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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

KADEN IS SO fucking hot and Ryan resents that.

“I resent him,” Ryan says to Louie in the locker room after warm-ups. Quietly because he does not want to alert Nick or Liam to his resentment. Although Nick is so in the zone that the world could end around him and he wouldn’t notice.

“Can you turn the resentment into goals maybe?” Louie asks, also quietly.

“You’re always thinking about work,” Ryan says with a sigh. He swears, Louie only has hockey on his mind. Hockey, and his hockey brother, and his hockey dad. And how much protein is in his food.

The other day, they got smoothies after practice and a girl tried to hit on Louie. She really gave it her all. So Ryan thought about what Ami said, although it doesn’t make much sense. Louie’s had girlfriends—several—he’s told Ryan about them in passing, like an afterthought. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who deludes himself out of being gay. Louie just doesn’t care whether or not he’s in a relationship. He’s married to hockey. That’s his one true love.

Ryan loves hockey, but he still wants a person. He wants to be someone’s person.

He’s not sure if that’s what he and Kaden were to each other, but in the end, they were something, and maybe Ryan would have really, properly fallen for him if they’d ever gotten past the dating stage. They just didn’t see each other enough to get there and didn’t end up working.

And then Kaden turned out to be the kind of guy who breaks up with people over text.

And then he had the audacity to be called up and come to Hartford and still be hot. He tried to talk to Ryan at the Cardinals’ practice rink yesterday, but then Carrot came to steal Ryan away for a chat (and to save him from himself, probably).

Coach put Ryan in the starting lineup, which he may not have done if they weren’t playing against Toronto, but this is basically him saying, look at this guy, we like him, he’s working out for us and doing good work . Or at least that’s what Ryan tells himself when he takes his spot on the blue line.

Carrot’s out on the ice with him, in a white jersey, on the other side of it all. And Ryan has been here for weeks, has not even been thinking much about his former team, and has mostly settled in, but this is when it really hits him. He’s left; he’s not going back. They don’t want him back. They don’t miss him. Not the team, not the friends he made, but the organization.

“Hey, Rye,” Carrot says, bumping into him after a whistle. “How about a little bet?”

Carrot loves a little bet. Carrot also once made him dress up as Tinker Bell for the team’s Halloween party so he could be Peter Pan. Ryan rocked that Tinker Bell costume, though. So, obviously, Ryan says, “For sure.”

“Winner gets to—” One of the refs comes over to usher them away from the net.

They’ll talk terms and conditions later. Although the further they get into the game, the more worried Ryan gets. Because at the start of the third, they’re down 3–5 and while they still have time to catch up, Ryan’s getting nervous .

“I just had the best idea for what I’m gonna make you wear when we win,” Carrot says with four minutes left on the clock. Score’s 3–6. It’s not looking good for Ryan.

“I hope it’s something I’ll look unbearably sexy in,” Ryan says.

“Of course, babe,” Carrot says and blows him a kiss before he skates away.

Ryan is so fucked.

“Ryan.”

Oh, for the love of fuck. Kaden did not hide in the fucking tunnels to sneak up on Ryan. He did not ignore all the signs that pointed to Ryan not wanting to talk to him.

Nope, he absolutely did.

“Ryan, can I talk to you?” Kaden asks. Looking like an absolute snack in his gray suit.

Ryan wants to punch him in the face. But maybe then even the Cards would take a long hard look at him and decide that he’s not worth the trouble. “No, sorry,” Ryan says. He should have waited for Louie in the locker room.

Kaden takes a step closer, reaches for him, but then thankfully changes his mind. He’s right in Ryan’s path now, though. “Please? I get that you were mad at me when you left, but we never talked things out.”

“We never—” Ryan laughs. “Kaden. Seriously?” He waits for Nick to pass them—a bunch of his friends are waiting for him a little further down the tunnel with Waldo, so he’s not really paying Ryan and Kaden any mind. Still, what Ryan has to say is for Kaden’s ears only. “You broke up with me. What the fuck is there to talk about?”

