Finn was on his feet before he could think, dragging the back of his hand across his lips, spinning to face the projection screen. Behind him, the rasp of fabric, a zipper, a belt buckle, the sound of a man putting himself back together in the space of three heartbeats. Finn gripped the back of the chair in front of him, knuckles white, lungs too loud in the room.
The door opened.
“Evan?” Coach Tremblay’s voice. “You in here?”
“Yeah.” Almost level. “Just checking the projector. Holloway was reviewing tape.”
Finn kept his eyes on the footage. The same cycling play. His heart slammed against his ribs, his lips swollen, the taste of Evan on his tongue.
“Little late for that.” A step into the room. “Everything okay?”
“Fine. Just finishing up.” Evan’s voice had gone perfectly even, the professional register snapping back between one breath and the next. “I’ll walk out with you.”
A pause. The back of Finn’s neck prickled. He kept himself measured, his shoulders relaxed, his fists loose at his sides even though the tendons in his forearms were pulled wire-tight.
“Holloway.”
Finn could track Coach Tremblay’s attention the way he tracked a defenseman on the ice: where the weight shifted, where the focus landed, the half-second delay before the next play. Right now that attention was bouncing between Finn and the room and Evan and back, and Finn stood perfectly, absolutely, bone-deep motionless and waited for it to pass.
“Don’t stay too late.”
“Yes, sir.” Even. Measured. More than Finn had expected from himself.
Behind him: fabric rustling, a tie being straightened, the small tug of someone putting armor back on. Then Evan’s voice, lower than it needed to be.
“I should go.”
Evan went. Finn listened to both sets of footsteps fade down the hallway, his father’s stride even, Evan’s a half-beat behind. The building went still around him.
The projector hummed. The St. Cloud penalty kill was cycling on the screen, the same play Finn had been not-watching forover an hour, and it occurred to him that he had no idea what the score of that game had been.
Finn was aching behind his zipper and his heart was hammering and his lips tasted like Evan, salt and skin. He pressed the heel of his hand against himself once, breathed through it, and let it go. The carpet had left raw spots on his knees. He could feel them through his jeans, and he pressed his thumb into one and held it because the sting kept his brain from replaying the sound Evan had made when Finn pulled him forward by the hip. That sound, wrecked and real, was nothing like the voice that had snapped back into place thirty seconds later when Coach Tremblay walked in.
That was the part Finn was going to think about. Not Evan kissing him. Not Evan’s body responding to every touch like it had been starving for years and forgot how to pretend otherwise. The part that mattered was how fast the mask went back on. How seamlessly Evan had become the director of hockey operations in the time it took to zip his pants and straighten his collar. Holloway was reviewing tape. Like Finn was a line item on a facilities checklist.
Finn sat down and let his head drop back against the headrest and stared at the ceiling tiles, the fluorescent panel above him unlit, the only light the blue-white glow from the screen. His breathing slowed. His heart didn’t.
Finn wasn’t angry. He understood the reflex, understood it better than Evan probably thought he did, because Finn had spent years watching people recalibrate around his sexuality, and he knew what it looked like when someone shoved part of themselves into a drawer because the room wasn’t safe. He understood it. But understanding didn’t make it hurt less, the speed of that transformation, the completeness of it.
Finn pulled out his phone and typed: That was a beginning. You know it was.
He sat with it for a second, rereading, thumb over the send button. Then he hit it, because Finn Holloway did not lose, and because Evan Tremblay needed to know that the man who’d been on his knees ten minutes ago was the same man who was going to keep showing up, keep pushing, keep being impossible until Evan stopped running long enough to realize he didn’t want to run anymore.
Finn picked up his bag, killed the projector, and walked out into the hallway where Evan Tremblay had straightened his tie and pretended nothing had happened.
4
EVAN
Evan didn’t last long.
He spent days pretending the film room hadn’t happened. Walking through the facility like his skin wasn’t buzzing, like he couldn’t conjure the taste of Finn’s lips by closing his eyes. He went to work. Answered emails. Sat through meetings with his father and nodded at the right moments and said the right things while his brain played the same three seconds on repeat: Finn’s fingers fisting in his shirt, Finn’s voice sayingyou like itlike it was that simple.
The discipline held for exactly as long as Evan didn’t have to see Finn in person. Then practice let out on a Tuesday afternoon and Finn came down the hallway in sweats with his bag over his shoulder, flushed from the ice, and their eyes met for two seconds that Evan felt in every joint of his spine. Finn didn’t smile. Didn’t stop. Just held the look and kept walking, and that was worse than a smile would have been, because a smileEvan could have written off as performance. The look was just Finn being certain, the way Finn was always certain, and Evan had stood in the hallway afterward staring at the fire exit sign and wondering at what point during those two seconds he had stopped breathing.
He went home. Ate dinner at the kitchen table. Graded his own composure on a scale of one to ten and gave himself a generous six.
You left a mark on my neck.
