by RJ Scott
“Ben, talk to me…”
I looked up from our hands to his worried eyes. “I don’t want you to worry. I don’t want anyone to worry, my parents, my sister. They all have enough to fret over. I refuse to add to that. It’s nothing…”
He squeezed my fingers lightly, his gaze growing serious. “That kind of thing is not nothing, Ben. That’s a threat.”
“It’s someone pranking me, trying to throw me off my game, make me nervous.” I glanced at the paper I should’ve been working on. I was falling behind. Life was piling up. The pressure was growing weightier with each passing day.
“Hey, look at me.” I did as he asked. “Do you think this is related to that incident in Michigan?”
“I don’t think so,” I whispered as if speaking about this out loud would bring the media to his door. “Some of those people were angry, really angry, but the notes have been coming since before that Michigan crap.”
His eyes flared. “There’s more than one of these?” I nodded. He rocketed to his feet, shoving his hands through his hair. “How many? When did it start? Where are they all?”
“I put the other ones away.”
“What? Where?”
“In our room, in my draw. Ethan, please don’t freak out. This is just some stupid prank.” I slapped the threatening note. He limped from one end of the table, then back, his anger and concern thick on the air.
“You’re not that stupid. Don’t sit there and try to feed me bullshit. I can see the fear in your eyes. You know this is way more than some prank by a fellow student or someone from an opposing team trying to mess with your head.” He grabbed the note with the bold, black lettering and shook it at me. “This is a threat. This is someone confessing that they’ve been following you, stalking you! This is proof that some sick bastard is out there watching us. Do not try to fob this off as a joke. You need to go to the cops.”
“No!” I slapped the note out of his hand, grabbed it before it hit the table, and crammed it into my backpack. “I’m not going to the cops. That’s all I need, a bunch of cops digging into my past, asking questions, making statements to the press. You think Edmonton wants a player with that kind of baggage? They’ve still not commented on that racial shit in Michigan other than the standard statement.”
They’d condemned divisive speech and expressed the sentiment that players of all races and sexual orientation were welcome in their organization. They just hadn’t specifically referenced me.
“They supported you openly, Ben. What did you want them to do? Go slap the shit out of some drunk college kids?” He made another pass around the table, his limp growing worse with each step.
“Why don’t you sit down?” I asked, worried about him, his leg, the stress in the air, and the fact that someone was, as he had said, watching me. Watching us. Maybe they were outside the window right now. My skin grew clammy and cold. “Please, sit down and stop yelling.”
“Sorry, sorry, I’m just…” He exhaled, scrubbed his face with his hands, and then fell back into the chair beside me. “Ben, this is serious. You need to give those notes to the police.”
I shook my head strongly. “No, I can’t have anything else fall on me, Ethan. There are still reporters pestering me for an interview about the race troubles.”
“If you’d talk to them, just one of them, they’d stop hounding you.”
Again, I shook my head. He’d been saying that since that horrible night. Advising me to speak out and call it out. Tell the world what I thought, how I felt, and how that kind of bigotry hurt everyone, not just the players of color.
“I want it to die down. I need to be picked for the team, come fall. My family need that money.”
“I’ll give you money.”
I scowled. That was yet another topic of heated discussion. My parents’ financial issues. If we’d bickered about him giving me money to send to them once, we’d bickered a thousand times over it. My answer was always the same. No. I was the son. It was up to me to take care of my parents and sister now. Me. Not my boyfriend. Not the world. Not the government. Me.
“No, you won’t.” I stood, grabbed my papers, and began filling my backpack. “I’m not talking about this anymore, any of it. No,” I snapped when he began to speak. “I’m done with it. I cannot be seen as disruptive to my future team. Nothing else matters but me making the cut in the fall. And all this other shit that’s fucking with my head has to be forgotten. The press, the Michigan shit, the notes…”
“Me?”
