by Tricia Owens
“Break!” their assistant coach yelled. “You bums are making my head spin!”
Laughing, Adrian kept an arm around Neil’s shoulders and dragged him with him to the benches, where everyone grabbed their water or Gatorade bottles. Adrian grabbed his water bottle and squirted it in the air, spraying it over the other players. Some cursed him, some shot water back, splashing Neil, too, who wiped it away with a smile. It was like playing with kids.
Or a big dog, he thought as he watched Adrian duck out of a grab by a player who tried to rub a towel over his face.
“We’re not normally this rowdy,” Elias assured him as he settled against the board next to Neil and watched the antics.
“With him on the team I have trouble believing it.”
Elias laughed. “Good point. He’ll be serious when he’s dead, I suppose.”
Neil drank from his bottle and turned away when he realized Elias was watching him watch Adrian.
“Never believed in instant chemistry,” the big Finn said, “but I think I witnessed it on the ice just now.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Neil said vaguely, uncomfortable with the comment which could have carried a more intimate meaning. “I’ll keep an eye on my crossover with your zone. I drifted a little far south a couple of times and double-covered a man.”
“I’m not worried about it. You’re not a rookie.” Elias squirted water on the ice and watched it freeze. “Atlanta’s at the bottom of our division, but tonight’s game is going to feel like a playoff round. You ready for the madness?”
Neil smiled. “I’ve played plenty of playoff hockey.”
“Ah, yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to come off like a prick.” Elias gave him a sheepish smile.
“I know what you’re getting at, though. There’ll be a lot of eyes on tonight, watching to see how I fit in.” Neil shrugged. “All I can do is play my best. The rest will sort itself out.”
Elias thumbed in the direction of Adrian, who was bent over at the waist, laughing uproariously at something. “He’s going to pressure you into some hotshot stuff. Better decide now how flashy you’re prepared to be.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To show you off. He’s proud of you, in case you haven’t figured that out.”
Neil felt his ears burning. “That’s nuts,” he mumbled before hiding behind his water bottle.
“No one said he isn’t. But he’s a damn good man.”
Something in the centerman’s tone caught his interest. “You’ve known him a long time, then?”
“Used to play against in each other in Worlds. Finland versus Sweden was always a top draw.” Elias chuckled, his expression soft with remembrance. “I tried to punch him in his pretty face once, after he crosschecked me. But of course we wore helmet cages so I never made contact. Such a pity. Would’ve been fun shutting him up for a little while.”
“Is that even possible?”
Elias grinned and slapped his arm. “I have the feeling if anyone finds out, it’ll be you.”
Neil smiled, hoping his unease wasn’t visible. “I’m just the new guy. I know less about him than any of you.”
“You guys hung out last night, right?”
“Just drove to the park. He, uh, wanted to show me the view.” Neil mentally kicked himself for being so honest. Why not tell Elias they’d been unpacking his shit?
“Considering how much he likes to talk and that nothing embarrasses him, I bet you know plenty about him already,” Elias said, thankfully not commenting on the strange, date-like evening they’d spent together. “Adrian is an open book. Honest to a fault and expects that from others. But I’ve always thought there’s something deeper there that not everyone gets to see.”
“Like a dark side?” Neil joked.
Elias eyed him. “Like he’s an interesting guy who’d be the best brother you ever had.” He coughed. “Or significant other. Though he’s not dating anyone seriously at the moment.”
Neil shouldn’t have cared about the latter comment, but he was irked to find that he did care. He was relieved, and how stupid was that? If Adrian dated someone, he’d lay off of hitting on Neil. If Neil were smart, he’d try to set up the other winger just to get him off his back.
But he wasn’t smart, because the thought of seeing Adrian with a woman on his arm was enough to have Neil grinding his teeth together.
“I’m sure that’ll change soon enough,” he said, shooting for calm and disinterested. “He sure does love the ladies.”
“Hmm. And what about you? You moving anyone here?”
