Chapter Six

November

Eric fast-walked out of the coach's office and then down the hall. His palms still felt sweaty and his heart pounded in his chest. He was glad that by this time of night no one was still in the arena, because he also had a pretty inconveniently obvious...well, it was obvious what he had been doing. Even if no one probably would have guessed who he'd been doing it with.

He still couldn't entirely believe that it had happened. That it had happened the way it had. He almost couldn't remember exactly how it had happened. Only that he had been furious and Sullivan was looking up at him with equally furious eyes and he'd reacted before he could even think about it.

It was always a gamble, with another guy like that. Even if he stared at you a lot, the way Sullivan had done since they started working together, that didn't necessarily mean anything. Even if you thought there was maybe a chance that he was looking it didn't necessarily mean that anything physical would be welcome, would start anything except a fight.

Eric had been playing hockey for a long time and he'd known he was queer for almost as long. It was a weird space to exist in, knowing there had to have been other guys like him playing, but not knowing who they were, not wanting to even risk asking the questions that could lead to finding out.

Once, when he'd been drunk and feeling kind of daring, he'd slipped into a gay bar after a game on the road in Los Angeles. Just to see what it was like. Come face-to-face with one of his teammates. They'd both stared at each other, frozen, neither willing to say anything. He'd beaten a hasty retreat and they'd just never mentioned it again.

This wasn't the past, though. This was the present. This wasn't his teammate, this was Ryan Sullivan , and he was being just as stupid. It was a risky thing to do. Sullivan could have punched him, could have had him fired, could have done any number of disastrous things.

Instead, Sullivan had just—

Eric could hear his heartbeat in his ears again, thinking about the way Sullivan had melted under the initial onslaught, the way he'd licked his lips when Eric had taken his face in his hands to kiss him again. The way his teeth had felt digging into Eric's lip. The way his biceps felt under Eric's grip. The way he'd groaned low in his throat when Eric shoved his tongue in his mouth. The way his solid, sturdy fucking body had fit against Eric's.

He shouldn't even be thinking about this still. He should put it entirely out of his fucking head. Sullivan was his boss , Sullivan was an asshole he had to work with day in and day out, Sullivan was probably his least-favorite person to see in the entire goddamn world. A smiling, overly optimistic jackass who'd had everything just handed to him.

But Sullivan kissed him back like... Eric wasn't good with metaphors. He couldn't think of anything to compare it to. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had kissed him like that, like there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

Whatever else Sullivan was, he definitely wasn't straight. And whatever else Sullivan was, he was definitely fucking annoying . Just because he kissed Eric like it was some kind of religious revelation didn't mean that anything was going to change between them.

He absolutely could not, and would not, touch Ryan Sullivan like that again.

He just had to go back to his tiny, quiet apartment, alone, and forget it had ever happened.

Ryan stumbled out to his car. His head still felt like it was spinning, completely off-balance. But he wasn't sure if he was off-balance or if it was the rest of the world that had been completely knocked off of its axis. Now that he wasn't in that office, with Aronson so close to him, with the promise of Aronson's mouth against his and Aronson's hands on his body, it was like—Jesus fucking Christ, he'd just been lifted up and kissed stupid against his own fucking whiteboard by another man.

There was being kissed by another man and there was being kissed by another man and liking it. Liking it so much that he was still thinking about it, that he could still feel the hot press of Aronson's mouth against his, a memory like a ghost of a touch.

That was pretty fucking gay.

Was he gay?

Ryan tried to think about a time in his life when he'd been attracted to a guy, and he was coming up blank. Sure, he noticed when other men were good-looking, but that was just a normal thing to notice. It was just a general aesthetic acknowledgment, right? Didn't everyone appreciate a good-looking person? In youth hockey, sometimes guys would mess around, but he'd never even done that. Had never even considered that someone would be interested in doing that with him. Then he'd met Shannon his freshman year and never even thought about hooking up with anyone besides her after.

But there was really no other way to look at it. Aronson had kissed him, and Ryan's head felt like it was going to implode every time he thought about it, every time he thought about doing it again.

Doing it again?

What the hell was he even thinking about?

His phone buzzed, and because Shannon had impeccable comedic timing, she had written, When do you want to come home to pick up your shit.

Ryan stared at the text message. He thought, again, about Aronson pinning him against the whiteboard. He'd been married for twenty-five years and within the last...god, he couldn't even remember how long, he had barely felt anything kissing Shannon. It had been familiar and comfortable, but there wasn't anything behind it. The reason he felt so rattled wasn't just because Aronson was a man but because kissing him felt—raw. He hadn't realized how much he'd been missing that feeling until it happened.

