Chapter Eleven

MATTS HAS A reputation for being violent.

He’s not a goon; he’s not an enforcer. But he’s made toeing the line between legal and illegal hits something of an art form, and while he doesn’t start many fights, he certainly welcomes them. He’s not violent , though, or at least, he’s never considered himself violent before. Until he opens his door to Sydney with blood on her face. Then, he thinks maybe he is a violent person after all.

He was practicing guitar before going to bed, trying to get the solo from “Master of Puppets” down, when his phone lit up with a text from Sydney.

can I come over

No punctuation. No context.

Red Right Hand had a concert at House of Blues that night. It was the first real venue that ever booked them, nearly three years prior, and they wanted to play there again before kicking off their first ever headlining stadium tour. For nostalgia, Sydney said. For excellent drinks, Rex said. For hot bartenders, Sky said.

House of Blues isn’t far from Matts’s apartment. He would have gone if tickets weren’t sold out by the time he talked himself into looking for them. So, he knew something was wrong when he got the text from Sydney a little past 11:00 p.m.

Do you need me to come get you?

give me your address

Matts sent his address.

And now, he opens his door to Sydney, standing on the mat with half-dried blood running from her nose to her chin, cracked and starting to flake over the bow of her swollen lip. His heart feels too big for his chest. Matts wants to hit something. Someone.

“Who did this to you?” he asks, pulling her inside.

She laughs, a raw, hysterical edge to it.

“Who did this to you?” she mimics, low and mocking.

His fingers are on her face. He’s not sure how they got there. “Is that supposed to be my voice?”

“Stop,” she mutters roughly, pushing at his hands. Blood smears on his thumb. “You’re like a romance novel cliché right now.”

“Sydney,” Matts says and doesn’t recognize his own voice.

She stops.

She swallows.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. Security took care of it. I need—” Sydney sets her motorcycle helmet on the entryway table and hugs herself, hands wrapped around her biceps. Her hair is a frizzy mess, her eyeliner is smeared halfway down her cheeks, and her tongue keeps probing at her swollen lip. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I need. I—can you—”

Matts is intimately familiar with wanting something and not knowing how to ask for it. He hopes he’s right when he assumes. “Yeah. Yeah, come here.”

She folds into him as if all she needed was an invitation, as if she didn’t know she already had one. He should probably ask for permission before manhandling her. But he doesn’t have the words; he needs her closer, needs tangible proof that she’s okay, that there aren’t other injuries hidden under her clothes. Sydney doesn’t flinch away from his searching hands. She doesn’t protest when he lifts her off the floor entirely. She clings, wraps her legs around his waist, hooks the toes of her boots together behind him, and pushes her bloody mouth against his neck with something close to a sob.

“I’m sorry,” she says, smearing the exhalation damp and miserable into his skin. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“No, hey. You’re fine. Don’t apologize. You’re fine. You’re perfect .”

She shakes, and the world shakes with her.

Matts walks to the kitchen and sets her on the island, putting enough space between them so he can get a better look at her. He doesn’t like what he sees. Her shoulders are a sharp curve of defeat, her jaw is clenched like she’s trying not to cry, and her fingers are knitted together like she’s uncertain if she’s allowed to touch him.

He didn’t think it was possible for Sydney to look so meek. It’s terrible. It doesn’t suit her at all.

“Just your face?” Matts asks.

“Yeah,” she says roughly, her eyes wet. “Two punches. Nose and mouth.”

Sydney holds up her right hand, and the sight of her swollen knuckles, the rust-brown patina on her silver dragon ring, gives him a sick satisfaction. “I got one in between though. I think I took some skin off.”

“Good,” he says fiercely.

Matts lets his hand around her neck slide down her arm, forces himself to let go of her hip so he can use both hands to gently—so fucking gently—remove her rings. He leaves the bracelet on. “Tell me if this hurts.”

He tests each of her joints, bending and unbending each finger, pad to palm, using his thumb to press each curled finger flat again. Sydney watches without fighting him.

“Hurt?” he asks.

“Only a little.”

“Okay. That’s good. And nowhere else?” He has to ask again just to be sure.

