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“Come on, Cal!” Mikey hollered, fluttering his eyelashes dramatically. “You can’t fight true love.”

My heart stuttered to a stop, then started up again, the whooshing sound of my pulse racing between my ears.

No one in this room had the faintest idea how true his words were.

How would they react if they did? Would they accept us, or would they have a collective aneurysm right here in L.A.’s visitors’ locker room?

Mikey lunged for me, and I scampered to the left, shoving the bulky pad into his sternum.

“If you put those lips anywhere near my face, Porter, I swear to God I’ll dump Nair in your shampoo bottle.”

I wouldn’t, and he knew that, but no one else did, and the quip earned the reaction I’d been looking for.

“Woah, woah, easy,” Koffee cut in. “Don’t go messing with the man’s hair, Callahan. He’s got that soft, bouncy shit going on.” He lifted his hands to his own head, hovering just over his scalp and flexing his fingers in and out as if to mimic the spring of Mikey’s curls.

“No joke,” Lavoie said, tugging a shirt on over his head. “Gabi pays three hundred bucks every two months trying to get her hair to look like Porter’s. You ruin that mop, and you’re answering to her.”

“Yeah, Cal,” Mikey smirked. “Don’t you dare mess with perfection.”

After another ten seconds of ducking and dodging where Mikey failed to kiss me, he clutched his chest, let out a groan of mock heartbreak, and collapsed onto the bench in front of his stall.

“Sorry, boys, but it looks like Cally and I just aren’t gonna happen.” His head fell back against the wood, and he let out a long sigh, his head turning toward me. The laughter was gone from his eyes, replaced by a look so soft, so undeniably loving, that my breath hitched with momentary panic.

Fucking Christ. How could any of our teammates see that look and not immediately know we were in love?

“Shit,” Hale drawled from the corner. “Just when I thought you two were going to cement our reputation as the queerest team in the NHL.”

“Statistically speaking,” Hale remarked, pulling a pair of socks decorated with cherubs on over his feet. “If about nine percent of the population identifies as queer, with a twenty-three-man roster, we’re right at the national average, so, you know, not overly queer.”

“How the fuck do you know all that?” Nielson demanded. “Did you just pull those numbers out of your ass or something?”

“Nope,” Hale said, stepping into his Doc Martens and tightening up the laces. “I got a lot of queer people in my family. This is the shit we talk about.”

“Yeah?” Stevens piped up, shoving his head through the neck of a Marauders sweatshirt. “Like who?”

“You know my Aunt Ronnie?”

Stevens nodded. “Ronnie’s the bomb.”

“Yeah, well, Ronnie used to be Ronald, and my other aunt’s pan.”

Mikey’s gaze landed on me, and he grinned, stepping into the circle. “Really? Mine too. And my sister’s a lesbian.”

I drifted toward Mikey as if my body was operating on autopilot and knocked my arm against his, our pinkies brushing together briefly. Mikey leaned into the contact like it was as natural as breathing because, for us, it was. I glanced down at him with a small smile. He grinned back.

“No shit,” Mercer replied. “Cool.”

“Okay, our queer family aside. Say Hale is right about those percentages,” Stockhard said, bringing the conversation back to whether or not the Marauders were, in fact, the queerest team in the league.

“Even if other teams have gay or bi players or whatever, those guys probably wouldn’t, like, broadcast it. A lot of these rooms are wicked homophobic. No one wants to risk causing problems or fucking up the dynamic.”

Bell sauntered by just then on his way back from the showers, a towel looped low around his waist, showing off the deep grooves of his Adonis belt. From the expression on his face, it was clear he’d been listening in on the conversation, waiting for a good time to make his presence known.

“Hey Belly Boy,” Monroe boomed. “You’ve always been out, yeah?”

“Yup,” Bell said, swiping a stick of deodorant over his pits. “Well, once I left home for college and got away from my fucked up family anyway.”

“And your teammates were cool with that?” Bogart asked, his tone dubious. “No one gave you any problems?”