Chapter Five

November

The road trip hadn't been as successful as Ryan had hoped. They'd won a few and lost a few. The thing that was both frustrating and heartening was that the team played up to tougher competition, but down to lesser competition. The kernels of what could be? They were there.

When he watched Williams and Cook on the ice, the way they seemed to know where to find each other even without looking, he was encouraged. They had played well in Toronto and New York especially. But when they went down two goals in thirty seconds against Columbus, Ryan had to duck his head into his hand behind the bench to keep his face under control.

They regrouped after the trip to go over the tape, to look at who was underperforming, to consider whether the lines and pairings needed to be shifted. The coaches often stayed late, sharing a beer in Ryan's office while they discussed the details. He wasn't surprised to find himself at odds with Aronson again.

"I thought you liked Keen," Ryan said, frustrated. He'd moved Keen up to the second line, temporarily, to see if they could get him going again. He'd also slotted him onto the second power play unit for the same reason. Not the first unit, of course. He didn't want to get too crazy.

"Yeah," Aronson said. "I mean, we got along just fine under Leclerc. He knew Leclerc's system. Knew where he was supposed to be and who he was supposed to be covering. But he's exactly what I meant when I said you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

"Conroy wanted us to highlight the veterans for trade deadline day, and to get them cooking however we could," Ryan pointed out.

Petey, who had already done his talk on the defenseman, opened one eye. "There's highlighting, and there's Keen."

"I don't believe you can just give up on anyone like that," Ryan said, frowning at the whiteboard. The numbers were there, in black and white. The abysmal effect that Keen had on shot share when he was placed on the second line. His own eye test. "I just need to work with him, get it through his head what we're actually asking and expecting."

"Okay, sure, Pollyanna," Aronson drawled. He was shredding a piece of paper, his long fingers twisting the pieces into little balls. It was the kind of anxious habit that was completely at odds with the way he spoke.

Petey laughed. "Wow, Roney, really showing your age with that reference."

To Ryan's surprise, Aronson's ears turned red. It was...kind of cute? "You know my parents are older."

"Well, the fact remains," Ryan said, frowning again, "we've gotta get him going. It's not like he's going anywhere if he doesn't start putting up points, at least, and we can't waive him."

"Why not?" Aronson asked, flicking a tiny ball of paper at Ryan, who brushed it off of his sleeve. "He's not really doing anything fucking useful out there, and he's not really lighting it on fire at practices."

"Can you imagine how that would go over in the room? Waiving a veteran who's been on the team this long?"

"We've done it before," Petey said. "Last year, when we had to free up cap space. It's not the best way to handle things, but if a guy's a professional, he understands."

"Would you call Keen a professional?" Ryan started, and both of his assistants sighed, because he was right. "Look. We don't need to make any drastic decisions today. I'll keep working with him at practice, and we'll see if some time on PP2 won't get him going a bit. I can give him a better center and see if that helps. Can always adjust midgame."

"I just think," Aronson said, a little singsong, "that sometimes you need to be a little nasty to get the point across."

"That's not the kind of environment I want to build here. I want the players to enjoy coming to the rink and I want them to trust that I'm not going to spend all of the time they're here yelling at them for things I know they're working on. I want to be able to meet them on their level and encourage them to be better."

"And that's admirable," Petey said, and then closed his eyes again. "But sometimes, you may wanna have a little bit of Roney's bite."

Ryan laughed. "Not literally, I hope." Aronson glowered at them but didn't say anything—he didn't have to. Ryan already knew what it would be. He rubbed his eyes and said, "All right, good work tonight, boys. We'll revisit in the morning."

Even in the loss, there were a few light spots, at least. The guys were still goofing off on the ice during warm-ups. It was Afanasyev's birthday, and Cook, Williams, and Davey had decorated his locker for the occasion: in multicolored hockey tape, the words HAPPY BDAY RODDY were clearly visible. They'd blown up the trainers' vinyl gloves to make bizarre-looking balloon clusters. The stoic defenseman had clearly been bemused by the offerings, but accepted them anyway with a solemn handshake.

