Chapter Sixteen #2
What was more, Chris deserved Luca being open with him.
Being trusting. Letting himself feel things instead of trying to bury them and pretending a series of romantic gestures were only favors between roommates.
Sure, literally anyone else on the planet would have recognized the dates for what they were.
But Luca had been too stubborn, and Chris didn’t process attraction and love the same way Luca did.
He also had terribly low self-esteem—or at least he used to—so it was no wonder he hadn’t realized.
The obliviousness charmed Luca as much as it frustrated him. Chris recognized love in other people at a hundred paces, or he wouldn’t have spent the last year as the team’s secret keeper. Luca supposed it was different when he was the one being loved.
Ultimately, last night had taught him the same lesson Lindy had been trying to impart all season, and Luca was man enough to admit he felt closer to the team and better on the ice the more he let himself open up.
Before, his motivation had been to help Chris and to make his life better.
Now, Luca was forced to accept he’d made his own life better as well.
So, he would begin as he meant to continue.
Luca poked Howie in the side.
Howie swatted him away.
Luca poked him again.
“What?” Howie snapped, pulling his earbuds out.
“Are you going to ignore us forever?”
Howie shrugged. “I might. What’s it to you? You hate me anyway.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Well, you sure as fuck don’t like me.”
Luca winced. He knew he’d been lying to himself about his own emotional attachment to the team, but he hadn’t considered how his behavior would read to others. He couldn’t fault Howie for assuming Luca’s dislike was authentic. “I don’t like anyone. It is a character flaw I am working on.”
That drew a half smile from Howie, though it vanished as soon as he caught Luca smiling back. “What do you want?”
“I want you to stop ignoring everyone. It’s bad for the team.”
“Yeah, well, it’s good for me.”
“No, it isn’t. You’re miserable, and your hockey has been shit.”
Howie scoffed. “Thanks for going easy on me. Jesus.”
Being more open didn’t have to mean being nice, did it? Luca took in the dark circles under Howie’s eyes, the toothpaste smear by his lips no one had informed him of. “You know Chris didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Looking out the window, Howie said, “Do you understand how humiliating it was? I told him all this shit about me, and he acted as if he was on my side or whatever, and then I find out half the team is queer, and they never bothered to tell me. And Breezy knew all about it.”
“He felt he could not share your secrets or share theirs. He didn’t want to out anyone. And he yelled at them all after you left.”
“He did not.”
Luca raised an eyebrow.
Howie didn’t respond, but he didn’t put his earbuds in again for the last ten minutes of the bus ride. It was a start.
More heartening still, Mooney gave Luca a half nod as they got off the bus, having witnessed some part of their exchange.
Luca had hoped to sit with Chris on the plane and perhaps catch a nap on his shoulder.
(People did it all the time; it wouldn’t be suspicious.) But Jax herded them into a four-way seat with Tom before Luca could put his plan into action.
Chris, pretending not to have noticed anything amiss, pulled out a book.
“Seriously?” Jax asked, unimpressed by the thick tome. “No way you’re actually reading that.”
Chris studied the back cover of Anna Karenina. “My brother recommended it. Sort of. Thought I would give it a try.”
“Well, not today. We’re going to talk,” Jax said as soon as the plane’s engine roared loud enough that their conversation wouldn’t be audible to everyone on board.
“Okay,” Chris said.
Jax and Tom traded a look.
“We owe you an apology,” Tom said.
“No, I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
Luca elbowed him.
“Ah! Why are your elbows so pointy?”
“To make up for how short I am,” Luca told him. “You were well within your rights to be upset. It was an upsetting situation.”
“Okay, but I shouldn’t have pressured Tom and Jax to do anything they weren’t ready for just to make things less awkward for me.”
Jax scrunched up his nose. “Very sweet of you, but if we weren’t ready, then we shouldn’t have had everyone over and been so obvious in front of them. We made a decision not to care about the consequences, and then the whole thing with Dmitriyev and Howie kind of…”
“Showed us some consequences we hadn’t considered,” Tom finished when Jax trailed off.
“But we still want you to take the A.”
Chris sighed.
Tom leaned forward, his elbows on the plastic table. “We will tell the team. The whole team, Russians included. You’re right. We put you in an untenable situation if we want you to keep filling your role as the guy who keeps everyone together. And we do.”
“You don’t have to,” Chris said. “I was going through some of my own stuff. It made me overreact. It’s always your decision, and I’d never take that from you.”