“Nowhere else.”

“Let’s get you cleaned up, then.”

Matts digs the first aid kit out of the hall closet, washes his hands, and lays out a handful of alcohol wipes.

“Sorry,” he says, ripping open the first one. “This’ll sting. And stink.”

But she stays motionless on the counter as he cleans up her lip, wipes the blood off her chin, the smeared kohl from around her eyes, and presses his thumbs to either side of her nose.

“It doesn’t feel broken,” he murmurs, more to himself than her. “Noses just bleed a lot.”

“You’d know,” Sydney says.

He thinks it’s supposed to come out joking, judgmental, but she mostly just sounds exhausted.

“I would,” he agrees, holding up a penlight. “Let me check you for a concussion, and then we’ll be done.”

Her pupils are normal. She follows his finger. She doesn’t have a headache.

Matts feels like he can breathe again.

“You wanna tell me what happened?” He’s still standing between her splayed legs, still touching her, palms cupped around her elbows, thumbs against the soft skin in the crease of her arms. He doesn’t need to be this close anymore, but he can’t seem to stop.

Sydney kicks the heels of her boots against the cabinet. “No.”

Matts doesn’t get a chance to press because his phone, sitting on the counter next to Sydney’s thigh, lights up with a call.

“It’s Devo,” he says. “Does he know you’re here?”

“No. I gave the police my statement, and then I…” Sydney falls into him, forehead knocking against his sternum. “…left.”

So, Devo is probably panicking.

Matts answers the phone. “She’s here.”

Devo exhales rough static in his ear. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah. We just finished cleaning her up. No concussion or broken bones.”

“Good. Tell her I’m going to fucking kill her.”

Matts laughs. “Is everyone else okay?”

“Yeah. We split up after the set because she took her bike, and we were supposed to meet at Dirt, but when we got there the cops said—” He cuts himself off. “Sorry. No. Everyone is good. Are you sure she’s okay?”

Sydney takes the phone. “I’m fine. I’m sorry I freaked you out; I wasn’t thinking when I left. I just needed to get out of there.” She clears her throat, summons a smile, and gains back something of her standard lilt. “I figured I should get myself checked out by an expert brawler, so.”

“Right,” Devo says, his voice muffled, but Matts can still hear him. “I’m sure medical advice is the only reason you went to Matts’s place—”

“Oh, no,” Sydney interrupts, with zero inflection in her voice. “I’m going through a tunnel. I might lose you.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Devo sighs. “Give Matts his phone back.”

She hands it over willingly.

“Hey, Matts?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t let her back on that motorcycle tonight. If she doesn’t want to stay, I’ll come get her.”

“I want to stay,” she says into Matts’s chest. “If that’s okay.”

What a joke. He’d keep her here forever if that was an option. He knows better than to say it though.

Instead, he says to Sydney, “Yeah, of course,” and then to Devo, “She’ll stay.”

“Okay. Take care of her, please. I know she can take care of herself, but—”

“She shouldn’t have to. Not all the time.”

Devo is silent for several seconds. “Yeah. That. Thanks.”

He hangs up.

“Well,” Sydney mutters. “That wasn’t mortifying or anything.”

Matts scoops her off the counter before she can say anything else because he knows it will make her laugh. She protests as he carries her through his bedroom and into the attached bath.

He shows her how the shower works and leaves her with a shirt and a pair of boxers. When she emerges a few minutes later, swallowed in his clothes, hair wet, face flushed with warmth, he briefly considers kissing her. Because how could he not? How could he look at her like this and not want to—

But her lip is split, and her eyes are rimmed in red, and he’s not going to let selfishness make a long day any longer for her. Even if she wants him to kiss her, tonight is not the night to try to start something.

Instead, Matts shows her the GAN ROBOT and lets her play with the shuffle function on the app while he takes his own shower.

When he comes out again, turning off the lights behind him, his electric guitar is no longer on its stand on the floor of his closet. It’s in her hands.

He freezes.

“How long have you had this?” Sydney asks, absently plucking at the strings.

“A couple months.”

“Will you play something for me?”