“If you don’t get off my fucking back… maybe!” Ethan said nothing as I shoved my arms into my coat and stalked out into the bitter cold of a bleak December day. Christmas was two weeks away. Ho-ho-ho. The house across the street was decorated already. Lights on the windows, a Santa and sleigh in the yard, and a big old green wreath on the door. My mother always had a live wreath and tree. Their house probably smelled like pine and cookies. She’d be baking nonstop from here on out, filling boxes with cookies for me to bring back to Minnesota. She worked so hard. Now she had to work even harder because Dad’s condition wasn’t improving, and my sister was applying to universities throughout Canada and the States. They never talked about the strain, but it had to be there. Mom needed me to succeed. I couldn’t let stupid shit get in the way. I had to stay focused, or my whole family would suffer.
I looked at the car sitting in Ethan’s driveway. Car. Singular. As in only one. Fuck. I spun around, light snow wafting down from the cold, gray sky, at the sound of my name being called from behind.
“You want me to take you home?” Ethan shouted from his front door.
I shrugged because right then I had no idea what I wanted or where to go or what to do.
“It’s just all too much, you know?” I shouted at him. “I’m not ready for life. I’m supposed to be by now, but I’m not.” I threw my hands into the air, ready to lie down in his yard and just give up. “I’m just… it’s too much. I don’t want to do this anymore, Ethan.”
“Do what?” he yelled back, the snow starting to pick up in intensity.
“Adulting.”
He snorted so loudly I heard it down by the car. “Welcome to life, my love. Can you come back inside? We can play Clue or something, maybe build some Lego Star Wars stuff, or watch cartoons. I could use a day of childhood again too. My leg aches, my neck is stiff, and I can’t read the fine print in this stupid book I’m pretending to read.”
I shuffled back to the open door, walked into his arms, and leaned all my weight into his chest as he hugged me tightly.
“Sorry for walking out,” I said into the warm flesh of his neck. He ran a hand up and over my head, to keep my nose tight to his throat.
“It’s okay. I’m sorry for piling things onto you. Can we talk about things? The notes, the hockey, the school, the boyfriend?”
“The boyfriend doesn’t need talking about. He just needs to cue up some Fairly Oddparents and let me veg for a few hours.” I burrowed into him, slipping my arms around his waist, feeling the solid strength of him taking on my weight and my worries. “The boyfriend is the best part of all that adult stuff.”
“Glad to hear it.” He pressed a kiss to my ear, eased out of my arms, and closed the door on the nosy neighbors.
Within minutes, we were on the sofa, candy and soda in hand, watching cartoons that I’d watched back when life was nothing more than animated nonsense, junk food, and the joy of hockey being played for hockey’s sake. True to his word, he didn’t broach the subject of the notes all day. When it was finally discussed, it was me who brought it up after we’d been in bed for a bit, his back pressed to my chest, my hand rubbing the hairs that trailed down under his navel to his junk. He’d been tender and open tonight, rolling to his back and pulling me on top. He’d wanted me inside him, he’d said. He was giving and mouthy, his comments sinful and snarly as I rocked into him, then slid out, over and over, until he urged me to stop treating him like an old man with a bum leg and fuck him.
“But you are an old man with a bum leg,” I panted, wiggling to the side a bit and placing that bum leg gently to the side so I could hoist his good leg up over my shoulder.
That made him chuckle, but just for a second. Then his laughter turned into low, gruff groans of pleasure. I did that to him, for him, made him groan and growl and undulate until we were both lost in our orgasms.
“I don’t know what to do about them,” I whispered a long while later, my fingertips moving over his treasure trail, his hand resting on my forearm.
“We talking about those notes?” He sounded drowsy. Great sex followed by a hot shower will do that.