“I know where you crashed your car,” Kaden says. “You were coming to my place.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes.

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“No, I will, I will bullshit you. You have lost the right to not be… bu llshat by me.”

Kaden folds his arms across his chest. “Look, this is—I feel bad.”

“That’s not my problem,” Ryan says, maybe a little too loudly. “As far as I’m concerned—” He cuts himself off when someone steps up to them.

Louie. Finally .

“Let’s go,” Louie says to Ryan, his eyes firmly fixed on Kaden. Not in a death glare and not in a way that’d give away that he has a problem with Kaden. Not in a way that would tell Kaden that Louie knows exactly who he is.

“Can we just have another minute?” Kaden says. “We were talking.”

“Sorry,” Louie says, his voice betraying no emotion, “but I think I left the oven on.”

“Bye, Kaden,” Ryan says pointedly. They’re done here.

They wordlessly head to the parking garage, Ryan fiddling with his keys. When they’ve made it to Ryan’s car, he says, “You didn’t actually leave the oven on, right?”

“Of course not,” Louie scoffs. When they’re in the car, he puts on his seatbelt and before Ryan has even put the key in the ignition, he adds, “You didn’t look happy, so I figured you wouldn’t mind being rescued.”

“Didn’t mind at all,” Ryan says and takes them home. The highway is blessedly empty, at least. Ryan turns the volume on the radio all the way down and Louie doesn’t ask any questions, just stares out the window.

Louie isn’t the kind of guy who feels the need to share every single thought he’s ever had with the people around him. That’s probably why he hates TikTok. But the less he says, the more Ryan wonders what’s going on in that head of his. Does he have thoughts? Is it just elevator music? Ryan’s head is so full from the second he wakes up to the second he falls asleep that he can’t imagine silence inside his head.

Back at the house, Louie shuffles right into the kitchen and gets a glass of water. Ryan follows him for a piece of chocolate from the candy drawer.

Louie tilts his head. “Wanna watch a game?”

“Don’t you need to go to bed so you can get up at the ass-crack of dawn to go for a run?” Ryan asks. Louie never stays up with him after a game. Never. Which means Ryan must be visibly pathetic.

“It’s going to rain,” Louie says. “So?”

“Actually, I’m…” Today, Ryan just wanted to go to bed. “Wanna come hang in my room?”

Louie blinks at him, like the concept of hanging out somewhere other than the living room is completely foreign to him. Did Ryan overstep? Did he finally stumble across the Big Gay Boundary? Carrot would hang out in Ryan’s room all the time. Ryan barely ever hung out in Carrot’s because every inch was covered in clothes at all times. No wonder Carrot never brought home girls (or guys, although Carrot would have definitely told Ryan if he did, in fact, swing that way).

“Sure,” Louie finally says. “I’ll just…” He tugs off his tie.

“Same,” Ryan says and makes for his room to get out of his suit.

He’s just put on sweatpants and an old shirt his sister brought him from a trip to Yellowstone when Louie gently raps his knuckles against Ryan’s door.

“Come in,” Ryan says and sits on his bed.

Louie does come in but hovers at the end of the bed for a moment.

“Sitting on my bed will not turn you gay,” Ryan says lightly.

“I wasn’t—” Louie cuts himself off and puts his glass of water on Ryan’s nightstand. “I didn’t bring a coaster.”

“That’s fine,” Ryan whispers.

Louie sits on the left side of Ryan’s bed and leans back against the headboard. It’s covered in this fancy velvety black material and Louie touches it with the tip of his pinky finger and an appreciative hum.

“Are you jealous of my fancy bed frame?” Ryan says. “Maybe I should get a different one for the guest bedroom.”

“Nah, it’s a perfectly fine bed,” Louie says. He grabs Gustav the bear and hugs him to his chest. Then he looks at Ryan. “Sorry, did you want him?”

