“Eyes on me.”
Finn looked at him. Evan’s face in the amber light, his collar loosened, his chest heaving, his thumb pressing to the hinge of Finn’s jaw. Finn stroked faster, his hips rocking up into his own fist, his breath going ragged, and Evan watched every second of it. Evan’s other palm went to Finn’s hair, gripped, pulled his head so his throat was exposed, and the tug sent a bolt of heat straight through Finn’s gut.
“Come for me. Now.”
Finn came. His whole body seized, his spine arching off the daybed, spilling over his own fist and onto his stomach, Evan’s grip in his hair and on his jaw the only things holding him to the earth. The noise he made had Evan’s name somewhere in the middle of it.
Evan caught him when he pitched forward. Pulled him to his chest, Finn’s face pressed to Evan’s shirt, Evan’s palm at the nape of his neck. Finn was shaking. Not from cold. From the overload of having been the center of two people’s attention and then one person’s command, and the one person was Evan, who had just saidcome for mein a voice that Finn was going to hear every time he closed his attention for the rest of his life.
A staff member in a gray shirt appeared at the curtain with a warm towel and a glass of water. Efficient, discreet, no eye contact longer than necessary. Evan took both, cleaned Finn with the towel, held the water to his lips. Finn drank. Evan’s fingers stayed in his hair the whole time.
No names exchanged.
Finn’s apartment. The couch. Both of them changed into T-shirts and sweats, the drive home having been silent in the goodway, Finn’s palm on the console between them and Evan’s pinky hooked over his.
The TV was off. The apartment was dim, just the kitchen light spilling through the doorway. Finn’s shoulder was warm at Evan’s and his pulse had finally slowed and he was scared.
Scared of this. The couch. The silence. Evan’s pinky hooked over his in the truck. The way Evan had held the water to his lips and cleaned him with a towel and hadn’t said a word about it afterward because the care was just there, embedded, not performed.
Finn had chased Evan. Had been patient and stubborn and certain. Had told himself that if he could just get Evan to stop running, everything would fall into place.
He had not accounted for the part where he got what he wanted and it terrified him.
The chase had been safe. That was the thing Finn hadn’t understood until right now, sitting on this couch with Evan’s shoulder warm at his. Chasing someone meant you couldn’t lose them, because you never had them. You could want from a distance forever and the worst that happened was the distance stayed. But Evan’s pinky had been hooked over his in the truck, and Evan had held water to his lips, and Evan had saidcome for mewith his thumb pressing Finn’s face up, and now Finn had something that could be taken away. Evan could wake up guarded again. Could decide the risk was too high, the gap too wide, the program too important. Could go back to the hallway nods and the professional voice, and Finn would be standing on the other side of a line that had been open and was now closed, and the difference between that and never having the line open at all was the difference between missing something and mourning it.
Finn had never been scared of losing anyone before. Not Ashley, not the guy from last spring, not any of the hookups orthe people who had passed through his life and left no mark. He had been the one who left. He had been the one who decided when it was over. He had never sat on a couch next to someone and known how much it would cost to lose them. And he did not like it.
“I don’t want to be a secret,” Finn said to the dim apartment, not looking at Evan, his voice low enough that he could pretend he hadn’t said it if Evan didn’t respond.
Evan’s palm found Finn’s knee. Warm, each individual finger pressing through the fabric of his sweats.
“It doesn’t mean anything.” Evan’s voice was low. “That’s the problem.”
Finn turned his head and looked at him. Evan was looking at the far wall, his jaw working, his profile in the spill from the kitchen light.
“That’s the opposite of a problem,” Finn said.
Evan didn’t answer. His palm stayed on Finn’s knee. His thumb traced once, and then stopped, and the stopping was worse than if he’d pulled away entirely.
Finn leaned his head against the couch, closed his eyes, and held on to something he hadn’t named yet and did not let go.
8
EVAN
Evan had color-coded Finn’s practice schedule on his calendar.
He stared at it on his laptop for a full five seconds before the realization landed. The team’s practice blocks were in blue. The coaches’ meetings were in gray. Travel logistics were in green. And Finn’s individual ice times, the early-morning sessions Finn thought nobody tracked, were in gold. A color Evan had not consciously selected. A color that did not correspond to any category in his system.
Evan deleted the gold entries. Then he sat at his desk and considered the possibility that he was losing his mind.
Four months. He scrolled through the calendar and counted. Four months of subconsciously assigning a separate color to one player’s schedule, and the fact that he hadn’t noticed until nowsaid more about where his head had been than any compliance form ever could.
* * *
The home arena ran cold, which was how arenas ran, and Evan sat in the operations section with his clipboard on his knee and his coat buttoned to his collar and did his job. The student section was packed. The scouts were in the press box, two of them, notebooks open. The ice was fresh from the first intermission resurface, and the players came out in the order they always came out: the goalie first, then the defensemen, then the forwards.
Finn was last. He always was. He took an extra lap, the blades cutting arcs near the blue line, his stick tapping the ice twice before he settled into position. His jersey was 17. Evan knew the number because it was his job to know every number, and his pen tracked to Finn’s column before the puck even dropped.