Neil shook his head. “Been running solo for a while now. We’ll see how it goes in a new environment. Maybe change is all I need to find that someone special.”
Elias chuckled and shook his head, though Neil couldn’t tell why. “Nothing like change to stir up the juices. Come on. Let’s put more pucks in the net. I bet we can wear a hole in it.”
Despite Elias’ hope, the latter half of skate was dedicated to skills work, with players working on their own or with the coaches to fix or perfect various aspects of their game. Neil stuck around to go over positional issues with one of the assistants, conscious of the GM and head coach entering at the far end of the rink and watching through the glass. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to prove himself under a watchful eye so he was able to tune them out. The man he wasn’t able to ignore was Adrian, who casually skated lengths of the ice as though he were a scrub doing suicide runs. Neil knew he was waiting on him, but the Swedish winger was in for a rude awakening: Neil’s work ethic demanded that he always be the last man to leave the ice after practice.
By the time Neil finally called it quits, the GM and head coach were gone, as was Adrian. Neil headed alone to the locker room.
Showers were running when he entered. He cast a look at Adrian’s stall and groaned beneath his breath at seeing the other man’s gear bag sitting there. But at least two other player bags were out, too, meaning he and Adrian wouldn’t be alone. After stripping out of his gear and passing them to the crew for sterilizing and drying, Neil grabbed a towel and entered the showers.
Thankfully, Seattle didn’t have the archaic circular pipe system that he’d encountered in two older arenas. Guys at his level of competition were good at not staring at each other’s junk, but when you were forced to stand in a circle, facing each other around a pipe with multiple shower heads, eyes were going to drift. Here, the shower heads were on the walls and the room itself was fairly large. He was able to select a shower on the opposite wall from Adrian, whose back was to him.
That didn’t mean Neil didn’t so some looking of his own. The other two players were on the third wall, facing away from the entrance. Neither of them saw Neil’s lust-filled look at Adrian’s tight bubble butt and meaty thighs. The man was pure physical perfection and Neil couldn’t shake the power of his attraction to him, though ogling him wasn’t going to help. How in the world was he going to get through the remainder of his contract without accidentally springing a boner? It seemed like an impossible task.
He hung up his towel and turned on the spray, sighing at the warmth that cascaded over his body. He’d been a little nervous about today’s skate. Hockey-wise, he hadn’t made a good impression up to now. Practicing by himself and then faking an injury in order to be scratched from what was supposed to be his debut game didn’t go far toward endearing him to his teammates. But no one had seemed to hold any ill feelings toward him and the practice had been a blast.
The sound of the other showers eventually petered out. Though Neil worried—and traitorously fantasized about hearing wet footsteps coming up behind him—Adrian left along with the other men with only a cheerful, “Good practice, Neil!” to acknowledge that they’d both been in the showers together.
Emerging back into the locker room a few minutes later, Neil discovered he hadn’t completely dodged the morning’s landmines. The team’s press coordinator was in the room along with a half dozen reporters and med
ia people. Neil slicked a hand through his wet hair and made brief eye contact with Adrian, who held court in front of his own stall with another half dozen men. He wore only his boxer briefs as he answered a question. Neil wasn’t so brazen.
“Give me a second guys, and I’ll be right with you,” he told them as he arrived at his stall. He dressed as quickly as he could, aware of the curious gazes he received—who didn’t want to know if the team’s newest player was packing something impressive? Guys were guys and would want to compare. But he was used to it, and managed to pull on his jeans and a T-shirt with his dignity intact.
“Okay.” He combed his fingers through his hair to tame the waves a bit. “Who’s first to baptize me?”
The gathered media guys chuckled but hesitated in diving right in. They were unexpectedly timid. Neil chalked it up to them being a new hockey market. The media hadn’t yet learned to become aggressive and call players to the carpet.
“How did your first practice with the team go?” someone finally asked him. “Any early jitters from being the ‘new guy’?”