His leg pressed against Luca’s under the table, and Luca pressed back.
“Anything we should worry about?” Jax asked. “Because you’re our friend, not because of the team.”
Chris shook his head. “Just…family stuff.”
“Everything okay?”
“It is now.”
Luca couldn’t stop the proud smile from spreading across his face if he tried.
“Oh?”
Chris blushed again. The bloom of color on his pale skin made Luca remember how he looked last night when he came, all flushed and panting.
His days of having to suppress his libido in public had not come to an end, and so long as he had Chris to look at to his heart’s content, Luca doubted they ever would.
“We had a big talk at dinner last night. I’ve been seeing Michelle—you know, the therapist—and we talked about setting boundaries and stuff.
It was…really good. I was always stuck in the middle and trying to make sure everyone got along at home.
Now I’m an adult…I don’t know… I guess having to do the same thing for the team hit a nerve I didn’t know I had. ”
Jax nodded in understanding. “You can love your family to bits and wish they hadn’t made you grow up so fast at the same time.”
Tom bumped his shoulder against Jax’s and left it there the same way Chris had done to Luca with his leg.
The sight filled Luca’s stomach with a strange warmth at having this in common with other people on the team.
He’d thought he would stay lonely his whole career, always the odd man out, unable to be honest with his teammates or with his girlfriends.
Now, he wondered if everyone felt the same growing up, adrift and alone until they found their place in the world.
“We will tell the team,” Tom repeated. “It’s time. Enough people know now anyway, so it’s not tenable to keep it a secret, and we’d rather it happen this way than through rumors. We were thinking before the Christmas break, so everyone has a few days to process.”
“Sounds good.”
“So…” Jax drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “You’ll take the A?”
Chris sighed and looked between all of them. “I think I’m ready. But what about Luca?”
Luca startled. “What about me?”
“I know the coaches offered it to you too. Phil asked me first.”
“And I said no.”
Chris shook his head. “You’ve been so good with the guys this season though. And I wouldn’t feel half as confident as I do now without…everything you’ve done for me.”
“That was all you.”
“Nuh-uh.”
Across the aisle, Hayes cleared his throat and put down his phone. Mercifully, no one else in their section was paying attention; Vanderbilt, Nieminen, and Gustafsson all had headphones on. “Give it to them both.”
“What? No!” Chris shrank back in his seat as if the thought menaced him physically.
“Yeah, no,” Jax agreed. “We’re not taking your A.”
“Oh, come on,” Hayes said. “Half the team barely talks to me.”
“There are twenty-three guys on the team,” Tom said. “Only four of us had reason to avoid you, and you’ve been much cooler about—” He waved his hand to indicate the concept of homosexuality. “—than I expected.”
“Thanks, I’m not a dinosaur. I’ve met—” Hayes looked around as if unwilling to say the words “gay people” for fear of summoning a Pride parade on a crowded plane midair. Instead, he repeated the hand wave. “—before. But chances are, I’ll be off the team by this weekend.”
Luca frowned. “Why?”
“We need a decent goalie. I’m the weakest link here in terms of how much cap space I take up and how little I’ve been producing. Adding to which a member of the coaching staff has every reason to want me gone.”
“Phil doesn’t want you gone.” Tom said it so immediately and dismissively Luca wondered if they’d talked about it. “Either way, no one is taking away your A as long as you’re here.”
“I don’t want it,” Luca tried.
“It’s such a good career move for you though,” Chris said, as if it wasn’t the exact same good career move for him. “Anyway, I’m way too soft a touch. Leadership needs guys who can get shit done.”
“Leadership needs both,” Jax corrected.
“So why don’t we share it?” Luca blurted out before he could reconsider. Once he’d said it, though, he liked the idea. “Make one of us the A for home games and the other for when we’re away.”
“Oooh, Luca should get it for away games. He’s great at finding things to do on the road,” Chris enthused, giving Luca a nightmarish flash forward of the whole team on an educational tour down the Chicago River.
“Deal,” Jax said. “Done. No take backs.”
“You just want someone else to be fine master,” Tom accused.
“Yup.”
In his entire time as fine master—a role he’d been given when he joined the team over a year ago—Jax had not exacted a single fine from anyone for anything.
Luca considered. He could be a more open, kind, and caring version of himself and also force the team to cough up money when they were being obnoxious. That could work. “I’ll do it,” he said. “The proceeds can go to your shelter.”