Benoit (Owatonna Book 3)

by RJ Scott

  I thought on my feet. Stan Lyamin? I didn’t have the Railers’ goalie’s number, but I did have Ten’s, but maybe given the time right now, what I should be doing is not hassling anyone at all. Owatonna must have security companies. I should just leave this until the morning. Then I checked Benoit, saw the defeat in his expression, and hardened my resolve.

  “Can you get Ten to—?”

  “I’m texting you Stan’s number,” Brady interrupted, and my phone vibrated with the number arriving. “Just tell me everything is okay right now and that I shouldn’t call other friends in Minnesota to go over to your place with their sticks.”

  I wanted to laugh. I think Brady was attempting to lighten the tone, but Benoit looked sick, and when I caught his gaze, he offered me a shaky smile. “It will be.”

  By five a.m., I had spoken to Stan, had not understood much of what he was saying, apart from that I should expect a visit from a guy called Gavrie who would be there at ten a.m., and in Stan’s words. “He fix.”

  I’m sure Stan didn’t mean only the windows. After all, I’d explained I was fearful of my partner’s well-being, and he’d listened to all of it before releasing a stream of Russian.

  Benoit and I didn’t sleep much more, and I ended up driving him back to his house just before six. He had a test today.

  “You need to tell the professor that you’ve had no sleep—”

  He stopped me from talking, with a kiss.

  “I’m good,” he said, and I admired him for what was either bravery or sheer pigheadedness. Probably a combination of both. I watched him walk up to his front door, hyper-alert to anyone hanging around, and wondering what the hell I was checking for. The security footage from my own shitty camera showed nothing more than a hooded figure in blurred gray and white. No way was anyone getting an ID from that grainy shit. Why weren’t security cameras like the ones on TV that gave full facial details at the push of a button? We couldn’t even tell if it was a girl or a boy or how big they were.

  I ended up going home a little after ten. A tall man, with tattoos on his hands, waited on the porch, not wearing a coat, and with an expression that was probably scaring off the icy cold Minnesota winter. “Gavrie,” he announced firmly in an accent that sounded very Russian. “GBK Security. You have fifteen easy ways to get into this house.”

  “It’s a rental,” I defended as if that made it any better.

  He muttered something under his breath. “No excuse,” he said louder. Then he strode up to the door and with a twist of metal rod, he was in my hallway, holding the door open and waiting for me. “You want to see other ways?”

  I felt faintly sick. NHL players don’t always get the attention that football and baseball stars get. I’d had my share of groupies who’d followed me around, but that had been in my younger days. I’d never thought I’d have any kind of stalker who would want to go to the effort of getting into my house. I wasn’t stupid though. I mean, I’d done my due diligence on the security in this house. The door locked with a key, there was a deadbolt, the windows locked, and I had an alarm and a security camera. I was safe. Of course the alarm hadn’t even been turned on last night. Stupid.

  I’d never felt this vulnerable before, and I knew it was because the thought of someone I loved getting hurt was a knife to the gut. Were we too obvious? Had Benoit been right? Maybe we should have never even started any of this? Maybe I should have stayed away and not fallen in love so fast, and maybe—

  “We got this.” Gavrie clapped a meaty hand on my shoulder. “No more sad face.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Gavrie pushed past me to answer it with a bellowed “Can I help?”

  I recognized one of my neighbors, an elderly former lawyer who kept his lawn perfect and mine as well where it butted up against his. Jim Reynolds had an opinion of the kind of renters there had been in the house before, and all of a sudden, he was confronted with one commanding Russian and the cops arriving in the night. Things didn’t look good.

  “Jim,” I blurted as I managed to lever my way past Gavrie. “Everything okay?”

  He smiled at me, holding out his palm. “The officer last night said I should keep an eye on things out here, and I was clearing snow by your path, and I found this. I don’t know if it’s yours?”

  I stared down at the key dangling from a yellow ribbon on his palm and shook my head. “I don’t recognize it.”

  Jim shook his hand. “It was on your property. I think maybe the officers might like to see it?”

