Chapter 39
Aaron
Someone is putting powder on my face and I can’t stop staring at Sasha.
He’s in the chair next to mine, a black cape draped over his suit while a woman with a brush works on his jawline.
His hair has been touched up — the dark gold waves pushed back from his face in a way that looks effortless but took fifteen minutes and two products I watched her apply.
He’s wearing the navy suit Diego picked out, a white shirt open at the collar, and he looks like he just stepped off a billboard for something expensive.
My stomach is in knots. My hands are clenched under my own cape and my heart rate hasn’t dropped below ninety since we walked into the building. In approximately four minutes, we’re going to sit on a couch on national television and talk about the fact that we’re in love. On purpose. Into cameras.
But Sasha’s jawline is doing something unhelpful to my ability to panic.
“You look handsome,” I say.
He glances at me. Then at the mirror. Studies himself for a moment with that expression he gets — chin tilted, one eyebrow slightly raised, completely serious.
“You’re right.” He turns back to me. “America doesn’t know what’s coming their way.”
I laugh. It breaks loose from somewhere in my chest, sudden and real, and the makeup artist doing my face pulls her brush back, laughing.
Sasha grins at me — not the press grin, not the camera grin, the one that’s just for me.
The one that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes the freckles across his nose shift.
“Sorry,” I tell the makeup artist. “He’s — yeah. He’s like this.”
“You love it,” Sasha says.
I do. I really, really do.
Across the room, Diego is leaning against the wall with his phone in both hands, typing fast. He’s been a live wire all morning — pacing, checking the rundown, confirming questions with the producer, adjusting Sasha’s collar twice before the hair stylist shooed him away.
But right now he’s holding still. Giving us this.
He catches my eye over his phone and gives me a small nod, then goes back to typing.
“Two minutes,” a production assistant says from the doorway. She’s wearing a headset and holding a clipboard and she looks about nineteen. “Elizabeth’s wrapping the cooking segment. We’ll mic you up on set.”
The knots in my stomach pull tighter. Sasha reaches over and flicks my knee with two fingers. Just a tap. Quick, casual.
But his eyes hold mine for a second. I’m right here.
I breathe.
The America AM Live set is smaller than it looks on TV. Bright lights, two cameras, a low table between the couch and Elizabeth Carr’s chair. Someone clips a mic to my lapel and tells me not to touch it. Someone else offers water. I take it because my mouth has gone dry.
Elizabeth Carr is already seated. She’s mid-forties, dark hair, warm eyes. She feels like someone you could trust. She shakes both our hands and says something about being glad we’re here, and I believe her.
“Just talk to me like we’re having coffee,” she says. “Forget the cameras.”
Sasha settles into the couch beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. He crosses one ankle over his knee. Completely relaxed. Like he does this every day.
I sit up straight and try not to look like someone about to pass out.
The floor director counts down. The red light goes on.
“Welcome back to America AM Live.” Elizabeth turns to the camera with a practiced smile.
“If you follow college hockey — or really, if you’ve been on the internet at all in the past three weeks — you know our next guests.
Aaron Kelly and Sasha Vorontsovsky were co-captains of the Ashford University Sentinels, two of the top-performing college hockey players in the country, and the center of one of the fiercest rivalries in recent college sports history.
” She turns to us. “Except it turns out the rivalry was never real. And what was real was something neither of you could talk about for a very long time. Welcome, both of you.”
“Thanks for having us,” I say. My voice sounds normal. That’s a small miracle.
“Happy to be here,” Sasha says. He smiles at Elizabeth — the charming version, the one that’s gotten him out of every press conference he’s ever wanted to leave.
Elizabeth leans forward slightly. “Let’s start with the moment everyone’s been talking about.
Aaron, your valedictorian speech at Ashford’s graduation — which has now been viewed over forty million times online — you stood in front of your entire university and came out.
You told the world you were in love with your co-captain.
What was going through your mind when you stepped up to that podium? ”
Forty million.
I didn’t know the number. Beside me, I feel Sasha go still for a half second. He didn’t either.
“Honestly, not much,” I say. “I had a speech prepared weeks in advance. And then in the days before, I decided I was going to go off script. I couldn’t stand there and talk about resilience and the future when the biggest thing in my life was something I’d never said out loud in public.”
“Sasha, you were in the audience for this speech. You’d just flown in from Russia.”
“I wasn’t planning on attending graduation,” he says. “But Aaron made me promise to come back early to see him give his speech. And of course now I know why.” He pauses. “I am immensely proud of him.”
“The two of you were marketed as rivals,” she says.
“The Solstice Athletic campaigns, the press coverage, the trash-talking on the ice — fans were obsessed with it. Kelly versus Vorontsovsky. You set records together in your final season, you were both drafted to pro teams, and the whole time, you were in a relationship that nobody knew about.”
“Our agent knew about the rivalry,” Sasha says. “He did not know about the relationship.”
“Diego still hasn’t fully recovered,” I add.
Elizabeth smiles. “How long were you together before you went public?”