On his walk back to the hotel, Ryan thought about whether he should contact Shannon's lawyer to see whether or not he could get some of his stuff. He was staying at a Residence Inn about a ten-minute walk from the Spectrum, but it was starting to wear on him. It was one thing to travel and stay at hotels and another entirely to come home to one every night, to the reminder that you were living out of a suitcase. At least he had a little kitchenette so he could cook, even if the utensils were completely dull metal and flimsy plastic bullshit. It was starting to become the final straw that had him searching for available apartments, although he still wasn't sure where the hell he was going to live.

Ryan wondered what he would even end up taking from the house. Probably Shannon would want to keep all of the furniture. It wasn't like he couldn't afford to buy new—he had made a tidy amount of money over the course of his contracts, and he had invested it well. Even if Shannon took half, Ryan would never have to worry about money ever again. But part of him almost didn't feel it was worth it, if he didn't know how long he'd be here. Ryan might have been confident in his ability to develop a team, to build something solid and lasting and successful, but he didn't know how long Conroy's leash would be.

Walking across the causeway, he was reminded that no matter how busy he was and no matter how many people he talked to in any given day, it was a pretty fucking lonely existence. Especially compared to his playing days, when he would have Murph and his wife over for dinner or go to their house pretty much every day they were home, when he would be hanging with the boys every single night they were on the road. And he was reminded, with a sudden, stinging little shock, that he'd been pretty fucking lonely for...a really long time. Even while he was married.

Part of him wanted to text Shannon or call her and ask, Is this how you felt too? Is this why you locked me out? But she had been pretty clear about the fact that he shouldn't do that. Instead, Ryan paused on the walk, looked out over the Charles River and the lights on the bridges, and thought about how he had kind of fucked up his life. He'd landed on his feet, sure. But there had been a lot of things he just...hadn't thought about. Hadn't seen.

He wondered if that was part of getting to middle age. Being able to look back on shit you'd missed out on, shit you hadn't done, and realizing that above everything else, you regretted it.

He wondered what Aronson was doing. Ryan knew that he lived in the South End, but beyond that, he didn't know anything about what the guy was like outside of work, where he was mostly glowering, arguing, or snapping Ryan's head off. Ryan wondered if Aronson liked to cook, whether his apartment was as spare and empty as Ryan's would probably be. He had said to Petey that his parents were older—Ryan wondered how old. He wondered if Aronson was getting ready to sleep, whether he was in bed, whether he was—

But all of this was stupid. It didn't accomplish anything. It didn't matter what Aronson was doing or what his apartment was like: Aronson hated him, too. Ryan took a deep breath, and shrugged his shoulders like that alone could clear the weight. He walked back to his hotel room and resolved that, no matter what else happened, he was going to find a new place to live within the next two weeks.

There.

That was a goal, something solid, that he could work toward. The rest of it? That was just noise.

Eric wasn't going soft, he told himself, it was just that if he wanted to keep his job, he couldn't fight tooth and nail with Sullivan all of the time. He had to be professional, and he had to continue working with the forwards and coaching the power play. It didn't help that no matter what he tried, the power play remained abysmal. To some extent, he knew that it was the lack of a good quarterback. Having a defenseman back there who could really move the puck completely opened the game up for the forwards. But what he had to work with could be considered at best "pretty grim" and at worst "pylons."

If he wanted to keep his job, he had to stop arguing with Sullivan, and he had to get the power play cooking. He honestly wasn't sure which one was more difficult, in the end. Part of him was beginning to enjoy the sparring, look forward to the way Sullivan's brown eyes would flash whenever Eric challenged him. The answering thrill low in his stomach.

His mother had started asking about Sullivan in the morning, like she was actually eager for updates about all of the woo-woo bullshit he spouted after the games.