Ryan laughs. “It’s fine, I can mope without cuddling my ginormous stuffed bear.” He chews on his bottom lip, wondering if he should talk about the weather or the elephant in the room. “He probably thinks I told you about him,” is what he settles on.

“But you didn’t, not really,” Louie says. “So you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.”

“I will anyway, but thanks.”

Louie presses his lips together, fiddling with Gustav’s ear. “I didn’t like his attitude. And I didn’t like the way he talked to me. And I didn’t hear what he said to you, but I probably didn’t like the way he talked to you either.”

“That’s a lot of things to not like,” Ryan says, feeling weirdly vindicated. When he was still seeing Kaden, he very often didn’t like the way he talked to other people. Carrot, for example. Carrot, who was Ryan’s roommate and actually really good at minding his business. Carrot didn’t exactly love Kaden, so Ryan didn’t invite him over much anymore and that’s how things kind of started to fizzle out. Not Carrot’s fault. If Ryan had cared enough, he would have found a way to make things work.

Louie gives a halfhearted shrug. “I’m sure you’ll find someone better.”

See, Louie definitely means well. It’s the plenty of fish in the sea kind of thing that you say when someone’s sad about a break-up, but when you’re a gay hockey player, the fish are not as plenty. And the sea is more like a swamp. “Hm,” Ryan says.

“I know it’s tougher for you than for most of the other guys,” Louie says.

“No shit.” Ryan scoots down the tiniest bit to get comfortable. “After all of this…” He waves his hand, which hopefully encompasses the whole ordeal sufficiently. “I kinda wonder if I should just stay single. It’s working for you, right? ”

“I mean…” Louie says. But that’s all he says.

Ryan tries to read into the silence. It works for him, but maybe sometimes he thinks about dating? It actually doesn’t work for him? He’s seen right through Ryan and knows that staying single will turn him into a pathetic puddle of sadness?

“Maybe it’s not ideal,” Ryan says. “I don’t like being alone.”

Louie’s lips twitch the tiniest bit.

“It’s not—” It’s not funny. Except maybe it’s kind of funny. Ryan, who hid at his friends’ houses when he was younger because home seemed too crowded and too loud. And now he can’t stand an empty house. “You know, when I first started playing in the NHL, I kind of figured I’d be alone a lot, and then I wasn’t. It was nice.”

“I’m sorry,” Louie says. He hands over Gustav. “But, Ryan?”

Ryan buries his face in the bear’s fluffy stomach. “Hm?”

“You play a team sport. That means you’re never actually gonna be alone.”

“I know,” Ryan mumbles. “But I just know I’ll watch all those guys get married and have kids. Or they already are married and have kids. And I just… I at least wanna adopt a dog with someone. Or a cat. I’ll even settle for a… turtle. Or a bearded dragon.”

“A bearded dragon,” Louie echoes. “That can’t be a real thing.”

“Dude, it totally is. Slaw’s sister has one.” Ryan grabs his phone from the nightstand and scrolls back through his pictures. Shit, he took so many selfies with Carrot. He misses that. He misses going out. He misses the bakery down the street from their apartment. He misses the Ryan he was before he got traded. Because he distinctly feels like a different Ryan and he doesn’t know how to get the old one back. Anyway. He makes it to the pictures they took in Ottawa last fall. “Here. She let me hold it.”

“That does not look like something you should let into your house,” Louie says.

“He was really chill.” Ryan pats Gustav’s head. “Maybe I should get a pet. ”

“Not during the season,” Louie says.

“Do you ever think about something that’s not hockey?” Ryan asks. “I mean, I am impressed by how much you think about hockey. But… I worry.”

Louie looks him straight in the eye. “Well… don’t.”

It’s probably none of Ryan’s business how Louie spends his free time. They sometimes hang out in the living room when they don’t have games in the evening and then Louie will just watch tape he got from their video coach all day. And he goes on runs. He runs so much that Ryan is starting to wonder what he’s running from.

