I picked up my phone. I didn't call Marty—not yet. But I looked at the screen and thought about three and a half million dollars and a starting net. And I thought about the silence of the man who loved me and would never say so.
For the first time, I felt the full weight of being the one who was going to have to move.
14
Jamie
Luca and Theo's apartment was the epitome of what happened when a meticulous Italian-American captain and a warm, chaotic bisexual winger built a home together. It was beautiful without being cold, with clean lines and warm colors and books everywhere. Luca kept the kitchen organized, and Theo kept it stocked with snacks.
The dining table was long enough for twelve. Tonight, there were eight of us. Luca, Theo, Kieran, Nico, Eriksson, Abbott, Volkov, and me.
I was fully on—the version of myself that made everyone feel comfortable. I made sure Nico sat near Kieran, Eriksson's glass was refilled, and Volkov's stories had an appreciative audience.
Abbott was across the table. He'd arrived with Kieran. They'd been at the facility together—something about equipment. I tried not to think about the fact that Abbott was doing things with other people besides me.
That was a new development. It was small—a shift that nobody would notice except the person who had spent years calibrating their day around someone else.
Theo cooked. This always surprised people who only knew his on-ice persona, the golden-eyed winger who played with reckless joy and charm.
Off the ice, Theo Callahan was an excellent cook. He'd learned from his mother, who expressed love through food. The pasta was homemade. The sauce was his grandmother's recipe. Luca stood behind him at the stove at one point, putting his hand on the small of Theo's back—the intimacy of two people who'd stopped being careful about touching around other people.
Dinner was loud. Volkov told a story about a bar in Moscow that was (almost certainly) fictional. Eriksson described his summer in Sweden with the quiet contentment of a man who missed home without being unhappy here. Nico said something in Finnish to himself while eating the pasta, and Kieran glanced at him.
I tracked all of this. I enjoyed it. These were my people. The room was warm and the food was good. And I was doing what I did—making sure the ecosystem functioned.
Abbott caught my eye across the table once. The look lasted a second. His expression was neutral. It said nothing and meant everything.
I smiled—my automatic one.
He looked away.
Then the dishes were cleared, and Theo was pouring wine. The conversation had shifted to weekend plans and a movie someone had seen. It was the slow unwinding of people who spent their professional lives in high-pressure environments and needed spaces like this to remember they were human.
Theo leaned against Luca's shoulder, the way he'd been leaning against him for years. Theo's body had simply learned that Luca's body was his default resting position.
"I couldn't do this without you," Theo said to Luca.
It wasn't about dinner. It was about life. About everything they'd built together—the marriage, the home, the choice to be visible and together in a sport that had, not that long ago, demanded invisibility.
He said it simply, the way you say things that are so true they don't need emphasis.
Luca's mouth twitched. Which, on Luca, was everything.
I heard it from across the table.I couldn't do this without you.It wasn't directed at me. It wasn't about me.
I did all the right things. I smiled. I took a sip of wine. I said something to Eriksson about the upcoming schedule. But something inside me had gone completely still.
I couldn't do this without you.
Our found family had been building since Luca came out and Theo had loved him loud enough for the whole locker room to hear. Our irreplaceable ecosystem existed because every person in this room had chosen to be here, to be vulnerable, to let the team become something more than a roster.
Abbott was part of that ecosystem. Abbott's quiet presence—the observer in the corner, the man who saw things people didn't know they were showing—was woven into the fabric of this room as deeply as anyone's.
And he was considering leaving. Not because the fabric didn't matter, but because the professional math told him to go. And I had told him,Whatever you decide, we're good.
We're good. The most supportive, generous, insufficient sentence in the English language.
I drove home alone. Abbott had left with Kieran again. Maybe it was just the natural drift of two goalies who shared a position and a private language, or maybe Abbott was actively creating space between us and I was the only one who could feel it.