"Maman, it's just stupid hockey clichés," Eric insisted.

"I think he has a point, tateleh. It's a little different, don't you think? The boys seem to like it. It's not the same old things they usually hear."

"It's just a bunch of stupid nonsense," Eric grumbled, as he got his coffee together. It was more small-area drills at practice today, and he was specifically working with the power play with an exercise designed to cut the amount of time they spent passing around looking for the best shot and starting to just take a shot. "He's charming, so everyone just ignores the fact that he isn't actually saying anything ."

His mother made a noise of assent that was not a noise of agreement. He'd become very used to all of her nonverbal cues over the years, especially when they spoke on the phone, because like many Jewish mothers, she could express an entire book's worth of information in one hmm . "Well, he listens to you?"

"I mean...yes, sort of."

"He values your opinion? Petey's opinion?"

"Yes..."

"Then listen, éric, I know you feel you should have gotten the job, and honestly, I agree that you are qualified and have put in the time. But you didn't. I think maybe you should give this Sullivan more of a chance before you start—and no, I know how you can get when you are upset about something. You are so stubborn, my darling."

Eric thought about protesting, but that would prove her point. Instead, he ran his hand through his hair and frowned at his coffee thermos. "It's just...he's got all of these stupid high-minded ideals and we just do not have the roster for it, 'Man. We've got a few kids that maybe that kind of approach will really help, but we've got a roster of fu—of veterans. They're struggling. They're really struggling."

"Maybe you just need to give them some more time. It's not like you're making the playoffs this year."

"Wow, ow , brutal."

"It's just the truth. But come, éric, you were never one to shy from a challenge. It doesn't sound like a bad situation. Look at that lawsuit in Long Island, that poor boy there. Things could be so much worse. It's all in how you look at it."

"I'm looking at it like Sullivan is a pain in my ass."

"Tateleh."

"I know, 'Man. I know."

They were playing at home at the Spectrum that night, and it was the kind of game that Eric hated to lose. It was a Saturday night game. Against the Colorado Black Bears, one of the top teams in the league. In front of a home crowd, the kind of loud, drunk Boston crowd that he had always despised during his childhood and then during his playing days, even though Calgary and Boston had no particular skin in the game against each other. It was just that old growing-up-in-Montreal feeling, the old rivalry impossible to shake even when he'd been working in Boston for years. But now they were his assholes, and he hated when the team put on a bad show in front of them.

Beforehand, he was aware that it would be a difficult game. Colorado had a dangerous array of assets on both defense and forward, so if you cheated to cover one you were leaving the other to activate. The forecheck could morph immediately from a pretty typical 1-2-1 to an aggressive 2-1-2, and he wasn't entirely sure that some of the defensemen, particularly the rookies, would adjust well to cover it. The defensemen were Petey's problem, of course, but Petey had other shit to worry about, like the fact that the east-west rush Colorado loved so dearly was going to wreak hell on his bottom-six.

Eric had gone over the game plan with Sullivan and Petey beforehand, but standing behind the bench during the national anthem, he didn't feel particularly confident. He could already tell he was fidgeting. Catching himself pushing his glasses farther up his nose, running a hand through his hair. All of the stupid tells that meant that even while he was focusing his brain on the task at hand, the subconscious parts of it were fucking worrying .

Petey glanced sideways at him.

"It's a losing season," Eric said, "so tell me why I give a shit?"

"Because you're a competitive bastard and you hate to lose."

"A rhetorical question, Petey."

"Don't ask a question you don't want an answer to," Petey said serenely.

Eric scowled at him, then looked sideways. Sullivan was already standing on the bench, watching the third line standing at attention under the shifting lights that accompanied the anthem. He practically bounced in place, all nervous energy, and Eric immediately felt annoyed that they were both doing these things. He thought about grabbing Sullivan by his broad shoulders and gripping hard, forcing him to stay still. If he could force Sullivan into stillness, he could will himself into line.

