Chapter 9: The Confession
The door to Leona’s hotel room clicked shut, sealing them in a space that smelled of stale air conditioning, cheap laundry detergent, and the faint, familiar scent of Leona’s gear bag. It was aggressively generic, a stark contrast to Vil’s curated suite. A lone hockey stick leaned in the corner, a pair of sweatpants lay in a heap by the bathroom door.
The quiet was immediate and absolute.
Vil let Leona’s leather jacket slide from his shoulders, catching it and draping it carefully over the back of a clumsy armchair. The sequins on his jumpsuit sighed as he moved. He didn’t turn around, feeling Leona’s presence like a physical heat at his back.
Before he could speak, hands grabbed his hips and spun him around. He was pinned against the wall beside the door, the impact jolting through him. Leona’s mouth crashed down on his, a kiss that was all hunger and no finesse, fueled by the silent walk and the terrifying simplicity of their joined hands. It was possessive, desperate, a reclamation.
For three seconds, Vil melted into it, his body responding to the familiar claim. Then, the old anger, sharp and bright, flared in his gut. This was what Leona always did. Reduced it to physicality when words were too hard.
He shoved Leona back, hard. His palms smacked against Leona’s chest, sending him stumbling a full step backward.
“No,” Vil spat, his voice low and venomous. “You don’t get to do this. Not every time we’re alone. You don’t get to just… bulldoze past everything and fuck me into forgetting.”
Leona’s eyes were wide, dark with shock and undimmed want. His breath came in ragged pulls. “I’m not—"
“You are,” Vil cut him off, his perfect composure cracking to show the raw edges beneath. “The village was a… a collision. This?” He gestured between them, at the charged air. “This needs to be a conversation. And you’re allergic to those.”
“What do you want me to say?” Leona’s voice was a rough scrape. “You looked perfect tonight. You skated perfect. The whole world loves you. What’s left to talk about?”
“How about why you left?” The words hung in the stale air, ugly and final. “Not the hockey. Not the ‘rules.’ Why you left me. You were my partner. And then you were just… gone. You became a stranger who checked people through plexiglass.”
Leona flinched as if struck. He looked away, his jaw working. The silence stretched, taut enough to snap.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he finally muttered, a weak, defensive parry.
“Try me.”
“It was suffocating!” The burst of sound was too loud for the room. Leona ran a hand through his hair, ruining the ponytail. “The routines, the judging, the… the fucking smiling, Vil. Having to be this… this graceful thing next to you. You were made for it. I was just there. A support beam. A fucking prop.”
Vil stared at him, incredulous. “A prop? You were the only thing that grounded me! All that power, that raw edge you had… it made our partnership interesting. It made it real. Then you took it and left it on a different sheet of ice.”
“Because it was mine!” Leona shot back, taking a step closer, his body thrumming with frustrated energy. “On the ice, in hockey, it’s mine. The aggression, the edge… it’s not packaged and scored for artistic merit. It just is. It’s honest.”
“And what we did wasn’t honest?” Vil’s voice had gone dangerously quiet.
Leona didn’t answer. He just stood there, chest heaving, his gaze locked on the geometric hotel carpet.
The fight seemed to drain out of Vil, leaving behind a profound exhaustion. He looked at the man before him—the stubborn set of his shoulders, the messy hair, the eyes that refused to meet his. He saw the boy he’d known, and the stranger he’d become, and the terrifying possibility that they might never reconcile.
He turned, reaching for the door handle. The sequined back, a vulnerable landscape, was to Leona. “Then I guess we’re done talking.”
The sound Vil heard wasn’t words. It was a strangled, desperate noise, like an animal in a trap.
He turned back.
Leona was on his knees.
He hadn’t moved gracefully; he’d just buckled, as if the bones had been removed from his legs. His hands came up, gripping Vil’s sequined hips, his fingers pressing hard into the fabric and the flesh beneath. His forehead rested against Vil’s stomach. His whole body shook.
Vil froze, shock icing his veins.
“Don’t go.” The words were muffled against the sequins. “Please.”
Leona’s grip tightened. He tilted his head back, looking up. His eyes were wet, red-rimmed, utterly shattered. All the sarcasm, the indifference, the aggressive mask—gone. What was left was naked, wretched truth.
