“Yeah, you do.” Finn braced both hands on the desk and leaned in. Evan’s breath caught. His eyes widened for half a second before the mask slid back into place. “I have seen you. In the stands. In the hallways. At every bullshit booster event yourdad drags us to. You track me around every room like you cannot help it. Then you catch yourself and look away and spend the next ten minutes pretending you were not looking at all.”
Evan’s jaw tightened. “Holloway—”
“Finn.”
“This is inappropriate.”
“Probably.” Finn let the smile curve anyway. “So tell me to leave. Tell me you have not thought about putting your hands on me.”
The silence that followed answered for him. Evan’s chest rose and fell faster. Flush crept up from his collar. The pen stayed white-knuckled in his fist. Finn had imagined this moment since the gala. What Evan would look like when he finally stopped pretending. Reality beat every version he had built in his head: tendons standing out along his forearms, weight shifting forward half an inch, then correcting like his body had made a decision his brain had not approved yet.
“That is what I thought.”
“You do not know what you are—”
“I know exactly what I am doing.” Finn straightened and gave him space. “I have wanted you since that gala. I have been waiting to see if you would do something about it. You have not. So I am.”
Evan stood. His chair rolled back and cracked into the wall behind him. “This cannot happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am—” He gestured between them, frustrated and undone at the same time. “The age difference alone.”
“I know how old you are.”
“My father runs this program.”
“Your father coaches the team. You run operations.” Finn held his gaze steady. “You are not my coach. You do not pick myline. You do not decide my ice time. So if that is what is stopping you, it is not actually stopping you.”
Evan tried to speak. Failed. Tried again, and nothing came out.
“It is—” His jaw worked. “It is more complicated than—”
“I am not asking you to marry me. I am asking you to stop pretending you do not want me.”
“Finn.” His name came out rough, scraped raw like it had cost something to say. “I cannot. I am not—this is not something I can just—”
“Tell me you do not want me, and I will walk out that door right now. I will never bring it up again.”
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Distant bass from someone’s speaker thumped down the hall, muffled and rhythmic, counting seconds. Evan’s throat worked. His mouth pressed into a line, then loosened. He looked everywhere except at Finn: the wall, the window, the carpet. Before he dragged his gaze back, like it physically hurt.
“I cannot tell you that.” Barely above a whisper.
Finn’s throat locked. His ribs squeezed around the breath he had forgotten to release. For one second, the room narrowed to the two of them and the hum of the lights and the pen that had rolled off the desk at some point and now lay on the floor between them like punctuation.
“Then stop running. I am right here. All you have to do is reach.”
Finn turned and walked out. He gave Evan time to stop him. Evan did not. At the threshold, Finn glanced back. Evan stayed rooted behind the desk, hands empty at his sides now, chest moving too fast, staring at the space Finn had just left like it had left a mark on the air.
It looked very good on him.
“Think about it. You know where to find me.”
Finn stepped into the empty hallway and stopped just for a second, back against cool cinder block, out of sight. His pulse hammered in his ears. Palms slick against the wall. He breathed through it. Then he pushed off and kept walking, blood singing. He did not look back again.
* * *
Coming out had been fine. That was the word everyone used when they did not want to call it what it was: a recalibration. Hayes had been the first teammate to say anything. He pulled Finn aside after practice and delivered a “cool man, thanks for telling us” with the earnest sincerity of someone who genuinely meant it and had no idea what to do with the information. The rest of the team followed Hayes’s lead. A lot of “cool man” and careful eye contact. A few weeks where everyone seemed to be workshopping how to act normal around the guy who liked guys and girls in equal measure.