I'll have to wait until we have a day off at home. So probably not until Thanksgiving.

I won't be in the house. So that's fine. I'll text you a temporary code.

Shannon, you know I'm not going to be trying to get into the house if you don't want me there.

By the time he buckled his seat belt, she still hadn't written back, and Ryan exhaled. He still wasn't entirely sure what had happened to his marriage. It was clear that somewhere along the line they had lost the passion they'd had in the beginning. And that was even before things had started to go wrong wrong. But he didn't understand what he had done to earn this kind of treatment. He wondered if Shannon had met someone, if she didn't want him stumbling across something awkward that would hurt her in the divorce proceedings.

But that was stupid, too. He wasn't contesting anything. A fair split was what she deserved for supporting his career as long as she had, even if it had been too much in the end. A boyfriend before the papers were final wouldn't have changed that.

It was weird. He thought he would've been more upset at the thought, but he didn't feel anything. The more time that went by the more Ryan started to realize that the marriage had been over long before he'd realized it. He wondered how long Shannon had known.

He wondered what she would've thought if she'd been a fly on the wall of his office the other night. Probably better not to know.

Ryan pressed the ignition and pulled out of the space. Jesus, he hadn't even had the time to think about the game and what he needed to talk to the guys about tomorrow. All right: that was it. First order of business, upon returning home, would be to lesson plan. Aronson, Shannon, all of it: that had to go on the back burner.

Easier said than done, but no one had ever said Ryan Sullivan was anything except stubborn as hell.

Eric woke up the next day to his mother's phone call and a splitting headache, even though he hadn't had anything to drink. For once in his life, he didn't really feel like talking to her.

He answered anyway and they went through the usual greetings and pleasantries. He told her a little bit about the game, about the win. Even though her eyesight wasn't very good anymore, she watched every match, and she usually had thoughts about them. This time, she wanted to know why he had been arguing with Ryan Sullivan on the bench.

"We just have really different views of the way things should be," Eric said, which wasn't untrue.

"You need to learn how to get along with your coworkers, even if they're wrong," his mother scolded him. There wasn't any bite in it, and she'd been telling him the same thing since he was in primary school and getting detentions for fighting. Except in that situation, there had always been the unspoken exception, like kicking the shit out of a boy who'd thrown pennies at him.

Eric thought about the argument on the bench. The frustrating thing was that Sullivan wasn't even really wrong. He'd been especially right about the coach's challenge. Eric wasn't about to tell his mother that, though. Even at eighty-two she had a steel trap memory, and he wasn't going to give her future ammunition. Instead, he went for the tried-and-true tactic of changing the subject.

"What are your plans for today, 'Man?"

"I'm going to meet Hélène Roback for lunch."

"Oh, that should be nice. Are you going to have someone drive you?"

"She'll pick me up; she's eighty-five but her eyes are better than yours, probably. And you know, we were talking earlier this week, and she has a granddaughter who's living in Boston right now, she's doing her residency at Boston Medical Center, and she's a really lovely girl and she's going into derm—"

"Maman, no ."

"I could put you in touch if you wanted. I'm sure she'd love to meet you for coffee. She's a Royal fan, but maybe she could put the rivalry aside for you."

Eric pinched the bridge of his nose above the glasses. He loved his mom dearly, but she had her fatal flaws. One of them was constantly trying to marry him off to whichever daughter or granddaughter of her friends happened to be single and available. It had only gotten worse since his father's death, like she had suddenly realized her own mortality and the fact that Eric would be alone when she died. She was determined to find someone to keep him company before she passed and channeled a good amount of her energy into that.

It was annoying, sure. But Eric knew it also came from a deep place of love and loneliness, so even when he got frustrated, he had to temper it. All his mother had ever wanted for him was to be happy, and this was the last gift she was trying to give him. If he thought about it too much—if he thought about losing her too—it was overwhelming. So he put up with her efforts at becoming his own personal shadchan without protesting too much.

It wasn't like a relationship with a woman was out of the question. Eric liked women, had had short relationships with women. He'd only ever really had short relationships with anyone . But women or men, he didn't really trust his mom's taste, which tended to run to "is she available, Jewish and in possession of a pulse."

