Epilogue
The locker room at the Staples Center in Los Angeles was loud. They’d just won their sixth game in a row and Mitch had scored three out of tonight’s four goals, thank you very much.
He put his suit on after his shower, because playing in the NHL meant you had to be fancy. The chain with the ring hanging off it that he only took off for games went around his neck, tucked under his shirt.
There were only about a dozen people who knew about the ring.
His dad and Dan. Cody. Yano and Marco. Alex’s mom.
JP, Jay and Leah. Ashton Yager. A couple of Alex’s teammates.
People they trusted with their secret. If anybody else asked about it, Mitch said it was a family heirloom.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. Alex had given him Grandpa Forest’s wedding ring.
Sometimes Mitch still couldn’t believe that he’d been wearing it for almost four years.
He and Alex had talked about it at New Year’s all those years ago—a guy didn’t come out in pro sports. Even when they marry the love of their life. If that had made the past few years a little more difficult than they’d expected, they dealt with it as a couple.
“Yo, Grey.” Fraser clapped him on the shoulder. “Coach wants to talk to you.”
Dread pooled in Mitch’s belly. Dread and irritation. With the trade deadline only four days away, Coach could only want to see him about one thing.
He was being traded. Again. A season and a half with Boston, two with L.A., and now he was, once again, being shipped elsewhere. He was a goddamn good player, so why did nobody want to keep him?
Did it have something to do with what he’d said to the reporter the other day? It wasn’t his fault that professional reporters asked the same stupid questions as college ones.
Still, this sucked. It was like being picked last in gym class. Not that Mitch had ever been picked last, but he imagined this is what it would’ve felt like. Shitty. Demoralizing. Embarrassing.
And just as he was starting to get used to L.A. too. Not that he considered it home, because he didn’t. L.A. sucked. But he’d made friends on the team, the coaches liked him—he was pretty sure, anyway—and he could now manage L.A. traffic like a fucking native.
Not to mention, he and Alex would have to re-jig their schedules. They had their entire hockey seasons planned out: when Mitch would visit Alex, when Alex would visit him, and when it was simply easier for them to meet in the middle, in Denver where they had an apartment on retainer.
Trudging his way to Coach Perrault’s office, he sent a message to anyone who was listening, that if he could please be traded to a team closer to Toronto, where Alex had been playing for the past four years, then he’d stop being mean to reporters.
Okay, he’d try to stop being mean to reporters. That had to count for something, right?
He walked out of Coach’s office ten minutes later. In a daze, he headed back to the empty locker room where he found his phone to FaceTime his husband.
“Hey!” Alex said when he answered. “Nice hat trick tonight.” He was lying on the couch in the living room of their townhome in Toronto’s Annex neighborhood, with his laptop on the coffee table next to him.
He was probably working on the new romance novel he’d been writing for the past few months.
The one he wouldn’t let Mitch read, the jerk.
Fuck, Mitch missed Alex’s face. Alex was thirty now and the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth were more pronounced, but he was no less gorgeous.
Mitch took in his thick eyebrows, his green eyes, his ever-present beard.
The two-year-old scar bisecting his eyebrow, the outcome of a fight that had resulted in the visor on Alex’s helmet breaking and embedding itself into his face.
Mitch had watched in horror from his hotel room in whatever city he’d been in at the time, as the announcers speculated on whether or not Alex was going to lose an eye.
Thankfully, the glass has pierced the skin above his eye, not his eyeball. But God, Mitch had been frantic. He still remembered sitting in that hotel room, desperately calling Alex and everyone he could think of on Alex’s team until someone finally picked up.
“Alex…” Mitch ran a hand through his hair and dug his nails into his scalp.
“What’s wrong?” Alex lost his smile and the picture on Mitch’s screen wobbled for a second as Alex sat up. “What happened?”
“I got traded.”
“Again? I’m sorry, Mitch. I know you were just starting to not hate L.A. so much.” Alex’s eyebrow quirked. “On the plus side, you couldn’t possibly get sent any further from Toronto. Except maybe if you’re going to Texas. Or Arizona. Tell me that’s not where you’re going.”
Mitch pointed at his screen. “To you.”
Alex blinked at him for a second before comprehension dawned. Excitement lit up his face, but then suspicion clouded his features. “Are you fucking with me?”
“No.” Mitch shook his head for emphasis.
“If that’s true, then what the hell are you still doing over there?”
Mitch couldn’t help but laugh. “I just found out. I called you right away.”
“Mitch.” Alex brought the phone right to his face. All Mitch could see was his eyes and nose. “Go back to your apartment, pack your shit, and get your ass over here.”
Mitch laughed again and it was free and happy. He couldn’t stop smiling and he kept leaning into his phone, as though he could touch Alex just by being closer to the damn thing.
“I will,” he said, feeling weightless with glee.
He was going to play with Alex on the same team, instead of always against him.
They were going to play together, live together, make a home together.
Not that they hadn’t done the latter two, off and on, for the past six years during the off season, but this was official.
No more flying back and forth, no more syncing schedules.
Just them, making a life together. “My flight’s in the morning. I guess…I have a game tomorrow?”
“Yeah, you do.” Alex’s grin was all teeth. “Holy shit, I really will see you on the ice now.”
Mitch leaned his forehead against his cubby and laughed under his breath.
“Mitch.”
He brought the phone up again and if there were tears of happiness in his eyes, Alex wouldn’t mention it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Alex said.
“Yeah.”
“Love you.”
Mitch swallowed roughly. “Love you too.”
They disconnected and Mitch left the arena, a bounce in his step. He was going home. To his husband.