The Linemate's Bargain

Flashguns pop like a string of firecrackers and Leo already wants to be anywhere else. His hands stay flat on the table, palms dry, expression neutral. The Wolves won, he scored one and set up another, and the reporter from the Chronicle-Journal wants to know what is clicking on the power play. Safe question. Boring answer. The kind that gets a nod and a scribble and moves on before anyone asks about his personal life. Then a hand claps down on his shoulder hard enough to jolt the bad joint, and Ethan Kim slides into the chair beside him with platinum hair glowing under the arena lights and a dynasty to promise the room. *"Loosen up, grandpa. You're twenty-seven, not seventy."* Leo was sixteen when he told his father he was seeing a boy from the team. His father folded the newspaper along the crease, packed a duffel, and drove to a motel. His mother put the groceries away and told him to play hockey and keep his mouth shut and pretend it never happened. He has been doing exactly that ever since. Now his brother Jamie's new medication costs two thousand dollars a month, and Jamie's kidneys are showing stress from the last round of treatment, and there is a campaign on the table worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Six months of pretending. Leo has already signed it. *"You're not actually dating, just selling the idea."* So he holds Ethan Kim's hand in public, laughs at his jokes on camera, and lets a marketing team build a story about two teammates who happen to fit. Ethan is twenty-two, bright, loud, tired underneath, and the first player in years who reads Leo's passes before he makes them. What neither of them plans for is a leak, a hospital call, and a man who has spent his whole career keeping his face blank discovering that he is not frightened any more, only tired of it. A closed-door MM hockey romance about a fake-relationship contract, a brother with a chronic illness and a graphic design degree, and a veteran forward who finally says the thing out loud on live television.