Chapter One

“HEY, MATTY. ARE you petting a dog in some back room at a party again?”

He almost hangs up the phone. Because, yes, Justin Edward Matthews—Matts to anyone who matters and Matty to his asshole stepbrother—is hiding in a back room at a party petting a dog. Again.

“I hate you,” Matts says.

“You don’t. What’s the dog’s name?”

“It’s Hawk, Eli’s dog.”

“Give her a kiss for me.”

He does. He’s sitting on a fancy bench thing at the base of an equally fancy bed in one of the dozen bedrooms at the house where the party is taking place. He doesn’t know if Hawk is allowed on the furniture or not, but he figures if she’s mostly in his lap, they’re good either way. He leans into Hawk’s warm bulk and briefly buries his face in her neck.

“So,” his stepbrother says, “the gay kid talked you into going out and socializing, huh?”

“Don’t say it like that,” Matts says, straightening.

“I’m not saying it like anything. I’m stating a fact. He’s a kid. He’s gay.”

“He’s twenty-one, and he’s married to my captain. He’s not a kid. And he’s one of my best fucking friends. Use his name.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Matts is regretting calling Aaron already. They used to do it all the time—calling each other whenever they got drunk. It was the way they bonded as teenagers when their families were recklessly combined. Matts was off at boarding school, so lonely it was hard to breathe sometimes, and Aaron was unceremoniously uprooted from the only town he ever knew, suddenly expected to call a stranger “Dad.” Their relationship was easier then, born out of isolation and a shared resentment for the people they called parents. But in recent years, their conversations have gotten more and more stilted. Exhibit A: this conversation.

“Hey,” Aaron says, like he can hear what Matts is thinking. “I’m trying. You know I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

“Okay,” he says quietly. An extremely awkward pause follows. “Well. Why are you hanging out with Hawk and not a less furry lady?”

Aaron has a point. The only good thing about going to parties is that sometimes girls will recognize him, and he can get laid without having to stumble his way through a conversation first.

“I came upstairs to use the bathroom. And it’s time for Eli to check in anyway. I’ll go back downstairs when he does.”

Hawk is Eli’s service dog. Eli doesn’t go to parties much, but when he does, he brings her with him and keeps her somewhere quiet where he can have her sniff him or whatever she does to predict his seizures every so often. And he always has someone with him as human backup too. Tonight, Matts is the human backup. Because he’s still doing PT for another week and isn’t cleared to travel with the team yet. He made the mistake of having dinner with Eli, and afterward, Eli looked at him with his big stupid sad eyes and asked him to please go with him, and Matts is a pushover.

He doesn’t like parties in general, but he especially doesn’t like them when he keeps having to explain that, no, he’s not Eli’s professional-hockey-playing-husband. He’s Eli’s professional-hockey-playing-husband’s injured alternate captain. Which is weird. Not because people are assuming he’s gay. That’s fine. That’s whatever. But people are assuming he’s married . Twenty-one-year-olds should not be married. Even if it seems to be working for Eli and Alex.

“The drinks are all colorful and sparkly,” Matts says. Making fun of rich people’s alcohol preferences is always a safe topic with his family.

“No,” Aaron gasps with faux outrage. “ Sparkly ?”

“No beer cans in sight.”

“The horror. Not even a bougie IPA?”

“There’s a tended bar, and the menu is all cocktails.”

“Gross. What color did you go with?”

Matts sighs in the direction of his drink on the nightstand. “Green. And then purple. And the worst thing is that I’m drunk after two of them.”

He regularly goes shot-for-shot with Russian NHL players. A neon drink should not be laying him out. He tries to look at his tongue to see if it’s changed color and is unsuccessful.

“Are you still on meds?”

“No, Mom , I’m off everything as of two days ago. Healing great. Should be playing again in another week. And I can’t even celebrate with a beer.”

“What a brave little soldier you are,” Aaron says. “Hey, speaking of moms. Are you coming home for Christmas or not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Is my dad…” He flips Hawk’s ears inside out. One will stay that way. The other won’t. He boops her nose, and she sneezes.

“You’re gonna need to finish the question if you want me to answer it.”

Matts sighs. “I don’t know. Just…you think he’ll ever apologize?”

“I think those would be hell-freezes-over type odds.”

