Chapter Thirteen

March

By the time March rolled around, Ryan really felt like he was hitting his stride as a head coach. There wasn't much he could do about the fact that the team wasn't going to finish particularly high in the standings. Injuries had ravaged the regular lineup: Travis Sinclair was out for the rest of the season after a shoulder surgery that couldn't have been put off any longer; Davey had to sit a few weeks with a sprained MCL; and Laurent Martel had gotten a nasty concussion in a stupid and useless fight. He was still dealing with post-concussion symptoms. Ryan had had to call up some guys from Providence, which wouldn't be a bad thing on a rebuilding team normally, but it wasn't the ideal time of the season to be trying to integrate new players into the system.

It was easier to deal with the media, too. They were still asking, especially after hard losses, how he felt about the team's record and where they were at this point in the season. They weren't mathematically eliminated from the playoffs just yet, but they would have to win almost all of their remaining games to make it.

The same way that he had for months now, Ryan answered patiently, "The way this season is going, I'm not looking at the standings, I'm really not. What I've been trying to do is to build a culture, which is one where we are playing the right way and doing the right things on the ice, a culture where anyone who's called up knows what we're looking for from them and the system we want to play. In that sense I'm very satisfied with the way that the team is playing. I can't do much about the injuries, and I can't do much about the fact that the roster is where it is at this point in the season."

On the bench it was easier, too. While Ryan still got caught up in the flow of the game, he didn't feel like he was missing as much as he had been at the beginning of the season. It was easier to manage line changes, easier to keep track of who was going where, and although they still took the occasional sloppy bench minors, overall, he felt like he had it handled.

He felt satisfied with the way that Heidi was handling the skills aspect of the practices: the younger players had all taken the strides that he'd hoped they would, and even some of the older players had improved their underlying numbers. Emil H?rm?l? actually had a positive Corsi for percent, which had never happened in his entire career; Cook had gotten him a cake that said "69% CF (nice)" and had smashed a piece of it in H?rm?l?'s face like they were at a wedding. Petey had gotten the PK under control and even though there was still the occasional sloppy in-zone coverage, overall, they were taking care of the zone.

Since Keen had been sent down to Providence, he'd been playing with a chip on his shoulder, but he was a point-per-game player, and even better, Ryan didn't have to worry about him grumbling in the locker room about his usage or upsetting Eric.

Everything was going well, for the most part. So why did he still feel so unsettled and anxious? Ryan had never been an anxious person as a player. He'd had a clear goal to work toward and the stubborn drive to get there, no matter what. There wasn't any reason it shouldn't have been the same as a head coach.

"What's going on, Coach?" Heidi asked, during a lull in the practice, while the boys were stretching it out, or goofing off in the distance, firing shots at a protesting Davey. He wasn't a particularly big goalie, but when even a baby in forty pounds of pads stopped you in your tracks on a breakaway, it was going to hurt like hell. "You seem a bit out of sorts."

"Joe Conroy offered me an extension last week," Ryan said slowly. He kept his voice down so Eric wouldn't hear. That was another thing he didn't completely understand yet, either. Why he felt so weird about telling him.

"But that's amazing!" Heidi exclaimed, then dropped her voice when Ryan shushed her. "What? Why? Aren't you happy? Would've thought you'd be thrilled to stay."

"Sometimes I wonder why I ever left coaching peewee hockey, to be honest."

Heidi laughed and rolled her shoulders. "I'm sure those are the days when we get blown out 7-2."

"Thankfully, those days aren't happening so often anymore," Ryan said. "But... I don't know. All of you have the one-year contracts too, so I know I should take it so I can give you all some job security if I can, but I don't know if it's the right choice for me."

Heidi stared at him, uncomprehending. "Why not?"

"Am I really the best person to coach this team? Or should I be giving someone with more experience the chance? Would it be better to try to get further away from—from home, you know? There's just a lot of variables. Don't get me wrong, Heids. I love coaching, and I love this team. I just took the job kind of impulsively, and now that things have calmed down, I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing for everyone else."

