Chapter 13
FINN
The Fury’s ice was better than Michigan’s.
Finn had known it the moment the equipment manager walked him across the fresh sheet that morning, pride thick in every word about the new plant and the temperature held a degree and a half colder than most rinks because analytics said edge quality improved by a measurable percentage.
Finn had nodded, kept walking, and thought the ice at Michigan was fine.
Good enough for him since he was six years old.
Now he stood in the parking lot with his phone heavy in his grip and the same thought circling. Better ice. Better equipment. Better everything. His agent had said they love you twice and Finn had answered good both times while the hollow place behind his ribs stayed exactly the same size.
Good ice. Professional ice. But Michigan’s had been his.
He was twenty-one and the day had gone exactly the way it was supposed to go and still his chest felt scraped empty.
Hayes had texted. His mother had texted.
So proud of you baby. He had sent a thumbs-up emoji and then winced at how small it looked on the screen.
Eli Kowalski had texted heard you killed the morning session.
told you. Finn’s mouth curved before he could stop it.
He typed thanks for the call and hit send before overthinking could catch up.
Eli’s message felt different. Warm. Like a door held open instead of a spotlight.
The cold had settled in sometime after the morning session.
The sky had gone flat white. Finn’s breath fogged in front of him.
From inside the building came the faint scrape of skates on ice bleeding through the walls, thin and familiar.
The parking lot was half-full. A team van near the entrance.
Two men in suits talking beside a black SUV without looking at each other.
Finn’s agent was still inside. Finn had taken a plate from the catering spread in the conference room, set it down somewhere, and walked out here instead because the room had been full of people who wanted pieces of him and the parking lot was not.
He checked his phone again. The habit he had carried since the breakup. Nothing new. He slid the phone into his pocket.
A car pulled in.
Silver sedan with Ann Arbor plates, moving at the uncertain speed of someone trusting GPS into unfamiliar territory. It nosed into the back row and stopped.
Finn’s hands went still at his sides.
The driver’s door opened.
Evan stepped out.
No blazer. Blue button-down untucked at the front, collar open. Jeans. The most casual Finn had ever seen him. Hair flattened on one side from the long drive, shadows under his eyes. Evan scanned the glass facade of the facility first, then found Finn.
Twenty feet of cold pavement between them.
Finn did not move.
“What are you doing here.” The words came out flat, not a question.
Evan walked around the front of the car and stopped ten feet away.
His palms stayed at his sides. Breath fogged white.
His jaw sat the way it did before a board presentation, but the rest of him was wrong for it.
Open collar, untucked shirt, weight shifting between his feet like his body could not find the stance it wanted.
“I had a whole speech,” Evan said. His throat moved. “Practiced it in the car.”
A broken sound, almost a laugh. “I can’t remember the first line.”
Finn waited.
Evan looked at him. Not the careful hallway glance. Full. Direct.
“Your father said your name. And my voice didn’t change.”
Finn’s ribs tightened around the words. He took them without flinching.
“It should have. Because you’re not a line item. You’re not nothing to worry about.”
“Then what am I.”
Not a challenge. Just the question.
“You’re the person I look for in every hallway. The person I color-coded into my calendar without admitting why. Told myself it was operational. It wasn’t. The person I was too afraid to choose when it cost me nothing.”
The wind cut across the lot and found the skin at Finn’s wrists through his jacket sleeves. He stood in it.
“I missed you,” Evan said. “Every day. Every hallway. Every time I drove past your apartment building and told myself I was just driving.” His throat worked again. “Every single day.”
Finn had not known that. The hit landed behind his sternum before his brain could name it.
“You did?”
Evan’s chin dropped for half a second.
Finn kept his fists in his pockets. Knuckles pressing the lining.
He made Evan stand there while the wind moved between them and a car door slammed somewhere else in the lot.
If he said no he stayed intact and lost the only person who had ever made intact feel like the wrong thing to want.
If he said yes he handed his chest to someone who had already proven he could break it without noticing.
Evan stood there without the blazer, without the clipboard, without anything except the truth and the long drive.
Finn chose anyway.
“You erased me,” Finn said. “In that hallway with your father. You erased me and you didn’t even notice.”
Evan’s shoulders dropped. His jaw tightened. His gaze closed for half a second. He took it.
