Harrisburg Railers Box Set 1

by R J Scott

  “You do what feels right when it feels right,” he told my reflection.

  “That’s no help at all.”

  “It’s the best I can do. Let’s go to bed, Tennant. I’m tired and we have a game tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, right.” I closed the belt drawer but left the closet open.

  Thirteen

  Mads

  The hit wasn’t hard. It wasn’t even a full check, more a collection of bodies in and around the net, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

  One-zero in our favor, and the puck bouncing on some of the shittiest ice I’d seen all season. I’d switched up my first D-pair, got them on the ice in a smooth changeover, and I took a moment just to admire the play evolve. I could feel the goal, like sometimes you just know the puck is going to pass the minder and find the net. Their goalie had been a beast tonight, and there was frustration in our team to break him. But with only five minutes left in the game, it seemed he wasn’t about to start letting shots through now.

  But we had the puck. Mac passed to Arvy from behind our goal, Arvy cycled it back, got in position, waited for the next changeover, first line was right there on the ice, and then it was game on. Two quick tape-to-tapes, a beautiful saucer from Lee, and Connor Hurleigh had the puck, steadying the bounce, heads up, and then he just let that beauty fly. Their defense bundled into Connor, the goalie went down, reached for the puck but it was too damn quick, hundred miles an hour, and the Railers were two up.

  The boos and jeers from the away crowd were something to ignore, the cheers from the Railers fans behind our bench and the shouts of the team outweighing anything from the home team supporters. The other team’s defense were still hovering at the goal mouth, some kind of altercation between our first line and them, and then everyone moved away and revealed Connor, our captain, hunched over and clearly in pain.

  “What the fuck?” Coach shouted, and even as he said that our medics were up and over the boards and straight to him. Linesmen congregated, and a weird hush fell over the crowd. I couldn’t properly see from where I was, and I exchanged glances with Ten, who was leaning over the boards and staring down at the ice.

  How badly was Connor hurt? Was his year over? Was it a broken bone, or a knee out of joint, a torn ACL, or even worse, that ghost of hell; a concussion. I only realized I was clutching my chest when Coach tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Okay?” he asked, and pointed at the fist right over my heart.

  I dropped it immediately, but not before Ten had caught the same action. He didn’t know where to look—at his captain clambering up with help from medics, or his lover probably looking like he was about to keel over dead.

  “Yeah,” I said, and then desperately wanted to change the narrative of the whole situation here. No one mentioned my medical issues anymore—not the team, not my friends, not even my son. They were filed under ‘things his body and hockey did to him’.

  Of course, I was still introduced as Jared Madsen, “former Sabres defender. Retired after a hit in the Stanley Cup final—heart problems, you know” by anyone who wanted to make it clear why I wasn’t still playing. I didn’t need anyone to defend me or explain the reasons why I’d stopped playing. Equally, I didn’t want to see that expression on Ten’s face. He’d looked like someone had kicked his puppy.

  “What’s the news?” I asked Emma, our first medic, as she skated back over. She shook her head; we weren’t exactly going to share medical information about a player with any asshole who could lip-read. But her expression was serious, and Cole, our second medic, had to hold Connor upright with help from Arvy.

  This did not look good, and the pain on Connor’s face was something I hated to see on any player.

  “Heads back in the game,” Coach shouted.

  The entire team looked at him before he sent over the second line but kept Ten back and sent out our third line center. This was mixing up the lines to try to keep momentum, and Ten stared intently at the game. When he went over alongside the first line wingers, centering his own first line, my heart was in my mouth. Their D was all over our forwards, and this move put him up against the same big boys that had just taken out our captain.

  It wasn’t a disaster, not like the Titanic was a disaster, but more of an experiment that didn’t entirely work. Ten hadn’t played with these two guys. He was faster than them; that much was obvious. With his own line, he’d learned how to use that speed. With these two guys, he was all over the show and asking too much for his wingers to connect, and these were the best we had.