  I took it from him and placed it carefully on the hall table, noticing that Gavrie was hanging out just inside the kitchen door, peering around the corner. I pulled the front door closed a little and blocked the entrance.

  “Sorry about last night, Jim.”

  “Not at all,” Jim announced and rubbed his hands together. “It’s the most excitement we’ve seen down here since the barbecue of oh-seven. Is everything okay? I saw you drive your boyfriend away, and he wasn’t smiling like he usually does.”

  I didn’t know what to do with that observation. When did neighborly concern cross over to something vaguely unsettling? Not that I thought Jim was the stalker, but fuck, I felt like I was living in a fishbowl.

  “He’s fine,” I lied.

  “Well, I wanted to say to you that the police took our security footage or downloaded it at least. We have a system that backs up to the cloud.”

  My cell vibrated, and I mentally thanked the god of phone calls, if there was even such a thing. I pulled it out with an apologetic smile, seeing Brady’s name there.

  “I’m sorry, work. I have to take this. Thank you for the key you found.”

  “No problem.” Jim didn’t seem put out at all. “You know where I am if you need me.”

  I was suddenly so grateful for having a neighbor who actually showed an interest in me and my house. When Benoit and I finally bought a place together, wherever he ended up, then it would have to be in a community where people talked to each other.

  “Thank you, Jim.” And I meant it. I connected the call to Brady as I shut the door, and then I had to go through the entire night in painfully minute detail; never let it be said that Brady wasn’t as thorough as the cop had been when he’d taken our statements.

  When I headed for the rink, I was done with the house, with explanations, and with the way that Gavrie kept poking around the house and sending me death glares of disappointment.

  “Rented,” I reminded him when he commented pointedly on the ease with which he could lift the patio door from its seating. I could have pointed out that normal human beings couldn’t lift the weight, but it wasn’t worth it.

  At least at the rink, it was quiet, the ice smooth, the noise of skates, a couple of the team using downtime from studies to get some work in. I saw two of them were a D-pair, and laced up my own skates. Nothing like working with budding defensemen to get my head straight.

  Heading up to Benoit’s parents’ place for Christmas was exactly what we needed. The fact that the police had no ideas about who was sending the letters had both of us on edge, and despite the extra security at my place, we ended up spending a lot of our downtime at the shared house. That was the best of things and the worst of them as well. Privacy was at a premium, but then seeing Benoit with his friends was a good thing. He was lighter with them around, whereas I think I reminded him of the whole mess with the letters. He hadn’t received any more, or at least that I knew about, and I hoped he would be honest if he did. I knew why he hadn’t told tell me before, but now everything was in the open, I wanted to know everything that happened to him.

  The flight to Quebec City was long, but it gave us plenty of time to just be us. To chill and watch crappy movies. The more distance we put between us and Owatonna, the better. He relaxed little by little and grew more excited with each mile closer to his home. No one was meeting us at the airport. His mom had wanted to, but she’d switched shifts at the last minute, so it had been up to us to rent a car, a
nd we headed north out of the city.

  The snow towered above each side of the cleared roads, and we made good time, listening to local radio stations and adding our own voice-overs when the radio was nothing more than crackling silence.

  Notre-Dame-du-Portage was a small town on the banks of the St Lawrence River, a stunning place, all white houses and small churches set into rocks down to the water. The road we took headed around the back of the town, where the houses were closer, and the sidewalks not quite as cleared.

  “Take a left,” Benoit said, and I followed the instructions, taking a wide angle around a snowbank. “Stop up here.” He pointed to a parking lot, but it wasn’t by a house but by a small lake. He unbuckled and climbed out of the car, grabbing his coat and gesturing for me to follow. Dressed against the cold, hats on, gloves, layered scarves, we ended up standing by a small fence that surrounded the space.

