by Avon Gale
“Hey,” he heard a voice say, and saw Lane waiting in the shadows. He looked exactly how Jared would if it had been his team that lost—disappointed and still a little angry, but with the satisfied air of an athlete who’d just competed and played hard. He’d lost, but that was part of it. And someone who was going to be an NHL star someday should probably figure it out sooner rather than later.
“Hey,” Jared said, smiling a little. “Good game.”
“For your next Christmas present, I’m not buying you any more books about goalies. You just get ideas.” Lane hit him on the shoulder. “That was from Zoe. She told me to boo you. She said to me, ‘Lane, you never told me that being a sports fan could hurt so bad.’”
Jared smiled. “Tell her I’m not at all sorry, but I get it.”
Lane nodded. “I can’t believe you stopped that shot. Do you know how many cockblock jokes I’ve already had to hear?”
Jared laughed. They were going to be fine. “Still not sorry.”
“Yeah, well. You shouldn’t be.” Lane moved in and kissed him, then rested his forehead against Jared’s. “Tomorrow I’ll be proud of you. Tomorrow I’ll get a goddamn Shore jersey and wear it to your games.”
“No. You won’t,” Jared told him. Lane smelled clean and showered, and Jared’s adrenaline was through the roof. He wanted to take Lane somewhere and fuck him senseless.
“No,” Lane agreed. He wasn’t smiling, but Jared had a feeling he was as close as he was going to get. “Go on and celebrate, dickhead. I’ll go clean out my goddamn locker.”
“So dramatic.” Jared kissed him again. “Hey, Lane?”
“It’s too soon for whatever you’re going to say, Shore.”
“No,” Jared said, serious for a moment. “It isn’t. It’s past time actually. But I love you, and tomorrow, do you think you can find us a place we can be alone for a few hours?”
“If you think you’re getting laid after that glove stop, you are so wrong,” Lane said, all heated and intense, even though they both knew he didn’t mean it. “Yeah. That’s fine. I should be less furious with myself by then.” Lane looked momentarily startled. “With you, I mean. Less furious with you.”
“Being a good player and a good captain means more than winning, you know. It means knowing how to lose. And it means letting your team see you’re upset you lost. Because trust me, Lane, this is a different sport entirely when you don’t let yourself get excited about winning.”
“Can you spare me the veteran hockey player wisdom?” Lane leaned in again.
“Sure. But let me tell you something, pipsqueak.” At Lane’s angry glare, Jared kissed him again. “You weren’t on my team, and you weren’t my captain, but you taught me how to love this game again. You showed me it was okay to think more of myself than I did and believe I could do more than throw my fists around. You gave me back something I didn’t even realize that I’d lost.”
“You’re saying it’s my fault you made a sick glove save on me?”
“It was pretty sick. Wasn’t it?” Jared agreed, unable to help himself. But he smiled at Lane and kissed him. “Remember how you said you’d wait to hear my story? I want to tell you, because I’m ready now. I thought I was before, but I think I needed this to really be ready.”
“Fuck you,” Lane muttered, but he nodded, and Jared saw a little hint of a smile. “Go celebrate your win with your bunch of thug teammates. Also, tell Aaron it’ll be a cold day in hell before my pretty boy mouth sucks his dick. I might give him a hand job, though. If he was drunk and you were into it. He looks kinda like a werewolf.”
“Will do.” Jared stopped and watched as Lane squared his shoulders like a defeated general. “But I’d stay, you know. If you wanted me to.”
Lane looked like he was considering it, but then he shook his head. “Go have fun, Shore. That’s what I’d be doing, if it were me. I’d have a lot of fun. I’d maybe have three, four Dr Peppers.” Lane had forsworn alcohol after his birthday, upon discovering that hangovers were awful.
The joke meant they would be fine, though he hadn’t really thought they would be anything else. A game wasn’t going to tear them apart. Jared kissed him one more time and then said, “I’m going to tell you this story, and you know what you’re going to do after that?”
“Cry?” Lane looked at him askance. “It’s that kind of story. Isn’t it.”
