“Yeah.”
“Why?” Lane asked, studying him intently. Shore looked like he was a good seven or eight years older than him, and he had the faded remnants of a black eye and a bruise on his jaw. It suited him—made him look a little like a boxer. “Is it because I hit you in the face?”
Shore laughed, a sharp, mean bark that reminded Lane of a husky again. His pale eyes darkened, like the sky before a storm. “You want to know why I’m mad, kid? I’ll tell you. Yeah. I fight, and that’s my thing. And you score goals, or at least, you would if your teammates weren’t having a bitch fight with you for whatever reason. And you actually made up for it by throwing down with a guy who could break your ass in half, but didn’t. Because guess who they’d blame for that? The kid drafted by the NHL, or the guy who’s turning thirty-two next year, who’s on his tenth team since he started playing?”
Lane very deliberately made himself not say anything about Jared knowing he was drafted, even though it was the first time anyone had mentioned it to him without Lane telling them about it first. “Umm. I guess… you?”
“Yeah, genius. Me. And so I can’t fight you like you deserve, because you’re the
talent
. So I look like I can’t do my fucking job, and you can’t fight
or
score a goal but suddenly you’re Mr. MVP. I do get tired of being the easy answer to someone’s personal problems with their team. You want to fight someone, why don’t you fight one of your teammates instead?”
There was a point there, but Lane was too confused by the beer, the not-really-dinner, and Shore being so close to him to figure out what it was. “You knocked me over, though.”
Shore blinked, like that was the last thing he expected Lane to say. “You got in my way.”
“I was on my way to the
goal
,” Lane reminded him. He pushed the basket of chicken across the bar. “Do you want one of these?”
Shore was still staring at Lane like he was the equivalent of the water tornado with a hockey stick from the Storm’s terrible jersey. “You have defensemen who are supposed to protect you. That’s what they’re for.”
“They didn’t. Seriously, they’re not bad if you just let them cool off for a second. The chicken things, I mean. But I guess that’s true about my team too.” Lane felt nervous, but he wasn’t worried about Shore hauling off and hitting him again. It was something else.
Lane wasn’t good at feelings. That’s why he played sports.
“What—look, what are you even doing?”
“Having a really awful dinner?” Lane answered, picking up another chicken piece. “I don’t think this is actually chicken. Do you?”
Shore slammed his hand down on the bar. “Do you even get why I’m pissed? I’m starting to see
why
you had to do something desperate to get their respect. You’re a weirdo. Or maybe a robot.”
Lane just shrugged. “Then why are you still mad at me?” He pushed the basket toward Jared again. “You might want to blow on these first, though.” His face turned scarlet at the words the minute they were out of his mouth.
Shore ignored him. “Because if you’re mad at your defenseman, go knock him over. Fight your own damn battles, don’t start one with me because you know goddamn good and well I won’t flatten your face into the ice like you deserve. You want to make a statement to your team, kid? Try making one by getting mad at the people who’re treating you like shit. Not me. Except that’s the fight you’re actually afraid of, isn’t it?”
Lane pulled the basket of chicken toward himself, silently rescinding his offer to share. “I did. And I should have done that first. You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t do stuff like that—not usually. But you’re really good at fighting, I just thought maybe you wouldn’t mind since you do it all the time anyway. And you really did knock me over, I think you keep forgetting.”
“I really want to hit you again. You know that?”
Lane nodded. “I can tell. Yeah. What do you want me to say, Shore? I did a stupid thing to make up for a lot of other stupid things, and somehow it gave me the courage to do the thing I should have done all along.”
Shore was motionless for a long time, but then he sat down next to Lane and took a piece of chicken from the basket. He popped it in his mouth, swore, and grabbed for his beer. “Holy fuck, these are disgusting.”
“I didn’t say they were good. Just that they weren’t bad. And you know, I totally thought you’d pound my face into the ice. It was scary. But you ran me over, and I know you said my defensemen should stand up for me, but they
didn’t
. And now they will.” Lane politely cut the last chicken piece in half so Jared could have one. “I’m sorry if it made you mad, but you’re not on my team. And you know, anyone you take down like that could turn around and drop the gloves, Shore. Even guys like me, who don’t fight.”