  The three of them were just puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit. Two minutes left and the other team scored on us. One minute left and it was tied when Ten turned over the puck in the neutral zone. The game ended in a tie, moving the whole thing into overtime. The three-on-three was just as brutal. Somehow, none of the team out there were connecting with anyone, like Connor being injured had ripped the structure of the team to shreds for this game and we’d lost all composure. Even Coach wasn’t cursing as he normally did. Connor being hurt was big. A game changer.

  When our opponents scored at three twenty-seven into the five-minute overtime, the fans erupted, and we left the bench, going straight to the dressing room. Players first. Inconsolable players who all wanted to know one thing. How is Connor? Is Connor okay? Is he playing the next game?

  This was dangerous. This could derail everything.

  “We don’t know anything,” Coach explained to the very quiet room. “It’s nine thirty. I want us on the coach at ten thirty, okay? Flying at eleven.”

  Everyone nodded, and I saw Ten slump in his stall, hands between his knees, his head bowed. I wanted to tell him it was okay, that having an injured captain wasn’t the end of the world, that we would rally, he could step up, we could win the following ten games in a row.

  If only I felt that optimism inside. Ten was exposed out there, and I couldn’t see it changing by the next game.

  The plane was quiet. Connor had limped onto it without help. The injury wasn’t career ending, but nobody on the medical team was telling us anything. All they would say is it would be a while for assessment, possibly missing two weeks of games. I thought about who we were facing. Six games over the next two weeks—a stand of four in a row at home, the other two in Florida.

  Ten used the bathroom, walking past me, his hand brushing my shoulder, and God how I wanted, at that moment, to push him into the bathroom and just…

  Hold him.

  All I wanted to do was tell him all those things to reassure him. And how stupid was that? When he walked back, he still had that destroyed expression on his face, and I stopped him with a hand on his thigh.

  “You played well. Get over the loss and move on,” I said. As a coach, I could say those kinds of things, and no one would bat an eyelid.

  Ten simply looked at me and nodded. “Yes, Coach,” he murmured, and I let him go.

  We were back in Harrisburg by two, taking separate cars home, always careful, and by the time I’d finished talking to Coach, the players’ cars were gone and I knew Ten would be home.

  He was in bed when I got in, and I stripped, brushed my teeth, and curled up behind him in bed.

  “How serious is it?” Ten asked.

  “They’re saying groin strain. Could’ve been worse; he could’ve impacted the wall.”

  Ten snuggled back into my hold, and it took a while, but finally he slept.

  The next day at the coaches’ meeting, they composed the official statement of a lower body injury, and then it was all about who to move where. A huge amount of what they were saying was focused on Ten.

  Coach seemed to change his mind with each separate input from his coaches.

  Ten was strong. Ten was fast. Ten was too strong. Ten was too fast.

  I thought they were missing one vital thing, and when it was my turn to talk I had to push down the instinct that maybe my opinion was tainted by the fact I loved Ten.

  I loved hockey—the puri
ty of it, the grace and beauty and style—and I had always stayed honest to the game as a player and a coach. So, I had to trust that what I wanted to say was purely technical and didn’t focus on Ten’s determination, and his huge heart that meant he’d sacrifice everything for this team.

  “I agree,” I began carefully. “Ten is way too fast for the wingers from our existing first line, but I honestly think we shouldn’t throw the line under the bus. We need to get Ten to adjust, but to my mind he’s first line for sure.”

  “I’ll work with the three of them,” Coach said, and nodded to Pikey, the associate coach. “Let’s get them in.”

  We lost the next game, not because of one line in particular, but because the team as a whole was all over the damn place. I was hoarse with shouting and dizzy with trying to match the lines. We were lucky to get away with only a five-two loss. It wasn’t what the team needed; it wasn’t what Ten needed. He overcompensated and lost any kind of natural edge he had to his skating. He was frustrated, the team was disappointed… we needed to pull this back, all of us.

  We won the next game, after a combination of the team being fresh off a back-to-back and starting their backup goalie. It wasn’t a pretty win, messy and scrappy, but it was a win. Another win in Nashville, and I caught Ten’s brief almost-smile, and it was in that game that I saw something click out there. Ten was different. He was talking with authority in the room, he was guiding and working on plays, and he was stepping up to his first line responsibilities.