“I think it started the very first day we met on the ice at the Ashford Arena, before junior year,” Sasha says. “Or maybe even earlier, the very first time I watched his game tape. He looked good.”
I laugh. Feel my face go warm.
Elizabeth is delighted.
“And during all that time, nobody knew?”
“A few people, gradually,” I say. “But we were — careful. We had to be.”
The lightness in the conversation shifts. Elizabeth feels it. She lets a few seconds pass before she continues.
“Let’s talk about the response since the speech.
It’s been three weeks. You’ve both received enormous support — the video went viral, there’s been an outpouring from fans, from other athletes.
But there’s also been backlash. Some sponsors dropped you both.
There’s been some ugly commentary online and in certain corners of the sports world. ” She pauses. “How has that been?”
Sasha answers first. His voice is even, direct. “Some companies don’t want their brand next to two men in a relationship. That’s their decision. We’ve lost some sponsors. Our agent is already replacing them with partners who want to work with us as we actually are, not as we were pretending to be.”
“It’s not fun seeing the comments,” I say. “Some of it’s been pretty rough. But — the people who’ve reached out, the messages we’ve gotten from kids, from other athletes who are closeted—” My throat tightens unexpectedly. I push through it. “That matters more. That’s the part that stays with you.”
“And in terms of your careers?”
“We’re both starting our first pro seasons soon,” I say. “I’m heading to Albany with the Firebirds. Sasha’s with the New York Titans. Both organizations have been supportive. So we’re focused on that.”
“Separate teams,” Elizabeth says. “Separate cities. How’s that going to work?”
“We’re going to make it work,” I say. “After everything we’ve been through, a little bit of distance is nothing. Besides, we might even get to play against each other.”
Sasha’s hand moves. Just slightly — his fingers shift on his thigh, closer to my knee. Not touching. Almost.
Elizabeth looks at us both for a moment. Then she asks the question I’ve been bracing for since we sat down.
“How have your families responded?”
Sasha goes first. I’m grateful. I need the extra seconds.
“My father passed away when I was young,” he says.
His voice doesn’t change. Controlled, steady.
You’d never know it costs him anything. “My mother is in Russia. She and I have — a complicated relationship that predates this. My bisexuality is not new information to her.” A pause.
Careful. Diplomatic. “We are in a better place than we have been in a very long time now.”
Elizabeth nods. She doesn’t push. She turns to me.
I’m quiet for a moment.
Sasha’s hand finds mine between us on the couch, and he squeezes. Firm. Warm. Right there, on national television, holding my hand like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
I look at Elizabeth.
“It’s — ongoing,” I say. “My parents — they love me. I know they love me. This has been a lot for them. I was raised in a traditional Catholic family and this isn’t what they expected for me.” I swallow. “The conversations are still hard. But we’re having them. We’re still talking.”
I stop. I can hear my own pulse in my ears.
“And as long as we’re talking,” I say, “there’s hope.”
Elizabeth holds the moment. She doesn’t fill the silence. She lets it breathe, and I’m grateful for that too.
“You mentioned messages from young athletes, from kids who are closeted,” she says, her voice softer now. “What would you say to someone watching this right now who’s in the position you were in a year ago? Who’s hiding who they are because they’re afraid of what it might cost them?”
I open my mouth. Sasha beats me to it.
“The hiding costs more.” He says it simply. No performance in it. “It always costs more than you think it does. And you don’t realize how expensive it was until you stop paying.”
My hand tightens around his. He doesn’t look at me but I feel his thumb move against my knuckle. Once. Slow.
“I’d say you don’t have to do it the way I did,” I add. “You can just tell one person that you trust at first, like I did. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic and sudden as it looked like in the video. It wasn’t for me.”
Elizabeth smiles. There’s something real behind it, something that doesn’t feel like television.
“Well,” she says. “I think I speak for a lot of people watching when I say that I hope the world we’re living in is ready to reward this kind of honesty.
In your personal lives, and in the sports world.
I hope the right sponsors find you, and the right fans stick with you, and your rookie seasons are everything you’ve worked for. ”
“As my mom would say, from your lips to God’s ears,” I say.
“We hope so too,” Sasha says. He looks at Elizabeth, then at me. His blue eyes catch the studio lights and I feel it in my stomach.
“We hope so too,” I echo.
The red light goes off.
Elizabeth impulsively hugs us both. “That was wonderful,” she says. “Truly. Both of you.” We thank her.
The floor director calls something about being back in ninety seconds. A production assistant ushers us off the set and suddenly it’s over, just like that.
Sasha’s hand is still in mine. I haven’t let go. He hasn’t either.
I look at him — this man who was willing to come back to hear my speech and give me another chance, who held my hand on national television without flinching. His suit is perfect. His hair is perfect. His hand is warm and steady and real.
He looks at me. “You did very well, Aaron Kelly. We both did.”
No matter what happens, no matter how the public reacts, I’ll have Sasha and he’ll have me. And that’s all I care about.