by Sarina Bowen
“Nope. I had a single at Northern Mass, so I usually brought hook-ups home. Or I went to their place.” He pauses. “That was the better option. Means I didn’t have to kick ’em out when they wanted to spend the night.”
I furrow my brow. “You’ve never spent the night with anyone?” He and I have been sleeping together regularly.
“Nope,” he says again.
“Why not?” I’m suddenly curious to know about his love life. Not the sex—the idea of him with anyone else bugs the shit out of me—but the relationship stuff. For as long as I’ve known him, Wes has been single. Now, knowing he’s gay, it makes sense why he never had a girlfriend. But has he had a boyfriend?
“I didn’t want anyone getting too attached to me,” he says with a shrug, his eyes focused on the road.
The response only makes me more curious. “Did you ever get attached to them?”
“Nope.” This is his go-to answer for the day, apparently.
“Have you ever gone out with anyone?” I ask slowly.
He’s quiet for a moment. “No,” he admits. “I don’t do boyfriends, Canning. It’s too messy.”
For some reason, my gut clenches. I want to ask him what I am, then. An extended hook-up? A summer fling? I knew this thing with us was bound to end eventually, but I at least thought the time we’ve had together has meant something to him.
Because it means something to me. I’m not sure what, or why, but I do know that this isn’t just about sex for me.
“And once I’m in Toronto, I won’t be doing anything,” he says glumly. “Celibacy is gonna suck.”
An uneasy feeling washes over me. “Did you talk to your dad about the Sports Illustrated thing?”
“Haven’t told him yet. But I’m not doing the interview. That’s not a can of worms I’m interested in opening.” He swiftly changes the subject, as he usually does when the conversation is too focused on him. “What about you? Have you bought a ticket to Detroit yet?”
Great. He picks the one topic I don’t want to discuss. “No.”
“Dude, you need to get on that.”
Wes parks in front of the supermarket and we hop out of the car. I hope he’ll drop the subject now that we’re here, but he’s still talking about it as we walk into the air-conditioned store.
“You’re supposed to report there in three weeks,” he reminds me as he grabs a shopping cart. “You thinking of renting a house in the suburbs? Where do the Detroit players tend to live?”
I nod, thinking about my conversation with Pat. He pulled me aside a couple days ago and said he’d put some feelers out in the coaching community. We’re supposed to talk again on Monday, but I still haven’t told Wes about it.
Deciding to test the waters, I grab another cart and say, “Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about going to Detroit.”
He looks startled. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning…” I take a breath. Screw it. Might as well tell him.
We head for the freezers in the back, and Wes listens with no expression as I pretty much repeat everything I discussed with Holly—how I don’t want to play backup my entire career, my lack of enthusiasm about going to Detroit, the possibility of being sent to the minors and not even playing a pro game. The only part I leave out is that I’m toying with taking a coaching job. I’m not ready to talk about that yet, especially when nothing is even official.
Once I’m done, he still doesn’t respond. He chews on his lips, thoughtful. Then he opens the freezer and heaves out a bag of ice. “You’re really considering not playing this season?” he finally says.
“Yeah.” The cold air hits my face as I grab two more bags and load them into my cart. “Do you think I’m fucked in the head for throwing away a chance at the pros?”
“Yes and no.” He drops another bag in his cart. “I think all your concerns are valid.”
The conversation halts when a woman pushing a cart pops around the corner. Her step stutters when she notices Wes’s black eye, and then she continues on with a wary look.
Wes glances at me, chuckling. “She thinks we’re hooligans.”
I roll my eyes. “She thinks you’re a hooligan. As she should. I, on the other hand, am a saint.”
He snorts. “Should I flag her down and tell her how I got the shiner, Saint Jamie?”
I give him the finger, then grab two more bags. We push our carts side by side and wander over to the checkout counter, where we get in line behind an elderly couple with a shopping cart full of cereal boxes. Just cereal boxes and nothing else.
“So my concerns are valid,” I prompt as we wait our turn.