"I can't speak for Petey and Roney, obviously," Heidi said, a small, concerned frown twisting her mouth down. "But Sully, as far as my experience? You've been the best coach I could've hoped for. You gave me the opportunity and I, for one, am gonna be fighting to hold on to it. I'd understand if you didn't sign the extension, but I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us when I say we'd like you to stay."

Ryan wanted to tell her thank you, but all he could think about was his father showing up at practice, the stupid distraction that it had become; his own inability to stand up and say get the hell out of my practice facility . Mark Sullivan was the kind of guy who was going to die at age 102 out of sheer spite, so it wasn't like that was going to get any better in the meantime. It was one thing to worry vaguely about it before accepting the job, another entirely to know exactly what he was in for if he couldn't figure out how to grow a pair.

"It has been really rewarding," Ryan admitted. That was an understatement; he didn't have the words to describe what coaching the team had meant to him, what seeing Cook and Williams grow into players he could be proud of had meant to him, what meeting Eric had meant to him. If he didn't sign the contract, he'd have to give all of that up. "I don't really want to go."

"So stay," Heidi said, like it was simple.

Maybe it was.

Eric wasn't expecting the call when it came. It was a day just like any other day. He woke up with Ryan's stubbly cheek pressed up against his back, pushed him away without rancor and sat up in bed. They showered together and Ryan complained again about Eric's undrinkable coffee, although by now, Eric had made concessions and started keeping hazelnut creamer in the fridge, even though he shuddered reflexively every time he saw it. They left the apartment together, and Ryan vibrated in place for a second like he was half-ready to go up on his toes and try to kiss Eric right there, in public.

"See you at the rink, Coach," Eric said dryly, the same way he always did.

On the drive to the practice facility for morning skate, Eric's phone rang. It wasn't a familiar number or area code, but for some reason he answered it anyway instead of ignoring it. "Hello?"

"Is this Eric Aronson?"

"Yes," he said, half-suspicious and half-terrified that something had happened to Maman, even though it wasn't a Montreal number. He considered whether he should pull over to the side of the road to continue the conversation.

"Eric, I'm very happy to have reached you. This is Paul Clifton."

At that point, Eric did pull over to the side of the road.

Paul Clifton had recently been hired as the new general manager of the Long Island Railers, after the dust had settled from the initial bloodbath. He was another longtime hockey man, although he had spent most of his career playing in Edmonton. The kind of old-school enforcer that you never saw in the league these days. The end of his career had overlapped the beginning of Eric's, although Eric couldn't remember anything particularly memorable about playing him. He'd been an assistant GM in Tampa before the Railers had poached him, so he had experience—he wasn't all brawn.

Eric ran through any number of things he could have said, including how the hell did you get my number . What he settled on was: "Can I help you, Mr. Clifton?"

Clifton chuckled; his deep voice amused. "Just Paul or Clifton, please. Mr. Clifton makes me think of my father, and he's been dead for years."

Eric laughed, too, a little uncertainly, and waited for Clifton to go on.

"I'm sure you can probably guess why I'm calling you, Aronson."

The thought had been forming in his head, but he was superstitious enough that speaking it before he was ready felt like it would just be drawing the attention of the ayin ha'ra. Instead, he took a deep breath, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "Why don't you tell me?"

"As you know, there was recently a complete overhaul of both the front office and the coaching staff. While we have our former assistant serving in a temporary capacity right now, we'd like to offer you the opportunity to interview for the head coach's spot."

Eric's head was full of static. He'd been working for this for so fucking long, and he'd been wanting it for even longer. He'd thought maybe it might've been the time when Leclerc got fired, but that hadn't been in the cards. He wasn't even upset about Ryan being hired anymore, not when it had ended like this. But the offer...this wasn't the way he thought it would've happened, bittersweet and almost tainted.

He was a practical man. There were only thirty-two positions. This opportunity wouldn't come knocking again, maybe not ever. Eric exhaled. At his left, he could see the traffic zipping by on the interstate, no one aware of all of the noise in his head. "Thank you very much for the opportunity," he said. "When would you like me to come down for an interview?"

