by R J Scott
I’m sorry too. I suck as well. Let’s suck together.
Max hit me back with a wink emoji I didn’t understand until I read my previous text over and blushed clear to my toes.
“Sorry God. I didn’t mean that to be as dirty as it sounded.” I slid out of the pew and out into the heat before the Rose of Beulah Baptist Church was struck by a mysterious thunderbolt.
Chapter Fourteen
Max
“And?” Toly asked me pointedly as he knocked my socked foot with his own.
I looked up from my phone at the men ranged in front of me. Connor was worried, Ten looked all kinds of serious, Stan stood with his arms across his chest in his best version of intimidating. And Toly? He was sitting next to me as if he thought I needed the support.
I do need support.
I’d fucked everything up. When I left Ben’s house, I was determined to forget him, assign him to the group of people I’d met, fucked, and then left. He wasn’t going to be important to me. I didn’t need him, or his complicated reasoning about why he now hated me. So his husband had died. What did that have to do with me? I’d lied, or at least omitted the entire brain thing, but that didn’t make a difference to a sex life. Right? What was his problem?
Whatever I’d done, whoever I was, in that moment, I was over Ben.
Then when I woke up the next day, the regret began.
At first it was nothing more than a subtle push and a need to find someone to talk to. Who did I choose? I was new here, and I’d already decided I wasn’t sharing this at the rink. Until, of course, I fucked up in the second game of the Stanley Cup final series against the Raptors, played like a robot, got into three fights, and spent most of my time in the bin. We lost that one, and even though we’d won the first game, we weren’t ahead anymore.
The team had an intervention, and they hadn’t left me alone since then. Which led to the texting, because we’re a group of guys and the concept of face-to-face talking about our feelings wasn’t one we liked the idea of.
“We’re meeting up tonight,” I summarized. Ten high-fived Stan, Connor sighed dramatically, and Toly bumped elbows with me.
“Thank fuck for that,” Connor muttered. After all, he was the captain and I had fucked up in the last game. I was lucky I wasn’t benched.
“And what are you going to say to Ben?” Toly said. He wasn’t actually asking me that. No, he wanted me to confirm I’d understood what he’d told me to say.
None of them knew about the reason it had all gone wrong. I’d simply told them I’d fucked up. I knew it was all on me. Of course, Ben would be afraid; of course he would worry. None of this was his fault.
“I’m going to say sorry for fucking up and beg him for a second chance.”
“Too damn right,” Toly muttered.
A commotion outside the circle had the guys parting, and Adler pushed right in.
“So, is this knitting circle just for you, or can anyone join in?”
Adler was just what we needed, because we exchanged smiles and then everyone scattered.
Adler wrinkled his nose. “What did I miss?”
“Men problems,” I said honestly.
Adler nodded like he knew exactly what I was talking about. “I know what you mean. You know Layton shouted at me for not putting the lid back on the coffee?” He huffed as if that was the worst thing in the world. And maybe for Adler it was the worst thing. But for me? I wished my problems were as small as that.
I was next up for PT. My right knee was still giving me problems. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but it made me feel every one of my thirty years. I was a veteran, and my body was used up. At least when I was being poked, prodded and pushed around I could clear my head and think about the things I wanted to say to Ben.
I put a call in to Doctor Warner as soon as I was back in my apartment, drinking coffee and listening to him telling me the statistics, the worries, the concerns, and the fact that maybe I’d been concentrating on the negatives more than the positives.
Armed with information, I headed to the shelter and to Ben, asking the cab driver to drop me around the corner. He’d recognized me. That happened sometimes, though rarely—being Max van Hellren wasn’t the same as being Tennant Rowe. I needed some time to get my head straight after talking for fifteen minutes about the Cup run, and I leaned against the wall. I watched a car slow down as it rounded the corner, recognized one of the security team I’d hired on his half-hourly drive-by. He nodded at me, and all I did was give a half wave. People were looking out for the man I loved, and I was reassured.