“I have,” he began, his voice breaking on the syllables. He sucked in a shuddering breath. “I have loved you since the first time you did that stupid sit-spin in practice. The one where you’d get this little furrow between your brows. You were fifteen. I was seventeen. And I thought… I thought if I stayed, I’d drown in it. That I’d vanish. So I ran to where I couldn’t see you every day. Where it wouldn’t feel like a goddamn heartbeat I couldn’t control.”
The air vanished from the room. Vil’s own breath stopped. The confession wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t poetic. It was a guttural, painful thing, hauled up from the depths. It was the most honest thing Leona Kingscholar had ever said.
Tears, hot and sudden, welled in Vil’s eyes. They tracked through the meticulous smoky makeup, leaving dark, gleaming trails down his cheeks. He looked down at the man kneeling before him, holding onto him like he was the only solid thing in a crumbling world.
Slowly, he reached down. He tangled his fingers in Leona’s messy hair, not gently. He pulled, forcing his head back further, making him look up the length of Vil’s body to meet his gaze.
“You,” Vil whispered, his voice thick with tears, “are the biggest idiot I have ever known.”
He pulled harder, bringing Leona’s face toward his. He didn’t bend. He made Leona rise to meet him.
The kiss was different. It was slow. It was wet with tears and tasted of salt and red wine and years of stupid, stubborn silence. It was an apology and an absolution, all in one.
When they parted, Vil kept his grip in Leona’s hair, their foreheads resting together.
“Idiot,” Vil repeated, softer now. “I loved you since you taught me how to sharpen my skates. You were so serious. Your hands were so steady. You didn’t even like me then. You said I held my toepick wrong.”
A shaky, almost laugh, escaped Leona. It sounded like a sob. “You did.”
“I know.”
Vil released his hair, his hands coming up to frame Leona’s face, his thumbs wiping roughly at the moisture under his eyes. “You don’t get to run from this again. The drowning. The heartbeat. We sink or swim together this time. Do you understand?”
Leona’s eyes searched his. He saw the smeared makeup, the defiant gleam, the unconditional offer. He nodded, a short, sharp movement. “Together.”
Vil pulled him to his feet. This time, when their mouths met, it was with a new, terrifying consensus. The sequined jumpsuit was a complicated barrier. Leona’s hands fumbled with the hidden zip at the back, his fingers clumsy. Vil reached back to help, and the sleek fabric pooled at his feet with a shimmering sigh, leaving him in just a pair of black briefs.
He pushed Leona back toward the bed. They fell onto it, a tangle of limbs, knocking the remote to the floor. The kisses were slower now, deep and exploring, as if learning a new language. Vil peppered Leona’s jaw, his throat, the shell of his ear with bites and kisses, his hands pushing the black button-up up to find warm skin.
“This shirt is stupid,” Vil murmured against his collarbone.
“You bought me the flowers,” Leona breathed, arching into Vil’s touch. “We’re both doing stupid things.”
Later, in the dim glow from the bathroom light left ajar, they lay intertwined. The sheets were a lost cause. Vil’s makeup was a wreck across the pillows. Leona traced the line of Vil’s spine, his touch now sure, now ownership.
“The crack,” Leona said into the darkness.
“Hmm?”
“In your performance. It wasn’t just anger. It was this… loud, screaming love. Wasn’t it?”
Vil was quiet for a long moment. He shifted, rolling onto his back to look at Leona. His blue eyes, stripped of their smoky armor, were clear and endless. “It was the only way I knew how to say it. When words with you were impossible.”
Leona propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at him. The magnitude of it, of that performance being a message in a bottle meant only for him, sent a fresh wave of awe through his exhausted system. He leaned down and kissed him, a slow, profound seal on the promise.
“No more cheap seats,” Leona murmured against his lips.
“No more fogged glass,” Vil answered, his fingers carding through Leona’s hair.
Outside, the city of Montreal pulsed on, oblivious. Inside the generic hotel room, surrounded by the litter of their past and present, they finally began the delicate, terrifying work of building a future that didn't require breaking to feel real.
The quiet between them now was different. It was not the tense silence of things unsaid, but the saturated stillness of a truth finally acknowledged. Vil lay on his back, staring at the hotel room’s generic ceiling, Leona’s steady breath warming his shoulder. The city’s light painted shifting patterns across the plaster.
“My agent is going to have a coronary,” Vil murmured, his voice rough from use. He traced a faint scar on Leona’s bicep, a souvenir from a hockey fight years ago.