"I've looked at the schedules, and I think this Friday would be most convenient, if you're available."

Eric flipped through his mental calendar. The team was playing back-to-back home games for the next two days, so they would be late nights. It was a little under four hours on the Acela. He wondered, for a second, whether he could convince Ryan to come with him, whether they could make a weekend out of it. But that wasn't possible. Not only did he not want to tell Ryan about it immediately, they had practices on Saturday that neither of them could miss to go swanning about New York.

"I'm available, so long as Conroy doesn't shut it down," he said. He'd make it work. He'd have to talk to Joe Conroy, but he'd make it work. "I'll let you know if it's going to be an issue with the Beacons."

And then he'd have to talk to Ryan.

After hanging up with Clifton, he called Conroy to work out the details.

"I don't know whether I want to take the position," he said, because he was being honest. Conroy had always been up-front with him, and Eric wasn't the kind of guy to bullshit. "But I'd appreciate if you would allow me the opportunity to interview."

"Of course we won't stand in your way if you have the opportunity for a head coach's position," Conroy said easily. "We'll miss you behind our bench, of course. But I won't prevent you from pursuing a promotion of this nature."

"Thank you, Joe," Eric said. "Can you not tell R—Sully about this yet? Like I said, I don't know if I want to take this position, so I don't want to...make things weird on the bench."

"Whatever you want." Even though he agreed, Eric could almost hear his eyebrows shooting up.

Eric hung up and drove the rest of the way to work.

It wasn't much time to prepare for an interview, but that was almost better. He couldn't overthink things, even if he tried. Today he just had to concentrate on the practice and the game and then on figuring out how he was going to explain his absence to Ryan. They didn't win the game, which was frustrating; even one of Ryan's ten minutes of frantic tape-watching before throwing together a speech for the boys hadn't had its usual effect. It had been one of those games where they played down to the opposition; for whatever reason, the Beacons had never played well against Detroit.

When it was all over, they were the last two men in the rink, which was how it ended sometimes. Ryan was an incurable romantic who sometimes liked to stay behind and look out at the ice, pristine again after the Zamboni had finished with it, at the empty arena rising above them. Eric, it turned out, had not even realized he'd had a part of him who could appreciate something like that until Ryan had woken it in him. It was funny. He'd been doing this so long, as a player and as a coach, and he'd never actually just looked at it that way. In a way, it almost felt like being in the sanctuary at synagogue. The same kind of religious awe.

"Hey," Eric said.

"Hmm?" Ryan asked. He looked over his shoulder with a smile.

"You're gonna have to stay at your apartment on Friday."

Ryan blinked. His eyes didn't narrow, exactly, but the smile faded. "What's up? Is everything okay?"

"Oh, it's fine. It's fine. It's nothing about you, I just have some business to take care of, and I might not be home at a reasonable hour, depending on how things go."

Ryan's eyebrows went up. And up again. "Uh-huh," he said. "Are you sure everything's okay?"

Eric thought about just telling him, but there wasn't any need to rock the boat if it wasn't an absolutely sure thing that he was going to get the job anyway. So he smiled, and said, "I'll tell you as soon as I get everything settled. Trust me, okay?"

"You know I trust you," Ryan said, "I just wish... I don't know. This seems like something pretty big. You know I'm not going to get weird about whatever it is, right? You can trust me too, you know that?"

"I do trust you," Eric said. Even to his own ears, it sounded lame and toothless. "This is just something I need to take care of on my own. I promise I'll talk to you as soon as I have more information."

"Okay," Ryan said. His eyes looked a little darker in the shadows of the tunnel.

Slowly, the lights in the rest of the arena were flickering off with the loud pops that always surprised Eric, even when he was expecting them. "I promise, Ryan."

"Okay," he said, again. "So we're not going to see each other tonight?"

"No," Eric said, regretfully. Tonight was the kind of night it would've been nice to get railed until he forgot his own name, but he was going to do the responsible thing and update his résumé and prepare for the interview. Ryan laughed, suddenly, and Eric said, "What?"