“I know.”
“If I let you in again. If I do this, I need to know it won’t happen the same way.”
“I can’t promise I’ll be perfect. I’ll probably reach for the professional voice when I should use the other one. But I’ll notice. And when I do, I’ll come find you.”
“You’re going to tell your father.”
“I’m not asking permission. I’m telling him.”
Finn held his gaze. The glass and steel of the facility caught thin winter light behind Evan’s shoulder. Anyone could look out any window and see the Director of Hockey Operations from Michigan standing in their parking lot in an open-collared shirt talking to a draft prospect.
Evan was not checking over his shoulder.
“Then stop running,” Finn said.
“I stopped running.” Evan’s voice cracked on the last word. “I drove here. I’m standing here. I’m asking you to let me stay.”
Finn closed the distance halfway. Close enough to see the lines at the corners of Evan’s mouth, the gray at his temples, the exhaustion pressed into his skin from hours of highway with nothing prepared.
“Okay,” Finn said. “You can try.”
He reached out and touched Evan’s knuckles. Cold skin under his fingers. Evan’s fist stayed rigid for one breath, then loosened.
“Okay,” Finn said again.
Evan pulled him in. Arms solid around Finn’s shoulders, palm flat against the spine of his jacket.
Finn let himself be held. Face tucked into the side of Evan’s neck where the familiar cologne bloomed warm against the cold.
Evan’s chin pressed to his temple. His chest rose once, deep, and the exhale moved through both of them.
Finn pulled back. Looked at him.
Evan kissed him.
Right there in the Fury parking lot. Winter afternoon.
Facility behind them. Suits thirty feet away.
Anyone watching from any window. Evan’s palm came up to Finn’s jaw, thumb along the bone, fingers curling behind his ear, and he kissed him without checking, without the half-second pause where the calculation used to live.
Just warm lips against cold, the taste of coffee and road and relief.
When they broke apart Finn’s eyes were wet and he did not wipe them.
“You showed up,” he said.
“I should have shown up weeks ago.”
“Yeah.” Finn’s mouth curved. “But you’re here now.”
* * *
The afternoon eval ran long.
Evan waited in the lobby, wide glass-walled space with low leather chairs and a display case of Fury jerseys glowing behind the reception desk. He sat with palms flat on his knees, posture too straight for the room.
Finn’s agent came through twice. The second time he stopped three feet away and studied Evan.
“Tremblay.” Flat. Testing.
“Yes.”
The agent nodded once and kept walking.
Finn came out in base layers, hair damp from the shower and curling at his temples. He saw Evan and stopped mid-stride. His face did the thing. Slight widening at the eyes, softening at the mouth, there and gone in the space of one breath. Evan caught it. He always caught it.
“Hi,” Finn said.
“Hi.”
“You waited.”
“Yes.”
Finn studied the straight line of Evan’s spine, the palms pressed to his knees. Evan looked like he would sit there another four hours if that was what it took.
“You want to get dinner?”
“Yes.” Evan glanced toward the elevator. “Your agent said the Fury put you up at the hotel across the street. Can we go upstairs first?”
“Yeah.” Finn grinned, small and real. “Yeah, we can do that.”
They went upstairs.
* * *
The hotel room was warm. White duvet pulled tight across the bed, desk with a leather folio, window looking out at the parking structure. The bedside lamp threw amber light across the carpet.
They stood inside it and looked at each other.
Finn laughed first. Short, surprised sound. “I don’t know what to do when nobody’s going to walk in.”
“Me neither.”
“We’re bad at normal.”
“Apparently.”
Finn was smiling the easy one, the real one.
Evan crossed the room and put his palms on Finn’s face.
Warm skin under his hands. Soap and sweat and the scent he had been breathing in film rooms and parking lots for months.
He had been holding himself away from it.
He let go now. Drew a full breath with Finn’s jaw between his palms.
“I missed you. Every day. Your name on my calendar in gold that I kept telling myself was operational.” Evan’s thumb brushed Finn’s cheekbone, the first rough hint of stubble, the heat of blood close to the surface.
“I missed you in the way of knowing exactly where you were in the building at any given time and pretending I didn’t. ”
Finn’s throat moved. “That’s a very specific kind of missing someone.”
“It’s the only kind I know how to do.”