Epilogue. Mads
Eight months later
I’m standing in the locker room with a ring box in my pants pocket and Christopher Rodriguez looking like he might throw up on the floor tiles.
Eight months of dating in secret, and now we’re apparently doing both major life events at once: coming out and, unless I chicken out, getting engaged.
In front of the entire team, the coaching staff, and the poor equipment guy who only came in to collect practice jerseys and is about to get the full show.
This is not how I pictured it.
I pictured candles. Maybe a nice dinner. Sex. Something that didn’t involve twenty-five hockey players in various states of undress, the stink of wet gear, and the kind of industrial cleaner every arena on earth seems to buy by the barrel.
But Chris has been talking about this for weeks—coming out to the team, finally—and the fact that he wants me there with him means something I’m not stupid enough to fuck up.
So here we are.
Post-practice, in the middle of the locker room, with me standing beside him while he gathers his courage like he’s about to jump off a cliff.
He looks at me, half terror, half determination, and I nod once.
Very Danish of me.
Very supportive.
The thing about Chris is that he is, by nature, a private person. Quiet. Composed. The kind of guy who keeps everything close to his chest until the pressure builds too high and he has to let something out or explode.
Eight months ago, in a hotel room in Copenhagen, he told me he transferred to the Saints because he wanted a fresh start.
Somewhere he could eventually be himself.
The Wraiths weren’t that place. The Wraiths were the kind of team where coming out would have felt like career suicide, and Chris isn’t a martyr. He’s practical.
He left.
He came here.
He fell in love with his goalie, which I’m guessing was not part of the plan.
Now he wants to tell everyone.
And I want to marry him.
So.
Roman moves into the open space between the benches and claps once. “All right, listen up. Chris has something he wants to say.”
The noise doesn’t die down exactly. Hockey players don’t do quiet. But the volume drops from full locker-room chaos to a dull murmur, which is about as close to attentive as we get.
Roman steps back, giving Chris the floor, and beside me, my boyfriend—my very handsome, very serious boyfriend—turns to face the room.
He looks sick—face pale, jaw tight, like he might faint if anyone looks at him too hard. His hair is damp from the shower, dark and curling at the temples, and he’s wearing that blue henley he hates and I love, because according to Chris, it makes his nipples show through the fabric.
“So,” he says, his fingers flexing like he’s trying to restore blood flow. “I, uh—”
Then nothing.
The room waits.
Sam, three benches over, is watching with the expression of a man who has placed a bet and is about to collect.
He overheard just enough of me and Chris during practice to know something was coming, and considering he’s spent the past months bombarding us with questions about whether we’re secretly together, today is basically his birthday.
I wanted to tell him a long time ago, if only to shut him up, but I wasn’t going to turn Chris’s life into locker-room gossip just because Sam had the persistence of a mosquito.
Roman’s face is carefully neutral, but his eyes keep moving between us. Even though Chris only asked him to get the room’s attention after practice, without explaining why, I’m pretty sure Roman figured us out a long time ago.
It’s hard not to recognize a secret relationship when you’re hiding one yourself.
As it turns out, Roman is secretly dating Sebastian Walsh—the captain of the Wraiths.
I knew they’d hooked up once, back when Toledo and Harris sent all of us to work at those rescue stations, but I didn’t know it had turned into an actual relationship until recently.
Because—how do I put this gently—Walsh is kind of a nightmare.
Anyway, apparently they’ve been together this whole time and hiding it from everyone.
A couple of months ago, I accidentally caught them holding hands in an arena hallway after our game against the Wraiths, and since then, Roman and I have had a quiet understanding: I don’t ask questions about Walsh. He doesn’t ask questions about Chris.
After tonight, maybe we can finally talk about it like normal people, because I’ve been dying to know what the actual fuck.
“Well,” Chris says, then clears his throat. His gaze darts to me for half a second, and I nod because it’s the only useful thing I can do without grabbing his hand in front of everyone and hijacking his coming-out speech.
Chris lets out a breath, and his shoulders ease a fraction before he looks back at the room.
“Uh,” he says, and this time he gets the words out. “I’m gay.”