“Why? Because you’re in a two-star hotel?” Leona’s fingers were drawing absent circles on Vil’s stomach.
“Because I’m here. With you. The narrative is… complicated.”
“Your narrative,” Leona corrected gently, catching Vil’s wandering hand and lacing their fingers together. “You get to write it now. Not them.”
Vil turned his head on the pillow. Leona’s profile was sharp in the dimness, his eyelashes a dark smudge against his skin. He looked peaceful. Vil had rarely seen him look peaceful. “Is that what we’re doing? Writing a new one?”
“Drafting, maybe.” Leona turned to face him, their noses almost touching. “First draft’s always messy.”
He leaned in and kissed him, a soft, closed-mouth press that was more promise than passion. It was a new language. Vil responded in kind, his free hand coming up to cup Leona’s jaw. The stubble was abrasive against his palm, a grounding, real sensation.
Then Leona’s stomach growled, a loud, vulgar interruption.
Vil broke the kiss, a snort of laughter escaping him. “Really?”
“Shut up. I was nervous. I didn’t eat.”
“The mighty hockey player, felled by pre-date nerves.” Vil pushed himself up onto one elbow, the sheet pooling at his waist. “I’m starving, too. We sent back the ninety-dollar steaks.”
A slow, wicked smile spread across Leona’s face. He threw back the sheet and swung his legs out of bed, standing in all his unselfconscious naked glory. “I know a place.”
“It’s four in the morning, Leona.”
“It’s Montreal. Someone’s always frying something.” He began gathering clothes from the floor, tossing Vil’s briefs at him. “Come on. Get dressed. Unless you want to go out in that shredded jumpsuit.”
Vil looked at the glittering heap of fabric on the floor. The delicate straps were torn, the sequins scattered like fallen stars. A casualty of their urgency. He felt a strange pang for it. “It was Laverne,” he said quietly.
“What was?”
“The jumpsuit. You tore a Laverne.”
Leona paused, one leg in his jeans. He glanced from Vil’s face to the ruined garment. A flicker of genuine regret passed through his eyes, followed by defiance. “I’ll buy you ten. Put on my sweatpants.”
They dressed in a comfortable, shuffling quiet. Vil, in Leona’s too-long sweatpants and a borrowed hoodie, his hair a magnificent wreck, looked like a fallen angel slumming it. Leona watched him roll the sleeves, a fond, proprietary warmth in his chest.
The diner was a blaze of fluorescent light in the pre-dawn gloom, smelling of old coffee and frying grease. They slid into a sticky vinyl booth. A waitress with a tired smile poured them coffee without asking.
“So,” Leona said, scanning the laminated menu. “What happens tomorrow?”
Vil sipped his coffee, black. He’d expected the question, but it still sent a jolt through his system. “I have a media day at ten. Then a flight to Toronto for a sponsor event.”
“And after that?”
“Boston. Then L.A.” Vil set his cup down, the ceramic clinking softly. “The ‘Never Enough’ tour. It’s a six-week circuit.”
Leona didn’t look up from the menu. “I have a home game series. Then we’re on the road for two weeks. West coast swing.”
Their schedules, two parallel lines that had violently intersected, were now threatening to diverge again. The reality of their lives—the travel, the commitments, the scrutiny—landed heavily between the sugar caddy and the ketchup bottle.
The waitress returned. Leona ordered a monstrosity involving eggs, pancakes, and sausage. Vil asked for oatmeal and fruit.
“That’s not food,” Leona said when she left.
“It’s fuel. Unlike your cardiac event on a plate.” Vil traced a water ring on the table. “We could… schedule things. I have breaks. You have off days.”
It sounded clinical.Insufficient.
“Scheduling,” Leona repeated flatly. He reached across the table, his hand covering Vil’s, stopping its nervous motion. His palm was warm, his grip firm. “Or.”
“Or?”
“Or I meet you in L.A. I get a hotel. You ditch your handlers for a night. We order overpriced room service and don’t answer the door.” His thumb stroked Vil’s knuckle. “And after your tour, when I’m in the off-season… I come with you. If you want.”
Vil’s breath caught. “Come with me?”
“As in, be there. In the same city. Maybe the same apartment.” Leona’s gaze was direct, unnervingly so. “The last time I tried to be near you, I ran the other way. I’m not doing that again. So you tell me. What’s the version of this that doesn’t feel like a cage to either of us?”
