4. Jamie
Jamie
(Present Day)
The post-win celebration is in full effect.
Alright by Kendrick Lamar is blasting from Devan’s speakers, rattling off the locker room walls with enough bass to vibrate the metal benches.
He’s half dressed, chest bare and gleaming, showing off the new tattoo stretched over his left pec, his daughters’ names, Chloe and baby Tiara, curled into the shape of a heart, still looking tender at the edges and healing.
Three months old, that little girl, and already permanently inked onto her father like she hung the moon herself.
“Jamie! Jam! Why are you still on your ass? It’s a celebration,” he shouts over the music, arms thrown wide like he’s personally offended by my stillness.
A few teammates reluctantly peel themselves off benches and join in with the kind of dancing that should legally require a signed waiver from everyone watching.
I force a smile and bob my head along to the beat, enough of a performance to pass for someone who is present and accounted for.
My shoulder rocks seem to be enough to satisfy him because he shifts his attention away from me, whipping around to shout at Derrick, who is currently helping his husband, Sebastian, out of his pads with the focused tenderness of someone who has forgotten the rest of the room exists entirely.
Those two have always operated in their own private world, completely sealed off, and tonight is no different.
“Tor!” Devan shouts in Bailey’s direction, but our captain is already dressed and moving toward the door with the quiet efficiency he brings to everything.
He never lingers after his post-game speech unless there’s press to deal with, and tonight he and Ridley are clearly of one mind, both waving Devan off without breaking stride as they slip out of the locker room.
“Scott! You have interviews! For the love of all that’s holy!
I know you want to celebrate but give our ears a break.
Get dressed and meet the PR team in the hall.
Now!” Coach Lennox’s voice cuts through the music from the doorway, the words sharp but his expression carrying unmistakable amusement at the scene in front of him.
Tobias reaches over and cuts the music off without ceremony, leaning in to whisper something directly into Devan’s ear. Whatever it is, it works. Devan pouts dramatically for approximately four seconds before something lights behind his eyes and he disappears toward the showers at a near sprint.
I’ve been with the Vipers for over three years now, and these men have quietly, thoroughly become my family.
They didn’t let me vanish beneath the weight of all their collective fame when I first arrived, and there is a lot of it, enough to swallow someone whole if they let it.
I could have been just another body filling a roster spot, another cog turning inside this vast, glittering machine.
None of them ever treated me that way. Not once.
Even before my own family finally made the decision to relocate to Seattle a few months ago, I never truly felt alone here.
I owe that entirely to the closeness of the men in this room, and it is not something I take lightly.
If nothing else, that alone is something worth holding onto. I should be flying high right now, riding the wave of a game that was genuinely good, three assists, a goal, solid two-way play from start to finish. Yet every quiet moment between the noise keeps pulling me back to the same place.
Back to him.
It’s been years now. Two of those years spent carrying the knowledge of exactly who he is, the full picture finally filled in.
Cyaire Reed. An actor. Not just an actor, a famous one, the kind of famous that means I can’t walk past a magazine stand or a cinema lobby or a streaming platform without his face surfacing somewhere, composed and untouchable behind whatever character he is playing that season.
He couldn’t be more in my face if he tried.
It doesn’t help that fame seems to run in the family. His brother is Julian Reed, who’s married to Malik Carter, two musicians whose names are almost impossible to avoid.
When I met him that night at the bar in the Langham Hotel, he was none of that.
He was just a man. My mystery man. My Blue.
There are moments, quiet ones, late ones, where I almost wish I could unknow everything else.
I want to go back to the version of that night that existed before context, before recognition.
I want to go back to holding him close in the dim quiet of my hotel room, tasting his lips, breathing in the warm, clean scent of him like that was something I was allowed to keep.
I watched him from a distance all this time, saw him photographed with men and women alike, living a life so thoroughly public that every corner of it was documented and discussed.
I told myself the conclusion was obvious.
That for him, I was just the night. A pleasant thing that happened and then didn’t.
I had no reason to believe otherwise, and I had too much to lose by testing it.
Then tonight, in the hallway outside this very locker room, his eyes landed on mine, and the shock on his face was real.
Unguarded. He had no idea I played hockey.
After all this time, he had no idea, and something about that detail sits strange and heavy inside my chest in a way I haven’t quite sorted out yet.
“You alright?” Derrick asks, lowering himself onto the bench beside me, eyes still tracking Sebastian’s movement across the room for a moment before turning on me with something more careful in them.
I lean forward, brace my elbows on my knees, and tilt my head sideways to look at him. “I’m fine.”
Derrick huffs, quiet and unconvinced. “Jamie. You’re still fully suited up.
Your skates are still on your feet. I don’t make it my business to memorize people’s routines as a general rule, but by now you would have been halfway to the car.
” He says it without accusation, just plain observation, which somehow makes it worse.
I can’t help the laugh that escapes me because he isn’t wrong, and I know he isn’t wrong.
I am a creature of habit to my core. In and out of the locker room with clean efficiency, always the first to report to PR for post-game obligations, first onto the bus, first on the plane.
I don’t linger. I don’t dally. Tonight I’ve been sitting here in full gear like the game forgot to end.