Sometimes, if he thought about the nebulous future, it was nice to imagine having Shabbat dinner with some faceless, disembodied person, someone who would understand why he'd want to take trips to the cemetery to leave pebbles on his father's grave.

In practice, all of the dates he'd gone on that his mother had set up had either ended disastrously when he'd put his foot in his mouth or fizzled out after the fifth or sixth follow-up when he and the woman inevitably realized that they had nothing in common besides their shared cultural background.

Unbidden, an image of Sullivan flashed across his vision. Eyes wide open, looking up at Eric with desire and a challenge he couldn't resist meeting.

God damn it.

"'Man, I have to go get ready for work," Eric said.

"Okay, tateleh. I love you."

"I love you, too," he said, and added, "Can you cool it on trying to set me up with anyone for a bit? I'm still trying to adjust to this new work situation."

"Of course," his mother said, and Eric wanted to laugh: that would last all of a week, probably. She was almost as stubborn as Sullivan when she had something she wanted to dig her heels in about.

Unfortunately, work was no less frustrating. There was no game today, but they were still having a morning practice, which Eric usually loved. There was nothing like being on the ice again, even if it wasn't in a playing capacity. Today he couldn't enjoy it because no matter where he was, Sullivan was always fucking underfoot. It was almost like their playing days again, where no matter what open space he tried to find on the ice, Sullivan was there, blocking the way, being a fucking pest.

The last straw snapped while Eric tried to lead the forwards in one of the small-area drills that Sullivan was so fond of. He buzzed by close, like he was a fighter plane strafing a target. Eric gave him a shove in the shoulder and said, "Watch where you're fucking going, Coach."

Sullivan whirled around, those whiskey-brown eyes alight with a challenge. "Get out of my way, then. Coach."

For a second Eric wished they were wearing pads so he could crosscheck Sullivan. Just a little bit. The players were staring at them, so he didn't do anything else, even though he dearly wanted to flip his middle finger up at Sullivan to let him know what he thought about all of this. Instead, he turned back to the drill and passed a puck to H?rm?l? so that the team could begin the next phase of the practice.

It didn't get any better, though.

No matter what he did, Sullivan was always there, always in his personal space. It was frustrating and annoying, and it made him think, again, of just picking Sullivan up and slamming him into the wall. It made him think of things he had promised himself he wasn't going to think about, and it didn't get any easier once practice was over and the team had showered and headed home to rest.

The coaching staff usually stayed after the practices to discuss tape and the progress the players had made; today was no exception. Petey especially had a lot to say about the progress, or lack thereof, with their veterans. Some of them were adjusting. Some of them weren't. The deeper they got into November, the more it became clear who was going to work with the new system and who would need to be on the way out at the trade deadline. Conroy liked to have weekly updates.

There was always something to do.

It was the same there, too. Sullivan was always too close. He shouldered Eric aside like he wasn't the one who'd just gotten into his space. He was close enough that Eric could smell his hair, fresh from the showers. It was infuriating and he could feel his eyebrows drawing down in a deeper and deeper frown.

He didn't say anything. Not in front of Petey.

But then Petey rubbed his eyes and said, "All right, boys. You got my updates, and I got a splitting fucking headache. I'm going to head home to sleep it off. You'll be all right finishing up here without me?"

"Perfectly fine," Sullivan said, grinning a foxy grin, all of his teeth flashing.

All of the hair on Eric's arms stood on end. The premonition of disaster. But he ignored it, fist-bumped Petey as he shuffled out of the room, squinting and rubbing his eyes again.

Once they were alone, Eric turned on him. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"You're really shit at staying out of the way," Sullivan said. He was smirking, that little bastard, like he knew exactly how much he'd gotten under Eric's skin, exactly how much he'd been trying not to think about what had happened the night before.

For a second, Eric had a flash of doubt as to where this was going. Whether all of the incidental touches, the inability to get out of the fucking way was an encouragement or another form of torture, a reminder of what he couldn't have.

"You," he said, "are a pain in my fucking ass ."

Sullivan set the papers he was holding down on the desk. He was still standing so close that Eric could feel that irresistible current between them, like a magnet. It was chilly in that room, always, because it was so close to ice level and mostly cinder blocks on the wall and concrete on the floor, and no one had bothered to make sure the heaters worked efficiently. It didn't matter, because Eric's entire body was on fire just from the proximity.

