Mag-log inThe bus got back to Greyhollow a little before midnight.Jamie had ridden home in the media van, wedged between a tripod bag and a sports-comm sophomore who talked the entire ninety minutes about camera settings. He’d nodded along and heard none of it, because two hours ago an NHL team had offered Max a spot.He’d spent the whole drive on his phone, the screen tipped away from the sophomore, reading everything he could find. The Crestwick Stormriders. Cup winners. Noah Rivers’s rookie season, written up everywhere. Aleksei Voronov, pages and pages on Voronov — the shutouts, the save-percentage records, the highlight reels, the fan accounts, the merchandise with his number on it. Jamie had scrolled through photo after photo of packed arenas, twenty thousand people on their feet, and tried to picture Max down there on that ice, in that jersey, that small and that far away and that watched.He was so happy for him. He was. The pride in his chest was enormous.But they’d been together a
Max floated out of the cinderblock office like a man who’d been unplugged from the wall.The hallway was chaos. The post-game scrum in full swing, reporters clustered around the tunnel mouth, a wall of raised phones and boom mics, Hallowell’s captain boldly answering questions about a game he’d lost. Max stood at the edge of it, still in half his gear, and scanned.There. Off to the side, camera up, filming a coach’s answer over the heads of taller people and standing on his toes to do it — Jamie, brow furrowed in a way that made Max want to leave hickeys up and down his neck.He had to tell him. He had to tell him now or he was going to burst in the hallway.He couldn’t exactly stride into a press scrum and sweep Jamie off his feet. So Max did the next best thing, which was hover at the perimeter making the most obvious, least subtle eye contact of his life until Jamie felt it.Jamie lowered the camera. Found him. And his whole face changed. Surprise, then a helpless flicker of hi,
For a second Max just stood there, helmet under his arm, sweat cooling on his neck, brain still buffering.“You… uh,” he started, and stopped. He looked at Noah, then Jensen, then, helplessly, at Voro, who had not stopped studying him like a specimen. “Sorry. Sorry, this is just a little… I mean, there’s a vending machine out there that only takes exact change.” He said it like it was the strangest part. “You came here..?”Noah barked a laugh. “Told you,” he said, to no one in particular, delighted. “Told you he was funny.” He crossed the little room and clapped Max on the shoulder hard enough to rock him. “Good to see you again, man. You look like you’re gonna pass out. Sit down before Larsson has to explain a body.”Max did not sit down. He wasn’t sure his knees would negotiate it. “I thought — I figured you forgot I existed.”“Who could forget a goalie goal, man,” Noah said, breezy. “And I definitely don’t forget the guy who cold-called me, ignored Voro’s advice and then went out
The rink at Hallowell State was older than Greyhollow’s, colder somehow, the boards a little dead where they should’ve been live. Max hated away barns like this. Ninety minutes down the interstate that afternoon, a gas-station sandwich he’d barely tasted, and the low grinding pressure that had lived in his chest for weeks now.The one bright spot was up and to his left. Jamie had ridden out with the media crew, Coach separating them a little more since the disclosure. Max had spotted him during warmups — perched at the end of the press row in a Greyhollow lanyard and someone’s borrowed windbreaker, camera balanced on the rail, filming the line rushes with that little furrow of concentration between his brows.Max skated a lazy loop and lifted his blocker in a small wave. Jamie’s eyes flicked up. The furrow melted for half a second into a helpless, pleased little smile before he remembered he was working and ducked back behind the camera, ears going pink even from thirty feet away.Th
Jamie had completely taken over the corner table in the campus coffee shop. His laptop was plugged into one outlet, his phone charger into another, and he’d already claimed the third for his external hard drive. He was planning on making the most of the free refills — his oat milk latte was already on its second life, and he had every intention of stretching this session as long as possible.“Okay,” Jamie said, turning the laptop screen toward Max. “My grandparents sent four flight options… Which is a lot.”Max leaned back in his chair, looking relaxed, one arm draped over the back of his seat. “Okay.”Jamie scrolled through the options. “I told my mom we’d book our own, but she looked like she’d find a way to put me up for adoption, so we’ll have to pick one of these.”Max’s handsome smile curved, slow and teasing. “I’d adopt you, Jamie. Your bedtime just got a lot earlier, young man.”Jamie’s face flushed bright red, horrified. “Max! That’s gross. Stop.”Max hadn’t looked at the sc
Jamie stood in the media section along the boards, adjusting the settings on his camera during warm-ups. The arena hummed with pre-game energy — the scrape of skates on ice, the sharp crack of pucks hitting boards, the low murmur of the growing crowd. He zoomed in on Max in net, watching the way he moved with that effortless power, dropping into stance, glove flashing up to snag a shot. Jamie’s stomach did that familiar flip it always did when he watched Max play. Even after everything, it still felt a little unreal that this was his boyfriend out there.Ava was glued to his side, as she had been for the last twenty minutes, for multiple reasons. One of which was that she couldn’t stop talking about Zach.“Do the balls always like swing and slap you on the ass?” she asked, leaning in way too close to his camera.Jamie glared at her, gesturing pointedly at the camera. “What if I’d been recording right now?”Ava rolled her eyes. “I do know what the red light means, Jamie. I’m not dumb.



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