Ben will understand. Ben will forgive me. I love Ben.
I repeated the words over and over, and finally I was ready to face the music, at five fifty-seven exactly.
He was waiting for me, side gate open, and security cameras be damned, I pulled him into my arms and held him close.
“I’m sorry,” I said against his neck. He eased me back and away, then kissed me. Not hard, not dangerously, but softly, whispering words between kisses that I couldn’t even hear.
Then it was my turn to ease him away.
“We need to talk,” I said.
He grasped my hand and tugged me away from the gate, pulling it closed and leading me into the office area. The place was quiet apart from soft snuffling noises from the puppies as they slept. We checked in on them. Ben made coffee, and we didn’t talk, not until we were in his office, on his ratty sofa, and turned to face each other.
“I’m sorry—”
“I wanted to say—”
We began to talk at the same time and ended up grinning at each other.
“You first,” I encouraged.
“I love you,” he began plainly. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you either.”
“I’m not the one with a broken head,” he said, and smiled wryly.
“I talked to my doctor again today, asked him again for the stats, and the possibilities, and the probabilities. Before, I focused so much on the negative I never listened to the parts where he said I might never have a problem again. But…” I had to be honest. “There is a chance I’ll have another bleed, and that could be a stroke, or my heart could stop, or shit, the list of horrors is a long one.”
He studied me carefully. “Hockey doesn’t help, does it?”
That was it. The crux of the matter. The danger I put myself in every time I went out on the ice. It was an acceptable risk for doing what I loved. Hell, I would say the adrenaline of fighting was enough to get me back on the ice each time. But now? The risk wasn’t acceptable, because I had something to fight for.
“Hockey is everything to me,” I began. I’d rehearsed this part to the last word. “I was three when I strapped on my first skates, held my first stick. It was in my blood, and the focus of my entire life was to get to the NHL. I’m good. Better than good—I was born to skate.” He reached over and took my hand and held it as I tried to make him see why I had made the decision I had. “And at the top of that is the Cup. It’s something that’s defined my life. Five more games, maybe only three, and I could have that one shining thing. I can’t let my team down. I can’t take myself away from hockey. But then I met you, and now you’re so important to me.”
I stopped and dropped my gaze. I couldn’t look at the emotion in his dark eyes and not feel choked up. I was admitting that even though I had feelings for him, loved him, I had to finish the other part of my life before I could have a life with him
He squeezed my hand, and I looked up at him. He didn’t look angry, or resigned—if anything, there was understanding in his expression.
“Don’t hate me,” I pleaded.
“I love you,” Ben repeated. Then he lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to my scarred knuckles. That kiss meant something. Maybe it was a promise, but it was a gift he was giving me.
“Maximum five more games, and then I’m done.”
“Then what will you do?”
&n
bsp; I leaned in to him and kissed him, just as gently as he had kissed me. “Then I’ll spend the rest of my life working out the best ways of loving you every day.”
He kissed me back then, and somehow I knew we’d found a middle ground to work from. What more could a thirty-year-old wrecked man want from the man he had fallen for?
At first the cacophonous noises that pierced the silence of our kisses meant nothing, and then Ben was shoving me away, and I stood up maybe a moment later, following Ben, who sprinted out of the office. I smelled it before we reached it. Fire.
“Call 9-1-1!” Ben shouted back over his shoulder, and I scrabbled for my cell, connecting and reporting the fire even as Ben disappeared into the smoke.
The puppies.
I didn’t even think, I followed Ben and found him scooping the puppies out of their pen, trying to corral them even as they thought he was playing. He handed me three.