He wants to. Desperately. Matts wants to show her everything he’s learned, wants to see her face when he plays the songs they’ve been deconstructing each week. He wants to play one of her songs—to impress her, to show her exactly how much he fucking cares.

But tonight is not the night.

“It’s late.” He moves to pull back the duvet on the bed. “We should go to sleep. But I do want to. Next time?”

She watches him for a moment, head tipped, with wet hair and heat-pink cheeks, before she returns the guitar to its stand. “Next time.”

Sydney climbs into the bed next to him like it’s normal, as if she tucks herself into his space every night, head on his shoulder, knees butting into his stomach, fingers curled like an anchor in the fabric of his shirt.

“Did you get it just so you could play with me?” she asks quietly.

“I did.” It’s damning, but it’s true.

“And you’ve been practicing?”

“I have.”

She doesn’t say anything for several seconds, and then, “You don’t do anything by halves, do you?”

“No.” Matts slides his hand, more possessive than it should be, around her shoulder and down to the curve of her flank. He presses his fingers to the divots between her ribs.

“No,” he says again. “I do not.”

*

MATTS HAS A very particular way he tapes his stick.

Not a euphemism.

When the PR intern stops him after practice the next morning to shove a couple rolls of tape at him, it takes him a minute to understand what he’s looking at.

And then the intern tosses a few rolls to Rushy in a different color scheme, and Matts recognizes the pink-white-blue pattern in his hands. It’s the trans flag tape he requested because the Pride game is that night.

And he’d completely forgotten.

He texts Syd: If you’re not tired of me yet, come to the game tonight?

She answers almost immediately: As if I’d miss Pride night? It’s a shame I don’t have a jersey to wear though.

Matts once again finds himself standing, half-dressed in the locker room, staring at his phone, uncertain how to respond to a text from Sydney.

He reaches up to tug on his necklace, the tiny ring now hung there beside his customary St. Jude pendant.

Rome and Alex, in their stalls on either side of him, are looking at each other in a way that is probably significant but Matts has no hope of discerning.

“Matts,” Rome says.

“Rome,” Matts says.

“What’s the face for?”

Matts doesn’t ask what his face is doing. He tosses the tape and his phone into the top of his unzipped bag without responding. He thinks about the way Sydney clung to him last night. About the way she said goodbye to him that morning after making breakfast together in his kitchen. The way she breathed him in like it meant something.

“How do you know if a hug is platonic or romantic?” he asks.

“Uh,” Alex says.

Rome ducks into his hoodie, scrubs a hand over his buzzed hair, and then holds out his arms. “Reenact it with me.”

“What? No.”

“Why not?”

That’s a good question. “It’d be weird with you.”

“Why? Because you don’t want to make sweet, sweet love to me?”

“No, because I already know that I want to— No. The question is if she’s interested in me .”

“Okay,” Rome says. “So, pretend you’re Sydney, and I’m you. And hug me the way she hugged you.”

“That won’t work. I’m taller than you.”

“Hi,” Kuzy says, sidling up to him. “I’m Matts. Very good looks. Very good hockey. Very bad talk to women.”

Kuzy, admittedly the tallest person on the team, has a couple inches on Matts. It’s not quite the difference between him and Sydney, but it’s the closest they’ll get.

Matts steps into Kuzy, slides his arms around his waist, and wraps a hand around his own wrist so he can squeeze tighter, so he can rest his left ear on Kuzy’s collarbone and turn his face into Kuzy’s neck and—

“Nope,” Matts says, stepping back. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Okay,” Alex says while Rome and Kuzy laugh at him. “I think you have your answer then.”

Matts thinks he might.

On his way out of the igloo, he stops at the front office. More specifically, he stops at the cubicle where he knows the social media interns lurk.

“Would it be completely inappropriate if I asked one of you to run an errand for me?” Matts asks. “It’ll take around an hour and a half. I’ll pay you, and I’ll let you do one of your tiny microphone interviews with me tomorrow.”

One of the interns, mid-spin on a rolly office chair, stands up so quickly she falls over into the wall. “I volunteer as tribute!” she says.