"It's been kind of a while since we haven't."

With a little shock down his spine, Eric realized how right he was. Ruefully, a little dangerously, he leaned forward and kissed Ryan quickly on the mouth, a press only, just to see his eyes fly wide open in shock. "I'm sorry. I'll see you on Saturday, mon pitchounet."

"You called me that once before—what does it even mean?"

"It's stupid," Eric said, more than a little embarrassed. "A nonsense endearment. My little pitcher."

"Little p—"

"Mon chum, we don't have the time to start this right now."

"Yeah, yeah," Ryan muttered, and shrugged. "All right. You go. I'm still thinking."

It wasn't easy to leave him, standing there in the empty, dark rink, but Eric did it.

It probably wasn't the most efficient way to get down to Long Island. Eric could have flown and then taken a cab, but the hassle of getting in and out of the airports didn't seem worth it, especially because he despised both LaGuardia and JFK. He could have driven, but then he would have lost the opportunity to prepare for the interview in silence in transit, because he would have had to deal with New York drivers. Really the only option was to take the train into Penn Station, and from there, to catch a cab to Floral Park, where the Railers' business offices were located. The trip would be slightly over five hours, and he had to leave at the ass-crack of dawn to make it on time.

Eric bought his train tickets, looked over his résumé one last time, ate three melatonin gummies and did his best not to look at his phone as he tried desperately to pass out. He woke up in the morning and resigned himself to Dunkin' Donuts coffee from South Station. As he was buying it, he thought about how Ryan would have loved rubbing it in and felt a momentary twinge of guilt that he had to push down.

His mother called while he was boarding the train, and immediately figured out that something was up.

"It's nothing, Maman," Eric told her, relieved that probably no one around him was Francophone.

"Why do you sound like you're in a train station?"

"I see your hearing aids are calibrated properly," Eric said, a little sour. "I've been offered an interview for a head coaching position."

"Oh, tateleh !" Maman exclaimed. "That's wonderful! You've worked so hard for—wait. You sound unsure."

"I'm not a hundred percent positive that this team is going to be the right fit for me, but even beyond that... I'm not really sure, you know. What to do about Ryan."

"You haven't talked to him about it? éric! "

"I know, Maman, I know, I just... I don't even know if it's going to pan out. I didn't want to upset him. I'll deal with it once I know for sure, one way or another. It's just hard. I've been working for this for so long, but Ryan is—I kind of fell in love with him, Maman."

She sighed. "Nothing is ever easy for you, is it?"

Eric laughed. "I'm too much of an asshole for things to come easy, you know that."

"éric," she scolded, "no you aren't. You're a good man, and Ryan knows it. You should really just talk to him honestly ."

"I'm going to. After the interview."

"I hope it's not too late," his mother said severely, and then sighed. "You will do well in this interview, keynahora."

"We'll see. Look, 'Man, I have to go," Eric said, and immediately headed toward the back of the train, where he knew he could probably find a window seat.

Eric had always liked train stations, from the old-school ticker board in Philadelphia to the soaring glass ceilings in Penn Station. There was something about the echo and the noise, the ebb and flow of commuters in and out, that felt strangely soothing. It was easy to disappear into the crowd, one of a million other people going about their business.

He didn't have time to appreciate it today; as soon as he disembarked, his briefcase slung over his shoulder, he had to head out to catch a cab. No use taking chances with New York traffic. Strangely enough, now that he was here, he felt the calm certainty he always felt knowing that soon he would be out on the ice, that the fight he was dreading would be finished soon.

The Railers' front office was an unassuming, modern building with copper siding, tucked into a residential neighborhood of Long Island. He stood outside, looking up, and thought about how shitty it had felt when Joe Conroy had told him they were going in a different direction. He felt the vague twist of nausea in his stomach and stamped it out viciously.