“That transparent, huh?” I shake my head slowly.
“Nah.” He waves that off. “I just see you sitting over here like you’re stranded somewhere inside your own head.
” He makes a gesture around me with one hand, a slow orbit, as though I am a small island that has drifted away from the mainland.
Looking at him looking at me, I suppose that’s not entirely wrong.
“I saw a ghost tonight,” I confess, the words out before I’ve consciously decided to say them. I don’t quite have it in me to walk it back.
Derrick’s brow lifts. “A ghost?”
I turn it over for a second, looking for a way to say enough without saying too much.
“Someone I met years ago, by chance. It was a one-night thing. Seeing him here tonight, in this building, it was a bit of a shock. That’s all.
” I wave my hand like I’m dismissing it, like it meant nothing, when the truth is that seeing him tonight has tilted my entire world a few degrees off its axis and I’m still trying to find my footing.
Derrick’s expression shifts, his eyebrows climb his forehead with slow, deliberate significance. “Him? Well, Jamie Maxwell.” He draws it out like he’s settling in for a long evening. “You have some explaining to do. All of the tea. Every last drop. Right now.”
My mouth falls open, and for the second time tonight a genuine laugh escapes me, brief and startled.
“Shaw. Devan is rubbing off on you in ways that should concern both of you. The tea is that there is no tea.” I say it firmly, looking him straight in the eye.
My sexuality is not a secret to my team, but I keep my business under wraps usually.
So, I shouldn’t be surprised at his need for said tea.
“I will probably never see him again. And whatever happened between us, I want to keep it exactly where it is. Locked away.”
Derrick nods slowly, something affirming in his expression that reads as genuine understanding rather than performance.
Before he can press further, Sebastian approaches across the room, towel secured around his hips, eyes going straight to Derrick like a compass finding north.
Derrick loses the thread of our conversation almost immediately, his entire attention pivoting toward his husband with the kind of effortless totality that I’ve learned is simply how Derrick Shaw operates when Sebastian Bergeron is in the room.
I clear my throat.
Derrick turns back to me with the sheepishness of a man who isn’t remotely sorry. “Sorry, Jamie, but I am only human.”
I get up from the bench and give him a firm nudge toward where he clearly wants to be. “Go. I’ve got cold sweat pooling and I need to shower. You’re not needed here.”
He resists just enough to look at me with a genuine furrow between his brows. “You sure? You didn’t even tell me who your mystery man is yet. I’m already emotionally invested in this story.”
“Another time. Like I said, it’s in the past. And given who he was here with tonight, I doubt our paths are going to cross again.” I shrug, keeping my voice measured and easy.
“Wait. . .hold on. Are you talking about—”
“Nope.” I cut him off clean, pulling my jersey up over my head in one swift movement. “Go to your husband, Shaw.”
“Jamie—” he tries again. His voice carries the certainty of someone who has already drawn the same line between the dots that I have spent years trying not to draw for myself.
I refuse to answer. I won’t get into it. I can’t. I have carried this quietly for years, kept it tucked away and undisturbed, and I’ve already said more tonight than I intended.
“Princesse. Leave Maxwell alone.” Sebastian’s voice drifts across from his locker, warm and unhurried, and he punctuates it with a knowing wink aimed directly at me as I drop my compression shirt onto the bench with a sodden, heavy slap.
“Come here, please.” He adds the last part entirely for Derrick.
Derrick exhales, long-suffering and theatrical, then turns and points a finger at me.
“Be glad I am easily redirected by attractive things.” He laughs, and then the humor drops out of his expression just slightly, replaced by something quieter and more honest. “Seriously, though. Talking helps. You know where I am.”
I watch him cross the room toward his husband, and I feel the familiar tightness in my chest that I always feel when I watch Derrick Shaw, now Derrick Shaw-Bergeron, live his life with this much fullness.
The accident is never far from the surface for me.
The incident that could have taken his career, that I have never fully stopped feeling responsible for, regardless of every reassurance I was given from every direction.
Teammates, coaches, Derrick himself. It doesn’t fully lift, but then I look at him, skating beside the man he loves, playing on the same position, building something real inside the life that nearly came apart, and something in me calms. Some things happen for a reason. That has to mean something.
I strip out of my remaining pads and gear with quiet efficiency, shower quickly, and dress for the walk to my SUV.
I’m grateful tonight that there is no press waiting on me specifically, no cameras to arrange my face for.
When I finally step out of the locker room, I find myself scanning the hallway before I mean to.
My eyes make a slow pass along the thinning corridor, the few remaining photographers, a couple of lingering journalists packing up equipment, the ordinary end-of-night quiet settling in.
He isn’t there.
I hold my head up, keep my stride even, and walk myself out of the arena and into the cold night air.
I try not to examine too closely why some small, foolish part of me was hoping otherwise.
After all this time, wasn’t he even a little curious?
Did he carry any version of that night the way I have carried mine?
Did he think about me even occasionally, the way I have thought about him without particularly meaning to, without ever quite managing to stop?
The empty hallway gave me the only answer I was going to get tonight.
Cyaire Reed belongs in the past.
I intend to leave him there.