He nods. “Goalies have it tough. I can’t deny that.”
“But?”
“But this is your one chance.” His voice softens. “If you don’t take it, you could regret it for the rest of your life. Look, if I was in your shoes, I might be questioning my decision too, but—”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d report in a heartbeat, even if it meant spending years waiting for your shot.”
“True dat.” He rests his forearms on the cart. “But that’s because I love the game. Even if I get to play only five minutes in a whole season, it’s worth it to me. Hockey is everything to me.”
But is it everything to me?
I’m even more troubled as I think of all the hard work that goes into a professional hockey career. The constant training, the rigid diet, the grueling schedule. I love hockey, I really do, but I’m not sure I love it as much as Wes loves it. And if I compare the level of satisfaction I get from stopping a goal to the pride I feel teaching someone like Mark Killfeather to become a better goalie, a better man… I honestly don’t know which one means more to me.
“I just think you need to give it a shot,” Wes says, jolting me from my thoughts. “At least go to training camp, Canning. What if you’re there and suddenly they’re like, ‘We’re giving you the starting job, kid.’”
Right, and then I’ll fly to work on a Pegasus, befriend a genie, and get paid in leprechaun gold.
Wes notices my expression and sighs. “It could happen,” he insists.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say noncommittally.
The old couple pushes their cereal cart away, and Wes and I step forward, charging the ice to Elites’ account. Five minutes later, we’re loading the bags into Wes’s trunk.
I’m no closer to reaching any sort of conclusions about my predicament, and Wes seems to sense that. He nods at the gas station fifty yards from the supermarket. “Let’s grab some slushies,” he suggests.
“The ice’ll melt if we leave it in the trunk for too long,” I point out.
He rolls his eyes. “It’ll take us all of five minutes. Besides, science has proven that slushies are conducive to the making of important life decisions.”
“Dude, you really need to quit quoting ‘science’ all the time.”
Laughing, we lock the car and make the short trek to the gas station, where Wes grabs two empty cups and nudges me toward the slushie station. He fills his cup with the cherry flavor and then waits. But I haven’t had a slushie in a long time, and I can’t decide. So I put some of each flavor in my cup.
At the counter, the middle-aged clerk chuckles at the sight of my rainbow concoction. “I did that once,” he remarks. “Felt sick for days afterward. You’ve been warned, son.”
Wes snickers. “My buddy likes a little bit of everything.”
I give him the side-eye for that awful joke. We pay for our drinks and leave the store, but we’ve barely taken two steps when Wes slaps his forehead. “We forgot the straws. Wait here. I’ll grab ’em.”
As he ducks back inside, I linger near the door, admiring the sleek, silver Mercedes S-class that pulls up to one of the pumps. A gray-haired man gets out of the Merc and smooths the front of his silky tie. Shit, the guy’s rocking a suit that probably costs more than my parents make in a year.
His gaze flicks in my direction. “Are you the attendant?” he barks out.
I shake my head. “It’s self-serve,” I call back.
“Of course it is.” His tone is condescending as fuck, and there’s a sneer on his face as he twists off the cap of his gas tank.
Frowning, I turn away from Snobby McSnobbers just as Wes pops out the door. He hands me a straw, his forehead wrinkling when he notices my expression. Clearly he thinks my frown is a result of my Detroit dilemma, because he lets out a quiet sigh.
“You’ll figure it out, babe,” he says softly. “You’ve still got time.”
Then he leans into me, gripping my shoulders with one arm. He brushes a reassuring kiss over my cheek, and my entire body tenses, because Snobby McSnobbers chooses that exact moment to glance our way.
The look on the man’s face cuts through me like a blade.
Disgust.
Pure, malicious disgust.
Jesus. Nobody has ever looked at me that way before. Like I’m a piece of dog shit they’ve just had the misfortune of stepping on. Like they want to wipe my very existence off the face of the earth.
Beside me, Wes stiffens. He’s just realized we’re being watched.
