Page 91 of Cross Ice

He didn’t push it. I heard the hum of a hotel room heater and muffled voices from a hallway. Vancouver was on a road trip. Columbus, if I remembered right. I tracked their schedule the same way I always had—not obsessively, just enough to know where my brother was at any given point in the season.

I got up from the couch. Evan was focused on his phone, giving me space. I walked into the bedroom and pushed the door mostly closed behind me.

“Nico. I woke up at six this morning to my phone blowing up. You understand that? I have an alert set for Lasers news—mostly so I can chirp you when you lose—and it goes off before I’m even out of bed. There’s a photo of my brother kissing some guy in a parking lot. I’m lying in a hotel bed in Columbus at six in the morning trying to figure out if what I’m looking at is real.” An exhale. “I’ve been sitting with it all day. Had morning skate, team meetings, film session—I got through all of it with guys coming up to me all day asking if I’d seen it, if I’d talked to you, if you were okay—and I couldn’t say what I was actually feeling because I didn’t even know yet. I had to wait until I had a room to myself and some time to actually think before I could call you.”

I sat on the edge of Evan’s bed. Didn’t say anything.

“I had to find out that my brother is gay from a sports blog,” Miguel said. “That’s where we are.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” His voice stayed even, but the edges had gone rough. “Because I’ve been sitting with this all day and I keep coming back to the same thing. You didn’t trust me. Out of everyone, you looked at me and decided I wasn’t someone you could tell.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then tell me what it was like. Because from where I’m standing, that’s exactly what it looks like.”

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor. The words were there—I’d been arranging them in my head for hours, trying to find the version that made sense. None of them felt like enough.

“It wasn’t about you,” I said. “That’s the most honest thing I can tell you. It was never about whether I trusted you specifically. It was about… the game. The locker room. The way we started in hockey.” I paused. “I built a wall around it early and just kept adding to it. Even after things changed. Even after I knew better.”

Silence on his end.

“I’m not saying that makes it right,” I added. “I’m just trying to answer you honestly.”

“I know what the locker room’s like,” Miguel said. “I’ve been in the same league as you for five years. I’m not naïve about it.”

“I know you’re not.”

“But Lapierre came out in October. Morelli and Savard in December.” His voice shifted and became less tight, more direct. “It’s not the same league. It’s still not easy—I’m not saying it’s easy—but it’s different. And at some point in the last few months, the thing you were protecting yourself from stopped being as real as it used to be.” A beat. “And you still didn’t say anything.”

He wasn’t wrong. I’d watched all of it and felt something loosen slightly in my chest each time—and then I’d put my phone down and gone back to exactly what I’d been doing before.

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right.”

“I’m not trying to be right. I’m trying to understand.” Another pause, longer. “Nico… I’ve known since you were twenty-one.”

I went still.

“College,” he said. “A frat house party. You were outside with some guy and I was across the street with Daniela. I looked up and there you were.” His voice was quiet now, measured. “I didn’t say anything because I figured you’d come to me when you were ready. I kept waiting for that.”

Nine years. He’d been carrying that for nine years, waiting for me to open a door I never opened.

“Miguel—”

“I didn’t push because it wasn’t my thing to bring up. It was yours.” The tightness came back, sharper than before. “But I’ve been waiting a long time, Nico. Years of waiting for my brother to trust me with something I already knew. And instead, I found out on the internet.”

I pressed my free hand to the back of my neck. There was nothing to say to that, no version of it that didn’t land exactly as hard as it deserved to.

“Did you think I’d have a problem with it?” he asked.

“No.” No hesitation. “Never. Not for a second.”

“Then I really don’t get it.” His voice dropped. Not angry. Something closer to hurt, which was worse. “Nico, I’m your brother. I love you. And you still didn’t tell me.”

The real answer was messier than hockey culture, messier than locker rooms and the way I’d come up. The real answer was that keeping it hidden had become something I did automatically, a reflex so deep I’d stopped examining it. That telling Miguel would have meant becoming a version of myself I wasn’t ready to be yet.

“It stopped being about any one person a long time ago,” I said. “It was just… how I operated. I kept it separate from everything. From everyone.” I paused. “That’s not an excuse. I’m just trying to be straight with you.”