“Yeah, I mean…” I closed my eyes and kissed his shoulder. “They scare me, Ethan.” There. The confession was out there, floating around in the darkness of his bedroom. “Life scares me. I used to be so confident, knowing that I could do it all, handle whatever the world threw at me. My freshman year here? Man, it was all about confidence. Now? Now I move through life scared of what will fall out of the sky onto me next. Failing school terrifies me. Not making the team terrifies me. Losing you terrifies the living shit out of me. Those fans in Michigan terrified me. And now this asshole sending me letters…”
“I know, life is fucking scary. It’s not just you. We’re all moving through our days scared that something will change, someone will die, something dear will be lost. I lie here at night, when you’re not here, and I can’t catch my breath for the fear of what lies ahead. Hockey is all I know. What am I going to do now that I can’t play hockey? What about us? What am I going to do with the next fifty years of my life? Will you head off for some remote Canadian town?”
“Not sure you’d call Edmonton remote,” I had to gently point out.
“Place has moose; it’s remote.”
“There are moose in Minnesota.”
“Stop talking facts to me. I’m trying to explain about my worries, and you’re giving me moose-housing facts.”
That made me chuckle loudly. I loved that about him. How he could bring in some humor to the direst of discussions and make them feel less heavy. He lifted my hand from his lower belly and kissed the back of my fingers. I loved it when he did that too. “What I’m trying to say is that we all face down those demons every day. Sometimes you can let things go. God knows I procrastinate all the time, but those notes, babe, those are downright creepy. You cannot let that person continue terrorizing and threatening you. You say you’re scared of life? Well, maybe if you start being proactive and stop letting others hurt you that fear might lift a bit.”
“Yeah, maybe…”
“Sleep on it.” He kissed the pad of my thumb. “I’ll be right by your side through it all.”
“Promise?”
“Totes my goats.”
I snickered right beside his ear. “No one says that anymore.”
“You sure? I saw a meme the other day on Facebook. It was this tote with a goat in it, and it reminded me of how much I like saying that.” He nibbled on my index finger, his tongue soft and warm as it moved over the tip. “Think I and Jared should form a group for old puck pushers who are sleeping with younger puck pushers. We could sit around, talk about the glory days, and toss out old sayings that make our men groan with shame.”
“So it would be exactly what you and Jared do now when you meet up?”
“God, you are such a wiseass.” He tongued a wet line over my palm. “Don’t let things with those notes go on too long, okay? I’m not trying to pressure you. I’m just concerned. You need to be safe to ensure that you can help your family out.”
What a shitter. He’d used some major psychology on me there. “Yeah, I know. You’re right.” He muttered something that sounded like he agreed that he was right. I let my head rest on the pillow, keeping him tight to me, as I waited for sleep to slip up and carry me off. I didn’t lie there long. I was mentally rundown.
It felt like only five minutes had passed when the sound of shattering glass woke both Ethan and me up. Brutally cold air blew into the bedroom as we floundered around slapping at the lights on the nightstands. There on the carpet, among the busted glass, lay a stone Santa gnome that we’d bought in town a week ago. Tied to the gnome who had been on the front porch was a pink envelope. My skin crawled, and my stomach heaved. No, no, not again…
“What the fuck?” Ethan gasped, leaving the warm bed, nude, to wobble around.
“Watch where you walk. There’s glass all over,” I said, sliding from the covers and into a pair of lounge pants. “Just sit down before you fall over.”
“What the fuck!” he roared, dropping to the edge of the mattress while I searched for some slippers, his jogging pants, and his cane. “What the ever-loving fuck!” I had no words, so I said nothing. What could I say? This was on me. Totally. The person had been here. Skulking around Ethan’s house. I tossed some sweatpants, socks, and his blue cane at him, then made for the gnome.
I yanked the note free from the ribbon, ripped it open, and unfolded it with trembling hands.
U R MINE. HE IS DEAD NOW. U SEE.
“Call the police,” I croaked around the fear lodged in my throat.
