Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Evan
Monday started the way I imagined most weeks would start from now on—with Nico at the rink and me at my desk trying to focus on work while half my brain was somewhere else entirely.
Nico
Light skate this morning. Game tonight against Florida.
Evan
Good luck. I’ll be watching.
Nico
Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.
I smiled at my phone and went back to the client presentation I was supposed to be revising. Made it through maybe two slides before my mind wandered again.
This was my new life. Games every few days, practices in between, stolen moments when Nico’s schedule allowed. It should have felt overwhelming—the constant hockey, the limited time, the way his career took up so much space.
But mostly it just felt… right.
Danny called around lunchtime.
“How’s the hockey boyfriend?” he asked without preamble.
“He’s good. We’re good,” I said, and I could hear the smile in my voice.
“You sound disgustingly happy.”
“I am.” The words came out softer than I’d intended, almost dreamy. I shook myself. “Is that allowed?”
“It’s mandatory,” Danny said. “You deserve it.” A pause. “You watching the game tonight?”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated, and I could hear him smiling. Then, more carefully. “You doing okay? With all of it—knowing who he is, what his life looks like, the whole thing?”
“Mostly,” I said. “It’s an adjustment.”
“That’s honest.” He let that sit for a moment. “You know you can call me when it’s not okay, right? When you’re trying to figure it out.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious, Evan. You spent three years handling everything alone with Ryan because he made you feel like your concerns were an inconvenience. I’m not letting that happen again.”
The directness of it caught me off guard, the way Danny’s candor sometimes did even after three years of friendship. “I know,” I said again, meaning it more this time.
“Good.” His voice warmed. “How’s the work going?”
We talked for another twenty minutes about a client presentation I was behind on, about his boyfriend Elliot’s impossible hours, about nothing particularly significant.
When we hung up, I felt lighter rather than unsettled.
It hadn’t always been that way. Not in the beginning, when I’d first moved to San Jose and Danny had been the only person who knew the whole story.
Then, every check-in had carried the weight of what I’d told him about Ryan.
There was no longer any weight.
By seven that evening, I’d settled on my couch with a beer to watch the game, Ice Hockey for Beginners at my side.
The first period was fast and fierce. Florida came out strong, and I winced when Nico got checked hard into the boards. But he popped right back up and kept playing.
I was starting to understand that was just how hockey worked. The hitting, the physicality, the way players crashed into each other at full speed and then just kept going.
It still made my stomach churn every time.
The Lasers scored first, and I grinned. Nico hadn’t been involved in the play, but it was still his team, and I was apparently a person who cheered for his team now. Second period, Nico got his chance. He picked up a loose puck and put it in the net so fast I almost missed it.
Goal.
I jumped to my feet with my arms in the air. “Yes!” My voice cut through the cheering on the TV.
San Jose won 4–2, and I texted Nico immediately.
Evan
Congrats on the goal and the win!
Half an hour later, I received a reply.
Nico
Thanks. See you tomorrow. Can’t wait.
I put my phone down and went to bed. For once I didn’t lie there second-guessing anything.
Tuesday evening, I stood in my kitchen with salmon marinating and rice steaming in the cooker, more nervous than I should have been about cooking dinner for my boyfriend.
Nico showed up at six. When he leaned in to kiss me, I caught the clean scent of his body wash. He handed me a bottle of wine. “I’m starving.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
“I’m sure it’ll be perfect.”
He settled onto one of my kitchen stools while I finished the vegetables, and we fell into conversation about his teammates and my clients, comfortable in a way that loosened my shoulders.
By six thirty, we were sitting at my dining table with plates of salmon, brown rice, and roasted vegetables.
“This is really good,” Nico said after his first bite of salmon.
“You sound surprised.”
“You said not to get my hopes up.”
“I never said I was bad at cooking.”
He grinned and took another bite.
We ate, talked, and I made the mistake of asking why the Lasers’ social media presence was so bland. Nico spent fifteen minutes defending the team’s PR director while I listed everything wrong with their Instagram strategy. When we’d finished, Nico helped me clear the table.
“Want to get dessert?” he asked. “We could walk to the frozen yogurt place a few blocks from here.”
I hesitated. Going out in public together was different from staying in my apartment.