The words hang over the locker room for a second, loud in the sudden quiet.
Chris stays frozen beside me, face pale, like if he doesn’t move, maybe everyone else will forget what he just said.
For a second, it almost feels like they might.
No one gasps or flinches. The whole room just looks at him, taking it in.
But as the silence stretches and starts turning awkward, I can feel him tense, waiting for someone to make it weird.
Right before it tips from awkward into unbearable, though, Johan leans back against his stall and says, “Good for you, Rodriguez,” with a small smile, like it really is that simple.
And somehow, after that, it is. The room loosens a little. A couple of guys smile and nod. Alex taps his knuckles against the bench, and Rami says, “Proud of you, man.”
One of the rookies—Jared, a kid from Minnesota who spends most practices getting chirped for his accent—says, “Cool, dude,” with the grave seriousness of someone who’s just received important information and is determined not to fuck it up.
Somewhere in the middle of all that awkward, well-meaning support, Chris finally lets himself breathe. He looks at me, relief flickering across his face, the corner of his mouth lifting just enough for me to catch it.
I smile back, because I know what’s coming next—and if they thought that was a lot, they’re not ready for the rest.
Chris turns back to the room.
“And,” he says, glancing back at me for half a second, “Mads and I are together.”
This silence is different.
Every head turns to me, and for one stupid second, my brain supplies absolutely nothing useful.
“Yup,” I say, nodding.
Alex is the first to recover. “Is this a joke?” His eyebrows go up, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean it badly, even though it comes out that way. “You hate Rodriguez.” He glances at Chris. “No offense, man.”
“None taken,” Chris says, smirking now.
“I don’t hate him,” I say, trying not to sound offended. “I actually like him a lot, which is sort of the point here. Oh, and I’m bisexual.”
The last part comes out like an afterthought, which is insane, because I always thought coming out would be a bigger deal for me, given that it took me thirty years, a defenseman I thought I hated, and one overheated train compartment to realize I was not, in fact, as straight as previously advertised.
I’ve just spent so much time worrying about Chris having to say his part that I somehow forgot I was standing right next to him with my own part to get through.
A few guys blink at me, incredulous.
Fair. I’ve only ever talked about women, and I’ve given them exactly zero reasons to think I’m anything but straight.
Still, I know this won’t be a problem. My teammates are assholes about plenty of things—volume, hygiene, group-chat etiquette—but they’re not homophobic. That, at least, I know for a fact.
“And,” I add, because there’s no graceful way to make this less shocking now, “we’ve been together for eight months.”
There’s another beat of silence while everyone seems to process the words eight months.
I can practically see them going back through the season in their heads—Chris and me showing up to breakfast at the same time, him accidentally wearing my hoodie on the bus, me suddenly knowing how he takes his coffee, both of us disappearing after team dinners with the subtlety of two criminals in a children’s cartoon.
That’s when Sam finally loses the fight with his own face. He straightens like someone just plugged him into the wall and shouts, “Holy shit! I fucking knew it!”
Chris looks at him, genuinely surprised, and Sam beams at both of us in turn, the joy of finally being proven right practically leaking out of him.
I can see him fighting the urge to give the whole team a full-blown presentation on how he figured us out months ago, complete with every piece of evidence he collected.
For once in his life, though, he manages to keep most of it inside his body.
Which, for Sam, is basically an act of heroism.
After that, the rest of the room catches up fast. There’s surprised laughter, guys talking over each other, congratulations coming from every direction, questions I’m not sure either of us is ready to answer.
Johan says, “You know what? You two actually make a lot of sense,” with so much easy certainty I feel my cheeks heat.
But the reaction that gets to me the most is Roman’s.
He just smiles, but his eyes look suspiciously bright, and I know why.
Until today, he was the first and only guy to come out on our team.
He did it two years ago, back when nobody could tell him what it would do to his career, how the fans would react, or how ugly other teams might get once they had that to throw at him.
Roman did it anyway.
And because he did, Chris and I get to do this now with a lot less fear.
In the middle of all that chaos, with everyone talking over each other and Chris answering questions he absolutely did not prepare for, I remember the main reason I came here today.
My pulse kicks hard.