Twelve
Ethan
Officer Lou Mitcham was thorough. I’ll give him that. His brother-in-law was a builder and called him to come over to board up the window as soon as he saw the mess. Of course he asked me if that was okay, but I had a hundred things in my head, and there was no room to think about securing the house. I had Benoit, who hadn’t moved from the sofa, and he was my priority. I sat next to him as Officer Mitcham took photos of the scene, while his partner made plans for the morning to canvas my closest neighbors for copies of their security footage. Benoit had the notes he’d retrieved from his drawer upstairs, on his lap, and he clutched them so tight they bent at the edges. I eased his grip open, and after a moment’s wrestling, he let go of them, and I put them on the small coffee table next to the letter from the gnome sealed in an evidence bag.
“Okay then, let’s start this from the beginning.” Officer Mitcham sat on the sofa opposite and looked at us expectantly. “Do you know who might be responsible for this?”
“No,” Benoit said, and he sounded so miserable that I took his hand again. If Officer Mitcham had an issue with two men holding hands, he didn’t show it.
“What about you, Mr. Girard?”
I started at the use of my name. “Me?”
“High-profile hockey player announces retirement, a super fan who sees you with Mr. Morin and thinks that you should have looked at them instead?”
“The note was meant for me,” Benoit murmured and pushed the folder toward Officer Mitcham. “There’s more of them, all the same tone, decreasing in logic each time.”
Officer Mitcham opened the folder, and for the first time, I saw the Post-it on each one with a date and place, and also a time when Benoit had found them.
“You’ve received all of these notes?”
Benoit nodded. “At first there was coherence about them; they talked about summer and loving me, and then they gradually grew worse, and now a gnome through our window.”
“Do you live here, Mr. Morin?”
“No,” Benoit said and sounded horrified, as if it was a bad thing that he might even think of living with me. That was shit, but then I’d fallen for someone who was fiercely independent.
“So we could hypothesize that this is someone who knows you and Mr. Girard are friends, and maybe followed you here tonight? Would that be an accurate assessment?”
Next to me, Benoit groaned and shook off my hand so he could press fingers to his temples.
By the time the officers had left, the window had been boarded up, and Benoit had made a full statement. He’d spoken about the notes, the jeering at the hockey game, assured the sympathetic officer that he was sure the two weren’t related, and then as soon as we were on our own, he slumped onto the sofa and tilted his head back, his eyes closed. They’d taken the letters as evidence, they h
ad a statement that covered everything, and now it was just him and me.
“I’m not leaving,” I said and sat next to him. Officer Mitcham had suggested we go to a hotel, but I wasn’t backing down. “But if you feel you want to go home, I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I’m okay here, if that’s okay with you?” He was unsure, and I needed to stop that now. I stumbled to my feet and pulled him with me.
“I want you to stay, and I have one more call to make before I’m going back to bed.” He sat with me as I called Brady.
“It’s four a.m., asshole,” Brady grumped.
I didn’t even stop to apologize and hoped to hell Brady would understand; after all what were best friends for? “I’ve got some trouble here. When you had that thing with your brother, the security you hired, who was it?”
I could imagine Brady going from half-asleep and pissed at me to sitting upright in bed. “What happened?” he demanded, and I heard rustling and movement as it appeared he left the bedroom. I’d never even checked if Boston were playing away or if he was at home.
“I’m sorry, Brady. Are you at home?” I began, but he made a noise of irritation.
“Yes, but you call me at dawn. It’s gonna be important. Now, start again.”
Okay, I could do this. I didn’t have to lose my shit right now. “When Ten was in the hospital, there was a security company you hired that watched over him, and I need their number so they can—I mean, I don’t need protection, but maybe Benoit… or I can get them out here to fix cameras.” Christ, I was making absolutely no sense at all.
“Calm down, E, and tell me what happened.”
“Later. Right now, do you have a number, Brady?”
I just needed a contact, and then I could sit with Benoit and work my damn hardest to alleviate the fear in his eyes.
“No,” Brady said, “it wasn’t an official thing. It was something that Stan Lyamin arranged.”