“Yeah.”

“Come home anyway.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The door opens, and Eli slips inside, music from downstairs bleeding through before he shuts it again.

“Hey,” Matts says, “I gotta go. I’ll call you Friday, and we’ll talk about Christmas, okay?”

“Sure. Hey, uh, say hi to Eli for me.”

“Yeah,” Matts says, “I will.” The word “thanks” gets a little stuck in his throat, but he mumbles it out and follows it with “bye.”

He slides his phone back into his pocket as Eli slides onto the bench beside him.

“You okay?” Eli asks. He’s a perceptive little shit.

“Fine.” Matts gestures toward the door. “It’s just a lot. Do you always have to be so damn good at social shit? You’re making me look bad.”

“Oh, no,” Eli says, “you do that on your own.” He gives him a second look and gentles his tone. “You do look a little rough though. You want to go outside? Or we can call it early.”

“Outside works.”

They sit with Hawk for a few more minutes, and when she remains calm and sleepy, they bid her goodbye and head downstairs toward the backyard.

But halfway through the living room, Matts stops.

Because there’s a girl in the kitchen.

Well, there are a lot of girls in the kitchen. But this girl is wearing black ripped skinny jeans, and her equally black ripped shirt—advertising some incomprehensible metal band on the front—has no sleeves or collar. The shirt’s sides have been cut from arm to hem and reattached with long lines of glittering safety pins. Her lips are full. Her hair is a wild riot of brown curls.

She looks like the unholy offspring of ’80s hair-metal-era Bon Jovi and ’70s Joan Jett, and her whole vibe is…unexpectedly but thoroughly doing it for him.

“Who,” he asks, “is she ?”

“Absolutely not,” Eli answers. “You are not ready for Sydney.”

“Sydney,” he repeats.

“No,” Eli says again, forcefully steering them toward the back porch. For someone so lean, he’s surprisingly strong. Sydney also looks lean and strong. Her glutes and thighs are particularly nice. She could probably squat him. He’d be happy to let her try.

“I thought the whole point of me coming tonight was that I needed to…expand my social realm or whatever.”

“Social repertoire is the phrase I used.” Eli is still pushing him. Matts is still resisting.

“Repertoire. Right.” He cranes his neck to keep Sydney in sight. She’s completely flat-chested, but her ass is something else. He wonders if she plays hockey.

“And, yes, it was,” Eli agrees. “But I know that look, Matthew.”

“Not my name.”

“I know that look, Justin Edward Matthews .”

That is, admittedly, his name.

“You don’t want to meet her,” Eli says. “You want to hook up with her.”

“And that’s…bad?”

“Have you ever even spoken with a trans woman before?”

“Trans…as in transgender?”

“No, as in transformer. Yes, transgender, idiota . And clearly, your taste in music is worse than I thought if you don’t already know who she is.”

“Wait, she’s a boy? Or—used to be a boy?” She doesn’t look like a boy. Though that might explain the boob thing. Is that bad to think? Eli would probably hit him if he said it out loud.

“And this is why you’re not allowed to talk to Sydney,” Eli says. “She would eat you alive.”

Sydney catches him staring, and Matts waves as Eli finally, successfully, shoves him around the corner and through the sliding doors to the porch.

Sydney appears again, moments later, from the opposite side of the open-concept kitchen, and purposefully makes her way toward them.

“Oh, fuck me,” Eli mutters.

“No thanks.”

“Eli,” Sydney says, stepping over the threshold to join them. “Who’s your friend?”

“Hi,” Matts says. “I’m Matts. I play hockey with Eli’s husband. Eli says I’m not allowed to talk to you because you’ll eat me alive.”

She gives him a considering once-over. “Eli is likely correct, but I’m sure we’d both enjoy the experience.”

Eli throws up his hands.

“Don’t let him fool you though,” she says conspiratorially, bowing with a flourish that somehow doesn’t spill her drink. “I am but a humble bard, at your service.”

“Bard, sure,” Eli mutters. “ Humble though—”

“You look like you need alcohol, Eli,” Sydney interrupts.

He sighs. “I do. Syd, behave. Matts, good luck.”

“Wait,” Matts says, “aren’t I supposed to be…monitoring you?”

