Chapter Thirteen #3
Kilian tapped his pen against the pad for a few moments, gathering his thoughts, and then he started writing.
He looked up from the pad an hour later to find the sun already going down outside his window, because it was Chicago and December.
Before him on the desk lay three pages filled with his rounded cursive letters.
He read them back, just to make sure he hadn’t imagined how right it felt to say those things, to put them out there in the world.
He hadn’t.
His phone had finished its full system reboot at some point in the interim. Kilian swiped away all the notifications from the lockscreen, barely registering them. His sisters. Breezy. Tom. His mom. A zillion random people he’d met once or twice, hadn’t seen in years, or didn’t know at all.
Derek’s number was listed under his missed calls twenty-seven times.
Kilian winced as he hit the call button.
It only rang once.
“Kilian! Thank God.”
Not the response Kilian was expecting. “Hi, Derek. Sorry about…everything.”
“All you have to be sorry for is not picking up the damn phone, kid. How are you holding up?”
Kilian frowned. That wasn’t right. “No, I mean…I’m sorry I didn’t let you know things weren’t going great with the Sea Lions, and I’m sorry I was stupid and I got photographed, and I totally get if you don’t want to be my rep now that I’m—now that people know about me.”
The phone went silent for so long Kilian wondered if it had turned itself off again.
“Kilian,” Derek said finally, very slowly. “I’m going to repeat myself. All you have to be sorry for is not picking up the phone. I’ve been worried sick, and I’m not the only one.”
It was Kilian’s turn not to speak, trying to process what Derek had just said.
“Actually, I owe you an apology.”
“What?”
“You’re my client. Your dad and I may go way back, but it was bad practice of me to get so caught up in what he’d let me know that I forgot to check in with you more. We never got to a point where you trusted me, so I couldn’t help you when you needed it.”
He wasn’t wrong. Kilian had never registered Derek as someone he could talk to when he struggled with hockey, let alone his sexuality. “So, you don’t want to…I don’t know, cancel our contract?”
“No, I do not want to terminate our contract.”
Right, that was the serious, professional word.
“Even though I’m gay?”
“Especially because you’re gay.” Derek’s firm voice brooked no argument. “I’m not going to lie and tell you it will be easy. You’re going to need someone on your side, someone experienced with contract negotiations and PR work.”
Kilian picked at a loose thread in the hem of his top. He should start buying real clothes for clubbing instead of cutting them up himself. “Why would you want to be the person to negotiate for me? It’s gonna suck.”
Derek chuckled. “I happen to think it’s the right thing to do.
But if you want a more mercenary answer, I also think it will be good for me and my firm.
As much as some people want to turn the clock back, we’re living in the twenty-first century.
There are other gay athletes out there, or bi, or lesbian, or whatever else.
Gaining a reputation as the guys who’ll support the community will give our firm a new niche, which we need right now.
And to be very honest, it might also keep us away from the real headaches—the athletes who keep getting spotted at alt-right rallies or who want us to cover up actual crimes. ”
That sounded reasonable. Rational, even. Derek’s firm was based in Vancouver, a by-and-large liberal city. It made sense they wanted a clientele to match.
Kilian took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, thanks. Um, have the Firecrackers gotten in touch about trading me yet?”
“Are you kidding?”
Kilian frowned. He’d hoped it would be a trade, since the other option meant he would be sent down. “So I have to go to the AHL?”
“No, of course not! Kilian, you were more than a point per game for the last three weeks. They’d be nuts to trade you or send you down right now. If you don’t keep it up, we’ll see, but you’re in a good position with the team.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve had Brianna from their PR department nagging me to death about a strategy for your online presence and lining up interviews and making sure the whole world knows how proud the Firecrackers are to have the first out gay player.”
“Oh.” When Brianna called him into her office the other day, Kilian thought she wanted to talk about burying the story, about hiding the truth, or possibly about hiding him.
He’d tuned out most of her talk as industry-standard lip service and waited for the actual demand to appear.
Then Damir had saved him from the meeting.
Was it possible she hadn’t just been doing damage control but wanted to work with him?
“So?” Derek asked. “Thoughts?”
“It’s going to be a lot of pressure,” Kilian blurted out. “Being the first.”
“It is. But you might not be the last.”
Remembering Tom telling him over sushi that he’d always longed for a role model as well, Kilian had to laugh. “Maybe so.”
“So how do you want to play it? Are we confirming the article? We’re kind of late to deny it at this point, but I guess we could try. Or would you rather do an interview? Or let talk die down on its own? I’m telling you now, Brianna won’t like doing nothing—”
“Actually, um.” Kilian drew in a deep breath. “I…I wrote something. I’m not a journalist or a writer or anything, but I thought I could post it on Insta, or if the team wants to post something on their site, they could…I don’t know. It’s probably bad.”
“I doubt that very much. Why don’t you send it over to me? Not to change it or make it less than what you want to say or anything, just so I can give you my take.”
“Sure. Don’t be nice to me though. If it sucks, let me know before the whole world reads it.”
Derek laughed. “Noted. And, um, kid?”
God, Kilian hated when people called him that. “Yeah?”
“Consider getting in touch with your folks? I’m not gonna talk to your dad about your career anymore. I should have drawn a boundary there from the start, but they’ve been battering down my door.”
Kilian bit at the end of his tongue. It was good to hear Derek wouldn’t be talking to Dad when he got in trouble anymore, but… “Soon,” he said. “When this is posted and out there. I can’t…um. If they’re gonna be weird about it, I need it to be after, or I won’t be able to do it.”
“I don’t think—”
Kilian ended the call before Derek could convince him otherwise.
He returned to the desk and turned on the lamp, illuminating his handwritten words in soft, yellow light.
On the whole, he wasn’t much of an aesthetics guy—his Insta specialty was thirst traps—but he carefully arranged the pen and stack of paper before photographing each page cleanly for Derek to read through.
On the off-chance this was good enough to go out, he wanted people to see for a fact that these were his own words, his own thoughts, written by his own hand.
After he sent the pictures, he put his phone in his pocket, still on silent, and went out to find Damir. The time they could spend alone, the two of them close and warm and intimate, was limited. Kilian wanted to make the most of it.