“It’s a great taco. But I’m not talking about the food.”
Dawson looked at Leo across the table. Hot sauce on his chin, sleeves shoved up past his elbows, eating like he’d forgotten anyone could see him. This was a version of Leo that Port Haven didn’t get. Dawson wasn’t sure Leo knew how sexy he was when he let his guard down.
Dawson reached across and wiped the hot sauce off with his thumb. He couldn’t help himself — the urge to take care of small things for Leo kept catching him off guard. Leo went still, eyes tracking the motion, and Dawson pulled his hand back before either of them could make it into something.
“You had sauce on your face,” Dawson said.
“You could have just told me, you know.” Leo’s grin had gone quieter, warmer. “Don’t hear me complaining, though.”
After lunch, they walked along the riverwalk. The path was wide, the trees lining the opposite side of the bank were turning orange and gold, and the foot traffic was thin enough that they had stretches of sidewalk to themselves.
Leo’s hand brushed his. Not an accident. Dawson could tell by the way Leo kept his pace steady, didn’t look over, gave Dawson the space to pull away without anyone having to acknowledge it.
Dawson didn’t flinch.
He let their hands brush again. Then again. And on the third pass, Leo’s fingers caught his and held.
Dawson’s pulse thumped once, hard, in his throat. His head didn’t turn. His eyes didn’t sweep. He just walked, hand in Leo’s, on a sidewalk in Milwaukee where nobody from his life would ever see him, and the feeling that moved through him was so far from fear that he didn’t have a word for it.
Leo’s thumb moved over his knuckle. One stroke. Slow.
Fingers laced together, a thumb on a knuckle. Such a small thing. Dawson had watched other people do this his entire life and told himself it wasn’t anything he needed. Walking next to Leo with their hands locked together, he understood for the first time how much that lie had cost him.
They walked. Leo filled the silence the way he always did, talking about the riverwalk, a gallery he wanted to check out, whether Jonesy could survive in a real city. Dawson listened, held on, and let himself have this: a Thursday afternoon, a man’s hand in his, a city that didn’t know or care who Dawson Mercer was.
His jaw was loose. He hadn’t noticed it unclench, but it had, somewhere between the coffee shop and the taco place. His shoulders sat where they were supposed to. His breathing was even. He wasn’t mapping exits or sightlines or the distance between his body and Leo’s.
Eventually, he’d drive back to Port Haven and become the other version of himself again. The one who deflected when his brothers asked who he was talking to. But that version was still hours away, and right now he wasn’t in a hurry to reach it.
“Hey,” Leo said. They’d stopped at a railing overlooking the river, the sun catching the water and throwing light across Leo’s face. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere. I’m here.”
Leo studied him. The look he got when he was deciding whether to push or let something go.
Leo let it go. He squeezed Dawson’s hand once and turned back to the river.
“Good,” Leo said. “Stay here.”
Leo found a record shop two blocks off the riverwalk, and they lost an hour in there. Leo flipped through crates of vinyl with a focus Dawson hadn’t seen from him outside of hockey, pulling out albums to show Dawson covers he thought were funny or terrible or both.
“Do you even have a way to play these?” Dawson asked, watching Leo add a third record to the stack under his arm.
“Not currently.” Leo didn’t look up from the crate. “My grandfather had this collection. Hundreds of records, all organized by year. He’d put one on every Sunday morning andmake me sit and listen to the whole side before I could go outside.” He pulled out another album, studied the cover, put it back. “He died last year. My mom sold the whole collection at an estate sale. She said she didn’t realize I’d want them because I move so often.”
Leo said it fast, without looking up, already moving to the next crate. Dawson watched him sort through the records and didn’t push.
Leo bought three records and carried the bag out of the store like he’d won something.
They found a bar with a patio overlooking the river and ate burgers as the sun went down. Leo ordered something on draft that came in a glass with a logo Dawson didn’t recognize. Dawson ordered a Leinenkugel.
They sat on the same side of the table, which Dawson hadn’t planned and Leo hadn’t mentioned. Leo’s knee pressed against his and stayed there.
Leo talked about Orlando. Not hockey, not the trade. The apartment he’d had near the beach, the Cuban place on his block where the owner knew his order, the Sunday phone calls with his grandfather that stopped last year when he died. Small things. The kind of details you only share when you’re not trying to impress anyone.
Dawson told him about the garage. How he’d been in the shop since he was old enough to hand his dad a wrench, and how, when their dad decided to retire, Wyatt took it over without anyone really discussing it. It just made sense. Wyatt was the oldest. Wyatt had the head for the business side. Dawson and Ethan never talked about doing anything else. Somewhere alongthe way, it stopped being his dad’s shop and became Dawson’s life, and he’d never stopped to ask himself if he’d chosen it or just never left.
He hadn’t said that aloud before. Not to Wyatt, not to Ethan. Not to anyone. Never let himself admit that he might have wanted to do something else because he didn’t want his family to think he felt trapped.