Sullivan opened his stupid, annoying mouth and said, "That sounds like a personal issue you need to work on," and before Eric could even think about what he was doing, he had closed the distance between them and grabbed Sullivan by the shoulders. At first, he was intending to shake him, like everyone said you should never do with a child, but before he could do anything else Sullivan had looked up at him with that stupid challenge Eric found impossible not to meet.

It was worse this time, because he already knew exactly what Sullivan felt like when he was opening his mouth eagerly to a kiss, exactly the way Sullivan tasted, exactly the way his hand felt winding into Eric's hair and yanking. He already knew, and it somehow still blew even the last kiss out of the water. It should have been impossible, that one person was so fucking annoying and also felt so fucking good under his hands, under his mouth.

Every resolution he'd made not to do this again went up in smoke as Sullivan's hands eagerly explored his body, grabbing his ass to yank him closer. Somehow during the initial onslaught, he'd backed Sullivan up against the desk, didn't realize it until there was nowhere else to push him. Sullivan didn't seem to mind, kept making these stupid noises against Eric's lips, gasps of encouragement, urging him on.

It had been a long time since he'd kissed anyone like this, openmouthed and biting and desperate, like the clash of tongue and lips and teeth was as much the point as any further destination. It was just his fucking luck that it was Sullivan that did this to him, that it was Sullivan who was panting into his mouth, his hands grabbing at any part of Eric that he could reach.

Leaning forward, Eric pushed at the papers, scattering them away, then lifted Sullivan up to set him down there. He tried to pull back a second, so he could see what Sullivan looked like, rumpled and debauched in the middle of all of his stupid plans, but he could only manage a second before Sullivan grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him back down. Fine. If Sullivan wanted to play that way, Eric could up the ante.

With the small amount of space Eric had left, looming over him, he managed to get his hand down Sullivan's pants and immediately discovered how fucking easy he was for all of this, already hot and hard in Eric's fingers. As soon as he touched Sullivan, he was rewarded with a long, ragged groan, with Sullivan finally relenting on the bruising kisses. His head drooped forward against Eric's chest, like he was looking down at Eric's hand where it was hidden by fabric.

"Fuck," Eric managed, although his voice sounded strange, too strained and high, "you horny little bastard, this was what you were after that whole practice?"

"Shut the fuck up and just—and just—"

Eric didn't have any words for the way it felt to have Sullivan firmly in hand, thrusting up into his grip, like he would die if Eric didn't jerk him off. He was already leaking, sticky on Eric's fingers. Eric was suddenly furious again, by the fact that this had just happened to him without his really thinking about it, how easily Sullivan had turned the tables on him. Eric might have had the upper hand the last time, but as soon as Sullivan had put his mind to continuing this , Eric was thrown off-balance.

He pulled back far enough to disentangle himself, ignoring Sullivan's attempts to pull him back. Yanked at Sullivan's pants and was rewarded when his eyes widened a little, like he was unsure about where this was going, not confident about what he wanted. For a second, Eric wondered, in his stupid, lust-fogged head, whether this was a bad idea.

Of course it was a bad idea. They were at work. They were in the arena. Anyone could walk in. But he simultaneously needed Sullivan's dick in his mouth and to prove to Sullivan himself that he had no fucking clue what he was doing, who he was messing with—

And then Sullivan was shifting his hips to help Eric along, his hands gripping the edge of the desk for support, mumbling, "Come on, come on, oh my god, please—"

It was the please that did it. Eric knelt. He was tall enough and the desk was low enough that it wasn't uncomfortable for him to be in this position, to reach where he needed to reach. He ran his hand up the length of Sullivan's dick, thumb dragging through the wetness leaking at the tip, rewarded by a groan and another jerk of his hips. With a bruising grip Eric pushed him down again, hands pressing into his thighs where they were trapped by the sweatpants, and then leaned down to take him in his mouth.

The noise Sullivan made when he did it was worth all of it, ragged and wanting and completely obscene.

Eric was aware of so many physical sensations just then. The cold concrete uncomfortable against his knees, Sullivan's hands twisting in his hair, Sullivan's insane thigh muscles shifting under his grip, the shape and taste of Sullivan in his mouth, the way it felt completely right and completely wrong all at the same time. Sullivan was noisy in this too, even while Eric was taking him apart with his mouth: incoherent but moaning, wordless but gasping.

Eric looked up and realized he was going to be jerking off to this image for a long fucking time: Sullivan with his thighs spread wide for Eric's body, arms shaking but holding himself up, head thrown back and mouth open, slack and stupid with what Eric was doing to him. He shifted, uncomfortably hard himself, had to press his palm flat against his own cock to keep things under control.