He grinned. “First time in a long time for me, yeah. But no, it was great. The guys have been really welcoming and fortunately for me, I’m used to the system here so it didn’t take me long to adjust. We had a good practice. It’s a good group of guys and I’m looking forward to playing with them and growing and getting better together.”
“How’s your injury, Neil? Can you explain what it was that kept you out of your first game with the Kraken?”
“It was something I tweaked during practice. Thought better safe than sorry. It’s not an issue now. I’m looking forward to making my debut in front of the home crowd. So far they’ve been nothing but welcoming.”
“Tell us your thoughts about being the most important player on your team to coming into a situation where you’ll be playing on a line with a superstar like Adrian Magnusson. Is it easier knowing you’ll share the load or is it a matter of competition for you two?”
Neil laughed. “Well, first of all I wasn’t the most important person on any of my previous teams going back to when I was a kid. Teams only succeed when every player contributes, and I’ve just been one of twenty-three guys trying to make a difference every night. Coming here, I anticipate that’ll be the same. I’ll give my best every shift and hopefully that’ll be enough to help us win some games. I’m not doing it alone and I’m not competing against my guys.”
Loud laughter broke out from the direction of Adrian’s stall. Neil studiously avoided looking over there, afraid he’d catch Adrian’s eye and something damning—like a blush—would give them both away.
“You haven’t experienced much adversity in your career,” another reporter spoke up. The muscles in Neil’s neck tightened. “It wasn’t until your injury in the Finals that you struggled with your game. Can you speak to how much trouble you’ve had with that?”
“Hey, now, let’s not make it sound like I’ve had it easy my whole career,” he said with a playful grin.
“You’ve never experienced a significant injury and your stats improved every year since your rookie season, until this year,” the man pointed out. He was about Neil’s age, with wire-rimmed glasses that did little to soften his piercing gaze. The phone he held in Neil’s face to record his answer was decorated with a sticker on the back which read RealTalkHockeyTalk. “Wouldn’t you agree that you haven’t faced the sort of adversity that other players in the league of your caliber have? Do you think that’s why you’re having so much trouble finding your game?”
The implications ticked Neil off, but he knew better than to bite. “I think every player has their challenges and they’re not always obvious.”
“What is your secret challenge, then?”
Neil glanced over at Adrian’s stall again. The handsome winger was grinning like a loon and appearing to be having the time of his life. Neil wished he could call Adrian over to take over since he seemed to enjoy it so much.
“I’m just trying to do the best I can with the resources at my disposal,” he told the Real Talk reporter. “I’m confident it’ll be a good season.”
“Two more questions, guys,” the coordinator told the media scrum.
“You were heavily involved with charities in Colorado and created two of your own,” someone asked him. “Do you intend to continue that here in Seattle?”
“Absolutely,” Neil said, happy to shift to a topic that meant something to him. “Being involved that way is highly rewarding and I’ll be working with the local communities to set some things up where they’re needed. It’s definitely high on my priority list.”
“Do you foresee any issues playing alongside a player who was your fiercest rival for most of your career? A man you didn’t seem to like very much?”
The Real Talk guy again. Neil was on his way to disliking him.
“Rivalries make hockey entertaining,” Neil replied. “We should always want rivalries, whether they’re with individuals or teams. Adrian and I competed against each other a lot, as you say, and he made my game better because of it. I have a lot of respect for him and always have. It was never personal. We left it on the ice.”
The reporter pushed his phone closer to Neil’s mouth, as though daring him to back away both metaphorically and literally. “But it’s not true that it’s not personal. He’s the one who pushed for you to come over. Why the change of heart in your relationship? He risked the future of the team to get you here. Why would he do that for you while you’re having the worst start to a season since you entered the league?”
“I said two questions, Gerald,” the coordinator cut in before Neil could bite back.
“It’s a follow-up to my first,” the Real Talk reporter, aka Gerald, protested.
