Chapter 34
Beau
Iwake from a night of fitful sleep for the first time in a long time. The sound of birds singing fills the air. Rolling over, I run into a wall of muscle and inhale deeply before I wrap my arm around him
Citrus.
Citrus and rain.
His scent is my safe space. It envelopes me like an embrace, and I’m ready to face the day. I wish I could bottle it up and wear it around my neck so I could keep him with me at all hours.
The sun shines through the curtains, illuminating my boyfriend’s sleeping body.
My boyfriend.
I can’t believe I’m saying—thinking—those words. I can’t believe they’re real. It feels surreal and crazy, but so right.
I feel Milo breathe out and fold into my embrace, his deep sigh music to my ears. I want to just lie here with him for the rest of the day, but I know we have morning skate soon.
Our game tonight is against Detroit, and the Avalanche won’t know what hit them.
“Are you awake?”
Milo’s voice is full of sleep, crusted and gunky, but somehow still very him. I rub my nose into his back as my answer before flipping him onto his back and straddling him. We kiss lazily, slow strokes of our tongues against each other.
Our erections are straining against each other, and who are we to ignore our desires?
He must read my mind, because Milo looks up at me with a wicked glint in his eyes.
I push down my briefs, freeing my cock and Milo does the same. I hold my hand to Milos mouth, and he spits like the good boy he is.
I wrap my fist around our aching cocks, and we simultaneously groan at the relief of the pressure.
I begin lazily stroking us together when Milo decides to pipe in.
“We have five minutes before we absolutely need to get ready, so you better come quick.”
Challenge accepted.
We end our game in victory after a brutal shootout. The locker room is a raucous celebration, people clapping my shoulders, congratulating me on the absolutely beautiful shot that won us the game.
I find Milo’s eyes in the crowd and feel like I’m home. Things have been great since coming out to the team—so great, actually. We’re happy where we are, so why rock the boat?
I want to rock the boat.
I’m not afraid of capsizing.
I love him. Obviously I love him, but I just feel stranded. We’re stuck together in a boat in the middle of the ocean, and I know there are resources to help us. We just have to ask for them.
I’m ready to ask.
I want to be out. Like, officially out.
I move through the locker room, dressed in only my base layers, and make my way to Coach’s office.
I knock on the door, listening for him to grant entry before letting myself in.
“Bennett.” Coach’s voice is gruff, but he’s a good man. “That was a hell of a shot. What can I do for you?” He’s not looking at me, but I need him to be.
I clear my throat, and he looks up.
“I want to come out,” I tell him, not really taking the time this probably deserves, dammit.
He blinks at me a few times before smiling and nodding.
“Okay, have you talked with your agent about this?” His voice is steady, calm, not at all surprised. I guess I already came out to the team. How surprised can he be?
“No, but I want to come out, like, now,” I say, a rush in my voice. This feels urgent. This feels like something I should do right now, something I need to do right now.
“Well…” Waldor is drawing this out way too much. I’m a man of action, and the time is now to move.
Christian Grady, the asshole, is no longer my agent. I’m a free man. I can come out to the world if I want to. Nothing is holding me back.
Not anymore.
Oh fuck, fuck me.
I should probably tell Milo. He’ll want to know.
Fuck, did he want to come out first?
“Can I grab Milo?” I ask Coach. He nods, and I just lean my head out the door. “Milo, come ’ere.” I feel about a mile high right now.
Milo looks up from his lap with a start, meeting my eyes before standing. He makes his way to me slowly.
Once he’s in the office, I shut the door and encourage him to sit down.
“Your boyfriend would like to come out. I need your help to convince him to wait until I can get ahold of Miranda.” He’s typing away on his phone.
Milo sighs and looks at me with exasperation.
“Baby,” he says wistfully, “I’m proud of you for wanting to take that step. It’s such a big one. But realistically, we should talk to Miranda first.”
“We?” I ask, eyes wide.
“We,” he says definitively, nodding. “We’re in this together, you and I.” He pauses and taps his foot in thought. “I definitely can’t imagine coming out to the locker room press. I would imagine doing an exclusive piece would be more lucrative for us.”
Coach Waldor nods and places his phone in the middle of his desk. It’s on speakerphone. Miranda Mason’s voice blares through the speakers.
“Beau Bennet, you better not come out to a bunch of sweaty locker room reporters,” she scolds loudly. “I can have several prominent magazines and blogs lining up and foaming at the mouth for the chance to tell your coming-out story.”
Milo leans into me, and I wrap an arm around him, looking into his eyes. Everyone is quiet for a moment.
“What if we came out together?” he says, his voice low. But because she has super hearing, Miranda hears and latches onto it.
“Okay, you two give me the green light, and I’ll start putting out feelers. We’ll do this right.” I can hear the clacking of her computer keyboard as she makes her plans for us.
I’ve taken a few relatively deep breaths at this point and calmed down from whatever possessed me earlier.
They’re right. They’re all right. I need to do this strategically.