“Monitor me with your eyes while I go acquire a beverage. I promise to swoon obviously if I need your attention.” Eli throws one wrist against his forehead and falls briefly to one side before straightening and making his way back inside.

“So you’re Hawk’s understudy tonight?” Sydney asks.

She has dimples. It takes him a beat longer than it should to respond because of them.

“That’s me. Temporary service human. Not as cute as the A-team upstairs, I know.”

She gives him another leisurely assessment, and he suddenly wishes he was wearing something more edgy than khakis and boat shoes.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she murmurs over the rim of her glass.

He watches her drink; he watches the light from the hanging lanterns on the porch glint off the rings on her hand; he watches her tongue slide over her drink-stained lips. He realizes he’s staring.

“So how do you know Eli?” Matts asks, only a little desperately.

She tips her head, expression suddenly assessing. It’s an oddly predatory look for someone whose curl-augmented height barely comes up to his chin.

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” Sydney says.

“I—no.” He squints at her, remembering Eli’s assertion about his taste in music. “Should I?”

She reaches out to flick the collar of his button-down. “I guess not. Though one of our songs is on syndicated radio currently.”

“You’re a musician?” That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. “What’s your band called?”

“Red Right Hand.” She looks like she’s braced for something as she says it, but the name means nothing to him.

“Is that, like, a Twister reference?”

She coughs on a laugh, then hides her smile with the back of her wrist, her long fingers—guitarist fingers?—splayed over the mouth of her cup.

“It’s a Paradise Lost reference,” she says:

“ What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,

Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,

And plunge us in the flames; or from above

Should intermitted vengeance arm again

His red right hand to plague us? ”

The cadence of her voice, the tone, is almost unbearably musical. She’s not a guitarist, he thinks with sudden certainty. She’s a singer .

“Math was more my thing than English,” he says. “You’re going to need to explain that.”

She kicks one of his shoes with the toe of her boot, like they’re sharing a secret. “See, that’s the fun part. There’s no easy explanation. Because the red right hand is meant to be a kind of divine vengeance against the rebellious demons. But the form that vengeance will take is uncertain. Maybe the red right hand is God himself. Maybe it’s Jesus since he sits at the right hand of God. But also, the mark of the beast is supposed to be on the right hand. So maybe it’s the antichrist.”

Matts thinks this is the most interesting conversation involving God he’s ever had. If sermons were more like this, his mother wouldn’t have had to poke him awake with her Bible highlighter so often during Sunday services growing up.

“So…you wanted to imply that you’re a divine tool, but no one knows if you’re good or evil? That’s why you chose the name?”

“Mostly, we just thought it sounded badass. But it makes me look cooler if I say I appreciate the complexity of its literary origins.”

It startles a laugh out of him, and she looks pleased.

Her whole face changes when she smiles. Though she quickly ducks to hide her smile behind the curtain of her hair. It’s an odd, habitual gesture. Shy in a way that seems at odds with the rest of her.

“You met Eli through YouTube stuff then?” he asks.

Eli is a popular vlogger who started with videos about cooking but now talks about skincare and skating and service dog stuff too.

“Yeah.” She considers him for a long moment and then seems to make a decision. “I’m a singer.”

He knew it.

“And I’m trans. I started a vlog when I was fourteen to document the process of going off blockers and starting hormones. But I ended up posting a lot of videos of me singing covers, too, just for fun. By the time I was sixteen, I had a solid following and decided to share some original songs. And then I started doing short-form stuff. A couple went viral. Got the band noticed. We signed a record deal last year, and now we’re touring and making a living doing it. So—living the dream.”

She pauses for a beat. He tries to look attentive and supportive and not like he’s wondering what exactly the whole gender changing process entailed. He doesn’t need Eli to tell him that’d be a wildly offensive thing to ask. He probably shouldn’t even be thinking it.

She narrows her eyes at him, and for a brief, drunken moment, he’s afraid she can read his mind.

Pink Elephant , he thinks quickly. Pink Elephant Pink Elephant Pink ––

“Anyway,” she says. “There was this Texas influencer meetup thing downtown last year, and Eli and I ended up hiding on the roof together for an hour. We’ve been friends ever since.”

“Eli is pretty great. Though he did try to keep us from meeting.”