Eric went up the stairs, where he was greeted at the front desk by the administrative assistant, who then took him to the elevator. The interview room was about what he had been expecting, the kind of featureless conference room decorated in Railers gear that could be easily reconfigured into any position needed. Clifton was there. The owner, Bennett Norris, an older, grumpier businessman who'd made his millions in the beer distribution business, wasn't. That was either a good sign or a bad one: that he'd made up his mind already or was leaving the entirety of the decision to Clifton.

"Good afternoon," Eric said, extending his hand for the shake. He remembered belatedly that he should've said Clifton or Paul , but there was nothing for it now.

"Good afternoon, Aronson," Clifton said, with another one of the warm chuckles that had characterized their conversation on the phone. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Why don't you sit down, and we can get started talking about what I expect out of the next head coach of the Long Island Railers, and you can tell me how you envision your own coaching position."

As they sat down at the table, Eric couldn't help raising his eyebrows. "Do you want to see my résumé?" He had it, still, tucked in the black folder in his briefcase.

Clifton laughed again. "I don't need to see your résumé, Aronson. You can leave it with me if you like, but the reason I reached out to you is specifically because I liked what you had to offer. From your experience as a player, to your time coaching in Boston."

"Uh-huh," Eric said, a little suspiciously, because that sounded almost too good to be true.

It turned out that what Clifton was looking for was typical: the sort of modern coach who could both relate to the players on a very basic level of past experience, but who was willing to look forward to the future of the game, to work with an analytics staff to identify areas for improvement and to try to bring a more unpredictable element to their tactics. They wanted someone to work with the younger players at a developmental level, but also ensure that the older players weren't getting bored or left behind.

"And what would you be looking for, if you accepted a job with this organization?" Clifton was asking.

Eric thought about it for a moment, but he was talking before he could fully organize his thoughts, fully articulate it. "I want a coaching staff that I could work with collaboratively. Staff with no deadweight, everyone offering their opinion. I want to be able to have free rein with the practices to do some unorthodox things. Small-area drills, experimental game simulations, that sort of thing. I want to be able to hire a skills coach and someone to work with the boys with mental strength training as well. I want—" For a second, Eric swallowed, hard. What he was describing was basically the situation he had in Boston with Ryan. And it was the kind of situation that he had no idea whether he'd be able to recreate somewhere else. He wouldn't have Petey's aggressive chill or Heidi's keen insight into details. And most of all, Ryan's...everything.

He realized, belatedly, that he had stopped talking. "It's a lot to ask, I know."

"Not really," Clifton said, steepling his fingers. "We have the budget to get you extra coaching staff, if you aren't happy with the skills coaches we have already. You'd have input into the hiring, as well. I'd want to make sure you could get along with and trust your staff."

"Of course," Eric said. His stomach felt uneasy, nauseous. "Being able to trust your staff is paramount."

The interview went on for quite some time. Clifton asked him about the on-ice incidents he had had as a player and Eric answered honestly: he didn't put up with bullshit from anyone, let alone someone using slurs. "But one of the things I'm most proud of is that in my old age, I don't need to fight anymore, at least not as a first resort. I've reined in my temper. And I think that has served me well in this position." He thought, briefly, about blowing up at Ryan in the office. The first argument that had led to pushing him against a whiteboard and everything that had come from it.

Get it together , he told himself.

"And what about the whole Player A lawsuit?" Eric asked, as the interview was winding down. "How is the team planning to handle this?"

Clifton's face grew solemn. "We're handling it. We're fully cooperating with the investigation, and as you're aware from the interview, everyone who was involved in the decisions that led to the cover-up has been released from their employment with the organization. We are fully committed to building up a new and transparent front office and management style, one that is devoted to ensuring the safety and security of our players as well as all of our employees."

"What are your concrete plans about this?" Eric asked. "If this were to happen again. If a player were to, say, report to me that he had been assaulted, and I reported to you."

"We would have procedures in place to handle such things," Clifton said smoothly. "The lawyers are working on all of that right now."

Eric could feel himself frowning, and tried to rein it in. "What about ‘going to the police to report a crime'?"

"Obviously, that is the end goal," Clifton said, smiling again. "But you know how front offices are. It's a lot of red tape and following the appropriate channels of communication."