"God," Sullivan was saying, "Jesus fucking god, Aronson —I'm going, if you don't want—"

Eric squeezed his thigh to let him know that it was fine, and whether it was just the extra pressure or the fact that he'd been panting for it all fucking day before this, Sullivan came, shivering and with a noise that seared itself immediately into Eric's brain.

He swallowed. Ran his tongue over Sullivan's dick until it stopped pulsing, until Sullivan made a pained little whimper that indicated it was too much. Eric pulled off and leaned back to survey his handiwork and again, the picture it made... Fuck. Sullivan was still panting and red-faced, his eyes closed, his dick wet with spit and come, still hard and curving up toward his stomach, the rumpled pants and boxers pulled down around his thighs.

For a second, Eric felt transfixed, still on the floor but unable to move. And then Sullivan opened his eyes, huge and dark, and held out his hand. Almost against his will, Eric took it. Let Sullivan's strong grip yank him to his feet and into an embrace.

He was furious at himself for being in a position to discover that Sully, postcoital, was a cuddler . He molded himself up against Eric's body, mess and all, and kissed him like Eric wasn't dying himself, like his erection pressed between them wasn't painful as hell. He took Eric's face in his hand and angled him into the kiss, mouth salty and warm.

"Fuck," Sully was saying, "that was— fuck . Can I—"

"Oh, now you're asking for permission?"

Sully looked up at him, eyes heavy-lidded, and said, "Okay, well, do you want me to suck your dick or not? Because I can go home."

For a second, Eric thought about telling him to fuck off. Telling him that of course he didn't want this. That would've been the most obvious lie he'd ever told. Instead, he said, "Do you have any clue what you're doing?"

"No," Sully said, frankly. He was still holding Eric like they didn't hate each other, like they weren't in the arena, like this was all completely normal. For a second, Eric wondered whether Sully was the crazy man, or if he was. "But you clearly know what you're doing. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you want. I can learn."

Eric would have pinched the bridge of his nose again, if his hands hadn't been full of Sully. "This isn't a small-area drill."

"It also isn't fucking rocket science, bud. Come on. I'm not gonna bite you unless you're into that."

The fact was that even if Sully had been inclined to bite, Eric probably would've risked it. His whole body burned with wanting, with anticipation. He disentangled himself from the half embrace, pushed himself away from Sully's body, the warmth coming off of him in waves. He exhaled, shaky, and said, "Get on your knees."

To his surprise, Sully did it, eagerly, slid off of the desk, yanking his pants up as he went. He got down on his knees easily enough, with a little wince: hockey players might have been strong, but they weren't necessarily flexible. And Eric knew from experience that the floor was hard on the knees. Neither of them was getting younger.

Sully looked up at Eric from that position, his mouth still a little swollen from making out, from biting his lip when Eric went down on him, and said, "I'm going to get better at this."

"What do you mean, get better at this?" Eric asked, pulling his own pants down.

"I mean I don't know what I'm doing," Sully said, "but I'm going to—I hate being bad at things. I've always been good at learning."

Eric still felt like he should probably be entering concussion protocol. The conversation wasn't doing much to help. "Sully, I mean this in the worst way possible, but what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," Sully said, grinning that foxy grin again. "I'm just competitive. You get it, I'm sure."

His hands were warm on Eric's thighs, and he licked his lips again, and Eric's brain decided that it wasn't worth arguing anymore. His dick was painful now, straining upward, and he had to take hold of it and stroke it, just to keep himself from making an embarrassing noise. Sully's eyes followed the line of his hand the entire time, dark and hungry.

"Shut up and suck my dick," Eric said.

"Okay, but you were the one with the hang-ups about this," Sully retorted, before he pushed Eric's hand away and took a closer look, like he was examining some kind of a tactical diagram. And then he leaned forward and ran his tongue experimentally over the head of Eric's dick, down the length of it. The whole time he did it, he didn't look away from Eric's face, like he was gauging his responses and adjusting accordingly.

When he finally slid his whole mouth around it, Eric couldn't help the involuntary, pained groan that ripped itself out of his mouth. Even though it was awkward and the rhythm was off as Sully went on by trial and error, it felt so fucking good.

It looked so fucking good, Sully's mouth stretched wide around him, the way he'd glance up through his thick, short eyelashes every now and then for guidance. What he lacked in technique he made up in enthusiasm, choking occasionally, eyes watering, but when Eric tried to push him away, he stubbornly kept at it. Thinking about that, feeling it, every part of Eric felt drawn and tight, trembling on the edge.

