Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
Brandon
When I hear the knock on our hotel room door I immediately start sweating. I can feel my heart beating in my throat.
Ryan’s lips quirk up to the side as he looks at me and taunts, “Are you feeling alright?”
“I swear to God, Ryan. If you have a bet going with Danton and Coach about whether or not I throw up, I’ll never suck your dick again.”
His eyebrows shoot up and he gulps. Then smartly holds up his hands and says, “No bet.”
I don’t believe him. But my threat was empty anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
There’s two more knocks on our door.
“Do you want to get that?” Ryan asks. “Or…”
“I’ve got it,” I say and make my way to the door to let my parents in. They’re right on time. We asked them to come to our room after our pregame nap, for which I remained wide awake. Ryan, like he so loves to do, slept like a goddamn cat lying in the sunny spot.
“Brandon,” my mom says when I swing the door open. “You look terrible.”
“Has he thrown up yet?” I hear Danton ask from the hall.
I poke my head out the door and he’s leaning outside of his room beside ours.
“Not yet,” Ryan yells from where he’s sitting on the rumpled bed we slept on.
“Damn,” Danton says, then walks back into his room and closes the door.
“Still get the pregame jitters, huh, son,” my dad says as he walks past me into our room.
“No,” I deny hotly.
At the same time Ryan laughs and says, “Yes.”
“Leave him alone,” my mom says as if she wasn’t the one to point out how terrible I look.
But to her credit, she does seem to pick up on something, because she pauses in her tracks and turns to face me again.
She reaches for me with her hands and cups my cheeks with her palms. Her lips pull tight as she looks at me.
“Yeah, son,” my dad says. “There’s no need to be nervous. You’ve been on a hot streak. You’re going to do great tonight.”
“I don’t think this is about the game,” my mom says. Her eyes leave mine and flick between the two beds in the room, pausing on the one that has clearly gone unused. She looks back at me, brushes my cheeks with her thumbs, then lets go of me and walks to Ryan.
“Hi, sweetie,” she says, placing her hands onto both of his cheeks now. Her voice is gentle. With her eyes still on Ryan, she says to my father, “Why don’t you take a seat on that bed?”
“What’s going on?” my dad asks. He suddenly seems clued into the charged atmosphere in the room. “I thought we were grabbing a bite to eat before the game.”
“We are,” I say. “But Ryan and I need to tell you both something first.”
Dad sits down on the bed and my mom lets go of Ryan and sits beside him. She looks like she’s about to burst. Her eyes are watery, and her lips are pressed so tight suppressing a smile I know she won’t be able to contain for much longer. I’m going to need to hurry up and get this over with.
Why was it so much easier to tell the team? Probably because Ryan did most of the work and Danton couldn’t stop himself from weeping from joy. No one even batted an eye and Ivanov gave us both hugs before getting dressed in his gear.
I rub the back of my neck with my hand. Ryan’s right. My hair is way too long, but I’m sure as hell still not cutting it. Not while we have a shot of winning the Stanley Cup.
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “So the thing is,” I start, looking between my parents on one bed and Ryan on the other.
I shouldn’t be this nervous. This room is filled with three of the four most important people in my life.
There is no need for me to be panicking.
I look directly at Ryan and lock eyes with him.
There’s a softness in his eyes. He smiles and nods his head at me. It settles my nerves.
Staying focused on him, I say what I’ve been holding in for years. “We’re together.” I turn to look at my parents now. “And I mean that as more than linemates. Ryan and I are dating. We’re gay.”
“More than dating,” Ryan says.
“Right.” I nod my head. “Way more than dating. I moved in with him last week.”
My mother’s eyes briefly go wide, and my father looks at us, stunned.
Feeling exhausted, I sit beside Ryan and take comfort in the way our thighs press together.
The surprise on my mother’s face is gone. She’s now regarding us with a softer expression. As if something in her is breaking but I can’t imagine what. There’s no way she’s mad. She loves Ryan. “How long have you two been together?”
“Since right before the first round of the playoffs.”
My dad brings his hand to his face and rubs his cheeks and chin. “We just saw you in Minnesota. Why didn’t you tell us?”