Matts reaches past her to grab a sticky note and pen from the desk and writes down Sydney’s address. “Can you get one of my jerseys in a size small and take it to this address?” He fishes out a couple hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and hands them over.

“This is way too much,” she says, looking suspiciously at the cash in her hand as if it might suddenly gain sentience.

“I’ll take it if you don’t want to,” the other intern says.

She shoves the bills in her pocket. “Any message you want me to deliver with it?”

“Oh.” Matts is stymied. “No? Only that it’s for Sydney.” Whoever answers the door at the house will know, but he figures it’s good to clarify.

The intern salutes.

Matts goes home.

He sets the trans flag tape on the island and gets a couple of his sticks out of the closet. Matts spends the half hour before his nap practicing, getting used to the color, the slightly different heft and texture of the tape as he goes through the habitual motions: the turn of the tape roll on his pointer finger, the pull from his wrist, the press of his thumb. Usually, Matts doesn’t use much tape, just enough on the toe of the blade for catch and spin and plenty of slick space behind to feed the puck. But he figures, in this case, the visuals are more important than utility, and it’ll only be for warmups anyway.

So, he uses twice the amount of tape he usually would and gets a little overly critical about the spacing, trying to line the colors up. Finally, Matts decides he’s happy with his approach a few minutes before the nap alarm goes off. He’s probably spent too much time worrying about it, but that’s fine. No one needs to know.

Matts doesn’t hear from Sydney again until he’s in the locker room before the game, headphones and hype playlist on, taping his stick with the colors all lined up, just like he practiced.

His phone pings.

The alert is from Eli, and there’s no text—just a picture. It’s a slightly blurry candid of Sydney, walking up the strip in front of the stadium. Her back is to the photographer, and she’s looking over her shoulder, curls swinging to one side, clearly midconversation.

The jersey fits her like a dress, with only the telltale sign of ripped black shorts where the hem hits her thighs. His name is right there in the center: a bright white Matthews stretched from shoulder to shoulder with a background of Hell Hounds black and red.

Matthews.

72.

On Sydney’s back.

His stick is perfect, but Matts retapes it again just to have something to do with his hands while he processes that.

He never really got it before, when the other guys talked about seeing their partners in their gear—why Alex’s phone background is Eli in Alex’s jersey and Jeff can’t seem to keep his hands off his wife when she’s wearing his hoodies. Objectively, Matts understood there was some sort of possessive thrill they got out of it, sure, but he didn’t get it.

He gets it now.

When they skate out for warmups, it takes a while for him to find Sydney in the riot of signs and flags. The stadium is packed, and a larger-than-usual crowd presses forward for pictures and pucks.

When he finds her, she’s grinning widely, fisted hands on the glass. For a second, they just stand there, smiling stupidly at each other while the world spins on around them.

Until Sydney notices his stick.

And then her fingers uncurl, slack with surprise, palms smearing on the glass, smile fading into…something else. It’s not a bad expression, but he has no idea what it means.

Matts flips his stick to allow her a better look at the blade. He wiggles it a little. He gives her a thumbs-up. But Sydney’s not looking at him anymore; her eyes slide from player to player on the ice like she’s searching for something, and he lets his attention be similarly pulled away by a group of kids with a sign beside her. He tosses them some pucks and skates in close to take a selfie with someone, then tosses a few more pucks farther down the glass. And then Rome skates over to complete their pregame handshake. He’s lost sight of Sydney by then and doesn’t have time to find her again because he does actually need to warm up and do his job.

At the end of warmups, before he leaves the ice, Matts finds her again up against the glass with flat palms, dark eyes, and a flush riding high on her cheekbones. He taps his gloved knuckles at her.

“Catch,” he says.

“What?” she yells back.

He balances the butt of his stick in his palm and mimes throwing it.

Her hands go up immediately, the too-big sleeves of her jersey sliding down her forearms, and something catches his attention. His bracelet, also too big, slips down her forearm before it’s out of sight again in the pooled fabric bunched at her elbows.

He hefts his stick up and over the glass.