It was just frozen yogurt, just a few blocks away, but it was also the first time we’d be out somewhere together—not a private hike, not dinner delivered to my door, but an actual public place where anyone could walk in.
“Sure,” I said. “Yeah, okay.”
The frozen yogurt shop was small and brightly lit, with a handful of other customers scattered around the tables. We filled our cups—mine with chocolate and strawberries, Nico’s with an alarming number of toppings—and found a table by the window. It felt normal. Easy. I started to relax.
“You’re going to regret all that candy,” I said, watching him take his first bite.
“Worth it.”
We were halfway through our yogurt when I noticed someone staring at us from across the shop. A guy in his early twenties, wearing a Lasers hoodie, phone already in his hand.
My stomach tightened. The phone. That was the thing that registered first—not the staring, but the phone already out.
The guy stood up and walked over to our table.
“Excuse me,” he said, looking directly at Nico. “You’re Nicolás Briggs, right?”
Nico’s entire demeanor shifted. His smile widened, his posture opened up, and his energy became more animated.
The private Nico I knew disappeared, replaced by the public version—charming, approachable, effortlessly friendly.
The transformation was so complete and so instant that it stopped my breath for a second.
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said warmly.
“Oh man, I’m a huge fan. I was at the game last night. That goal you scored was incredible.” The guy was practically bouncing. “Could I get a picture with you?”
“Sure.” Nico stood, easy and gracious, like this happened all the time.
Because it did. I was just learning that now, in real time, in a frozen yogurt shop on a Tuesday night.
The guy held out his phone to me. “Would you mind?”
I took it. Stood a few feet back, held up his phone, and watched through the screen while Nico posed with his arm around the fan’s shoulders, both of them grinning.
“Thanks, man,” the fan said, taking the phone back. Then his eyes flicked to me, just for a second. A quick look, up and down, like he was filing something away. “You guys have a good night.”
He walked back to his table. I watched him sit down and start typing on his phone.
My stomach hadn’t unclenched since he stood up.
Nico sat back down like nothing had happened. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
But I wasn’t. My hands were shaking, and my mind had already run to the part that scared me most—not that it had happened, but how easily it had happened.
How casually. A stranger had walked up to our table mid-conversation, and Nico had become someone else entirely.
I had held a stranger’s phone with shaking hands while our private Tuesday evening became something that would end up in someone’s camera roll.
And I wasn’t just some anonymous guy holding the phone.
I was Evan Hunter. I’d been photographed on red carpets, had my name in gossip columns, had my face attached to Ryan Pierce’s story in ways that didn’t disappear just because I’d moved cities and changed my name.
Anyone who’d covered that story would know exactly who I was.
And if someone connected Evan Hunter to Nicolás Briggs, they wouldn’t be asking questions about me. They’d be asking questions about Nico.
“Evan.” He leaned forward slightly, his voice low enough that no one else could hear. “You’re not fine. Talk to me.”
I met his gaze. “Can we go? Please?”
“Of course.”
We threw away our half-eaten yogurt and walked back to my apartment. The whole way I kept my head slightly down, aware of every phone in every hand we passed. I hadn’t done that since LA.
Back in my apartment, I paced the living room while Nico watched from the couch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have thought about that before suggesting we go out.”
“It’s not your fault.” I stopped pacing. “I’ve been here before. I know how it starts. And standing there holding that phone, all I could think was… what if someone recognized me? As Evan Hunter.”
Nico went still. “Ryan’s Evan.”
“Ryan’s Evan,” I confirmed. “If someone makes that connection—if anyone who covered that story sees a photo of me with you—it’s not going to raise questions about who I am. It’s going to raise questions about who you are.”
Nico didn’t say anything for a moment. Neither did I. We both knew what it meant.
“That’s a real risk,” Nico said. Not minimizing it. Just naming it.
“I know.”
He crossed to me. “I’m not going to pretend it isn’t. But Evan… we knew this was complicated. That hasn’t changed what I want.”
“I know.” I let him pull me in. “I’m just scared.”
“I know you are.” His arms tightened. “So am I, sometimes.”
That surprised me enough that I pulled back to look at him. He met my eyes steadily, not taking it back.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I’ve known that was possible. I chose this anyway.”
“That’s not fair to you,” I said. “Any of it.”
“Evan.” His hand moved slowly up and down my back. “I told you, I chose this. That includes the complicated parts.”