  Well, at the rink he was. On TV he was.

  At home? That was a different matter. Everything flooded out on the day off after our latest win. We’d woken up, made love as usual, eaten breakfast like every other day, drunk coffee, talked shit… we’d even shared a shower and some pretty freaking awesome kissing.

  But when it came to deciding what to do with our day, a toss-up between going out for lunch or staying in and watching cheesy movies that we could ridicule, Ten was clearly agitated. He couldn’t decide; he wouldn’t decide. He had no opinion on what we should do, and he began to pace. I contemplated going out for a walk, giving him some space to let him get everything out of his system on his own, but it seemed he wanted to talk.

  “I’m not ready for the first line on this team,” he announced on his twenty-something pass of the sofa in front of me.

  Ah. So that was what was up.

  “Yes, you are,” I said, and I believed it. I wouldn’t lie because, like I said, you have to be honest in hockey. I’d never blown smoke up any player’s ass; I wasn’t going to start now. Ten had to know I was being candid, right? Only his next words showed he thought very little about what I was saying at all.

  “You’re just saying that because we’re together.”

  “My dick up your ass doesn’t mean I’m lying,” I said crudely, and saw him wince.

  That had been harsh, and I realized I needed to lose my coach persona and really find my inner kindness. It came out wrong, because what I wanted to say was, Talk to me, Ten. Let’s see if we can’t sort this, and I’ll be super supportive and boyfriend-y. But what actually came out was, “Fuck’s sake, Ten, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  Yep, even after all of the your-heart-is-for-shit, hockey-is-done therapy, on occasion I was still a dick who couldn’t word things the right way.

  Ten sat on the coffee table in front of me, his knees bumping mine. “I wanted that first line so bad,” he admitted. “But not at Connor’s expense.”

  “So, what is it? You feel guilty that Connor was injured and you took his spot?”

  “Yes, no… yes… Shit, I don’t know.”

  Ten looked adorably confused, and I leaned forward and placed my hands on his knees. “That’s hockey, Ten. You know that.”

  He looked at me and nodded, but the worry hadn’t left his expression. “So, what if I’m better centering the second line?”

  “You might be,” I said, then made sure to add the reassurance part. “But the coaches and management see a strong improvement from you on that first line, and you’ll be stronger on second when Connor is back.”

  He nodded. “I wanted that first line,” he admitted in a soft voice, like he was admitting the world’s worst sin. “But I wanted to earn it. And how stupid is that? Because the game we play means we could all get injured tomorrow.”

  “Exactly. Play your position, play your best. Part of the team.”

  “All those years being second best behind Tate Collins, I wanted to show I was the best, but maybe I’m better off in second place.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” I said, and there must have been something in my tone, because Ten smiled at me, a heart-stopping smile that reached his beautiful eyes. I was a goner. I tugged him so he was next to me on the sofa, then pulled him close. “And one day,” I teased, “when you’re a grown-up boy, you can be captain of your own team.”

  That was enough for him to start a play fight, which in turn led to kissing, which of course inevitably led to some of the hottest sex I’d experienced in my entire life.

  He is a drug and I am an addict.

  Thanksgiving isn’t my favorite time of the year. I mean, Canadian Thanksgiving I love, but American Thanksgiving isn’t a Canadian thing. Didn’t matter, though, because suddenly, even though half our team was non-American, it was vital to know exactly how you were going to spend the day. Even Stan was into it, although how much he actually knew about Thanksgiving escaped me. When I asked him, all he said was “Eat ham. Gobble Gobble”.

  Seemed to me that where each of us was spending that one day was all anyone could talk about, and I’d been personally invited to four separate turkey days as the sad loner the team saw me as. I didn’t even explain I’d have Ryker with me because his mom and her husband were on a tenth-anniversary cruise.

  All I can say is thank fuck for Ten.

