Page 170 of Over the Line

But it just closed gently behind him, cutting off the noise from inside the locker room and leaving us out here in the cacophonous silence.

My shoulders sagged. “Fuck. What do I do now?” I gestured at the closed doors. “Am I even allowed to go in there?”

“It’s probably not a good idea.” Liam put a hand on my chest. “Let him cool off.” I was about to ask him who the hell he thought he was, telling me how to handle my son, when he quietly added, “There’s too many cameras in there.”

My anger instantly lost steam. I had no doubt we were on camera right now—there were cameras everywhere in this arena, not to mention a few people standing off to the sides trying to be slick about watching us. But the locker room would be full of cameras and microphones, and it wouldn’t do any of us any good to have this out in there.

Fuck. Ironing things out with Chris had been complicated enough. Now we had the added bonus of media interest, especially after someone had… God. Why? Fucking why? What was the point of releasing a video like that?

And what the hell was I supposed to do?

I turned to Liam. “I don’t know how to handle this.”

He studied me, and I swore I could see him shifting from my boyfriend to the team captain. As if he were rallying and collecting himself so he could take charge and fix this. I couldn’t say I minded, because I was fucking useless in that department.

“Listen.” He took my hand between both of his. “We’ll handle this, okay? Let’s give him some breathing room. Give ourselves a chance to regroup.”

I nodded slowly. It sounded way too simple. And way too difficult. And way too much like I was just leaving everything hanging instead of manning up and fixing it.

But I didn’t know what else to do. Just minutes ago, I’d discovered my personal life had been made wildly public. Now Chris was furious with me, all the progress we’d made rebuilding our relationship seemed like it had gone up in smoke, and I was… God, I was paralyzed.

“We’ll get through this,” Liam said. “We will.”

One way or another, sure. Things always worked out somehow.

Whether they worked out well was another question entirely.

He squeezed my hand. “Do you want to stay with me tonight?” It didn’t sound like a come-on. Like he wanted us to go back to his place and screw. An offer of company, I thought. A chance to regroup together.

And… yes. More than almost anything, yes, I wanted to be as close to him as possible tonight.

But I wasn’t sure my conscience could take it. Swallowing hard, I shook my head. “That’s probably not a good idea.”

Liam mostly hid the wince, but not entirely. “Okay. Text me or call me, all right?”

“I will.”

“We’ll get through this,” he whispered again, and I had no idea who he was trying to convince this time.

I just nodded. For a moment, we held each other’s gazes.

Then I headed for the parking garage while he went back into the locker room. No kiss goodbye. No touch. And it wasn’t because he smelled like hockey gear. I didn’t care about that right now—I wanted to hold on to him and not let go, smell be damned.

But… cameras. Chris. Gossip.

So we just… walked away.

All the way to the parking garage, I didn’t know if I was going to cry or throw up. Maybe both. This was exactly the kind of worst-case scenario I’d been afraid of. We’d been outed, and Chris was furious. Not because we were together, but because we hadn’t told him ourselves.

Because I’d lied to him.

Fuck. I wanted to believe he’d see reason once he’d had a chance to cool down, but I was terrified I’d fucked up one too many times. If we’d had a normal, functional father-son relationship, this would probably be a minor blip. But we had baggage. Cargo jets full of baggage. We had a history of no-contact, and Chris had very, very tentatively let me back into his life.

What if this made him slam that door again?

When I reached my car, I started the engine but didn’t pull out of the space. Instead, I took out my phone, and with shaking hands, I wrote out a pair of texts to my son.

Chris, I’m sorry. We wanted to tell you when you weren’t already overwhelmed with hockey and the baby. We didn’t expect someone to out us like that before we had a chance.