He forced himself to calm. Exhaled. Took stock of everyone on the bench: the third line was taking the first shift, so at his left, Cook and Williams and Sinclair sat ready to jump onto the ice when the call to change lines came.

The game started out disastrous. Davey let in two quick goals fairly early in the first, and the team was getting caved in on several levels, both possession and shot-share. The team's internal metrics on the iPad were pretty grim. "I think we should have the forwards spread out a little more to counter the rush," he snapped, after Colorado jumped on yet another turnover and took it back into the Beacons' zone.

"That's just asking for trouble," Sullivan said, shaking his head. "The way Colorado attacks, we've got to focus on the main—"

"What are you talking about, Sullivan?"

"Listen to me," Sullivan said curtly. He was almost at eye level, standing on the bench. His light brown eyes were alight with anger, for once, not focused on the play on the ice. Below them, the players were studiously trying to ignore the argument, shuffling down the bench as they had to come on and off the bench. "You don't need to agree with me, but on the ice, you need to fucking respect me, and if I say we are deploying the forwards in a particular way, then we are deploying the forwards that way. Do you understand ?"

The righteous fury flared in his stomach. Respect? Seriously? When had he ever been disrespectful, especially to someone who talked a big game about collaboration but didn't seem to be willing to listen when he felt he was right.

There were a number of things he could think of that he wanted to say in response. There were a number of things he would have liked to do in response, namely, pushing Sullivan off of the bench and seeing what would happen if he fell on his ass on the floor and its thick coating of spit and blood and mucous and melted snow.

Instead, he said, "I understand," and tried with all of his might to telekinetically punch Sullivan in the face.

In the intermission between the first and second, Sullivan did what he did best, which was wait ten minutes or so to give the guys time, and then go to stand in the middle of the dressing room and give a speech. He talked passionately about the lapsed defensive coverage, the way that they needed to play on top of the opposition, how you couldn't give them an inch or they'd take a mile. It was hard to look away from him when he got like that, stalking around the room like some kind of big cat, doing half of the talking with his hands. It was no wonder the team would run through a wall for him.

"We just need to watch our sticks," Sullivan concluded. "Stay out of the box. Come on, boys. You've got it in you, we just need to execute."

Eric had never been one for speeches, either as a player or a coach. The few times he'd had to talk to the room during intermissions, he'd mostly focused on the video screen and talking strategy. It wasn't that he was envious of Sullivan's ability to just step in front of a group of people and start talking , like every game was St. Crispin's Day. If he ever wanted to become a head coach, he'd probably have to learn how to do it, even if it seemed ridiculous.

People didn't respond to him the way they responded to Sullivan. That was a personality failing, maybe.

In the tunnel, as the team psyched themselves up to go back on the ice, Eric went up to Cook and Williams and Sinclair, all of whom were leaning against the wall and waiting. Cook bounced up and down on his skates, a wiggly little dance, and he looked up curiously when Eric approached.

"Hey, Coach?" Cook said, but waited for Eric to go on before following up on the question.

"Boys," Eric said. "Specifically, when the Bears come up on the rush, you gotta cut to the middle immediately. That's where the attack's going to be focused. There'll be the F3 high, but the D2 is the one you're going to really need to cut off to disrupt things."

Williams turned that serious gaze on him, his eyebrows raised a little bit. It was a curious, measuring look, open to what Eric was saying, but wary anyway. "That's not what Coach Sully said."

"Look," Eric said, frustrated, three seconds away from grabbing his hair and yanking fistfuls of it out right then and there. "I want to win. I think you want to win, too. Sullivan's always talking about reads and making your own decisions, so don't you think you can make one goddamn decision if I'm right ?"

Cook and Williams exchanged a glance, like they weren't particularly sure about this, and Sinclair exhaled a long, slow breath. "I don't wanna get in the middle of whatever—is going on here," he said slowly. "But if it's the right play...it's the right play."

