public. People recognize him on the street—”
“Evan.” His voice was firm but not unkind. “Did you look at his Instagram?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Did you see any relationships on it?”
I thought about the grid of posts. The game photos, the sponsor content, the team events. “No.”
“Any dates? Anyone who showed up twice?”
“No.”
“Any indication at all that his private life has ever been public?”
I was quiet.
“That’s not nothing,” Danny said. I heard the click of a keyboard in the background.
“I just looked him up.” He paused for a few moments.
“He’s been in the NHL for eight years and there’s nothing.
No relationships, no scandals, no one who’s talked to a magazine.
Ryan’s relationships were public from day one because Ryan wanted them public.
It was part of his brand. But with Nico, there’s nothing. ”
“That could just mean he’s been closeted.”
“It could. It also means he knows how to protect what matters to him.” I could hear Danny shifting, settling into the conversation. “Tell me what he said. All of it.”
So I did. The tattoo, and Morelli and Savard’s photo.
The first night at the club, wanting to be nobody.
The way recognition changed how people treated him.
The blackmail—Danny went very quiet at that part.
The specific reason he’d waited to tell me, the fear that I’d make a decision about Nicolás Briggs before I’d had a chance to know Nico.
“He said he was afraid of losing you before you’d built something that could survive the telling,” Danny said when I finished.
“Yes.”
“And you told him about Ryan.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s still there.”
“He left at… I don’t know, ten? I fell asleep. I woke at two with a blanket tucked around me.”
“Evan.” Danny’s voice softened. “He stayed for dinner. He stayed until you fell asleep. He covered you up and let himself out so he wouldn’t wake you.
And now you’re sitting on your couch at three in the morning reading Instagram comments from strangers instead of sleeping.
” A beat. “Does that sound like the right use of your time?”
“No,” I admitted.
“The comments aren’t about you. They’re about a public figure those people have never met. You know the actual person. You have information they don’t have.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because it sounds like you’re letting strangers on the internet tell you what your relationship is.”
I closed my eyes. He wasn’t wrong. He was infuriatingly, completely right.
“I’m scared,” I said. It came out simpler than I’d intended.
“I know.” No judgment in it. “You’re scared because you’ve been here before and it went badly. That’s not the same as this going badly. Those are two different things.”
I thought about Nico’s hand resting palm up on the couch cushion.
Not reaching for me but just leaving it there, giving me the choice.
I thought about one life to live, one life to love, and what it had cost him to finally mean it.
I thought about him covering me with a blanket and letting himself out without a word.
“You’re right,” I said.
“Then go to sleep,” Danny said. “And tomorrow, when you’ve had some rest and some coffee, it’s going to look different.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you. Go to sleep, Evan.”
I did… eventually. I lay on the couch under the blanket Nico had pulled over me and stared at the ceiling until somewhere around four, when my body finally gave up and let me go under.
I woke up at seven to gray morning light and the exhaustion of three hours’ sleep after an emotionally significant night. I made coffee, took it to my desk, and opened my laptop to the work I needed to finish—a brand audit for a client whose deadline was not going to care about my personal life.
I lasted forty minutes before I picked up my phone.
He’d have practice this morning. I figured that much.
I didn’t know what time it started or when he’d be done, didn’t know what his mornings looked like before practice.
There was so much I didn’t know about the practical shape of his life, and that was part of what the night had clarified: the vagueness was over, but it had left behind a lot of empty space where real information needed to go.
I typed a text and looked at it for a moment before sending it.
Evan
I hope practice goes well. I looked you up in the middle of the night. I don’t understand most of what I was looking at, but you seem very good at it.
I put the phone face down on my desk and went back to the brand audit.
Three minutes later, it buzzed.
Nico
Just got to the rink. You were up late.
Nico
How are you doing?
I looked at those three words for a moment. Not “What did you think?” or “Are we okay?” just “How are you doing?” Asking about me first, the same way he always did.
Evan
Still processing. But okay.
Nico
That’s fair. Can I see you tonight?
I thought about the Instagram comments. The Wikipedia page. The contract number that had made me set the laptop down. I thought about Danny’s voice at three: supportive, steady, and certain.
Evan
Yes. Come over this evening.
Nico
I’ll bring dinner. You pick.
Evan
Mexican from that place you like.
Nico
Done. See you tonight, Evan Beckett.
I set my phone down and looked at my laptop screen, at the brand audit I needed to finish, at the ordinary Friday morning waiting for me on the other side of last night.
I was scared. I hadn’t decided anything yet.
But I’d said yes to tonight. And for now, tonight was enough.