“Point deduction, for sure.” She studies him over her cup, taking a leisurely sip. “You handled that better than I expected,” she says finally.

“Handled what?”

“Realizing you were hitting on a trans girl. Worst case, guys like you, they get angry. Best case, they fall into a mental spiral about the Schrodinger’s dick situation. You at least made an effort not to immediately look at my crotch.”

He redoubles that effort now.

“Schrodinger’s—wait. ‘Guys like me’? What does that mean? And what does ‘angry’ mean? Have people hurt you?”

“Clearly, I can handle myself. And I just mean that most straight dudes typically need an adjustment period to be comfortable with the idea of sleeping with a trans girl. Or even the idea that they want to sleep with a trans girl.”

“I guess,” Matts allows. “But at least dicks are straightforward. I’d for sure know how to get a girl off if she had a dick. That’s, you know, not always the case the other way around.”

He can’t believe he’s saying this out loud. He’s never drinking again. Or talking to another human. This is why he doesn’t go to parties.

She’s full-on grinning at him now, wide and completely unobstructed by her hair.

“Full disclosure—if you are looking for a hookup tonight, I am not your girl. I’m just flirting.”

He can’t decide if he’s relieved by that or not. “Ouch. Am I not your type?”

Someone pushes past them, and she shifts to stand beside Matts rather than in front of him. She nudges him in the ribs with a pointy elbow.

“Consenting humans are my type,” she says. “But I don’t do one-night stands. Which I’m guessing is what you’re angling for. If you’re angling for anything.”

He considers being insulted by that.

“No judgment,” she adds. “If I was a twenty-something professional athlete, I probably wouldn’t want to settle down yet either. Well…” She glances across the room at Eli. “Unless I was Alexander Price and found my soulmate at nineteen.”

“Do you do friends?” Matts asks. “Or— Shit, not— I didn’t mean—”

He tries to find a different way to say it other than “do you want to be my friend” like a five-year-old. Fuck, maybe that’s his best option. “Do you want to be my friend?”

She studies him, bottom lip tucked between her teeth. “You know, weirdly, I think I do.”

“Cool.”

“I also do my friends sometimes, too, just FYI.”

Matts chokes a little.

“But only the really good ones. They have to have tenure.”

“Something to aspire to,” he manages.

“Something to which to aspire,” she corrects, “if you want to be grammatically correct.”

“I’ve never wanted to be grammatically correct in my life.”

She laughs and gestures to the room at large, rings glinting. “Since I’m not an option, do you want me to introduce you to some cute ladies with absolutely no interest in marriage, kids, and a white picket fence?”

“Do they have legs like yours?”

She nods contemplatively as if she’s taking the question seriously. “How do you feel about horses?”

“Uh. Generally positive?”

“Good enough. Let me introduce you to our resident rodeo queen. I have personal hands-on experience with her legs, and they’re not quite as nice as mine, but few are. Hey now. Don’t bluescreen on me. You okay, bud?”

“Sorry. You two have, uh… Are you—?”

“I told you; I sleep with my friends sometimes.”

She did say that.

“So she…has tenure.”

“That she does.”

“Would she be interested in me ?”

She looks at him like he’s an idiot. “A six-foot-three professional athlete? Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay. But I don’t look anything like you. So if she’s attracted to you—”

“Her type is also consenting human.”

“Oh, good.”

“Though, fair warning, she will want to talk about horses before, after, and possibly during sex.”

“Weird, but not a deal-breaker.”

He grew up on a ranch. His first vaguely sexual experience was under the bleachers during a rodeo. Horse girls are familiar territory, at least.

“I need to keep an eye on Eli though,” he realizes.

She pats him on the back. “Well, they’re currently both in the kitchen, which makes that easy. Let’s go.”

They go.

*

IN THE FOLLOWING week, Matts doesn’t think much about Sydney.

He doesn’t.

She’s just a person he met while inebriated. And he was weirdly into her. And he completely embarrassed himself in front of her. And he hasn’t been thinking about her .

Except.

The following weekend, the Hell Hounds are traveling again, and Matts is spending the night with Eli so he doesn’t have to exist in his apartment alone. His roommate, Asher, is traveling with the team, and Matts just can’t sleep in an empty house. Having slumber parties with his captain’s husband is probably weird, but after the first two nights home alone with zero sleep, he stopped being proud, and Eli graciously allowed him to call the guest bedroom his own.