The thing was that Eric wanted this job so fucking much. In theory. He had wanted this job for years; he had been furious when Ryan had stolen it right from under his fingers. But this was not what he'd wanted to hear. This was more of the same, this was corporate speak for we're not going to do the right thing until we can be sure that we're covering our asses .

Eric had never been in a situation like Player A had been, and he didn't know how he would have reacted, if he'd been trying to crack a major league roster at the time. He knew the desperation, the fear, the knowledge that you had to do anything , including playing through injuries, so you wouldn't lose your spot. And now that he was a coach, he knew that it was his job to help protect those specific guys, the guys like him. The hungry, desperate ones. The ones who were vulnerable.

"But you'd take it to the police?" he pressed.

"Of course," Clifton said.

While Eric wasn't entirely sure if he believed it, it was the sort of thing that he couldn't argue too much in a job interview. They ran through the last pleasantries, the last few questions, the jovial reminiscing about their playing days and what it used to be like in the league and how fast things had been changing recently.

Finally, Clifton said, "I'll be blunt with you, Aronson. This is basically your job to lose. I just need you to give me an answer in the next two weeks whether you'll accept or not."

"Thank you, sir," Eric said, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat. "I will have to talk to Ry—Coach Sullivan and the rest of the staff, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

They ended on a handshake, and then the assistant came back in to escort Eric to the door. He had a lot to think about on the train ride home.

Ryan wasn't sure what to make of the fact that Eric was gone all of Friday. It wasn't that they missed him at practice, exactly—Heidi was more than capable of stepping in to work with the forwards in his absence. But Ryan felt it, like a hole in his chest, if he was going to be melodramatic. The whole practice felt off-balance to him; he caught himself constantly turning like he was expecting Eric to be there, for the stupidest things. To ask him what he thought about Cook's board battle or Williams's edge work or any of it. To needle him about the way he'd get grumpy when one of the boys showered him in snow. To tease him about where they'd go for dinner after.

It was one practice ; there was no need to act like some ridiculous teenaged boy, mooning after the girl of his dreams. But there was the nagging little fear in the back of his head. It was unusual that Eric would miss practice or a game for any reason. So that basically meant it would probably have been a job offer. And if he didn't want to tell Ryan about it yet, that meant it was probably something serious, something he was considering accepting.

Ryan tried his best to concentrate on the practice, but his head felt like there was a thunderstorm brewing in there. He wasn't upset. He was happy for Eric. They'd never talked about what they were doing, but he'd started to...he didn't even know what he was hoping for. It had felt real and solid and like something when Eric had took him home to Montreal. But if he was going to be leaving Boston, Ryan also couldn't expect that things would just continue that way. It was one thing to keep them up when they were working together, in the same city, when it was easy. It was another thing to commit to something long-distance.

Either way he was going to have to talk to Eric, finally.

That opportunity came sooner than he was expecting. Ryan was already home at his sad little apartment, making himself dinner, when Eric texted, Can you let me in? Ryan checked the stove burners he had on under his griddle to make sure that nothing would catch fire if he accidentally got locked out of his apartment and went downstairs to do just that.

When he opened the door, he found Eric on the doorstep, bedraggled from the steady rain that had been falling that evening, droplets misting his glasses. He had a black leather briefcase tucked under his arm, and his coat was billowing a little in the wind. When he saw Ryan, he took a step forward and grabbed him by the shoulders and leaned down to kiss him.

Ryan made a surprised noise into his mouth, especially because now he was getting rained on too, especially because they were basically in public, but went with it, still swept up in the emotions of realizing that they might have to end this soon. Eric kissed with the kind of desperation that Ryan felt, like he knew things were changing faster than they had been ready for, like he didn't want it to happen any more than Ryan did.

When they finally pulled apart, Eric's glasses were a smudgy mess of rain and nose-prints, and he was breathing a little raggedly. Ryan said, "Uh, you know, you can come in where it's not raining."

Eric laughed, although there was a hint of uncertainty to it. "Yes. Of course."