  “White Fish Lake,” he said and grinned widely. “This is where I learned to skate.” He slipped his gloved hand into mine. “Dad would bring me out here, and I was maybe four? Five? I don’t know, but I had these tiny skates, and I’d spend all day out here, bundled up, racing up and down so fast. At least I thought I was fast, but when you look back at the family videos, it was more of a stumble drag-step.” He laughed, and I had to kiss him next to his lake. I just had to. He tasted of the chocolate we’d eaten in the car, and I loved the taste of him so much it hurt.

  “When did you start skating without drag-steps?” I asked and pulled him into my side.

  “I don’t know. It just happened. Then, one day, there were a load of us out there, and no one wanted to be in goal, and so we took it in turns with this borrowed gear, and when the other kids just screamed and laughed, I wanted to do it and take it seriously.”

  “I bet you stopped everything getting in that net.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Nah, I was a sieve, worse than a sieve, but you know, after that first day, I would push and push. I watched goalies, a lot of my personal hero Malcolm Subban.”

  “He’s a good kid.” I realized what I’d said when Benoit side-eyed me.

  “He’s older than me,” he teased, and I hip-checked him enough so he nearly fell in the snow. “But his brother, PK, he came out with a video, talking to a skater who’d been getting grief from fans for the color of his skin.” Benoit paused and half closed his eyes. “I want to get this right because it’s important. PK said in January that we’ve got to believe in ourselves and let nobody tell us what we can and can't do, especially if it's because of the color of our skin. It means something that I have role models, and I want to get selected by Edmonton and be that to someone else.”

  Watching Benoit talk with such passion, I wanted to kiss him again, but he was still talking.

  “That whole Spiderman thing, you know, with great power comes great responsibility? I want to make a difference to kids who don’t fit inside the lines, where the color of their skin may make them stand out, or they may not come from families with money, or they might be gay or bi. And I forget that in Owatonna when I let everything else drag at me. I need to think about the big picture.” He shook his head and smiled so hard. “I sound like a giant dork.”

  I couldn’t help but tease him then. “Word of advice. If you’re going to climb buildings, you may want to take your pads off.” Then I kissed him again, just because, before tugging him back to the car. “Come on, Spidey, it’s meet-the-parents time.”

  Thirteen

  Benoit

  Sometimes when a person sits back and looks around, they realize how lucky they’ve had it. Watching my family welcome Ethan into our home and our lives openly choked me up. Yes, I’d faced some crap and was still dealing with a huge problem, but overall, on the life scale, I’d had it good. My family accepted me and my new boyfriend. That right there was huge. I knew quite a few queer kids whose family wanted nothing to do with them. Trans kids who had no home to return to over the holiday breaks. I was damn lucky.

  “Okay, really, enough hanging on the man,” I finally said laughingly as I waded in to save Ethan from my mother, father, and sister. They’d had him pinned in the kitchen for an hour, stuffing him with sponge cake and coffee. “We’re going to go unpack. I’ll get Ethan settled. Then I’ll head down to the basement and pull out the sofa.” I yawned to drive home the point.

  “Why on earth would you want to sleep in the basement?” Dad asked, carefully getting to his feet with the help of two canes. “It’s colder than a witch’s boob down there.”

  “You could have said tit, Dad. I’ve heard that word before,” Tamara tossed out as she reached for another slice of homemade sponge cake.

  “Not from me you haven’t,” Dad replied, giving me a wink. “You two sleep in your room. Mom and I are fine with it as long as you don’t wake us up when you get jiggy with it.”

  “Oh. My. God.” I felt the heat rush to my face. “We don’t ‘get jiggy with it.’” I looked at my mother. She was hiding a snicker behind her coffee mug.

  “We don’t?” Ethan asked. I wanted to slap him. Instead, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet. “Guess we’re taking a nap now. He’s really pushy. Did you raise him to be so pigheaded, or was he born that way?”

  “Born that way,” all three of my family members replied simultaneously. Then they laughed.

  “Ha-ha.” I tugged Ethan along, up the stairs to my old room, after grabbing our bags from the foyer. “Why would you tell them we’re having sex?”

  “You think they don’t know?”

