I looked at him. Theo Callahan, the man who'd come out publicly during his rookie year and somehow made it look effortless. Who'd fallen in love with his captain and navigated the media storm—and the team dynamics and the league politics—and emerged on the other side engaged and happy, apparently bulletproof.
I wanted to ask him how.How do you let yourself want something when wanting has only ever been the prelude to losing?
"How did you know?" I asked instead.
Theo's expression shifted. Not surprise, recognition. He'd been expecting this question, or one like it. "Know what?"
"With Luca. How did you know it was worth the risk?"
He leaned back against the wall. His dimples disappeared for once, his face settling into something more serious. "I didn't. That's the point. You don't get to know in advance. You just, you feel it, and you decide whether the feeling is worth being terrified."
"And if it goes wrong?"
"Then it goes wrong, and you survive it, because you've survived worse." He met my eyes. "You've survived a hell of a lot worse, Nico."
My throat tightened. "It's complicated."
"It's always complicated. Luca was my captain, my mentor, and closeted for sixteen years. He had a contract that could've been voided. He had a father in the Hall of Fame who didn't know his son was gay. Complicated is just the word people use when they're scared."
"I'm not scared."
Theo smiled. It was gentler than his usual grin, quieter and more knowing. "You're terrified. And so is he, by the way. I watched him on the bus today, and he was staring at the back of your head for two hours while pretending to watch film on his laptop."
Something cracked in my chest. "He has?"
"The man's a mess. He's just better at hiding it than you are, because goalies are freaks who process everything internally." Theo leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Look, I'm not going to pretend I know what's going on between you two. It's not my business. But I know what it looks like when someone's trying to talk themselves out of something good because they think they don't deserve it."
The words landed in the center of my chest and dug in.
"The people who matter won't let you ruin it alone," Theo said. "That's all I'm saying."
He stood, grabbed his gear bag, and paused at the door. "Also, if you hurt Walsh, Luca will literally murder you."
He flashed his dimples and left.
I sat in the empty equipment room and thought about what Theo had said.So is he, by the way. He was staring at the back of your head for two hours.
The bus ride home was overnight. I found my seat, row eleven, window side. Two rows ahead, Kieran sat with Abbott, their heads bent over a tablet.
Just before the lights dimmed for the drive, Kieran turned in his seat. His eyes found mine across the dark bus. The look lasted two seconds, maybe three. Long enough to say everything that daylight and the presence of twenty-two teammates wouldn't let him say out loud.
I'm not retreating. I'm waiting.
I turned toward the window and pressed my forehead against the cold glass and let myself feel, for the first time in a year, the terrifying, annihilating hope that I might be allowed to keep something.
13
KIERAN
We beat Philadelphia 4-2 on the last night of the road trip, and the bus ride home was that particular kind of loud that only happens when a team has swept a four-game swing. Someone had connected a speaker to their phone and was playing some wild music. Garrett was doing an impression of the Philly coach's post-game press conference that had the back of the bus in stitches. Volkov was asleep with his mouth open, his head on Eriksson's shoulder—Eriksson too polite or too Swedish to move.
I sat in my usual seat, three rows from the front, and watched my save footage on my tablet. Or tried to. My eyes kept drifting to the reflection in the dark window, specifically, to the seat eleven rows back where Nico sat with his earbuds in and his head against the glass.
We hadn't touched since Detroit. Four days of games and bus rides and hotel rooms where we'd kept the space that daylight required. But every time I looked at him, across the locker room,through the glass during warm-ups, in the mirror of our shared hotel bathroom, the memory of the kiss reassembled itself. The sound he'd made against my mouth. The heat of his fingers through my shirt. The wordhomesitting between us like a fuse waiting for a match.
Abbott shifted beside me, adjusting his neck pillow. "You're not watching film," he observed.
"I'm watching film."