No, that we’re being judged.
“Do you know that guy?” he says warily.
“No.”
“He looks familiar.”
Does he? I’m too stuck on his expression to know.
“Ignore him,” Wes murmurs, taking a step toward the car.
My breathing is shaky as I follow him. Unless we walk all the way around the gas station to get back to our car—which I’m unbelievably tempted to do right now—we have no choice but to pass the Mercedes. As we near the man in the suit, I find myself bracing myself the way I do on the ice right before a puck flies toward me. I’m in defense mode, ready to protect myself at all costs, even though I know I’m being ridiculous. This man isn’t going attack me. He isn’t going to—
“Fucking faggots,” he mutters under his breath as we walk by.
Those two words are like a blow to the gut. From the corner of my eye I see Wes flinch, but he doesn’t say a word. He keeps walking, and I struggle to match his brisk stride.
“I’m sorry,” he says when we reach the car.
“Nothing to be sorry about, man.” But I can’t deny I’m shaken up. That bubble Wes and I have been living in all summer has just burst. If we somehow managed to keep seeing each other after camp, I might encounter this type of shit all the time.
Unbelievable.
“People are assholes.” His tone is gentle as we get into the car. “Not all of them, but some.”
My hand shakes as I place my slushie in the cup holder. “This happens to you a lot?”
“Not often. But it happens.” He reaches for my hand, and I know he feels it trembling as he laces our fingers together. “It sucks, Canning. Not saying it doesn’t. But you can’t let jerks like that get to you. Fuck ’em, right?”
I tighten my grip on his hand. “Fuck ’em,” I agree.
Still, the drive back to the rink is subdued. We don’t say much as we drop the ice off at the cafeteria. I really wish I could just brush off that bigoted comment—that look—but it stays with me. Gnaws at me. Yet at the same time, I feel a burst of pride for Wes. No, it’s awe, because it takes true strength for him to be so unflinching about his sexuality. His own parents refuse to accept it, and even that doesn’t keep him down.
“Coach Canning, Coach Wesley!” Davies calls when Wes and I arrive outside the rink. “Come meet my dad.”
The front steps are littered with teenagers and their folks, all of whom are eager to meet the coaches who are grooming their kids into champions. Shen is in the middle of an animated conversation with his parents, grinning wildly as he talks about his progress. A few feet away, Killfeather stands alone, his teeth worrying his bottom lip as he looks around.
Wes and I have just reached Davies and his father when a flash of silver catches my peripheral vision.
I shift my head, and my heart drops to the pit of my stomach when the Merc from the gas station suddenly speeds up to the curb. I notice Killfeather take a step forward, looking even more agitated now.
The driver’s door opens.
The bigot gets out of the car and addresses Killfeather in an annoyed voice. “Isn’t there a closer parking lot?”
My goalie visibly gulps. “No. Only the one behind the building.”
“I’ll leave the car here then.”
“It’s a fire lane,” Killfeather protests. “Just park in the lot, Dad. Please.”
Oh shit. Dad?
Dread floods my stomach at the same time Killfeather Senior registers my presence. His head turns sharply, those dark eyes landing on me. Then on Wes.
As his lips curl in an angry sneer, only one thought runs through my head.
Fuck.
29
Wes
Damn it. I knew that fucker at the gas station had looked familiar. I hold my breath as my gaze locks with the man at the curb. But Mr. Killfucker doesn’t make me hold it for long.
“No fucking way,” he spits. “No fucking way. Where is Pat?”
“Right here,” says a calm voice. Pat appears in the open doorway, a frown playing on his lips. “Is there a problem?”
“You’re damn right there is. This is what’s costing me thousands? I’m paying a couple of perverts to spend hours each day with my kid? That is fucking bullshit.”
Heads are turning faster than on spectators at Wimbledon. And as I watch, Pat’s face pales. His eyes bounce onto me for a fraction of a second, and my heart sinks.
I’m going to be a liability here. A fucking crater for Pat and his business.