Right now, I’m happy. I have my man, my team knows, and I’m okay with the world finding out.
Why shouldn’t I get a brand deal out of my coming-out story?
I laugh a little at the thought.
Miranda has jumped into action. She’s chattering away with Coach, and I sit here with Milo, just letting the world kind of fall away from us. He smiles at me, no longer small or secret. It lights up his whole face.
I smile back at him, suddenly feeling a thousand pounds lighter.
“You know, I’ve wanted to come out since my rookie season,” I say, grabbing Milo’s hand and holding it in my own.
“I’ve known I was bi for a long time, and I’ve never been ashamed of it.
I’ve just never had such a positive support system before.
I’ve never had so many people believe in me or be there to lift me up. ”
Milo squeezes my hand in his grip. “I’m sorry you didn’t have the people to support you before, but selfishly, I’m glad you waited for me.”
“I fucking knew it.” Miranda is laughing. “You two are not slick at all. I knew you were a couple the moment I met you, Beau.” She cackles, and Waldor laughs too.
“You didn’t tell your agent you were in a relationship?” he asks incredulously.
“We weren’t even ready to tell each other,” Milo says, exasperated.
I chuckle because, looking back, it feels so obvious how in it we both were. How infatuated we were with each other. How obsessed we were with each other.
“Alright, Miranda,” I say, grabbing Milo’s hand and pulling it into my lap, “what do we do?”
“Okay guys, just a few more shots on the ice before we can move to the locker room.”
Milo and I are standing at center ice, dressed in our best game-day suits, and both of us have a little makeup on. The makeup artist tried to cover Milo’s freckles, and I just about walked out.
“Can you try to be serious this time?” Milo asks me, but I don’t know if I can. He’s dressed in my favorite of his suits, this gorgeous burgundy number. Not only does he look beautiful in the color, but the way it hugs his body is almost obscene.
I swear his ass somehow defies gravity.
The way we’re posed, I’m able to slide my hand down his back to pinch his butt, and he jumps.
“Fuck, Beau!” he cries out. I laugh, and the camera person sighs loudly.
“Maybe we should take shots separately and edit them together after?” one of the PAs suggests. I frown. Because, yes, they’d get the shots done in a timely manner, but that definitely would be no fun.
They walk over and pose us, moving my hand from Milo’s butt and shoving them into my pockets. With my all-black suit, the pose makes me look so much more serious than I really am.
Miranda is off to the side, watching everything like a hawk. She gave them a list of approved questions already and shot down the underwear shoot, though I wasn’t opposed. Milo had blushed so deeply when they suggested it that I wanted to capture the expression in a bottle and keep it always.
“Okay, so if you can keep your expression more…” I try to make my face as lifeless and devoid of emotion as possible. “Yes, just like that, perfect.” They snap the picture of me before doing the same to Milo.
“We’ve got it. Let’s go to the locker room and finish up there,” the art director, Ferris, says, eyeing me. “And we’re not going to have any funny business, right?”
I roll my eyes but nod. They’ve put up with enough of my shit today. I guess I can be easygoing for the rest of the shoot.
In the locker room, the poses are kind of ridiculous.
Me leaning against the stall, staring at Milo, who sits on the bench next to me.
They pose us draped all over each other, sitting on each other, leaning on each other.
There’s no way they’re using most of these.
I think Ferris just wanted a little laugh at our expense, and I can’t blame them.
Now that I’ve had time to calm down, I was being a bit of an ass on the ice.
The interview itself goes by quickly, asking about what it was like in the closet, when we knew we were queer, the challenges of self-acceptance, et cetera.
“What is the most rewarding part of living openly?” the interviewer asks, and I smile at Milo.
“Him,” I say with confidence. “Being able to be myself with my boyfriend is the best part of living openly.”
He smiles broadly, all toothy, and it makes his eyes crinkle a little at the corners. I want to pepper kisses over every little wrinkle, to hold his face in my hands and simply adore him.
The interviewer side-eyes Miranda, then makes eye contact with me. They’re about to go off script.
“What’s one thing you wish people understood about addiction or recovery?” they ask quickly. Miranda looks ready to swoop in, but I put my hand up.
“No, I’ll answer this.” I kind of expected this direction.
“It looks different for everyone. Everyone has their own reason for doing it, but what’s most important is that you have a support system.
I can’t imagine doing this alone, without Milo by my side.
” I look at him, and he takes my hand. “Can we maybe include the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at the end of the interview?”
The interviewer nods fervently.
We wrap up the interview, and Milo and I flop down on the bench in the locker room. He leans his head against my shoulder, and I wrap my arm around him, pulling him close.
“We did it,” he says, his voice low. “We came out.”
Neither of us says anything for a moment.
“Kind of anti-climactic, don’t you think?” he asks, raising a brow as he looks up at me. I chuckle. He’s right, this isn’t all the wild excitement I thought it would be.
“You know,” I ponder aloud, “now that I’ve checked that off my bucket list, there is something else I’ve always wanted to try.”