“No way, son,” Coach Chris says, and pats Connor on the back. “You earned this for sure.” He looks at the rest of us. “Hurry up and get cleaned up! Press is waiting to be let inside.”
“Ugh…” we all groan in unison.
“I know. I know,” Coach says. “You’ve got five minutes until they descend.”
Or less, it would seem. The door opens. But it’s not the press that comes inside. It’s worse. Connor Kennedy Sr is pushing his way through the door, making a beeline towards his son. He’s smiling, but it looks fake and calculating with whatever mind game he’s playing. “Now that’s what I like to see out of my boy!”
Connor recoils as his father approaches and attempts to wrap his arms around his son.The air in the room has gotten thick. His arrival has smothered the joviality we were all enjoying.
Bouchard looks up at me from where he’s sitting, untying his giant shin pads from his skates. He’s not the only one who’s picked up on the tension, though. Everyone seems to be trying to busy themselves with something more interesting in their surrounding areas.
From across the room, I lock eyes with Connor. He’s looking at me over his father’s shoulder. My heart rate rises, and I move to come near him. He stops me by subtly shaking his head. Standing at my stall, I keep an eye on him as I towel dry the sweat from my hair.
You can practically hear a pin drop in this room with how silent it has gotten aside from Connor and his father talking. The arrival of Connor Sr sucked all the life out of it. Either he doesn’t notice, or he doesn’t care. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter as he’s making a big show of congratulating Connor on his play and ignoring everyone else in the room.
Yes, Connor played his heart out. We all saw it and we all agree. Watching him play tonight was a thing of beauty. He was unstoppable. He was also unselfish. On each play, when possible, he would line people up and pass the puck, creating opportunities for Franklin, Nichols, and Calhoun to score their own goals. I mean, this game wasn’t even close. We blew Finland off the ice with a final score of six to one. That doesn’t mean it was easy. Finland has a lot of talented players, four of which play in theNHL with us, but they were no match for Connor in his fury tonight.
Had they met us on another day, they might have stood a better chance. But Connor was on a mission to prove himself during this game and nothing was going to stop him.
I look back at him again. He’s listening to his father, but his eyes have gone hard, and his lips are pressed tight. It kills me to not be able to pull him away. But this is not my fight. This is the one area I can’t protect him, even though that’s all I want to do. That said, he does seem to be doing fine on his own. The confidence of winning this game is giving him a boost. He was obviously propelled to fight his father on the ice tonight even though technically, Connor Sr wasn’t who we were playing against. But Connor sure as hell skated like he was, and he’s carrying that energy over into the locker room now. His shoulders are back, and his jaw is set, ready to bite back at anything negative his father may have to say about his play or the team.
I get it. Well, not entirely. I’ve never had to skate against my dad’s assumptions of me, but I have had to skate against Connor’s father’s. The man has never once wanted me to win. Not now, and not when he first laid eyes on me when I was sixteen.
“Marshal.” Coach grabs my attention. I glance up from my seat where I’m unlacing my skates. He looks frustrated. “In my office.”
Connor looks towards Coach, then back to me. I shrug at him. As I walk past, I catch the look on his father’s face. He grins like the bully he is, and his eyes are full of disdain. I don’t know what Coach is about to say, but I can guarantee whatever it is, Connor Sr has something to do with it.
“Close the door and take a seat, Gavin,” Coach says from where he’s now sitting behind his desk.
“If it’s bad news, I’d rather stand.”
He leans back in his chair with his lips pressed tight as he considers me. He gestures for me to sit down. I do.
“It’s not bad news to me,” he says. “But just because I don’tcare, that doesn’t mean you might not still feel some sort of way about this.”His tone is tired and resigned.
“Ahh,” I say, and let out a breath, deflating like a balloon. “So this is it. I’ve been outed. And there’s no need for me to guess by who.” However, I am shocked Connor Sr would go this route since it was his son who he found out I was sleeping with. This seems like a risk. It couldn’t have been a hasty decision on his part. It’s an obviously calculated move. Connor Sr doesn’t make moves he can’t win. However I react to this has to be just as calculated. He wants me to act hastily. He wants me to react in a way that will cause me to be kicked off the team and shipped back to Alaska, bypassing even going back to Buffalo. He’s been hand delivered what he wants. A way to bait me into doing something that would finally get me kicked not just off this team but out of the league as well. He’s counting on me making a brash move.
I take a deep breath. So, what is the play here? How do I fight back without losing Connor and what I’ve worked my entire life for?
“There’s no official source,” Coach says, eyeing the shut door. Or, more accurately, attempting to stare a hole through the steel at who’s on the other side of that closed door. “It was leaked moments ago to the press anonymously.”
“And what exactly did this anonymous source say?”
“Only that you were caught naked in bed with another man you snuck into the dorms and into your room.”
I tip my ear towards my shoulder. “Well, that’s a lie.”
“No shit,” Coach says, and I realize he knows the truth.
“So, what am I looking at here, as far as repercussions go?”
He can’t answer right away because there’s the sound of commotion ringing out on the other side of the closed door behind us. He gets up from his seat and locks the door. Pausing next to me on his way back to his desk, he pats me twice on the shoulder, then sits back down in his seat with a heavy sigh. “As far as I’m concerned, there are no repercussions. Not on the team, at least. And if any of your teammates, though I sincerely doubt they will asmost of them are terrified of you, give you shit about this, they will have to deal with me.”
“I don’t give a shit what my teammates say about me on this.” There’s only one teammate who I’m concerned for right now anyway, and there is no way he’s going to have an issue with me being gay. For obvious reasons.
Coach laughs. “I didn’t suspect you would.”
“But seriously, Coach, what is the fallout going to be? Thisanonymoussource didn’t do this for nothing.”