Whether it was Sullivan's locker room speech, Eric's tactical adjustment or Davey the goalie turning on another gear and making a few key desperation saves, the team managed to slowly fight their way back into the game. Williams somehow sauced a ridiculous pass through traffic to Cook for an insanely bad-angled one-timer that nevertheless managed to glance off the goalie's shoulder and into the back of the net. With screams of joy, the team converged on him, and just like that, they were back in it.

Eric could feel Sullivan's eyes boring a hole in the back of his head from his vantage point on the bench, but he did his best not to look. Sullivan wasn't stupid: he could see what the first line was doing, and he could see that it wasn't what he had asked them to do. He was furious, that much was clear, his sturdy little body practically trembling with suppressed frustration.

Eric had no idea what the fuck his problem was, because they were fighting back into the game, weren't they? And it was on the back of the adjustment. Sinclair had broken up three rushes since they'd made it, covering the D2.

By the time Afanasyev, who was practically a dinosaur in hockey years and slow as shit, managed to get a slapshot from the point on the power play that somehow lasered right through, everyone crowding the net to tie it up, Sullivan looked like a bomb about to go off. Eric had never seen him like this coaching before, only as a player. It was the kind of look that meant that someone was going to get a very embarrassing shorthanded goal scored on them.

In this intermission, Sullivan didn't come into the room at all, he just paced in the hallway while Petey and Eric went over some video with the guys who needed it as the team changed and prepped for the third. It only got worse from there.

In the first thirty seconds of the period, the Black Bears scored in the middle of a nasty scrum in front of Davey's crease. It was one of those situations where the call could have gone either way, probably. Eric wouldn't have challenged: not when they were this close and risked opening up the lead even further. Sullivan, on the other hand, was practically apoplectic, signaling to the ref.

"Don't do it," Eric said, urgently.

"What do you mean, don't do it? Number 67 was fucking laying on Davey's leg. He couldn't get across to cover. I'm making a challenge."

"The review room calls never go in our favor. You want it to be a two-goal lead instead of a one-goal lead you could easily catch up to? Our penalty kill's been garbage. There's no way it wouldn't end up in the back of the net."

"Look at Davey, Aronson. Look at his face. We have to let him know that when this shit happens, we'll back him up."

"I don't think—"

"I didn't ask you what you thought," Sullivan said, in a voice entirely unlike anything that Eric had ever heard out of his mouth before. It was the kind of voice that made Eric stand a little straighter. The kind of voice that made him feel the prickly about-to-fight feeling he used to love and dread, all at the same time. The feeling that was so close to something else.

Even after the goal was called back, he couldn't relax. And when Williams scored what turned out to be the game-winning goal on an absolutely beautiful rocket from the right circle and then Davey shut the door for the rest of the game, Sullivan stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

Jubilant at pulling off a gutsy win, the guys cellied on the ice, hugging it out and then skating forward to give Davey his taps and hugs. The baby goalie accepted them all, beaming, his sweaty hair plastered to his forehead, his cheeks red.

Sullivan was already off the bench, heading back to the locker room, and Petey glanced sideways at Eric with his eyebrows raised, as if to say you done fucked up. Which was fucking ridiculous: they had won the game. Eric headed back into the locker room himself, feeling absolutely murderous. If Sullivan was always going on about reads, then he should have been fucking happy that his concepts had worked. But that didn't seem to be the way it would go.

During the presser afterward, Eric went out to watch, which he usually didn't do. He stood in the back of the room, his arms crossed over his chest, as Sullivan answered questions from the beats.

Usually Sullivan was upbeat and even cheerful during the availabilities, cracking jokes and dispensing his little gems of wisdom to an admiring crowd, all of his charisma on display as the reporters ate out of his hand. Today he was curt and visibly pissed off, particularly when Kayla Lawrence, one of the writers from the Globe , asked about the midgame tactical adjustment. Eric couldn't even really make out the answer over the roar of frustration in his own ears, like an ocean wave.