The guy standing next to her, taller and with a longer reach, snags the blade before Sydney can. Matts bangs both hands to the glass, probably harder than is necessary, pointing at Syd.

“Hey! No,” he shouts. “Let go. It’s for her.”

The guy lets go.

Matts meets her eyes again as he skates backward toward the tunnel. She’s holding the stick with both hands against her chest, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth, dimples showing as she watches him. He waits until the last possible minute to turn around.

“Giving a girl your stick is definitely not platonic,” Rome says, shoving Matts’s shoulder as they leave the ice. “If you were still wondering about platonic versus romantic behavior, I mean.”

“I was not,” Matts says.

*

MATTS LIKES PREDICTABILITY . Numbers, equations, Rubik’s Cubes—he likes the knowledge that some things are structured and immutable. Axioms may change, but math does not. There’s comfort in that.

In many ways, hockey is predictable, like plane geometry. The neutral zone is both a quadrilateral and a parallelogram. The angle between the blade and the shaft of his stick is 135 degrees. Better edge control depends on the angle of his ankles, better ice coverage depends on the angle of his knees, and better speed depends on the angle of his hips. Crossunders are more effective because he can skate faster if he uses his interior skate less than his exterior skate, if he only takes full strides with alternating outside skates. And passing, shooting—well, that’s all angles too—angles of incidence and angles of reflection: knowing how to bank a shot off the boards to sit on a teammates’ tape, to ricochet off the pipe and into the acute space between the goalie’s pad and the net. It’s all numbers. Angles and lines, circles and triangles.

When the puck drops in a face-off, there’s a circle at the center: an equal probability each player on its radius will get the puck. But geometry can’t account for the human component of hockey: the player in the face-off with split-second faster reflexes; the player with the longer reach; or the player who doesn’t play the angle game at all.

In many ways, hockey is predictable. But in many ways, it’s not.

Like when an opposing defenseman targets Alex from the moment he steps on the ice in the first. Petty shit that escalates. Like when he checks Alex from behind two minutes into the second. Like when Alex goes down and doesn’t get back up.

Matts isn’t on the ice when it happens, but his line change is coming up, and he’s got one leg over the boards, tapping his heel, ready.

And then Alex is down, and Kuzy is trying to kill the player who hit him, and Matts is throwing himself onto the ice with the rest of the emptying bench to pair up and swing.

Alex limps down the tunnel with an arm over the trainer’s shoulders, and both penalty boxes end up crammed with players. Their lines are totally fucked when Matts skates out to take the next puck drop, but despite the chaos, a fight also has a way of changing the way the air feels. It reminds him that hockey is more than just a game of angles and shapes. It reminds him that, for hundreds of years, humans have thrown their bodies into competitions for the sake of the unpredictable nature of sport. Rome says fights “summon up the blood,” which Matts is pretty sure he stole from Damien, which means it’s probably Milton or Shakespeare or something. Syd would know. He should ask her.

The point is that Matts isn’t thinking about geometry when he takes the next puck drop. He’s not thinking about the law of cosines. In that moment, he doesn’t want predictability or comfort. And maybe it’s a residual effect from the night before. Maybe he’s projecting. But he wants anger and violence and the thrill of uncertainty. He wants someone to try to hit him the way they hit Alex. He wants someone to test him.

Matts wins the face-off and sprints, manages a fucking beauty of a spin-o-rama to split the defense, and then he’s on the breakaway. The goalie is good, Matts will give him that. He manages to get his stick down just in time to block the shot, but Jeff battles for the rebound, wins it, and they reset. Again, down the center line, a toe drag fake out, a give and go.

There’s nothing calculated about the shot Matts takes; it’s just anger and muscle memory, and that’s all he needs. He doesn’t even feel like celebrating when the goal horn goes off.

He just wants to do it again.

So, he does.

*

DESPITE THEIR WIN , the locker room is subdued after the game.

Alex has a concussion and will be out for the rest of the regular season. No one has brought up playoffs, but they’re all thinking it.

Matts follows Eli and Alex home after the game.

