Chapter 3
FINN
The film room smelled like stale coffee and the mustiness of a space that never got enough air circulation.
Finn had been slouched in one of the front-row chairs long enough for his lower back to ache, the one with the cracked leather armrest that nobody ever bothered to replace.
He watched St. Cloud’s penalty kill cycle on the projection screen without absorbing a single frame.
The projector hummed behind him. The clock on the wall ticked, one of those industrial ones with the red second hand that jumped instead of swept.
Someone had left a half-empty coffee cup on the table beside him, and Finn had been staring at it long enough to memorize the ring it was leaving on the wood.
Twenty-seven minutes. That was how long he’d been sitting here, which meant twenty-seven minutes of St. Cloud’s box formation collapsing on the same dump-and-chase entry, twenty-seven minutes of a forward whose name he couldn’t remember cycling the same play, and twenty-seven minutes of pretending he was here to review tape when he was actually here because Evan Tremblay’s office sat three doors down and Evan would have to walk past the film room to leave the building.
Finn had no patience left. He had a plan instead. Simple: stop letting Evan avoid him.
The silence since the texts had been thorough.
Not the angry kind, not the confused kind.
The kind that took effort. Why me? and because you see me and then nothing.
No response. No acknowledgment. Evan catching Finn’s eye across the facility and looking away like he’d accidentally glanced at the sun.
Finding reasons to leave whatever room Finn walked into: phone out, tablet open, suddenly fascinated by a conversation with whatever assistant coach happened to be standing closest. He’d perfected the exit so thoroughly it had become its own choreography, and Finn had catalogued every step of it.
Evan’s posture changing when Finn entered a room.
His hand going to his phone. A full week’s worth of manufactured logistics that apparently required him to be in the opposite wing of the building from wherever Finn was.
Senior year. Last season. The draft close enough that Finn could feel it in every practice, in every scout in the stands, in Coach Tremblay’s evaluative focus during scrimmages that had nothing to do with being his father’s colleague and everything to do with draft stock.
Finn was not going to spend what was left of it watching Evan Tremblay manufacture reasons to be somewhere else.
The door swung open behind him, hinges protesting, letting in a slice of fluorescent light from the hallway. Finn kept his eyes on the screen, on a St. Cloud forward doing something with the puck that was probably very interesting if you cared about St. Cloud’s penalty kill.
Finn’s shoulders oriented toward the entrance before his brain caught up. They always did when Evan was nearby, the same way a compass needle didn’t choose north but found it anyway.
“You’re here late.”
Flat. Clipped. The voice Evan used with equipment managers and athletic department assistants, stripped down to vowels and consonants and nothing else.
“Watching tape.” Finn gestured at the screen. “Coach wanted me to review their PK before the game.”
Evan stepped into the room. The entrance clicked shut behind him, the only way in or out, at the back of the space. His footsteps crossed the industrial carpet and stopped somewhere behind Finn’s left shoulder.
“Their box is aggressive.” A beat. “They collapse fast. Force turnovers in the neutral zone.”
“I know how they play.”
“Then you don’t need me to explain it.”
Finn swiveled the chair around, leather squeaking on the base, and took his time looking.
Evan stood about six feet away. Arms crossed over his chest, jaw set.
Blue button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, tie loosened at the collar.
Shadows sat under his eyes, bruise-colored, and Finn’s tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth.
Six feet. He could close that in two steps.
Press his lips to the thin skin under Evan’s eyes until neither of them remembered why they were supposed to be keeping distance.
The slacks fit him too well. That wasn’t Finn’s problem, but it wasn’t helping.
“No.” Finn stood. The chair rolled back with a creak. “I don’t need you to explain it. But you came in here anyway.”
“I saw the projector glow through the window. Checking who was in the building.”
“And now you know.”
Evan’s gaze cut toward the hallway, then back. His jaw tightened. His eyes dropped to Finn’s lips, held for a second, then snapped up. His Adam’s apple bobbed once.
“I should go.”
“You keep saying that.” Finn took a step forward. “You keep telling me to leave, and then you don’t.”
“Finn.”
“Evan.”
Another step. Then another, until Finn was close enough to catch the cedar and bergamot underneath Evan’s cologne, the scent that had followed him back to his apartment and stayed in the fabric of his jacket for a day and a half.