He didn't speak to Sullivan after the presser. He didn't speak to Sullivan during the normal postgame routines, when the guys were showering and doing their cool-down workouts and heading into the kitchen to find out what meals the nutritionists and in-house chefs had provided for them. Eric was going to have to speak to him eventually. This wasn't the kind of shit he could let go. Unbidden, his mother's voice in his ear: You are so stubborn, my darling.

He would have to say something. He just had to wait to get Sullivan alone.

Being on a rebuilding team meant that there wasn't the same kind of pressure you'd have on a contender, but that didn't mean that Ryan wasn't constantly aware of the internal pressure he'd placed on himself. The pressure to make sure that the guys were learning, that he was steering the team in the right direction, that night by night, he could see tangible improvements. Overall, he'd been happy with the start to the season. All of the guys he'd wanted to see take steps forward had done it. They were sitting at or around .500 on any given night. The losses weren't blowouts. The team was engaged in practices.

They had even won that night against the Black Bears, which would have normally been something to savor. Colorado was where he'd like to see the team in five years, a Cup contender with no glaring holes in the roster, playing fast, physical hockey, constantly a threat in all three zones.

Ryan should have been happy about it.

Ryan was happy about it.

Unfortunately the happiness regarding the result of the game was drowned out by the argument he'd had on the bench with Aronson and the fact that no matter what he'd tried to do to show the man that his way of coaching was actually getting results—even the results themselves, staring them both in the face—Aronson simply refused to stop...well, Aronson was unable to stop being a fucking dick about everything.

Ryan had managed to get through the presser without visibly reflecting that he was annoyed in any way. He had always prided himself on his ability to shrug things off: he'd had to do it a lot over his career. Starting out as a short undrafted nobody had meant he'd taken a lot of shit his first few seasons, on the ice and off it. He'd let it roll off his back and focused on proving them all wrong.

This was—this was different.

Aronson was irrationally, infuriatingly determined to piss in Ryan's cereal. No matter what he did, Aronson disagreed. Disagreed loudly and often in front of the guys. Ryan had tried over the last month or so to talk to him about it, but every time Aronson had pushed his glasses farther up his nose and peered down at Ryan like a bird of prey staring at roadkill, and glared until Ryan eventually gave up.

Today, though. Today Ryan was pissed off enough that he wasn't going to let Aronson glare his way out of it. There was being a dick and there was blatantly ignoring Ryan's preferred systems and telling the guys to do something completely different in the heat of the moment. There was challenging him on the bench in front of the whole team. It wasn't like Ryan was unreasonable or unwilling to listen to his assistant coaches, but this had been beyond insubordination, this had been fucking insulting.

He made it back to the office before Aronson did, and he furiously set about diagramming what he had wanted the forwards to do on the breakout, versus what Aronson had told them to do. It was one thing to see it in the heat of the moment on the ice but somehow worse to have it all laid out there in black and white and red.

He was still scribbling angrily when the door opened. Ryan didn't bother turning around; this late after a game, it was only ever going to be Aronson.

"What are you doing?" Aronson asked. He sounded amused, his faint accent a little stronger the way it always was when he was making fun.

"Drawing you a diagram," Ryan snapped, "because you apparently didn't understand what I was talking about on the bench."

"I understood perfectly. I just thought that considering the aggressive way their D were pinching all night, an adjustment was in order."

"Then you discuss that with me first, you don't—"

"Oh?" Aronson said, and laughed.

Ryan whirled around to confront him. It must have looked comical to an outsider: Aronson well over six feet tall and gangly as hell, a lopsided smirk on his face; Ryan at least half a foot shorter, stocky and red-faced with fury. He almost never lost his temper, but even he had his limits, and weeks of this bullshit had caught up with him.