  Ugh. Yes, of course they did. I just… it made me itchy to imagine my mother thinking of me being fucked in the ass by Ethan. I heard his chuckle behind me and ignored it.

  “This is my room. Don’t be intimidated.” I threw open the door, stepped inside, and waited for him to limp inside.

  “Wow, it’s a shrine. A goalie shrine. I feel like I should light a candle and drop to my knees, which I would do, but well, one bad leg and all that.”

  I smiled at him, my gaze roaming over the posters and sticks on the blue walls. My heroes. The men who had made me want to emulate them on the ice and off.

  I tossed our bags to the corner, opened the drapes, and sat on the double bed. “I used to lie here in bed at night as a kid and stare at Grant Fuhr and know that I had to be him someday. Like, not as good because he’s a legend. First black player to win the Stanley Cup. First black player to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. So yeah, never that good. But maybe just a tenth as good. Then Malcolm came up and started playing.” I waved at all the goalies on the wall. “I wanted to be him too. Still do.”

  Ethan smiled and cupped my face. “I love hearing you talk about the men you admire, the game you love, the plans that you have for yourself. I desperately want to be a part of your future.”

  I leaned in and put my mouth on his. The kiss was long, sweet, and wet. A promise of a future that I also desperately wanted, with him beside me.

  “You could at least close the door,” Tamara chided as she walked past on her way to her room. Again, my cheeks grew hot. And again, Ethan snickered at my embarrassment.

  “She’s such a brat,” I mumbled, got up, and closed the door. “Let’s unpack now. Then we can crash.”

  “How about you unpack and I nap. That sounds good. I’m old and infirm.” He fell back over the bed, arms out, and made sickly old man sounds.

  “Man, you will do anything not to have to pack or unpack, won’t you?” He laughed lightly, so I started taking out the clothes of his that I had packed, neatly, yesterday. His idea of packing was to stand on one side of the room, wad up his clothes, and see if he could make a three-pointer. Dude was seriously not the least bit worried about his appearance.

  “Packing is for camels,” he replied. I arched an eyebrow but let it slide. I yanked open a deep bottom drawer on my dresser and felt nostalgia wash over me.

  “I haven’t seen this in ages,” I murmured, lifting the old metal lockbox out of the draw
er. “Hey, Geezer Joe, look at this.”

  I sat down beside him. He pushed up to a sitting position, then lifted the firebox from my hand. “I can see you’ve had a hand in decorating this.” He tapped at the Edmonton logo drawn on the lid of the green steel box. “But I never pictured you as a unicorn sort.”

  “Oh yeah, well, I didn’t draw that one. Dominque did.”

  “And Dominque is?”

  “Dominque Wells. Dom we called her. Old girlfriend. My first girlfriend. We were sixteen and so in love, or so I thought. She never did quite grasp how I could love a violent game like hockey. She hated it when I billeted with a family in the States. Accused me of cheating on her when I didn’t. I don’t cheat. I have morals.”

  “Yeah, I know, babe.” I gave him a flimsy smile.

  “Guess you do. Anyway, before she got possessive, we made this time capsule thing, and we made a pact that we’d come back in ten years, still a couple, and open it. It’s locked, though.”

  Ethan patted my thigh. “Cute story. The innocence of a first love. Was she cute?”

  “Oh yeah, adorable. Dark red hair, freckles, bright blue eyes, great legs.” I rattled the lockbox. “We put some true junk in here. A picture of us on the lake skating. She dreamed of being Tessa Virtue to my Scott Moir. She loved ice dancing and wanted me to give up hockey to skate pairs with her. And she was good, not Olympic skills of course, but good. We met at the lake. She skated right over to me during a shinny game and asked me out. We dated for a year before I broke it off.”

  “First loves rarely last,” he said, giving my leg a squeeze.

  “I know.” I sighed, wondering what had ever become of that pretty little girl with the beautiful red hair. “Anyway, we put money inside, which was to be used for an apartment.”

  “How much money?”

  I shook the box again, the coins inside rattling loudly. “A handful of loonies each. Man, we were so not prepared for the adult world.”