All Chapters of Own You.: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Leo was terrible at hockey.Damian noticed it within the first five minutes. The boy could barely stand on his skates, let alone move in a straight line. His stick was upside down half the time. He kept trying to stop by running into the boards, which would have been fine if he weighed more than fifty pounds, but instead he just bounced off and landed on his backside like a turtle.And he was having the time of his life."Did you see that?" Leo shouted, scrambling back to his feet. "I almost didn't fall!""I saw," Damian called back. "Good recovery."Leo beamed. His gap-toothed smile was so bright it could have lit up the entire rink. He pushed off again, wobbled, waved his arms like a windmill, and somehow stayed upright for a full three seconds before his skates went out from under him.Sebastian skated over to where Leo had landed. He crouched down, his good hand extended—the sling was off now, though the doctors had warned him not to use the arm for heavy lifting. Leo looked up at

The kiss on national television broke the internet.Damian knew this because his phone hadn't stopped buzzing in three days. Texts from teammates he hadn't spoken to in weeks. Calls from reporters he had never met. Social media notifications in the tens of thousands—most of them supportive, some of them hateful, all of them overwhelming. He had turned off his phone twice. Sebastian had thrown his into the freezer after the fifteenth death threat.But something else happened too.The fan vote shifted.Damian watched it happen on Sebastian's laptop, refreshing the league's page every few minutes. The "no" votes had been at two hundred thousand when they woke up the morning after the interview. By noon, they had dropped to one hundred fifty thousand. By evening, one hundred thousand. The "yes" votes climbed in the opposite direction—fifty thousand, one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand.People had seen the interview. People had seen the kiss. People had seen two broken men telling t

The holding cell smelled like bleach and bad decisions.Sebastian sat on a metal bench, his back against the cinderblock wall, his hands cuffed in front of him. The orange jumpsuit they had given him was two sizes too big. His wedding suit—a simple black jacket and tie—was in a plastic bag somewhere behind the desk. The clock on the wall read 12:15 AM. They had been married for seventeen minutes. He had been in jail for twelve.Damian burst through the booking area doors at 12:47 AM.His hair was wild. His eyes were wild. He was still wearing the suit from the wedding—the tie loosened, the top button undone, the jacket missing. He looked like a man who had run three miles in dress shoes. Which, Sebastian would later learn, he had."I'm here to bail out my husband," Damian said to the desk sergeant.The sergeant, a large man with a mustache that looked like it had its own gravitational pull, raised an eyebrow. "Husband?""We got married seventeen minutes ago. Then you arrested him." Da

The hotel room was on the twentieth floor.Damian didn't remember how they got there. One moment he was on the ice, holding Sebastian, the crowd roaring around them. The next moment he was in a elevator, Sebastian's good arm wrapped around his waist, both of them still in their sweaty game gear. The next moment the door was opening, and the room was there—king bed, floor-to-ceiling windows, a bottle of champagne on ice.The team had arranged it. Alex, probably. Or the equipment manager. Someone who knew they would need a place to collapse after the game, after the arrest, after everything.Damian stood in the middle of the room, staring at the window. The city stretched out below—lights, streets, the dark shape of the arena in the distance. Twenty thousand people had watched them win. Millions more had watched on television. The bribed ref was in custody. The lawyer had disappeared. And Damian was standing in a hotel room with his husband."We won," Damian said.Sebastian was behind h

The league headquarters was a glass tower in the heart of downtown. Damian had been there once before—for the draft, years ago, when he was eighteen and scared and full of hope. The building had felt different then. Bigger. Brighter. Full of possibility.Now it felt like a tomb.Sebastian walked beside him down the marble hallway, their footsteps echoing off the walls. Alex was behind them, silent, his face pale. Sebastian's mother had flown in from Florida the night before. She was already inside the hearing room, along with the lawyers, the league officials, and Damian's father's lawyer.The same lawyer who had bribed the ref. The same lawyer who had tried to destroy them.Damian's hands were cold. His heart was pounding. But his voice was steady."You ready?" Sebastian asked."No.""Me neither."They pushed open the double doors.The hearing room was large and sterile—a long table at the front, three league officials sitting behind it, rows of chairs for the participants. Damian's