  “Hey, Coach, Brady said you should go visit him for Thanksgiving.” Ten said, loud enough that anyone who was bothering to hang around talking post-game would hear. Subtle was not in Ten’s vocabulary.

  “He did?”

  “Yep. Him and Jamie will be at Mom and Dad’s, and I’m going as well. You wanna go?”

  “I have Ryker,” I said, picking up my bag. I’d already planned for the worst-case scenario of some Ten-free days, but when Casey had told me about her last-minute thing, I’d been happy to get to enjoy the day off with Ryker. Star Wars movies and a huge amount of over-eating on anything but turkey were in the plans. Ten had walked in on the conversation last week, so he’d known I had Ryker, but neither of us had made anything like a plan.

  “Yeah, Mom said Ryker should come too.”

  Which was how we’d got to the place where we were now. Sitting on a bench and lacing up skates at the Railers practice rink. We weren’t in Carolina yet. This was the prequel to the Thanksgiving fun; Ryker had come up early, and he’d talked non-stop about going skating with me and Ten. The facility was closed, it was eleven at night, the lights were low, it was just the three of us, and I was going out on the ice for the first time with Ten.

  Well, not the first time, but the first without my coach’s hat, and maybe the chance of some two-on-one keep-away. I still had moves. My heart might have let me down, but muscle memory and the joy of skating were right there, front and center.

  Ten and Ryker were chatting faster than I would have thought humanly possible, but every so often I saw Ten’s eyes glaze over. Keeping up with my seventeen-year-old son was clearly wearing.

  Then we were on the ice, and I watched with no small amount of pride as Ryker pushed with his foot and found a skating rhythm that was fast and accurate, finishing the push with some backward crossovers and lazy circles around me and Ten. Ryker pushed off again, taking a puck with him and warming up with a few slow passes to himself off the boards.

  “He’s good, and I’m not just saying that as his dad,” I said. “He’s better than his age dictates; Ev already wants him tied up to an agent.”


  Ten glanced at me, then back to Ryker. “No,” he said. “Not after what happened to Brady, remember?”

  I remembered all too well; the scumbag who’d screwed Brady over had made it difficult for him to get away from the minors and almost fucked up his chances in the draft we shared.

  “Ev will start in on me again. He’s visiting.”

  “He’s here?” Ten looked around, horrified, and I had to laugh. Ev and Ten hadn’t exactly spoken other than a handshake on meeting, but Ten had certainly heard all the horror stories I’d told him.

  “Tomorrow. Something about local business support, fuck if I know, but he has his finger in every pie that’s remotely connected to me.” I couldn’t help the irritation in my voice, and it didn’t stop. “And he’s aware Ryker is with me for Thanksgiving, so I knew to expect his ass up in my space. Apparently, he wanted Ryker with him—something about me not being emotionally available, whatever the fuck that means.”

  Ryker came to a stop in front of us, throwing up snow. “Hey, old men, wanna skate?”

  Ten straightened beside me and chuckled darkly, “You are so gonna pay for that, kid.”

  Ryker grinned like he’d expected nothing less and backed away from Ten, balancing a puck on the end of his stick. One knock from Ten and the puck landed on the ice, bouncing on its end, and Ten stole it from under him.

  The two of them were a beautiful thing to watch. The two men in my life, laughing and teasing, then getting oh so serious. Ryker didn’t stand a chance against Ten most of the time, but every so often—well, twice to be exact—coming up on Ten’s left side, he would take the puck and he would make Ten work. I joined in, playing my lone defenseman role, stealing the puck, pretending to check Ryker into the boards. My breathing was fine, my heart was fine, but I couldn’t keep up with Ryker, and there was no hope in hell of getting anywhere near Ten.

  I’d come to terms with the age gap in my love life. Those extra years were nothing, and I loved Ten so much it hurt, so I forgot everything in that love, but in hockey terms, a decade was an eternity. Added to which, I wasn’t as toned and fit as I used to be. I kept up pretty good, but I called time first. I skated to the boards and hoisted myself up, sitting there and watching Ryker and Ten dart around the ice.