Chapter 14 #3
Something in his face shifted—surprise, and then warmth. “Yeah?”
“I’m not promising I won’t be terrified.”
“I know.” He paused. “I’ll get you comp tickets. You’ll sit with the other players’ families and partners. You won’t be alone up there.”
I thought about that, sitting in a section full of people who understood exactly what it meant to watch someone they loved play a contact sport for a living. People who had figured out how to do this.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah.”
His smile was immediate and warm. “Yeah?”
“Don’t make me say it again,” I said. “I already said yes.”
The conversation drifted to smaller things—his Vegas trip, my weekend, nothing significant. Then his phone buzzed on the counter. He glanced at the screen, and something crossed his face. Concern, maybe, or guilt.
“It’s Miguel,” he said. “I should take this.”
“Go ahead.”
He stood and walked into the family room, answering as he went. “Hey, what’s up?”
I couldn’t hear Miguel’s side of the conversation, but I watched Nico’s body language shift—shoulders tensing, hand running through his hair.
“I know, I’m sorry. Practice has been crazy… Yeah, I will… Soon, I promise… I can’t really talk about it right now… Because I’m not alone.”
A pause.
“No, just… someone’s over… a friend… Miguel, I’ll call you back, okay… Love you too.”
He hung up and stood there for a moment before coming back to the kitchen.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. He just… he knows something’s going on. He can tell I’m being evasive.” Nico sat down heavily on the bar stool. “I need to tell my family. Soon. Before they figure it out on their own or hear it from someone else.”
“Are you ready for that?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t keep hiding this from them. Hiding you from them.” He looked at me. “Miguel’s my brother. We grew up together, came up through hockey together. He knows everything about me.” A pause. “Except the most important thing.”
The most important thing. I knew what that meant—not just me, but everything I represented. Nico being gay. Nico having chosen someone. Miguel didn’t know either. “When do you think you’ll tell them?”
“Next time I’m in San Diego, maybe. When I can do it in person.” He took my hand. “I want them to meet you. Eventually. When you’re ready.”
Meeting his family. Being introduced as his boyfriend. Becoming a real, acknowledged part of his life. The thought was terrifying and wonderful at the same time. “Okay,” I said.
He pulled me close and kissed me, and we stayed like that for a while before eventually moving to his bedroom.
Being in his bed, in his house, surrounded by all the physical evidence of his hockey life, I’d expected to feel like an outsider looking in.
Instead, it felt like the opposite, like being let into something real, something he didn’t show people.
The jerseys downstairs, the haphazard trophies, the hand weights abandoned in the corner.
This was Nico’s actual life, and I was in it, and that meant something I was still learning how to hold.
When we came together it was unhurried, with Nico taking his time with me the way he did when he wasn’t in a rush.
The point wasn’t the destination but the getting there.
He knew my body well enough now to know exactly what I needed, and he gave it without being asked.
When he finally pushed inside and stilled, his forehead dropping to mine, I felt the intimacy of being somewhere new with someone I trusted.
His space. His bed. His hands on me like I was something worth being careful with.
Then he started to move, and whatever patience he’d had dissolved. I stopped thinking about anything else.
I came with an unintelligible shout. He followed moments later, his exhale warm against my neck. He took care of the condom, found a washcloth, and cleaned me up. Then he pulled me against his chest, pressed a kiss to my temple, and said nothing.
Which was exactly right.
In the dark, listening to his breathing slow, I lay still and let myself feel the full weight of it.
Not the fear—not yet. Just the weight of what was actually there.
The note he’d left against my coffee maker on a Saturday morning.
The drawer he didn’t know I’d stood in front of for ten minutes before I started emptying it.
The hike, the comp tickets, his hand in mine on a ridge with the whole city below us.
This bed, this house, this man breathing steadily beside me, who had chosen this knowing what it could cost him.
That was what I stood to lose.
Not my privacy, not my anonymity, not the quiet life I’d built in San Jose, though those too. But this. Specifically this. The warmth of his arm across my waist and the knowledge that he’d chosen me anyway, and the terrifying, unfamiliar feeling of having something I actually wanted to keep.
I’d been so focused on what dating Nico could take from me, I hadn’t let myself fully consider what I’d lose if it fell apart.
Now, lying in his bed in the dark, I considered it.
It was a lot.