Vil stared at their joined hands. He thought of lonely hotel rooms in countless cities, of the silent, perfect isolation of his own apartment. He thought of the echoing quiet Leona had described, the one he’d hated. He imagined filling that silence with the sound of Leona complaining about the coffee, his skates in the hallway, the solid, warm weight of him in Vil’s space.
“I want the apartment,” Vil whispered. He looked up, meeting Leona’s eyes. “I want you complaining about my green juice in my kitchen. I want your disgusting hockey bag stinking up my front hall.”
A slow, real smile broke across Leona’s face, transforming it. “Yeah?”
“Yes.” The word felt like a key turning. “But I also want the hotel rooms. The stolen nights on the road. All of it. The schedule and the spontaneity. I don’t want a single version. I want the whole… messy draft.”
Their food arrived. Leona’s plate was a beige and brown mountain. Vil’s bowl held a neat, respectable portion of oatmeal. They ate in a comfortable quiet, their legs tangling together under the Formica table. It was ordinary.It was extraordinary.
Back in the hotel room, the dawn was beginning to bleach the sky a pale grey. The clutter of their earlier haste was still there. Vil’s gaze fell on the ruined Laverne jumpsuit, a shimmering puddle on the floor. A symbol of something broken open.
He walked over to it, picked it up. The torn straps hung limp. He held it up, the sequins catching the weak light.
“It’s just a thing,” Leona said from behind him, his voice soft.
“I know.” Vil let it fall. He turned to face Leona. “But sometimes the thing matters. It was armor.”
Leona closed the distance between them. He didn’t reach for the hoodie zipper. He gripped the fabric at Vil’s shoulders, his fingers curling into the soft cotton. His eyes were dark, intense, but not with desperation this time. With intent.
“Let me,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
Vil nodded, a faint, almost imperceptible dip of his chin.
Leona’s hands tightened. With one fierce, controlled motion, he tore the hoodie open. Buttons, real ones this time, pinged against the wall and skittered across the floor. The sound was sharp, final. The heavy fabric gaped, exposing Vil’s chest to the cool morning air.
He did the same to the borrowed t-shirt beneath, the cotton yielding with a soft rip. Vil stood perfectly still, allowing it, his breath coming faster. This was not a frantic shedding. This was a deliberate unmasking. Leona pushed the torn fabrics from Vil’s shoulders, letting them fall to join the sequins on the floor.
He looked his fill, his gaze hot and appreciative. Then he took Vil’s hands and placed them on the waistband of his own jeans. “Your turn.”
Vil’s fingers hooked into the denim and the soft jersey of Leona’s sweatpants beneath. He pulled, not with Leona’s brute force, but with a sharp, determined yank. The seam at the side gave way with a loud, ripping tear. He pushed them down, and Leona stepped out of the tattered pile.
They stood facing each other in the grey light, surrounded by the wreckage of fabric, completely exposed. No sequins, no denim, no armor of any kind. Just skin, scars, history, and the terrifying, brilliant possibility of a future they were choosing, stitch by painful stitch, right now.
Leona reached out, not to pull him closer, but to brush a stray strand of hair from Vil’s forehead. The gesture was unbearably tender. “See?” he whispered. “Better.”
Vil caught his wrist, turned his head, and pressed a kiss to his palm. “Yes.”
He led Leona back to the bed, to the sheets that still smelled of them. This time, there was no frenzy, no competition. It was a slow, thorough exploration, a mapping of familiar territory with new understanding. The morning light grew stronger, painting their skin in gold, as they rewrote their story not with breaking, but with a patient, relentless kind of making.
The morning light grew stronger, painting their skin in gold, as they rewrote their story not with breaking, but with a patient, relentless kind of making. Leona’s mouth was a slow exploration along Vil’s collarbone, a deliberate contrast to the bruising desperation of before. His hands, usually so forceful, now charted the geography of Vil’s ribs with a reverence that left him breathless.
Vil arched into the touch, a soft sound escaping him. He tunneled his fingers into Leona’s hair, not to guide, but simply to feel the coarse texture against his skin. The world narrowed to this room, this bed, this new and terrifying gentleness.
“Tell me,” Vil whispered, the words barely audible. He wasn’t sure what he was asking for.