“Are you giving me a lecture about hockey, rookie, because it sounds like you are.” Jared didn’t seem all that angry anymore, though. He also didn’t eat the piece of chicken Lane left for him fast enough, so that meant Lane could have it. Jared motioned to the bartender, and ordered them both another beer.
When they arrived, Jared held his bottle up and clinked it against Lane’s. “We play each other a lot. I’m going to keep going after you, because you’re going to try and score goals. And it might work, since your teammates will now pass you the puck on occasion.”
“And the guys will fight you. I hope. Because I don’t think I really liked it, and I don’t want you to punch me again. You have bricks for fists. You want some more of the chicken things? I’m still hungry, I can split some if you want.” Lane smiled at him tentatively. He was still feeling weirdly uncomfortable around Shore even though it seemed like they were friends now. Maybe if he burned his mouth some more and got drunk again, he’d be able to ignore it.
Jared laughed and said, “Sure, why not.” He was a pretty nice guy once he was done with the threatening glares and condescending calling-Lane-kid thing. Which meant that uncomfortable feeling didn’t go away, no matter how much Lane drank.
He tried to remind himself of the look on his mother’s face when she opened his bedroom door and saw for herself why her son was so shy around his teammates. How she’d closed the door quietly and never said a single word about what she’d seen. Instead, he thought about the two minutes before she opened the door, how they were maybe the best two minutes of his whole life, and how he relived them when he was alone.
They split a basket of the steaming-hot chicken things, and Lane had two more beers. He wasn’t drunk, but he was tired, and it occurred to him that the reason Jared was still in town was because they had another game the next day. That was the thing about the ECHL. They liked to schedule back-to-back games on weekends. Their Sunday game was a matinee too, which meant Lane was pretty much fucked all around.
“I have to go back,” he said, and Jared nodded and grabbed his wallet. Lane was paying too much attention to Jared’s fingers. They were long and almost slender, not the kind you’d expect to find on a hockey enforcer. Jared caught him watching and made some joke about “I already helped save your career, kid. You think I need to buy you dinner, too?” Lane blushed hotly and reached in his pocket for his money.
“You’re all right,” Jared told him while they waited for an opportune time to stupidly dash across the interstate. “I’m not going to be nice to you on the ice tomorrow or anything. I expect your defensemen to step up and…. Are you okay?”
Lane was not okay. He kept blinking and looking at Jared’s eyes, sucking idly on his lower lip—which was still sore—and thinking about all the things he wanted that he couldn’t have. “Sure. I’m fine. I’m not used to being drunk twice in one day.”
Jared gave a short laugh. “You say the weirdest things. Come on. Let’s go. Don’t fall or anything. This would make the stupidest obituary ever.”
Lane nodded, looking with determination at the road. “Tell me when,” he said, and he could feel Jared watching him, but he didn’t look over. He kept his gaze firmly on the glowing Econo Lodge sign until Jared said, “Okay. Now.”
They dashed across the road, and it was fine. There wasn’t a single car, but it still made Lane breathless, like he’d done something exciting—something forbidden. Like fighting Jared Shore, or climbing on top of Derek Bishop and kissing him in his bedroom.
They kept running—through the front doors of the hotel and into the lobby—all the way to the elevator. Lane was breathing hard, and his head was a little clearer from their sprint, but his blood was pumping, and it was making him restless. “Your team is staying here too, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jared said, his gaze oddly shuttered as the elevator doors opened. Lane dropped his own, convinced he’d somehow fucked up again.
When the elevator doors closed, Lane looked at Jared and waited for him to tell Lane what floor he was on. Instead, Jared swore under his breath, reached out, grabbed Lane by the shirt, and shoved him up against the elevator doors.
For a heart-stopping moment, Lane thought Jared knew what he’d been thinking about, and was going to beat him up for it. And he couldn’t do anything but stand there, wildly euphoric in a way he didn’t understand.
Jared didn’t hit him. Instead, he leaned in, trapping Lane against the closed doors and pressing up against him. Lane had been hard since they left the bar, and Jared had to be able to feel it. It took Lane a few seconds to understand what it was pressing back against him, and before he could moan or do anything else, Jared’s mouth was on his and they were kissing.