Evan’s breathing changed. Finn could hear it, the intake going shorter, shallower, and he stayed right where he was and let that do the work.
“You make me a lot of things.”
Evan’s lips pressed flat. No answer. No retreat.
Evan stood there with his fists at his sides while Finn reached out and pressed his palm flat against Evan’s chest, right over his sternum.
The cotton was thin. Evan’s heartbeat slammed against it, fast and insistent, and Finn’s own chest loosened for the first time all week.
There it was. The thing Evan wouldn’t say.
The thing his body said for him every time Finn got close enough to listen.
“Tell me to leave.” Finn held his ground. “Tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll walk out, and we go back to pretending.”
“It’s not about what I want.”
“It’s only about what you want. Everything else is noise. The age gap. The job. What people might say.” Finn held Evan’s gaze. “None of it matters if you don’t want me.”
Evan’s throat worked. He said nothing.
“That’s not how the world works.”
“That’s exactly how the world works.” Finn closed the last of the distance. “You’re scared, and that’s fine. I get it. But I’m not going to let you use it as a reason to walk away from me.”
Evan’s weight tipped forward a fraction before he caught it.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking for.” Finn let himself smile. “I’ve been thinking about it since sophomore year. I’ve got a pretty detailed picture at this point.”
“Finn—”
“Tell me to stop.”
Evan didn’t.
Finn hooked two fingers through the knot of Evan’s tie and pulled him in.
The first touch was a brush, giving Evan one last chance to step back. Evan’s response was to grip Finn’s hips hard enough to bruise, fingers digging in through the denim. Finn’s breath left him. His knees dipped before he locked them.
Evan tasted like coffee and mint, his stubble scraping along Finn’s chin, and the noise that came out of Finn’s throat was not one he’d authorized. His fingers were trembling. He dug them into the back of Evan’s neck harder and it didn’t help.
Evan’s hands slid from Finn’s hips to the small of his back and hauled him closer.
Finn went, arms around Evan’s neck, pressed flush, and the heat of Evan’s body through the thin cotton of his shirt was a revelation.
When Evan’s back hit the wall, Finn used the leverage to roll his hips forward.
They were both hard already. Finn could feel Evan through too many layers, and he ground forward, swallowing Evan’s groan into the kiss.
“Fuck.” Evan broke the kiss long enough to say it. “We can’t—”
“We already are.”
Evan laughed, startled and real, and Finn kissed it right out of him. He worked his fingers under Evan’s shirt, palms flat on the warm skin of his back. The muscles jumped under his touch. Solid everywhere. Broader than Finn had built in his head, and he’d spent a lot of time building it.
“Someone could walk in.”
“The hallway’s empty. We’ll hear anyone coming.” Finn pulled him closer instead of letting him retreat.
“That’s not—”
Finn kissed him again. Evan stopped arguing.
Evan’s thigh pushed between Finn’s legs, and Finn ground down on it without apology, chasing the friction, while Evan’s teeth found the side of his neck.
Scraped over his pulse point. Finn tipped his head back and let himself make noise, a groan that came from somewhere below his ribs, because Evan’s teeth on his skin was worth every rule they were breaking.
Evan’s hand came up to the side of Finn’s face, thumb at his jaw, tilting his head to get at the line of his throat.
The tenderness of it cracked something in Finn that he hadn’t expected.
He’d imagined this as desperate, hard, two people crashing into each other.
And it was, it was all of that, but Evan’s thumb tracing his jawline while his teeth worked the tendon in his neck was something else entirely.
Something that said I’ve thought about this too, and I’ve thought about it carefully.
Finn’s hips rolled on instinct. The friction was maddening and not enough and perfect, and every time he pressed forward Evan pressed back, and the rhythm they found was the kind of thing that happened between bodies that had been orbiting each other long enough to know the gravitational pull by heart.
“You’ve been driving me crazy.” Evan’s voice low and ruined at his throat. “For years. Do you have any idea—”
“Yes.” Finn arched into him. “I’ve been doing it on purpose.”
Evan pulled back far enough to look at him. His eyes had gone nearly black in the dim light of the projector, his lips red, his hair wrecked from Finn’s fingers. Collar askew, chest heaving, a flush climbing up his throat past the loosened tie.
“You’re impossible.”
“You like it.”
Finn pressed forward until Evan’s exhale went ragged.