Chapter Seventeen #2
Howie glared at the whole room in mutinous silence as he wrapped his entire stick in the stuff from top to bottom.
Chris wished he could talk to Howie more than ever, to share his perspective on it, to tell Howie he got it now.
He understood why Howie needed community so badly and wanted to let him know how sorry he was for his part in Howie not having it.
But Howie shouldered past him onto the ice without so much as their customary handshake.
He played well, at least. Maybe it was because of the rainbow tape job for warm-ups, maybe because of sheer determination not to repeat the benching in Montreal. But Howie’s passes connected better, and after a slick assist from Mooney, he even got a goal in the second period.
They squeaked out a narrow 3–2 win thanks to Ottawa getting a delay-of-game penalty, letting Tom score off Luca’s pass on the power play to equalize. The last one of the night was Chris’s.
Since it was the game-winner, Kayleigh put him on media.
Normally, Chris hated media. He’d seen enough memes of himself taking reporters too literally or not understanding their questions on hockey fan pages to last a lifetime.
Tonight, he carried the buoyant feeling of realizing Pride Night was for him as much as for Howie, for Jax, for Tom, and for Luca.
He managed all the usual statements, the “played the full sixty minutes” and the “got pucks in deep.” He told the reporters Nilsson had a tough job and big shoes to fill, and he had done great tonight, so they were looking forward to good things from him.
The last question went to Olivia Starling. “Chris, a lot of the Sea Lions participated in tonight’s Pride Night here in Ottawa. Is that a message you support?”
She’d given him an easy one. “Yeah, for sure. LGBTQIA-plus rights are human rights, you know?”
“Wow. Do you think it’s appropriate for athletes to make such political statements?”
Chris blinked. Had he said anything dumb?
No, he’d said the most innocuous, obviously true thing he could.
He looked over to Kayleigh, who made a cutting motion across her throat.
But she wasn’t trustworthy, all she wanted were clicks, and Chris knew he hadn’t said anything wrong.
If Howie could stand up for what he believed in with the media, then so could Chris.
“I don’t think it should be political to treat everyone well,” Chris said. “Also, if people cared about athletes making statements about LGBTQIA-plus rights, all those guys who refused to play in Pride jerseys a couple years ago for religious reasons or whatever should have gotten fined.”
“Okay, we’re out of time for tonight!” Kayleigh said brightly and began shooing the reporters out of the room.
As Chris returned to his stall, Howie caught his eye and nodded at him.
It wasn’t much, but it was better than silence.
He rooted around in his bag for his shower things.
Leaning in close, Luca muttered in Italian, “I am going to suck your dick for that.”
Oh, Chris wanted to feel Luca’s perfect lips on him again. But… “I thought you wanted me to fuck you. Tomorrow is an off day.”
Luca’s eyes went half-lidded. “New rule. You cannot talk dirty to me in Italian in the locker room.”
Chris would live. He could talk dirty to Luca in Italian in so many other places. “What about French?”
“If you give me some sort of Pavlovian reaction to the French language, my family might disown me.”
“Challenge accepted.”
“Kids, quit flirting! We have a plane to catch!” Jax called.
Given he was three years younger than Jax and now the same rank on the team, Chris wanted to say he would flirt wherever and whenever he wanted, but it was neither the time nor the place. He went for the shower and imagined a snappy comeback instead.
Their flight home left late after the game.
It had been a long couple of days, and Chris was exhausted.
He meant to check in with his parents, make sure they weren’t taking everything he said too hard.
He also hadn’t checked the team Instagram since before he and Luca had gotten together.
People had probably left a lot of comments on his interview tonight already.
But his phone only had 2 percent battery, and it had put itself into energy-saving mode.
Chris could have charged it and checked, but he knew what he’d said was true. So what if strangers online didn’t?
He could have also pulled out his book, but the few pages he’d managed of Anna Karenina so far had required a lot of concentration, and he didn’t feel up for that right now.
It had a killer first line—Matty was right—but Chris needed more of an attention span to tackle the rest. Instead, he balled up his sweatshirt against the window and passed right out.
He woke up somewhere over Oregon and found Luca chatting with Hayes of all people.
Chris stayed in a hazy, drowsy state through landing and the bus ride to the arena. He forced himself into wakefulness for the drive home, but as soon as he and Luca got there, after a perfunctory shower to wash off the plane smell, they crashed in Chris’s bed completely nude.