"I'm making cheesesteaks," Ryan said, "if you, ah, want one. If you can eat one?"

"That sounds perfect right about now," Eric said, and followed him up. "I don't really keep kosher, you know."

The cheesesteaks were something that Ryan had eaten in Philadelphia in his playing days, and he'd gotten kind of obsessed with recreating them at home. They weren't exactly clean eating, but sometimes you just wanted a gigantic portion of meat and onions and cheese on some bread that, by the time you were finished with it, was practically falling apart under the weight of the filling. He'd gotten pretty close—the key was freezing the meat before you started trying to slice it—but the bread was always a struggle. For some reason, the right kind of rolls just weren't available outside of Philly. He made do.

Eric leaned against the counter in his narrow galley kitchen while Ryan worked. He'd already done most of the prep, so now it was just a matter of cooking the meat and onions on the grill and laying the cheese on top toward the end, toasting the rolls just a bit in the fat left behind. He watched Eric from the corner of his eye, waiting for him to talk. He'd taken off his coat and wiped his glasses off with a cloth, but his curly hair was still a little damp, and he kept rubbing the back of his neck uneasily.

"Can you just tell me what's going on?" Ryan said, finally, as he was chopping up the meat straight on the griddle.

"I had an interview today." He didn't sound happy about it, his voice tight and stretched. "I was offered a head coaching position."

Ryan's stomach dropped. He shoveled meat onto the roll and looked up, forcing himself to smile. It wasn't hard, and it was the hardest thing he'd ever done. "Eric, Jesus, that's amazing. Congratulations, buddy. I'm, I'm sorry I don't have anything special we can drink to celebrate."

"Well," Eric said, mouth twisted down. He couldn't look Ryan in the eye. "I'm not sure if I'm going to take the job."

"What?" Ryan said. It was like whiplash, a little. The pride and the fear and the relief. "Why not?"

"Well. As you might've already guessed considering the vacancies around the league, it was the Railers."

Ryan stared at him. "Oh. Ohhh , Jesus."

"Yeah. So. I asked them about what they'd do if a player reported something similar again, and I wasn't very encouraged by the answer. It was just corporate bullshit for doing the bare minimum to cover their asses. I was—not thrilled by it."

The meat steamed in the buns, but Ryan suddenly didn't feel very hungry. "Eric, I...look, no one deserves that position more than you. And I think if you want it, you should take it. You've worked so fucking hard for it, and this kind of chance doesn't come up very often. You know better than anyone."

"Yeah," Eric said, shortly. He pulled one of the plates toward him but didn't eat, either. "I just...morally, I'm not sure if I can do it. And I heard their owner on the radio on the train ride home, ranting about how unfairly the organization was being treated in the press. It's just...it's the chance of a lifetime. But I don't know if I can take it, Ry. I just don't know."

The dinner forgotten, Ryan took a step forward, and wormed his way into an embrace. Even now, it was almost shocking how easy it was to fit their bodies together, considering Eric's height advantage and the way Ryan's face ended up buried somewhere in his chest when Eric's arms tightened and pulled him in closer. "The thing is, Eric. You're like...a really good person. I know you. And I know if you took that position and anything happened, the guys would trust you, and I would trust you to do the right thing, no matter what the team wanted."

"That's. Probably kinder than I deserve," Eric said, voice muffled by Ryan's hair. "I appreciate you saying that, probably more than you know. But I don't know..."

"I think that if you want the job," Ryan said, hating himself for how fucking sad he felt saying it, "you should take it. Like I said. No one deserves that more than you do. And I want to see you—I want to see you behind the bench where you belong."

Eric mumbled something again that sounded like I am behind the bench , but Ryan couldn't hear it clearly over the pounding of his heart in his own ears. "I have some time to think about it. So I'm going to think about it. Okay?"

"Yeah. This isn't the kind of decision you should make right away," Ryan managed. "But I want you to know, like, whatever you do. I'll support you in it."

"Thank you," Eric said again, and kissed the top of his head, a gesture that was so ridiculous that Ryan tried to swat him away. "Hey. I'm starving. Let's eat, and then we can talk about like—anything other than this. Please?"

