And neither of us knew how to make that enough.
The game that night was ugly.
Seattle came out hard and fast, and we were flat from the first drop of the puck. Back-to-backs were always tough—the body doesn’t recover fully in twenty-four hours—but this was worse than usual. We looked disconnected, sluggish, half a step behind on every play.
I was a full step behind.
The turnover came midway through the second period. I had the puck behind our net and should have made a simple pass to Étienne at the blue line. But I hesitated, second-guessing, and their forward read it perfectly. He stepped into the passing lane, picked off the puck, and fed it across to his teammate in the slot.
2–0 Seattle.
Entirely my fault.
“Shake it off,” Kinnunen said as we skated back for the faceoff. But I couldn’t shake it off. That turnover was the kind of mistake I never made. The kind of mental error that came from being completely unfocused. Unprofessional.
We lost 4–1. One of our worst games of the season.
The atmosphere was grim in the locker room. Coach kept his postgame talk short. “Tough back-to-back. Get some rest. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”
I showered quickly, trying to shake off the disaster of the game. By the time I got back to my stall, Étienne was already there, sitting on the bench with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
He looked up when I approached, and I saw my own exhaustion reflected in his eyes.
I sat down heavily beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. Around us, the dressing room was subdued—guys packing up quietly, a few muttered conversations about the loss, but mostly just the sounds of zippers and bags being shuffled.
“You played like I felt,” Étienne said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. He wasn’t looking at me, just staring straight ahead. “Like you didn’t sleep.”
“I didn’t.”
“Me neither.”
“I’m sorry about tonight. That turnover?—”
“Don’t.” He glanced around quickly, making sure no one was close enough to overhear, then leaned in slightly. “Everyone has bad games.”
“This one was on me.”
“It was on both of us. We were both off.” His knee pressed against mine for just a second—brief contact that could have been accidental but wasn’t. “You know why.”
Ididknow. We’d both played poorly, distracted by the weight of everything unsaid, by the restless night, by the conversation we’d had in his hotel room that had resolved nothing.
This was what hiding did—it didn’t just suffocate us emotionally, it bled into our performance, our jobs, everything.
Kinnunen walked past, and we both went quiet, shifting apart slightly. He nodded at us but kept moving toward the door.
When he was gone, I stood and dressed. Étienne stood too, and grabbed his bag.
I lay in bed that night, alone in my too-quiet room, and let my mind work through the problem methodically.
Option one: keep hiding, keep pretending, keep living the way we’d been living.
Result: Étienne slowly breaks, our relationship deteriorates, eventually he leaves—not because he doesn’t love me, but because he can’t survive the hiding. I lose him.
Option two: come out, face the consequences.
Result: unknown. Could lose everything. Could lose my family, his father, each other if they trade him, or… we could find a way forward. We could build something real.
The problem was that option two had too many variables. Too many unknowns. And I’d spent seventeen years minimizing risk, calculating odds, making the safe choice.
