Chapter 1 #2
Finn stepped into the empty hallway and stopped just for a second, back against cool cinder block, out of sight. His pulse hammered in his ears. Palms slick against the wall. He breathed through it. Then he pushed off and kept walking, blood singing. He did not look back again.
* * *
Coming out had been fine. That was the word everyone used when they did not want to call it what it was: a recalibration.
Hayes had been the first teammate to say anything.
He pulled Finn aside after practice and delivered a “cool man, thanks for telling us” with the earnest sincerity of someone who genuinely meant it and had no idea what to do with the information.
The rest of the team followed Hayes’s lead.
A lot of “cool man” and careful eye contact.
A few weeks where everyone seemed to be workshopping how to act normal around the guy who liked guys and girls in equal measure.
They got there eventually. Mostly. But Finn still caught the small adjustments: conversations shifting when he walked into a room, someone starting a story about a girl, then glancing at him to tack on “or guy, whatever” with performative inclusivity that made his back teeth ache.
One freshman had asked him with painful earnestness if he had always known and looked disappointed when Finn said yes.
Like he had been hoping for a more interesting narrative arc.
The harder part was how the story changed depending on who he slept with.
Jake from the soccer team freshman year earned him knowing looks like it confirmed something people had wondered about.
When Ashley started showing up at team parties, Finn caught teammates visibly loosening, shoulders dropping like they had been holding a breath they could finally release.
Nobody said anything. Nobody had to. He had spent most of a year not correcting it, letting them think what they needed to think.
Some days it stayed easier than being everyone’s teachable moment.
He decided it was worth it anyway. Being visible was the only version of himself he had ever been able to live inside. Most days, it was enough.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Mom. Finn let it go to voicemail. She would text if it mattered. She always did.
The apartment looked like every senior hockey player’s place: protein shake bottles colonizing the kitchen counter, a pile of sticks in various stages of re-taping leaning against the wall by the front door, a pair of skate guards he had kicked off two days ago and never picked up.
TV on mute. Some sports recap he was not watching.
Every time he closed his eyes, Evan’s hands dropped to his sides, and that voice cracked on the vowel like he had swallowed something sharp.
I cannot tell you that.
His phone buzzed again. Ashley. You up?
Finn considered the screen, thumb hovering.
This was what he did when the noise in his head got too loud: burn off energy with whoever showed up and did not ask for more than he could give.
Guys from apps. Girls from class. Whoever.
Gender had never mattered much. What mattered was the heat of another body against his. The temporary quiet that came after.
The person he actually wanted sat across campus, probably rearranging highlighters and convincing himself nothing had happened.
No amount of company would change that.
Come over, he typed anyway.
She knocked fifteen minutes later, already pulling her shirt over her head as he let her in. “Hi to you too,” he said.
“Less talking.” She kicked the door shut behind her and pressed up on her toes to kiss him, hands already working his belt.
This was what he liked about Ashley. She wanted exactly what he wanted, and she was not shy about taking it.
She tasted like cinnamon gum and smelled like vanilla body spray.
She walked him toward the bedroom with one hand fisted in his waistband like she owned the place.
Finn went willingly, stripping as they went, her mouth on his neck, his hands finding the clasp of her bra by muscle memory.
She climbed on top of him and rolled her hips once, testing.
His body answered the way it always did: reliable, immediate, blood rushing south.
He gripped her thighs, thumbs pressing into warm muscle, and matched her rhythm because that part still worked.
She threw her head back. Nails biting into his chest. Finn closed his eyes for half a second, and the hands on him changed: broader, rougher, a palm pressing flat between his shoulder blades.
Firm pressure that said I have got you without saying anything at all.
Cedar cut through the sweat and vanilla.
His hips snapped up hard enough that Ashley gasped and laughed. “Fuck do that again.”
Finn opened his eyes fast, shook the ghost off, and gave her what she came for. But the image stayed lodged under his skin like a splinter he could feel every time he breathed.
Afterward, she lay beside him, head on his shoulder, fingers tracing idle patterns across his chest. “You are distracted tonight.”
“Season is ramping up. Head is all over the place.” He ran his fingers through her hair because she liked it and because it cost him nothing.
“Plus, the captain thing is more administrative than I expected. Spent twenty minutes today explaining to a freshman why we cannot skip the cool-down skate just because his legs were tired. Full breakdown: muscle recovery, lactic acid, injury prevention stats, the works. Pretty sure his eyes glazed over around minute five, but I kept going anyway because I am apparently incapable of giving a short answer to anything.”
Ashley laughed warmly and knowingly. “You do that. The over-explaining thing. It is kind of sweet.”
“It is a character flaw.”
“Mm.” She propped herself on one elbow and looked at him. “You going to have time for this once things get crazy?”
“Probably not. I am a mess during the season. Not fair to you.”
She sighed, but she smiled when she did it. “You are too hot to be this nice about it.”
“I contain multitudes. You are welcome.”
She laughed and swatted his shoulder, then got up to find her clothes.
Finn lay back, one arm behind his head. No particular pull to ask her to stay.
She was smart. Funny. Had an athlete’s body and zero illusions about what this was.
He liked her exactly the right amount to feel good about it and not one ounce more.
That was the thing about Ashley. About all of them.
The guys from apps. The girls from parties.
The occasional hookup that turned into a few weeks of texting before it faded.
They were good. They were fine. They scratched the itch and left him alone after.
He had built an entire system around that: want something, get it, let it go.
Clean. Simple. The kind of arrangement that let him focus on hockey and captaining and the draft and all the things that were supposed to matter more than whoever ended up in his bed on a given Tuesday night.
The problem was that the system only worked when wanting stayed general, when it was just restlessness.
The second wanting turned specific, the second it attached itself to one person with one particular set of hands and one particular voice and one particular way of looking at you like you had just set fire to his entire carefully organized life, the system fell apart.
Ashley left with a kiss on his cheek and a casual “See you around.” The door clicked shut behind her.
The apartment went still: fridge hummed, muted TV cast blue light across the ceiling, faint bass from someone’s music two floors down.
Finn lay there, one arm behind his head, listening to the building settle around him.
His phone buzzed again. Mom. Good luck this season, baby. He sent back a thumbs-up emoji because he was twenty-one and that was the most affection he could manage over text, then set the phone face down.
The ceiling had nothing useful to offer.
He stared at it anyway. What came back was Evan rooted behind that barrier of color-coded order, hands empty at his sides, chest moving too fast, mouth opening around a word he could not finish.
The whole body caught between what he showed the world and what Finn had forced into the light.
I cannot tell you that.
Not a denial. Not a rejection. Something worse.
An admission wrapped in a refusal offered barely above a whisper in a room that smelled like cedar and dry-erase markers.
Finn had carried it out of that office and down the hallway and across campus.
It sat behind his sternum now, warm and heavy, refusing to dissolve.
He rolled over and pressed his face into the pillow. Inhaled deep. Cedar again. Except it could not be. But the scent had imprinted somewhere between the confrontation and the walk home, and now it stayed layered underneath the vanilla and sweat and laundry detergent. Persistent as a bruise.
He breathed in anyway.
He did not let go.