They look sad. Which is the last thing I expected.
“Did you think we wouldn’t accept you?” Mom asks. She looks like she’s about to cry, whereas when she first got here and caught on, I thought she was going to burst with joy.
“No,” I say. “I never thought that.”
“Never,” Ryan agrees and places his hand on my shoulder.
He runs it back and forth across my back.
“The opposite actually.” He pulls his hand away from my back and I look over at him.
He’s looking at my parents, who are staring at him the same way they’ve always looked at me and Ander.
Like we can do no wrong. “There’s so much I’ve always wanted to tell both of you. ”
My mom shakes her head. “Ryan, you don’t owe us an explanation.”
“Except that I do,” he says as he takes a breath and rubs his hands harshly across his face.
As I watch him, it dawns on me that maybe this moment is bigger for him than it is for me. My stomach sinks. I’ve been selfish. I’ve taken my parents’ love and acceptance for granted. Everything I have is all that Ryan has ever wanted.
“When I first came to live with you,” Ryan continues, “my life was a mess. I had just been outed at home, and well, that hadn’t gone so well—”
“Is that why your parents never came?” my mom asks. She wipes her eyes.
“No,” Ryan says. “Things weren’t great for us already. Honestly, even if they hadn’t found out I was gay they wouldn’t have visited me in Green Bay anyway. Hell, they’ve never been to any of my games and I hardly ever hear from any of them outside of the occasional Christmas wish.”
I can feel the anger radiating off of him as he rises to his feet and starts to pace the room. I didn’t expect this, and I don’t know what to do as I watch the flood gates open, exposing everything Ryan has kept hidden from everyone for so long.
“My oldest sister,” he says. “She just got married. Did you know that?” It’s clearly a rhetorical question.
“I didn’t. I only found out because I occasionally check both my sisters’ Instagrams and I saw the photos from her wedding.
It’s as if I don’t exist to them. Any of them.
They all get to be happy. They all get to be a family.
I’m the one who’s constantly being punished, and for something I didn’t even do.
I didn’t ask for this. My mom had an affair and I’m the one who was cast out because of it. ”
My mom looks over at me. She starts to rise off her seat, but I beat her to it.
As soon as Ryan is near enough to me again, I’m up and have my arms wrapped around him.
This was supposed to be my coming out. This was supposed to be the easy part for him.
All he needed to do was sit there and be his perfectly handsome self. But instead he’s laying his life bare.
Once I have him in my hold, it’s as if all his energy has left him.
This was a bad idea. We have a game to play in a few hours and right now, with the way he’s collapsed against me, he can barely hold himself up.
He’s gripping my shirt with his hand, and he’s buried his face into my neck.
I can feel my skin getting damp from his breath and his tears.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if there’s anything to say. So I do the only thing I can at the moment and that’s just hold onto him as he continues to break down while my parents look over the entire scene.
My poor parents. We’ve blindsided them and I still have yet to give them a proper explanation as to why I never even bothered to tell them I was gay.
But I can’t focus on that right now. Ryan needs me, and he never needs anyone.
Not like this, at least. I whisper into his ear, reminding him that I love him.
“Ryan, sweetie,” my mom says. She’s suddenly standing beside us.
I never even saw her get up. She places a hand on my back and gently pushes me aside so she can take over.
“Their loss is our gain. We’ve always seen you as another one of our sons.
” She looks over Ryan’s shoulder at me and smiles.
“And now Brandon has made sure you are a permanent part of it. You always have a home with us. We’re never going to push you out or leave you. That’s a Bouchard promise.”
“It’s true,” my dad says. He stands too and the next thing I know he has me wrapped in a bear hug. “I’m sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell us.”
“I’m sorry too,” I say. “I should have said something ages ago.”
“Don’t worry about it,” my dad says as he lets go of me, then places a hand onto Ryan’s back. “It doesn’t matter. We know now and this changes nothing.”
“I think it changes quite a lot of things,” Ryan says, his voice sounding strained.
My mother pulls away from him and goes back to holding his face between her palms. “It changes everything, and all of it for the better. Welcome to the family, sweetie. Officially.”