Tonight, though, Matts is sequestered in the guest room because Eli is filming a video in the kitchen before dinner.

Matts is poking around aimlessly on his laptop, and without really meaning to, he googles Red Right Hand. The first video in the results is just lyrics and sound, but the second is from a live concert, and he clicks into it, sliding on his headphones.

A drummer sits to the right back, and a bass guitarist stands to the left. Sydney is front and center in another pair of destroyed jeans, another cropped black shirt. Only, this time, she’s wearing a patch-spangled denim vest, and she’s got an electric guitar resting on one thigh. Her hair obscures her face as she picks out a starting riff that wouldn’t be out of place in a Metallica song. The tension builds, the bass guitarist joins her, the drummer enters with a clash of cymbals and it’s—compelling. Objectively. It gets a whole lot more compelling when Sydney looks up, grinning and fierce, finds the microphone on the stand in front of her and leans into it, bared teeth pressed against the grill as she starts to sing.

Matts’s father raised him not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but his father isn’t here. And Sydney is singing.

Jesus Christ.

She’s good. Really good.

Her fingers are still flying on the fret, her eyes closed, face tipped toward the stage lights, and it’s—

He glances at his own acoustic guitar on the bed beside him—a guitar he’s been playing nearly daily for more than a decade—and has to admit he wouldn’t be able to keep up with her.

That probably shouldn’t be as hot as it is.

Matts tries to focus on the lyrics as Sydney approaches the chorus the second time, turning up the volume on his headphones.

Won’t bow to you

Or your test of litmus

Try me and see

If you doubt my fitness

I’ll swear to your god

And mine as my witness

If you’re asking for proof

I’ll provide it with quickness

Are you asking for it?

Are you asking for it?

I’ll burn your house down

With the match that you’ve lit

And then she’s stomping across the stage to play, hip to hip, with the bassist who is also incredibly talented, and Matts has to start the song over. Too much is happening at once. He’s sure he’s missing things.

He plays it three more times, all the way through, before watching the next video.

And the next.

And then Eli is knocking on the door asking if he wants to wash up for dinner, and Matts realizes he’s been glued to his laptop for over an hour. He almost says no to Eli’s cooking because he wants to keep watching. He isn’t prepared to handle Eli’s rightful concern if he does, though, so he pauses the video he’s on and goes to eat.

After dinner, Matts forces himself to work on some sponsor and social media stuff he’s been putting off. If he procrastinates much longer, his publicist will call him and use her disappointed voice, which is never fun. However, it occurs to him, as he’s sending off the approval for the final shots of the most recent ad campaign he was part of, that he hasn’t posted his weekly short-form content yet. He made an agreement with the team’s management that he would post something Hell Hounds related once a week. It’s part of the marketing team’s initiative to have the players be a united, positive, visible force on social media. He typically fulfills his duties by hastily editing together highlights or putting trick shots or stickhandling drill videos to music.

But now, Matts has an idea.

He finds the first Red Right Hand song he listened to and chooses a thirty-second segment of it that ends with the kickass chorus. He spends a solid hour splicing together a series of his most impressive goals (and a couple fights) to accompany it. Matts even throws some filters on the footage and slows a few clips down so the action in the shots is synched with the bassline. He’s proud of it when he’s finished. The lyrics, the building tension belied by Sydney’s nearly whispered soprano crooning just before the blatant alto aggression of the chorus—it’s perfect. It’s the perfect song for showcasing an athlete’s talents in a “fuck anyone for ever doubting me” way.

The song reminds Matts of being sixteen, of driving his uncle’s truck with the windows down, summer air in his face, Black Sabbath throbbing through the speakers, and a hunger for something he couldn’t describe gnawing at his gut.

He thinks other people will empathize.

He posts the video and goes to cuddle with Hawk on the living room floor and do Sudoku puzzles while Eli finishes his homework.

Matts needs to chill out if he’s planning to sleep tonight, and watching more of Red Right Hand’s videos is not conducive to chilling.

He leaves his phone, face down, charging on the nightstand.

He doesn’t think to look at it again until morning.