"Whatever you want, buddy," Ryan said, and sighed as he untangled himself from the embrace. "I can be a very good distraction."

Eric, laughing, kissed him again, but Ryan didn't feel any better after it.

Eric had a hard time falling asleep, even after a pretty intense orgasm. He lay awake in Ryan's bed instead, alternating between staring at the ceiling in the shadows of the room and looking back down at Ryan's face. Eric liked to see how slack and relaxed Ryan was in sleep, because awake, he was constantly in motion, constantly on edge, constantly smiling or talking or getting his stupid nose into everyone's business.

Given everything that Eric had learned about him since they'd started sleeping together, it wasn't surprising at all that he was a cuddler in bed, either: he spent most of the night trying to squirm his way closer to Eric, who inevitably ended up pushed to the very edge of the bed by the time the sun started peeking through the blinds.

Looking at Ryan was a more pleasant occupation than trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do about the job the Railers had offered him. He hoped Ryan was right: that he was a good person who'd be able to do the right thing if it came down to it. He'd been a fighter his whole life, and that hadn't changed now that he wasn't putting on the gear and pads anymore. But there was a difference between knowing that you wanted to do the right thing and doing it in practice.

Surely, the other coaches hadn't wanted to actively cover up that kind of abuse. Maybe they had been lulled into complacency by the possibility of the playoffs, by the desire not to get fired and keep their jobs, by the knowledge that someone else would handle it. It was easy to pass off responsibility if someone told you it would be handled. Who was to say the same thing wouldn't happen to him?

Ryan's simple, easy confidence in him still warmed his chest like almost no other compliment or honor he'd ever received. But he still couldn't entirely believe it.

Even beyond that, there were the optics of it. He didn't want to accept the job and come in to be the Band-Aid, the distraction. He could potentially be the first Jewish head coach in the league in over a hundred years, and that would certainly be a talking point that they could use rather than the ongoing lawsuits. Accepting the job would be an implicit approval of anything the organization did, because there were probably non-disparagement clauses in the contract.

But then there was the fact that he desperately wanted the job. He wanted to have the opportunity to build something long-term, something successful, something that was his. He wanted to prove everyone wrong who'd ever looked at him and called him a goon, everyone who thought he couldn't do it, everyone who jokingly mentioned his long, long slate of penalty minutes, his lack of hardware or a Cup. Eric knew, deep within himself, that if he had the chance, he could run with it. He could do it. Maybe not the next year or the year after that, but eventually.

Every time he thought about the pros and cons, he ended up right back where he started. He wanted the job. He didn't know if he could live with himself for taking this job. He truly wasn't naive enough to think that the fact that he was a good person, or tried to be a good person, would be enough to counter systemic, organizational rot.

But other people did it every day. Other people compromised their morals to get where they needed to go. You couldn't get ahead in the world without being a little ruthless, a little selfish. Right?

Ryan grumbled in his sleep, turning over on his side and pushing himself even more insistently against Eric's body. He always ran hot, and Eric was normally the kind of guy who liked his space in bed. He'd gotten used to Ryan this way, somehow.

Ryan wasn't ruthless or selfish. He wasn't a pushover; there was a spine in there, but he cared about the boys, as a group and individually. He worked with the healthy scratches long after everyone else had left the ice. He had apologized to Eric when he'd realized what the situation had been. He waited almost the entire season to waive a guy who was barely trying, just because he wanted to draw out the best in him another way.

The shitty thing about the whole situation was that Eric knew he had a clear choice, and it wasn't the easy one. He just had to get up the stones to make the call.

He ran his hand down Ryan's arm, wondering what the hell life would be like without him in it. It was funny how he'd wormed his way in there, in such a short amount of time, intertwined himself in every aspect of Eric's day-to-day, like it was nothing. There weren't many people out there like Ryan Sullivan, and that was probably a good thing. Eric wasn't sure if the world could actually handle more than one of them.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He had a lot of work to do in the morning.