“It used to be, but I don’t think it is anymore.” Jared leaned in and pitched his voice low, right against Lane’s ear. “You’re going to fuck me.”
With that, he went to join his team, to celebrate and get drunk and watch that save of his over and over and celebrate being the hero.
Chapter 9
By two the next afternoon, Lane was mostly over the Sea Storm’s loss the night before.
A few of his teammates texted him apologies for saying things about Jared, both before and after the game. Lane just sent back believe me i don’t mind i’m using some of them later, and he went for a nice, long run on the beach. Then he asked Ryan if he could have the apartment for a few hours.
“Sure. I’m going to Zoe’s anyway. Her house is so clean.” Ryan’s eyes were wide. Of all of Lane’s teammates, Ryan had gotten over the loss the fastest. By ten that morning he was wondering if they could get tickets to the finals.
Later Lane stopped by Riley’s to check on his friend and make sure he was all right, even though the loss wasn’t really Riley’s fault.
“I couldn’t get there fast enough to throw myself in front of the puck like Jared did,” Lane told him. Riley seemed all right. A little quiet, but not too upset. Then again, considering Ethan Kennedy was Riley’s roommate, even Ryan seemed quiet by comparison.
Lane hadn’t cared for Ethan at all when he first showed up. He thought he would probably be the one to have a very vocal problem with Lane being gay. As it turned out, Lane had completely misjudged the cheerful, tattooed Ethan. Not only did Ethan have no problem with it whatsoever, he promised to pummel anyone who did.
If any of his teammates had a problem with Lane’s sexuality, they weren’t saying anything about it. But they did have a habit of stopping and mumbling sorry at Lane and going uncomfortably quiet if they used the phrase “cocksucker.” Lane’s captain legacy would be that he made his whole team as awkward as he was. But it was Ethan Kennedy who put a stop to all that by sauntering up to Lane in the locker room after practice and saying, “So, I hear we can’t say cocksucker around you because you suck cock. That’s dumb. Not that you suck cock, ’cause blowjobs are cool and shit. But that’s an important word in my on-ice vocabulary, Courts.”
“I know,” Lane told him with his usual honesty. “I didn’t tell the guys not to say it. I think they just don’t want to offend me. Or whatever.” And that was nice. It really was, but it also kept Lane feeling like an outsider, no longer included in the—admittedly juvenile—parlance of their sport.
“Does anybody have a problem with Captain Courts here sucking dick? Like, a real problem? No one’s stupid enough to think he’s gonna make you gay or something. Right? Homophobic people piss me the fuck off, but I can’t fucking play hockey and not say cocksucker. You might as well ask people in NASA not to talk about space.”
Lane didn’t understand Kennedy’s comparisons, but he kept quiet because his teammates were looking around at each other.
“No one cares. It’s just... what if he gets mad?”
“Then he’ll tell you to shut up? What the hell is this shit? You think your captain doesn’t have the goddamn balls to tell you to shove it after he stood up there and said he was gay? That’s not easy. What is wrong with you?” Ethan crossed his arms and glared at the entire room. “So? Problems? Tell me, and I might hit you hard enough to get you the fuck over yourself.”
No one said anything, or at least no one wanted to admit it to their new crazy defenseman. “Courts, you can tell them to shove it if it offends you. Right?”
“Sure,” Lane said. And now he’d done
it, so he’d have to. His team went back to saying shit, and Lane spoke up if he had to. “Shut up. Can’t you think of a better gay slur than that? No? Then don’t use them, you sound like a moron.” But he didn’t have to. Not too much.
When he’d thanked Ethan, he shrugged it off and smiled charmingly at Lane. “I’m being serious, Courts. I can’t go out there and worry who I’m calling a cocksucker. But hell no way am I playing with a bunch of homophobic assholes. That shit does not happen around me. I punched a guy on my own team once because he wouldn’t stop using that kind of language. I warned him. Twice. So I’ll punch any motherfucker who gives you shit, Courts. That’s what I’m here for.”
“Thanks, Kennedy,” Lane said, and then Kennedy wandered off and left Lane staring after him with a confused look on his face.