It was less than two minutes—probably less than ten seconds—and then the door opened and it was over, Lane stumbled into the hallway and watched the doors close on Jared—who was breathing hard and staring at him with those bright blue eyes like Lane was a fight he couldn’t start.
Lane stared stupidly at the closed elevator and waited for a couple of seconds to see if it would come back. But it didn’t, so he turned and went to his room. When the door was barely closed behind him, he shoved his jeans off and frantically got a hand on himself, eyes half-open as he tried desperately to remember every second of that kiss and how good it had felt.
JARED SHORE
was calling himself every name in the book when he got back to his room. He shoved the keycard into the little machine and became irrationally angry when it flashed a red light at him.
“Fucking cocksucker,” Jared yelled, kicking at it. That would have made him feel better, but
cocksucker
just made him think about the elevator and Courtnall, with his wide eyes and his blowjob mouth and his
split lip
and goddammit, why did Jared kiss him? He was such a moron.
“Just a minute,” his roommate, Jace Wynn, muttered as he came to open the door for Jared. “You’ve been knocked in the head too many times, man. Calm down.”
Jared pushed past him with a grunt and tossed his stupid, ineffective keycard on the dresser. He gave a brief, cursory glance at the bed, where a girl was lying naked and smoking a cigarette. “It’s a nonsmoking room,” he said, which was him being a dickhead. But he was tired and horny and stupid, and he needed a shower and some sleep—before he found out what Courtnall’s room number was, so he could go put that kid on his knees like he’d wanted to do all night, and see that pretty mouth wrapped around his dick.
Idiot. Why did you do that?
It wasn’t like Jared was new to any of this. He’d been around the block enough times to know what all those looks Courtnall was giving him meant. Even if the kid himself didn’t know, which was maybe the thing that got Jared’s blood going and made him want to do it in the first place. He was going to get off in the shower thinking about how hard Courtnall was, how he’d kissed him like he was desperate for it.
He glared at Wynn as he headed to the bathroom, for no other reason than it was obvious Wynn had gotten laid—probably twice—while Jared was out. That might not even be the same girl who was there when Jared left. Wynn was popular with the ladies. And he should be. He was young and attractive—one of those players who knew he wasn’t ever going to play for the Stanley Cup, so he played for pussy and drinking money instead.
Jared liked Wynn a lot better than some of the roommates he’d had over the years. And in the old days, he wouldn’t even have left the room while his teammate banged some chick in the bed next to him. He’d even joined in a time or two.
But he was thirty-one years old, and he knew he only had a few years before he was going to have to hang up his skates for good. Three at best. And it was mostly stubbornness that kept him lacing up for whatever financially precarious ECHL team requested his services. After the debacle of his college career, he’d had a single season with the Adirondack Phantoms (mostly on the bench), and a tryout with their big-league club, the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League. Other than that, he’d played for teams with ridiculous logos in cities no one visited—teams that went under without anyone even noticing they were gone.
But he was still playing professional hockey, goddammit, and that was all that mattered.
There was another reason he kept bruising his fists and his body, wearing a succession of terrible jerseys night after night in half-filled arenas. Hockey was all Jared Shore knew how to do, and he had no idea what it would be like to do anything else. It was terrifying. So, even though he was probably risking his health and turning into nothing more than a glorified goon, Jared kept at it. He was a contrary bastard, that way. It was the same reason he’d decided to be a Colorado Avalanche fan when he grew up in Michigan, a few hours from Detroit and the Red Wings.
Sometimes he really liked his life. He had no debt, virtually no possessions, and he made a decent enough living to support himself. He wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids—that he knew of, anyway—and he never really minded being traded off to this team or that. They called the ECHL “Easy Come, Hard to Leave,” and Jared knew why. He’d watched a lot of his teammates—kids who showed up fresh-faced and eager to join the big leagues—fall prey to the trap of the minor league’s minor league. Decent money, very little responsibility, and a schedule where you mostly played games on weekends and worked out the rest of the week. And also took a lot of naps.