The coordinator rolled his eyes. “Sell me another one next time. Thanks for mostly following the rules, guy. We’ll see you at the arena.”
Neil turned his back and pretended to fiddle with his bag while the coordinator led the media out of the room. A few seconds later, Adrian’s group followed suit, leaving the two of them alone.
“They’re easy here,” Adrian said with a grin as he hefted his bag over his shoulder. “The fans in Chicago asked me tougher questions than these softballs.”
“They’re alright,” Neil said guardedly. “You have any history with that Gerald guy?”
“No, why?”
“He was a little antagonistic.”
“Hmm. I only know that he hosts a Kraken podcast that’s decently popular. He’s never given me a problem before. Maybe talk to Mark, the coordinator, if he’s giving you trouble.”
“No, it’s not a big deal.” Neil stalled for time, pretending to move things around in his bag.
“Do you need a lift home?”
“No, thanks. I picked up my rental car this morning.”
“Ah, okay. Good to have a car.”
“Yeah.”
Adrian’s earnestness leaked out of his pores, but Neil told himself to be strong. He needed to draw and keep boundaries if he was going to survive playing alongside someone he found so attractive in many ways. He wasn’t happy that he was softening toward the Swede. A purely physical attraction could be compartmentalized and denied. But last night he’d glimpsed more of Adrian, enough to make him curious, and as they said, curiosity could very well kill a cat named Neil.
“I usually head to the arena around three,” Adrian told him, still cheerful and apparently hopeful that Neil would respond positively. How someone could be so optimistic was beyond Neil’s comprehension. “Gives me plenty of time with traffic.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Neil closed his eyes and mentally willed the other man to give up and go.
A handful of excruciating seconds later, Adrian sighed, very quietly. “Okay, guess I’ll head out. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Yeah. See you.”
After Adrian left, Neil zipped up his bag. He felt like he’d tossed a favorite chew toy into the trash, except he doub
ted that his former rival could be deterred so easily.
~~~~~
Neil rarely experienced pregame jitters. He’d been playing hockey for so long that game nights didn’t carry apprehension, only anticipation for the speed and excitement soon to come. But it seemed there was a first time for everything, because Neil was sweating beneath his gear as he took to the ice for warmups.
So much was riding on tonight. He hadn’t fully appreciated what his presence in Seattle meant to the city until he saw all the handmade signs held up by fans along the glass and the people wearing navy and gold jerseys with his name and number on them. It was incredibly jarring to see his name in colors other than Colorado’s aqua, red, and white. A strange sensation—like he was an imposter and none of this was really happening—pumped his heart to race even faster than it already did. The arena didn’t feel like home. The uniforms around him were unfamiliar. He skated harder, faster—
And then it all fell into place again. The schlick schlick sound of his blades against the ice, the cold rush of air over his cheeks, the comforting weight of his stick, like an extension of his arm—these things he knew as though they existed in his DNA. Focus on the hockey, he told himself as he took his turn shooting at their goaltender. You’re in control here.
Cheers followed him as he skated around the Kraken end of the ice, tapping his stick along the glass at the fans carrying signs for him. He flicked a dozen or so pucks into the stands to the delight of those who caught them. Palms slapped the glass, rooting for him as though he were already their favorite player. He hadn’t played a single game, yet he already had a significant cadre of supporters. It was as humbling as it was daunting, because all of this good will was predicated on him performing the way he had with his old team before this season.
He continued to savor the manic atmosphere as the starters were announced and the top line took to the ice. The ovation for Adrian was ear rattling. In only half a season he’d become the fan favorite. But it was the response to Neil’s name being called that shook his expectations. The arena seemed to vibrate with the cheers and screaming. Neil struggled to hold back a smile as he joined Adrian and Elias on the blue line. This was it. He’d joined—he’d created—a superstar line, and everyone in the building knew it and was losing their minds over it. Whether it took a single game or ten, the Kraken was about to unleash holy hell on the rest of the league and Neil couldn’t wait.