Lane, Kennedy, and Riley played a few games of some pointless, first-person shooter game and avoided talking about hockey. When Lane left his friend’s apartment, he went to the store and got some groceries, which took him a lot longer than it should have because he never did that. When he got back, Jared was waiting for him in front of his building.
“Hey. I thought you’d maybe skipped out,” Jared said, falling into step beside him. Lane hadn’t watched that save of Jared’s, but the minute he saw him, he knew he could. There was no point dwelling on the game. It was over, and that was that.
“Nah. I thought about it, but I figured, wherever I tried to go, you’d throw yourself in front of me to stop me.”
“Ha!” Jared looked a little tired—maybe from partying too much—but he didn’t seem hungover. “Before you ask. No. I didn’t get plowed. I drove the guys around, since I had my car here. They were all a bunch of drunk assholes. I think I would rather have lost.”
“No. I had to do the same thing, but everyone was sad.” Lane handed him a grocery bag. “Hold this.”
“Are you making me dinner?” Jared looked inside the bag. He still had his playoff beard. Lane had shaved his that morning, which was the single good thing about losing, because he was embarrassed at his reflection every time he saw it. He was terrible at beards. Terrible.
“Nope. You’re making me dinner, and I’m going to lie on the couch. Then I’m going to watch your stupid save, but only twice, and you have to be quiet the first time and not narrate it. Then I want to hear your story, and then I want to fuck you, because I really want that, and you said I could.”
“Oh, Lane,” Jared said and kissed him. “You’re the best sore loser I know.”
Lane bit him on the mouth. “Shut up. If you don’t win the Kelly Cup I’m going to kill you. You know that. Right?”
“I know.” Jared’s beard made him look like a Viking. Lane found it attractive, but he wasn’t ready to admit that just yet. Maybe after dinner.
They ate dinner, and Lane watched Jared’s save a few more times than just twice. By the third time, he was laughing at the look of utter disbelief on his face when he saw Jared had the puck. “That’s impossible. Goddammit.” Lane leaned over and kissed him. “It’s also very attractive. Or it would be, if that gaping moron wondering where his goal went wasn’t me.”
“I find that gaping moron very attractive,” Jared told him, cheerfully. “But I wouldn’t, if it weren’t you.”
Lane let him watch it one more time, and that was it. Jared had brought a six-pack with him, so Lane broke his “I’m never drinking again” vow and had one. He thought it was appropriate after losing a conference championship. But he’d played in a game seven and a championship game in his first pro season, and that cheered him up a lot.
Jared, looking hot and pleased with himself and being a badass, was also cheering him up. Lane wondered if they could skip story time and go right to the part where Lane got to fuck him—when Jared started talking.
“So the reason I’ve avoided relationships like the plague is because of my first—and only—one. I met him when I was nineteen and a freshman at Ferris State, where I went to college to play hockey.”
Lane immediately opened his mouth to ask questions, but Jared shook his head and touched Lane’s mouth gently. “Shh. I hate this story, I want to get it over with.”
Lane nodded and let him continue.
“My parents had absolutely no interest in hockey. I told you that, I think? They’re professional people, and they think sports are barbaric. The only reason I learned to play hockey at all was because my mother found me trying to tie my sister’s ice skates to my feet to go with the neighborhood boys and play pond hockey. My sister had taken some figure skating lessons, and I almost broke my arm three times because of that stupid toe pick.”
“When I was fifteen, I got invited to play on one of these developmental-league teams. Not anything like your system in Canada, but if American kids want to play in the big leagues, that’s how they do it. That or college hockey. Anyway, I was invited, but my parents wouldn’t let me because of the time commitment and the expense, even though we could afford it. They didn’t want me to focus on something that was a hobby and miss school and all of that. You know, my parents have never, ever seen me play hockey? Not even once.”
“I’m sorry. What?” Lane couldn’t be quiet at that. He couldn’t. “Did you... did you say never? College hockey, or...?”
“Any hockey,” Jared answered, and Lane made a horrified noise.
“They didn’t? You and Riley. His parents didn’t go to games either. What’s wrong with Americans? I don’t want to live here.” Lane was also angry at Jared’s parents in a primal, visceral way—for refusing to let their son follow his dream and for never seeing how good he was or how happy it made him or....