“One of the pens outside,” he ordered, and I did what he said, sprinting as fast as I could to the outside pens, finding the nearest empty one and pushing the puppies inside. He was right behind me, carrying four, and then with the two of us going back in we rescued the remaining pups, shut the door to try to stop the fire spreading, and turned our attention to whatever hell we had to deal with next. The fire was hot, contained at the moment in the office building, but the first kennel and storage weren’t far beyond, and if the fire leaped between? I grabbed the office extinguisher, and aimed it at the flames, standing between them and the kennels. As if I could stop the fire just by being there.
I had to stop the flames from reaching the Cat House. God knew Ben would dive into the fire to save his animals.
I exhausted the contents. Maybe it slowed the flames, maybe it didn’t—I couldn’t fucking tell. Ben was struggling under the weight of a huge mastiff, and I helped him. He was emptying the kennels in danger and moving dogs down, but what if the fire caught the kennels and spread?
Then I saw him.
Saw them.
At the same time as Ben, who froze next to me.
Rolf was there, DK standing in front of him with his hands raised and his face bloody. I stepped forward again, putting myself between Ben and Rolf, whose lips were pulled back in a snarl.
“DK?” I heard Ben say.
“I’m sorry, Ben, he made me—”
“Let it burn,” Rolf said, and shoved DK forward. “Let it all burn.”
He pushed DK again, and the kid stumbled into me.
“All of you back into the office.”
Behind us, the fire was crackling, ceilings caving. He wanted us back in the fire. None of us were doing that.
He waved a gun in our direction and in the light of the fire his eyes held a crazed look. “Into the fucking offices. All of you can burn.”
Ben took a step back away from me; I could see him in my peripheral vision. What was he doing?
I moved again, making sure it was me right in front of Ben and DK. I was bigger, and a gun didn’t scare me. Nothing scared me when I was in the moment.
“Move!” Rolf screamed. He stepped toward me, and I didn’t even think. I wasn’t going to stand there and let things happen to me, to us, so I staggered forward, used my entire body weight to tackle the bastard to the ground, and he went as easily as a rookie on new skates. I pinned him, the gun between us, and I fought for that gun, gripping and scraping and scratching at every bit of bare skin, ignoring every curse from Rolf.
No one threatened what I loved.
He was surprisingly strong, bucking up under me, and at one point he got the gun free, waving it wildly. I slammed his hand to the ground, hearing his scream and the discharge of the gun. I pulled the thing loose and moved away, picking up the gun as I rolled and coming to a kneel pointing the gun right at him.
“Stay there, fucker,” I shouted over the noise of the fire and the sirens.
Thank fuck for the sirens.
I glanced over at Ben, who was kneeling on the floor, holding his arm, DK trying to help him stand, and then the chaos increased.
Someone took the gun from me, another person helped me stand, asked me what had happened, but all that time I was staring at Ben and the blood on his white shirt. He’d been hurt.
I pushed my way to him, ignored people calling after me.
“What happened?”
“The bullet scraped him,” DK explained even as I shoved my way closer to Ben. The gun? A bullet? I’d done this to him. Regrets were sour in my mouth, and then he did this incredible thing. He simply smiled.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I shot you,” I said blindly.
“Rolf shot me—he was the one with the gun.”
“Are you… Can I…” I’d lost the ability to talk, and then it was too late, the firefighter in charge talking to Ben, volunteers there for the dogs, and abruptly I was standing on my own by the gate.
“We have him on camera,” someone said at my side.
I rounded on him, the same man I’d seen in the car on the drive-by. I wanted to shake him. How had Rolf gotten past him?
He held up a hand as if he knew what I was going to say. “We saw the gun on the owner’s nephew, called in backup.”
I couldn’t listen to this, to any of it, and I went to find Ben.
Finding him with the dogs, talking to a visibly shaken DK, I hugged him from behind.
“What can I do?”
He turned in my hold, and his eyes held shadows. “I don’t know where to start.”
“You should go to the hospital,” I heard myself say, but I knew he wouldn’t do that.
“I need to make sure… The dogs…”
“The dogs and cats are fine.” I glanced at his arm, the widening red patch on his sleeve and the slick patch of wet blood on his forearm.