“Can I ask you something?” Louie says after a moment. “It’s kind of personal.”

“This can’t be worse than Carrot asking me what come tastes like.”

“He did not,” Louie says flatly.

“Sure did. Anyway, after we had that conversation, I thought a little too hard about what’s in come and then I couldn’t swallow for like a week.”

Louie stares. His eyes are so wide. “Oh my God.” Something cracks and he starts laughing, loud and bright and happy, in a way Ryan hasn’t heard him laugh ever since he met him. “Was he drunk?”

“Totally sober,” Ryan says, grinning. “And I did answer the question. Although, honestly, I can’t believe he’s never—”

“Don’t say it.”

“I mean, come on, a lot of guys have. Even straight guys.”

“Stop,” Louie says, still laughing. There are tears at the corners of his eyes. “This is the worst conversation.”

Ryan nudges him. “So, what was your question?”

Louie takes a deep breath to calm himself down. “I was…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know if we know each other well enough for this, but I was wondering… Dominic said he didn’t figure out he was gay until he kissed a girl and noticed that it wasn’t…”

“Oh,” Ryan says, “I actually didn’t have to kiss a girl first. Not that I didn’t try. But I definitely already kind of knew at that point.”

“You just knew.”

“Yeah. And then I eventually, uh, interacted with a penis that wasn’t mine. And I was like, yeah, that definitely works for me.”

Louie stares at him.

“You know, a dick? A schlong? A… meat wand?”

“Don’t call it meat wand.”

Ryan cackles. “What’s your favorite word for it, then?”

“I don’t have one.” Louie rolls his eyes. “I would say most people don’t.”

“You would be surprised.”

“Huh,” is Louie’s contribution to that. He’s still looking at Ryan, like he’s not done asking questions, like there’s something else he’s looking for.

“What?” Ryan says.

“It’s just that you don’t talk about it like Dominic does,” Louie says.

“Us gays actually tend to have personalities besides being gay.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Louie says. “You know that’s not—” He kicks at Ryan’s shin. “Stop making me look homophobic.”

“Hey, it’s just us here.” Ryan winks at him. But he thinks he does know what Louie meant. “I get it, though. People’s journeys are different. And some aren’t delighted to be gay.” With a dad like Dad Hathaway, Ryan would guess that maybe Dominic was not delighted. Although it also took Ryan a while to come out to his family, not because they’re homophobic, but just because Ryan is terrible at making big announcements and terrified of people looking at him differently.

Or he used to be.

He told Carrot first and when Carrot, the straightest man alive, didn’t look at him differently, he figured that telling his parents wouldn’t be so bad.

What really helped when he was still a teenager was having friends who understood the situation he was in. Not only did they—cough, his teammate Adrian, cough—understand, they were also willing to make out with him. Which was very helpful.

“Dominic would be fine if Dad wasn’t…” Louie scrunches up his nose. “I don’t think Dad hates gay people. He just wishes Dominic had stayed in the closet.”

“Please tell me he didn’t say that to your brother’s face.”

“No, but if I know it, Dominic knows it, too.” Louie tips his head back against the headboard. “There’s a reason he doesn’t live in Boston.” He waves his hand, shooing those thoughts away. “I was gonna make you feel better, but I don’t think I’m doing that.”

“No, you did,” Ryan says. “Really distracted me for a second there.”

“Good, okay,” Louie says.

His eyelids are starting to flutter. Ryan should tell him to go to bed, but he wasn’t kidding when he told Louie that he hates being alone.

He’ll have to get used to it sooner or later.

“It’s okay if you wanna go to bed,” Ryan says. “I’ll just hang with my bestie Tracy Chapman.”

“Tracy…” Louie frowns. “Who’s that?”

“‘Fast Car’, Louie.”

“What?”

“Um. ‘Talkin’ Bout A Revolution?’”

“I—”

“Oh my god,” Ryan says and grabs his earphones, handing one of them to Louie. “Sorry, but you can’t go to bed yet.”