They woke to find the weak winter midday sun at its peak, warming up the room. Sunlight dappled strips of light across Luca’s smooth skin. He stretched, revealing the full length of his toned abdomen. Chris splayed a hand out across it.
Luca flexed his abs.
It was such a douchey move that Chris couldn’t help but laugh, and then Luca laughed, too, his stomach going soft again under Chris’s touch.
“You’re so pretty,” Chris said.
“I like when you call me that.”
Chris snorted. He loved the man, but Luca was just the tiniest bit conceited.
“No, I mean…” Luca rolled onto his side and propped up on his elbow. “I used to hate being called pretty.”
“Why?” People mostly called Chris stupid. He’d love to get “pretty” instead.
“My team in Juniors…” Luca trailed his fingertips up Chris’s side, whispering along his ribs.
Chris bit his lip to keep from laughing at the soft touch.
It tickled, but Luca seemed serious. “I told you they didn’t like me very much, right?
‘Pretty boy’ was one of the nicer things they said. They also used ‘fag’ and ‘homo.’”
Chris caught Luca’s hand in his and drew it up to press a kiss to the back of it. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen. My English was—” Luca made a face. “—so-so. They made fun of that, as well. But it is not hard to understand tone of voice or having to sit alone on every road trip in the bus.”
“Assholes.”
“Yes.”
“So you went home to Italy before the draft.”
Luca nodded. “My agent thought I should stick it out, but I had finished high school, and my parents told me to come home.”
“Was it any better in Italy?”
Rolling onto his back, Luca sighed at the ceiling.
“I don’t know. Maybe it would have been, but I was not ready to give anyone a chance.
I thought, better to go home and get a degree while I play since there is probably no future in hockey anyway, and I treated my team like people I would not see again. ”
“Can’t believe I’m dating a college boy,” Chris teased. “Will your parents be disappointed I’m so dumb?”
Luca slapped his chest hard enough to sting. “You are not dumb.”
“Uh-huh, sure. But then you went in the second round of the draft, and you still decided to stay in Italy?”
Luca shrugged, loose and easy. “I thought I had better finish the degree I started. There was no way I would make the NHL out of training camp.”
“AHL pays well too.”
“Yes. But I think it is good I went home. If I had been here right after, I would have been so angry and so…how do you say…self-righteous? I would not have been good for the team. I needed to grow up.”
Chris made a face. “The guys on the Winnipeg Windmills needed to grow the fuck up.”
“Well, yes. But so did I. I thought I liked who I was, you know, before this year. I thought other hockey players might not respect my sexuality, but I knew, and that made me superior.” Luca smiled, but it looked a little sad.
“But I was angry and ashamed of myself for hiding, and I couldn’t see it yet. ”
The silent implication that he could see it now, that he didn’t feel the same way because of Chris, warmed Chris from the tips of his toes to the tops of his ears. “I wish you’d been drafted to Montreal in Juniors. Then we would have met earlier.”
Luca rolled over again, straight into Chris, nestling against him. “I don’t think I would have been ready for you then.”
“I would have waited.”
Aghast, Luca stared at him. “You cannot say these things.”
“Why not?”
“I…” Luca opened his mouth and then closed it again, at a loss for words. “You…”
“Does it make you feel things again?” Chris tickled down Luca’s sides, making him squirm.
“Yes, damn it.” Luca poked at Chris. “It’s too early for emotions.”
Instead of pointing out Luca was the one who had started a drawn-out discussion of his tragic past, Chris kissed him. Then, he said, “It’s noon.”
“Hm.” Luca kissed Chris again, a little longer. “Are you hungry?”
Chris took stock. They’d gotten breakfast on the plane, and the idea of leaving the bedroom wasn’t appealing. “Not really. You?”
In one smooth move, Luca pushed Chris over and climbed onto his hips. “Not at all. How are you feeling?”
“Um. Good?”
“I mean,” Luca said, kissing down the side of Chris’s neck, “are you interested in me riding your cock?”
“Right now?”
“Well, I would need some stretching first. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but it is rather large.”
“You might have said something.”
Luca groped behind himself to give Chris’s cock a squeeze. “So? Are you in the mood? Or rather not?”
Chris pushed up a little into Luca’s grip. He didn’t hate the idea, but he wasn’t raring to go either. “We can try? I want to get you off. Don’t know if I’ll get there myself.”
“I can work with that,” Luca assured him.