“I’ll go later.”
“Ben.”
“I swear I’ll go later. It’s just a scratch.”
Damn scratch sure was bleeding. I stopped arguing with him, though. I did make DK find a first aid kit and tend to his uncle while I assisted in whatever way I could.
I stayed with him and helped him, hated the worry in his eyes, watching as shock made him clumsy, knowing the strain on his shoulders, and I didn’t think about hockey once.
Of course, that came back to bite me in the ass come morning. I’d been up most of the night, working with Ben, finally giving in to sleep in Ben’s car at five, holding Ben in my arms and listening to him talk about his fears for the future.
I wanted to say I would buy him the future, that I had enough money to fix it all, but tonight wasn’t the right time for it.
My cell began to ring just after seven. Connor. With Ten a short time after. Then Stan, who left a garbled message I didn’t understand about dogs with teeth. I called Connor back, and they knew. Everyone knew about the fire from the news.
“Where are you?”
“At the shelter.”
“Are you okay? They said you tackled a man with a gun.”
“I’m okay.”
“And that Ben has been shot?”
“A flesh wound.”
I didn’t want to talk. I was exhausted and I needed sleep. Ben needed sleep and medical attention. The animals needed to be safe, the shelter rebuilt.
Connor cleared his throat. “Coach is making you a healthy scratch for tonight.”
I’d known he would say that; I’d been expecting it. God knew what kind of crap performance I’d put in on the ice with all this happening.
“Okay.” I wasn’t fighting it.
“I want you back, Max,” Connor said. He wasn’t ordering or cajoling. Simply and plainly, he was stating a fact. “Next game.”
The next game after tonight was in another two days. Did I want hockey more than I wanted to be helping Ben? I opened my mouth to explain I was confused, but Ben snatched the phone from my hand.
“Hello, who is this?” Ben asked. Then he nodded and listened to whatever Connor was saying. “Yep, he’
ll be there.” Then he looked at me as he finished the conversation. “I’ll make sure he is, because the Railers have a cup to win.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ben
The thing about being bossy is that, generally, the bossy comes back to bite you. Which was why I was now seated in a tiny cubicle in the ER at 6 a.m. having my arm sutured. Max had gotten his bossy on and had called a cab, despite the fact we had kennels and a cattery to empty. All the animals at Crossroads had to be moved to other shelters or taken home by staff and volunteers. Some of the older dogs had been kindly fostered by the workers, but the rest were now in transit to other shelters. Something that I should be overseeing since I was the manager. But no. Mr. Hockey Britches got all demanding and pushy like a boyfriend or something. It was kind of nice, but I wasn’t telling Max that.
So here I was, not looking at the stitches being put into my bicep. Better to look at Max sitting in an ugly chair nursing a cup of coffee. Soot-covered, reeking of smoke, and looking haggard well beyond his age, the man was still a beautiful sight. One that I’d nearly lost.
“Is he done yet?” I asked when I felt a small tug.
Max tipped his head to peer around the ER doctor. “Nope.” I squeezed my eyes shut.
Max kept talking, “One time I got forty-two stitches on my forehead. Skate blade. Right here.” I peeked at him pointing to a scar right by his hairline. “Went back out and played the rest of the game. Best third period I ever had, hits-wise.”
“I thought I recognized you,” the doctor said. He and Max then fell into hockey talk. I sat there, mind spinning like a top, exhaustion as heavy as an anvil dropping onto me out of nowhere.
The wound was tended, wrapped, and I was still sluggish, mentally unable to connect to anything aside from the fact I’d been shot. Like, yeah, I knew I’d been shot, because it hurt like a white-hot son-of-a-bitch, but there had been the fire and the police and the organizing of the moving of dogs and cats and…and …
“Ben?” I looked up from my shaking, bloody hands to see Max leaving his seat, his face a mask of concern. “Do I need to call the doctor back in?”