"Because I seem to remember you talking a pretty high-and-mighty game about collaboration when you first got here, and this is kinda dictatorial, Napoleon —"

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Aronson?" Ryan demanded. His hands felt white-knuckled, clenched in fists at his sides. "Why the hell do you hate trying to work with me so much? I've never been anything except accommodating, I've never been anything except nice—"

"You've never been anything except a fucking Hall of Fame superstar who waltzed in here and took my fucking job , Sullivan. You're nothing except a guy who gets everything fucking handed to him when I've worked for years to earn this."

Ryan felt like the top of his head was going to explode in a cloud of smoke and lava, like an erupting volcano. As they argued he could see Aronson's face getting redder and redder too, the taciturn smirk that pissed Ryan off so much vanishing into something more dangerous.

Aronson's full mouth was pressed into a thin line, twitching with fury. The dark brown eyes were narrowed, fixed on Ryan with the kind of attention that really did remind him of nothing so much as a falcon, the kind of mad energy that a bird on jesses had. His whole body leaned into Ryan's personal space, like he could intimidate him into backing down with sheer size alone.

Well. That was his first mistake. Ryan hadn't spent almost eighteen years playing in the league against guys who were taller and heavier to be easily intimidated. He glared right back, even if he had to look up to do it. Ryan couldn't have stopped himself if he'd tried. "Everything handed to him ? Do you have any idea how hard I fucking worked to make it into the league in the first place? You of all people should understand—"

"We are nothing alike—"

"Yeah, it's not my fault you never got the hardware and that you never won shit ."

As the words came out of his mouth, he was aware that it was a step too far. A low blow considering that the Cup was the one thing everyone wanted, and so few people were able to win. Sometimes it was the difference between a Hall of Fame career and eventually being a has-been everyone talked about in hushed terms, like, what would it have been if he could have just won a Cup? It was even worse because Aronson had almost gotten there with Calgary, back in 2009, and Ryan's team had swept them right out of it.

He shouldn't have said it, but it was too late to back down now.

Aronson stared down at him, his whole body vibrating like if he opened his mouth something absolutely vile was going to come out of it, like if he moved even one inch, he was going to do something violent he'd regret later. Ryan remembered the year Aronson had broken 200 penalty minutes and almost laughed; of course Ryan would be unlucky enough to end up having to share the bench with the kind of guy who had had multiple biting scandals and get along with him so badly to the point that they were about to come to blows in their office.

He could feel the sting in the air, almost like electricity crackled between them, like if he said the wrong thing the spark would send the whole room up in flames.

"Aronson—" Ryan started, intending to try to diffuse the situation after all, but the words were trapped on his tongue when Aronson moved forward suddenly, faster than Ryan would have thought possible. The entire weight of his body shoved Ryan back against the whiteboard, and when Ryan opened his mouth to yelp in surprise, Aronson's lips came down hard on his and Ryan's entire brain shorted out.

For several long seconds he couldn't even think about what was happening in a logical way. He'd never kissed a man before. He had never even considered it. Ryan had kissed a normal amount of girls as a kid, and then he'd met Shannon in his freshman year of college, and after that, he'd only ever kissed her.

Kissing Shannon that first time had felt like fireworks going off in his head, like the world had suddenly aligned into a way that made complete and perfect sense.

Kissing Aronson was like fireworks, too, but it felt like he was drowning, like nothing would ever make sense again. He was insanely conscious of Aronson's five-o'clock shadow rough against his chin, of Aronson's big hands gripping his shoulders, of Aronson's tongue fucking his mouth, of Aronson's furnace of a body pressed up against his, of the way Aronson had him bracketed in against the whiteboard, the metal strip where the erasers would sit digging painfully into his back, all of the pens clattering to the floor as he squirmed.

Ryan was shocked to find that Aronson wasn't just kissing him, but Ryan was kissing him back, eagerly, hungrily. It wasn't something he'd done consciously at all. His body reacted instinctively and before his mind could scream, what the fuck are you doing? , his hands had somehow made their way up to grab Aronson by the hair—it was thick and curly and easy to wind his fingers into—and yank his head down so he couldn't escape.