“I know. It’s okay, Lane. I’m glad you’re angry at them on my behalf, but I’m over it. I think back, and if I’d joined, I probably would have been cut. Or worse, had to play defense, which I didn’t want to do because, like I’ve said before, everyone wanted me to. And I realized yesterday that there’s no point in regretting things you haven’t done, or even that you’ve done, because you have no idea what things would be like if you had or hadn’t done them.”
“Uh.” Lane took a drink of his beer. “Okay? Maybe keep going. You’re losing me.”
“Right. Anyway, I stuck with it and played in high school and got a scholarship to Ferris State. I was actually accepted at Boston University, but the scholarship wasn’t enough to pay my full tuition, and once again, my parents thought it would be a waste of money.”
“Man, fuck that,” Lane hissed, mad again. “Show them that save from last night and see if they still think that. Do they know who Patrick Roy even is?”
Jared’s smile was a little sad. “Nope. My parents hated sports, and my friends idolized the Red Wings, which is why I became a fan of the Avs. They were in a really heated rivalry, you know.”
“I know,” Lane said, eyeing him. “I’m from Canada. We do know about hockey there. So you went to Ferris State.”
“Yeah. I was okay. Pretty good, but not great. I saw your numbers, Lane, and I had nothing on you when I was your age.”
“Or now,” Lane added. He cleared his throat. “Don’t make me watch the save again. I’m still in dickhead hockey-player mode. It’ll pass.”
Jared smiled. “I know. Anyway, let’s just say my career prospects were four years in college, maybe. Maybe get drafted and sent to the AHL. Maybe. But if I’d stayed, I’d probably have ended up right where I am right now. And I’m happy where I’m at, Lane. I really am. You have no idea what winning that game last night meant to me, but it was... something I wanted badly and was afraid to want. If that makes sense.”
Lane took his time and looked at Jared—all fierce, triumphant, and bearded—wearing his faded bruises on his skin like battle scars. “I know about that,” he said very quietly. “Believe me.”
Jared looked pleased and then continued. “I wanted a career in hockey, and everyone told me... well, not that it wasn’t possible. That would have been too much effort to even say. It was basic
ally just.... No one said anything. They thought I was a good player, a good teammate. No one ever said, ‘Jared isn’t playing to his potential or anything.’ No one said I didn’t have any potential. No one really said I did either.”
Lane watched him from his place on the couch, fighting the urge to get up and initiate sex or suggest playing a video game, which was Lane’s answer to talking about feelings that made you sad.
“But then I got to college, and someone did say that. Someone told me, ‘Oh, you’ve been underdeveloped. You’re not getting enough ice time. You’ve got so much more potential than anyone’s recognized.’ Someone told me that with a little work, I could be a first-line center and get drafted. And I fell stupidly, stupidly in love with that person, Lane. I would have done anything for him.” Jared’s gaze was steady. “That person’s name was Andrew Whittaker, but do you know what I called him?”
Lane nodded, a sick feeling churning with the anger. He wasn’t going to like it at all. “Yeah. You called him Coach.”
“That’s right. And he got me, Lane. Hook, line, and sinker. I’d messed around with a guy before that, so it wasn’t a surprise that I was into it or anything, but sleeping with your coach is a whole other ballgame. Excuse the bad pun. And Andrew knew just what to say to me, knew exactly what I’d never heard, and knew he could get anything he wanted from me. Anything. If he convinced me he meant it.”
“And he was smart about it. He started out with some special sessions and working with me privately. And oh, my playing improved. Of course it did. I forgot that I was a player and good enough to make a team on my own merits, and I believed I was whatever he said I was. And then one day, he started to act weird around me. Telling me that we couldn’t meet, that we couldn’t have these practice sessions anymore. And I thought my career depended on him believing in me, that I couldn’t just play the game and learn. Oh no.”
Jared stopped to take a drink of his beer. He sounded angry, and it made Lane want to punch Andrew fucking Whittaker in the junk. Several times. With his Corolla.