He says it’s so he can help Eli keep an eye on Alex, and it is. But Asher has started spending more and more nights at his girlfriend’s house, and Sydney had to go home right after the game to sleep since the band has an early morning departure the next day, and he just…doesn’t want to be alone.

Matts helps get Alex settled on the couch with ice, Gatorade, and meds. He then retreats to the guest room so Eli can curl up under Alex’s arm to distract him, and so Alex can be vulnerable in a way only possible when you’re alone with someone you trust. Someone you love.

Matts likes listening to them through the cracked guest room door, the soft murmur of Eli’s muffled voice as he recounts some story from his childhood involving goats and the quiet appreciation of Alex’s laughter.

Eventually, Matts calls Aaron, stretched out on the guest bed with Hawk mostly on top of him.

“Hey, Matty,” Aaron says after the third ring. “Are you petting a dog in some back room at a party again?”

Matts sighs into the phone. “No. Well.” He looks at Hawk. “I am petting a dog, but it’s not at a party. And I’m not drunk. I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay,” Aaron says, immediately guarded. “What’s up?”

“I want to bring Sydney with me to the spring drive.”

“Oh.”

Matts waits.

“Are you two together now?”

“No.”

“Matty.”

“I think there’s a chance though. I mean, I think she might— She’s always wanted to go on a cattle drive, and we could use the help.”

“You can’t use a drive to romance someone.”

“I think there’s more than one western movie that would disagree with you.”

“Look, I know you said she’s familiar with horses and cattle, but if you bring her here, all folks will see is some city girl you’re trying to impress, which will cause plenty of problems even if no one knows she’s…you know.”

“Transgender,” Matts says for him. “It’s not a bad word.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I live in a high-rise and get my groceries delivered,” Matts says. “When she’s not on tour, Sydney lives with her folks and pulls her weight. She does more barn chores annually than I do. So, at this point, I’d say she’s more suited to a drive than I am.”

Aaron makes a noise somewhere between a groan and a whine, and Matts can practically see him pacing, digging the heel of his free hand into one of his eyes.

“Can you imagine,” Aaron says finally, “how your dad would react if he found out about her? You realize that would be a shit show, right?”

“I need you to understand that I do not fucking care about my dad’s opinion of Sydney.” Matts is a little bit shocked to find that the statement isn’t all bravado. Does he want his father to like Sydney? Yes. Does he need him to like Sydney? No.

Aaron is silent. He lets out a low whistle. “Man, who is this girl?”

“She’s important, okay? And I’m bringing her; I’ve decided. And I need to keep her safe while she’s there. Will you help me with that or not?”

“Obviously.”

“You think any of the guys will be a problem?”

Aaron makes an ambivalent noise. “If they are, we can take them.”

That’s probably accurate. Aaron is nearly as tall as Matts and easily outweighs him in the offseason, much less when Matts is playoff lean.

“Okay,” Matts says, “but should I be expecting trouble?”

“Nah. Don’t think anyone here will have heard of her, and even if they’ve heard of the band, they wouldn’t know her face. Except for maybe Ellie. She’d want Sydney’s autograph before wanting to take a swing at her though.”

“Ellie?” Matts doesn’t know an Ellie.

“Eloise. New part-timer. Girl who lives down the road. She’s into that punk music shit.”

“Red Right Hand isn’t punk,” Matts says absently, and then, “My dad hired a girl?”

“ I hired a girl.”

Huh. “Good for you.”

“Isn’t like I’m trying to be progressive or anything,” Aaron mutters. “She’s a good fit for the job. Local. Strong. Hard worker. Doesn’t take any shit. And Trigger likes her.”

If anything is a ringing endorsement, it’s the latter.

“Still. That’s cool,” Matts says.

“It’s whatever. Listen. Speaking of the drive. The weather has been warming up earlier than expected. We’re probably going to need to move the herd sooner rather than later.”

“Like, before playoffs?”

“You’ve got a week between the regular season and the beginning of playoffs, right? Could you come then for a few days?”

“Yeah, that could work. You know my game schedule?”

“You’re an idiot. Also, you need to stop punching people. You’re not an enforcer.”

“You were watching the game tonight?”

“I’m hanging up now,” Aaron says.