He could hear his own breath in his ears, ragged and gasping, could feel Aronson's wandering hands, grabbing his ass and pulling him in closer, hitching him up so that his feet weren't even touching the ground, pinned between the whiteboard and Aronson's body. His legs automatically hooked themselves around Aronson's hips—

The whole thing was fucking nuts.

It was insane .

And Ryan couldn't have stopped if one of their players had shown up at the door, shocked to find his coaches, well. The only way to describe what was happening to Ryan was getting mauled and loving it .

Aronson kissed like he used to play hockey, vicious and dirty and competitive. His mouth was hot and anything but giving; the kiss had teeth in it. Ryan was perfectly happy to bite back, and when he did Aronson shuddered and redoubled his efforts, his nose bumping Ryan's, his glasses smudgy from breath and skin.

It was like being on the ice again in the middle of a game, when all of his senses felt heightened and he could react entirely on instinct, like every scrape of a blade on the ice and every flash of color at the corner of his eye was a secret message just for him, a map to a win.

Except now instead of the sound of metal on ice he had the deep groan Aronson made when Ryan let go of his hair with one hand and dragged it down his back. Instead of the bright blues and reds of jerseys he had Aronson's brown-and-gold-flecked eyes, open and furious, his pupils huge and dilated. And instead of the goal horn, he had the hot length of Aronson's erection, grinding into his thigh.

That was what finally snapped him out of his dazed, almost drugged haze. "Aronson," he managed, his voice ragged. "We have to—we can't—"

"Oh, fuck," Aronson said, and immediately dropped him. He was breathing hard, his shirt askew where Ryan had pulled it out of its careful tuck, his hair wild where Ryan had yanked at it. He blinked, then said again, "Oh, fuck ."

It took Ryan a second to get his balance again. He lifted his hand to touch his mouth, his chin, a little red and raw from the scrape of Aronson's stubble. He felt like he had to go through concussion protocol. "I—uh—well. That was. One way to handle a coaching dispute."

"I didn't mean—" Aronson started.

"What you should be apologizing for is being a dick on the bench and messing up my goddamn diagrams—"

"That's what you're worried about now ? I should've kissed you fucking harder ."

Strangely, Ryan could feel himself flushing, like he was a teenager again or something. "You should've listened to me."

"Oh my god," Aronson was saying, looking at the smudged ink on the whiteboard. His smile twitched, so obnoxious that Ryan wondered what would happen if he kissed Aronson again to shut him up. "You only messed it like halfway up. You want a step stool next time?"

"The fuck do you mean, next time?" Ryan demanded, his heart beating so hard that he could hear it in his ears.

Instead of answering, Aronson took another step forward and leaned down. He took Ryan's face in his hands and Ryan was aware that at any second, he could have slapped Aronson's hands away, hit him in the stomach, pushed him to get him to stop. He didn't do any of those things. He let Aronson kiss him again. It was slower this time, less angry, but no less world-skewing.

Ryan was forty-five years old and apparently learning some really surprising things about himself, like the fact that Aronson, obnoxious, annoying, frustrating Aronson, had a particular way of kissing him with full-out intensity and then starting to pull away in the exact manner that had Ryan's body leaning into it. Chasing after it. It wasn't until Aronson had stepped back again, smirking, that he realized what he was doing.

"Yeah. Like right then, Sully."

"I—" Ryan started. He realized, belatedly, he hadn't thought about what he was going to say. He was still pissed at Aronson for the game debacle, but he was also embarrassed. And hard. And—

"That's what I thought," Aronson said, grinning, and turned on his heel to leave.

"This isn't the last you're gonna hear about this, asshole."

"Oh, I bet."

And Ryan was left to sit there with dry-erase marker smeared all over his sweater, an inconvenient erection and even more inconvenient truths about himself to reconsider.

All in all. It had not been his best day.