Killfucker is also noticing all the other parental attention he’s garnered. That’s when he goes in for the kill. “I will not keep quiet about this.”
Cue his son’s involvement. “Dad!” the kid shouts. “What the hell are you saying?”
Pat’s jaw hardens until it resembles a granite block. “You’ll need to follow me, sir. If you’re going to slander my NHL-bound coaching staff, you can do it in the privacy of my office.” He turns around and disappears into the building.
I wait until Killfucker passes me. On his way up the steps he gives me an evil glare. Then I follow him inside. Right behind me is Jamie, his eyes downcast.
“I’m going to hear what he has to say,” I whisper. “But you don’t have to come.”
Jamie gives me an exasperated glance and follows me anyway.
Fuck me sideways. I’ve just fucked up Jamie’s final summer at Elites. This job he loves so much? Torpedoed by yours truly. He’s going to rue the day he ever met me.
A minute later, the four of us gather in Pat’s tiny office, and I flick the door shut.
Killfucker obviously knows not to hesitate before taking a shot. He lets it fly before Pat can speak first. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t know about these two. How the fuck could you hire them to work with impressionable teenagers?”
Pat takes a deep breath, but his face is red. “I have no idea what’s set you off. Does someone want to fill me in?”
Jamie opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up a hand. I can feel myself shaking with anger, but my voice sounds reasonably steady. “Let’s let Mr. Killfeather tell Coach Pat exactly what he saw.” I turn to Killfucker. “And don’t hold back, man. Tell him every detail.”
This parry works, because Killfucker starts to look uncomfortable. I’ve just managed to use his own homophobia against him. He can’t even get the words out, he’s so disgusted. “They…” He clears his throat and points at me. “He kissed him.”
And now I have to give Pat credit. There’s a flash of surprise on his face, but he shuts it down only a nanosecond later.
I jump in again before Pat has a chance. “That’s not a good enough description, man. What else did you see? I’m waiting to hear the perversion.”
Killfucker shakes his head. “That was plenty, trust me.”
“Really?” I snarl.
“Where did I kiss Coach Canning?”
He’s clearly finding my offensive play exasperating, so I know I’m on the right track. “At the gas station!”
“On what part of his body, dude?” Then I almost snicker, because now there’s a throbbing vein in the center of Killfucker’s forehead.
“Uh, here,” he says, pointing at his cheek. “But that’s not the point.”
I keep pushing. “Really? Because I think it is exactly the point. I’ve known Jamie forever, and he’d just told me something important about his career, and I hugged him. With one arm. Don’t skimp on the details, okay? I comforted my friend in all that gory detail—half a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Slap the cuffs on me, why don’t you?” I put my wrists out straight.
Killfucker is about to explode. “But I saw... I think you two clearly…”
Pat jumps in now. “It really doesn’t matter what you think. This is your big problem? A G-rated private moment between friends?”
“Friends who—”
“Not your business!” Pat shouts him down. “Not mine, either. I’ve never seen my coaches do anything inappropriate. They are all business on that rink. And that’s what you’re paying for, sir.”
“No!” counters Killfucker. “I’m paying for good judgment, and I will tell whoever is willing to listen that you don’t screen your employees. You’re just waiting for disaster, anyway. These two cause a stir and—”
Pat cuts him off. “The only stir Coach Canning caused was the day his girlfriend showed up at the rink. And your son made an inappropriate comment about her anatomy.”
Killfucker’s mouth falls open. “Then it’s worse than you know, Coach, because Mr. Canning here obviously gets around. Because I know what I saw. And my son and I are out of here.”
Shit. Poor Killfeather. He’s got this ass for a dad, and he gets yanked from camp?
Pat’s face is a stone. “You’re free to do as you wish. But if you slander my coaches to anyone I will not take it lying down.”
“Not like they do, huh?”
After issuing this parting shot, Killfucker leaves.
The office is left in a deafening silence. The only sound is Pat’s loud sigh, until Jamie tries to say something. “Coach, I…”