Leona understood. He lifted his head, his gaze holding Vil’s. The usual guarded irony was gone, burned away. What remained was stark, unflinching honesty. “I am madly in love with you,” he said, the statement clear and solid as a stone dropped into still water. “Ardently.Insanely. It’s the only true thing I’ve ever known.”
Vil’s breath hitched. He’d waited years to hear it, had carved the shape of those words from the silence in his own chest. Hearing them now, in the plain light of morning, felt like a bone being set.
Leona didn’t stop. He kissed the corner of Vil’s mouth, his jaw, the pulse point beneath his ear, as if punctuating each sentence. “I loved you in Prague when you were all sharp edges and louder than anyone else on the ice. I loved you when you became this… untouchable god in sequins. I hated you for it, sometimes, but I never stopped. Not for a second.”
He smoothed a hand over Vil’s hip, his thumb stroking the dip there. “And I am going to keep playing hockey. Because I do love it. It’s where I fit. The chaos, the immediacy of it… it’s mine. But that’s a place, Vil. It’s not a person.” He leaned his forehead against Vil’s, their breath mingling. “You are my person. I will be at every competition I can get to. I will watch every damn routine on my phone in some airport lounge. I will bore my teammates to tears talking about your technical scores.”
A laugh bubbled up in Vil’s throat, watery and surprised. He swallowed it, his eyes stinging.
“I’m going to complain about your green juice in your kitchen,” Leona continued, his voice a low, steady promise. “My disgusting bag will stink up your hall. We’ll fight about the thermostat and who used the last of the hot water. And I will be there. For all of it.However messy it gets. For the rest of my life, if you’ll have me.”
The declaration hung in the sunlit air, immense and simple. Vil could find no clever retort, no deflection. He could only meet it with a truth of his own. He pulled Leona down into a kiss that tasted of salt and certainty. It was a seal.A covenant.
This time, when they moved together, it was with a profound, synchronized hunger. There was no rush, only a deep, gathering intensity. Leona’s touches were everywhere, learning him anew. Vil responded with a vulnerability he had never allowed himself, guiding, asking, yielding.
When they finally joined, it was with a shared gasp that felt like a beginning. The pace they built was deep and relentless, a current that pulled them both under. It wasn’t a frantic race toward a finish, but a journey they were determined to take in unison. Vil’s legs were locked around Leona’s waist, his heels digging into the small of his back, anchoring them together. Leona’s arms braced beneath him, holding him so close not a breath could pass between them.
“Look at me,” Leona breathed, his voice strained with the effort of holding himself still.
Vil opened his eyes. He saw himself reflected in the dark, wild love in Leona’s gaze. He saw the future there, messy and bright and theirs.
“I’m here,” Vil whispered, his fingers tracing the sweat-slick line of Leona’s spine. “I’m right here.”
That was all it took. The world dissolved into sensation, a cresting wave that broke over them both, pulling them under in a silence that roared. They clung to each other as it passed, trembling, pressaed so close their racing hearts seemed to beat against the same ribcage.
A long time later, the room came back into focus—the slanted light, the distant hum of the hotel’s ice machine, the scent of their skin. Leona had rolled to his side, pulling Vil with him, keeping him wrapped in his arms. Vil’s head rested on his shoulder, his ear pressed to the steady, slowing thump of Leona’s heart.
“The tour is six weeks,” Vil said into the quiet, his voice husky.
“I know.”
“You have the west coast swing.”
“I have the schedule on my phone.”
Vil propped himself up on an elbow. “We’ll text. Ugly, blurry pictures of hotel rooms. Audio messages when you can’t sleep.”
“I’ll call after every game,” Leona said, his hand tracing idle patterns on Vil’s back. “Win or lose. Even when I’m in a foul mood.”
“Especially when you’re in a foul mood.” Vil smiled, a real, easy thing. “I want the unedited version.”
Leona returned the smile, a rare, unguarded flash of teeth. “You sure? It’s mostly grunting and complaining about the refs.”
“I’ll learn to translate.” Vil lay back down, settling into the curve of Leona’s body. The rest of their lives stretched out before them, not as a terrifying void, but as a series of problems to be solved together—time zones, schedules, interviews, rumors. It felt manageable. It felt like a challenge he finally wanted to meet.
Outside, the city was fully awake. Car horns blared. A plane traced a line across the sky. Here, in this generic room littered with their past and their promise, they slept.