Sully's hands on his thighs, his ass, his balls, like he was learning Eric's body almost as much as he was learning how to suck a dick. He had to pull away, gasping, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips and chin slick with spit, red and swollen, his eyes huge, like he was getting off on getting Eric off all over again.

Eric's dick twitched in Sully's hand and he said, "Well?"

"Gimme a second," Sully panted, "it's, uh, an adjustment. I'll figure it out."

"You can use your hand to—"

"Yeah. Shit," Sully sighed, as he went back down. Finally, he wasn't looking, wasn't analyzing. His eyes were closed, like he was lost in it.

Eric remembered, belatedly, that he was supposed to be offering instructions. He was supposed to be telling Sully what to do. But letting him figure it out on his own felt so satisfying and so right that he couldn't find the words even if he'd wanted to. Could only hang on to the desk for dear life, his legs shaking jelly, while Sully went to work. While he watched Ryan Sullivan, Cup champion and three-time playoff MVP, on his knees, eyes closed, intently concentrating only on Eric. It was too much to handle.

He managed, belatedly, to get his hand into Sully's hair. It had been an unremarkable sandy brown during their playing days and now it was mostly silver-gray, only hints of its original color flashing through. It felt soft under his hands as he shoved Sully's head down. Sully choked but gamely went along with it, gasping around him. That was the final thing that pushed Eric over the edge. The orgasm seemed like it went on for a long time, like an out-of-body experience.

When he was finally able to open his eyes, Sully had pulled away and was still crouched on the ground, staring up at him. Eric felt slow and stupid, like he was swimming through molasses. Reached out and grabbed Sully's hair again, just to give it a tug.

To his amusement Sully let him do it, although he rolled his eyes and said, "Well, that was, uh, more than I thought I'd get out of you today, eh?"

"Next time if you want a blowjob don't fucking bodycheck me during practice," Eric mumbled.

"Where's the fun in that?" Sully demanded, and Eric's cock twitched again at how wrecked his voice sounded, scratchy and throaty. Eric had done that to him. Sully winced and shifted where he was sitting and groaned when he stood. "I'm too fucking old for this."

Eric, pulling up his underwear and sweats and tucking his dick back into them, snorted. "Yeah, you're practically decrepit. Geriatric."

Sully made a noise low in his throat, an amused little hmm. "You weren't complaining when you were sucking my geriatric dick. And you're, what? Forty-two?"

"Don't remind me," Eric said, and then paused. He felt, for the first time, uncertain. It was one thing to argue with Sully on the bench, another thing to joke around with him after they'd both gotten off. He still felt slow and easy, magnanimous. But this was new ground. He didn't want to follow up about next time , and he didn't know whether to—

"So, uh," Sully said. It was still obvious what he'd been doing. His mouth was still red, his chin a little scraped up from Eric's beard. His hair was a bird's nest where Eric had yanked his head around. His clothes were rumpled. "Since we're here. We never did get a chance to go over the forwards' tape."

Eric burst out laughing. He couldn't help it. Of course Ryan fucking Sullivan would wheel immediately from blowjobs to analyzing tape. And, strangely, that made Eric feel more at ease, too. Things hadn't changed so much at all.

"Fine," he said, "but I still think you were wrong about the way you tried the breakout on the 1-3-1 forecheck they had."

"That," Sully said, with a sniff, as he turned back to the whiteboards, "is not a forecheck. That is what we in the business refer to as a neutral zone trap. You know this."

"Well, you didn't know how to get the guys around it, so..." Eric paused. He wondered whether he could shove Sully against the boards again. It was a very tempting proposition. But they did have the work to do, and he would have to be careful about how he separated it. "Fine. The trap. We can't just do that same breakout again."

They didn't touch again, even though Eric's skin still felt prickly with the sense memory. It went long into the night, that meeting. But strangely, on his way to the car, Eric felt as wide awake as he ever had.

Ryan was slowly accomplishing his goals. The day after what he had started thinking of as the Incidents, he signed a lease on a two-bedroom apartment in Allston, reasonably close to the practice facilities where he'd end up spending most of his time. He spent several uncomfortable days in there, sleeping on an air mattress. And then it worked out that the Beacons had a three-day stretch of days without games in the middle of November, so Ryan texted Shannon to ask, Can I come and get my stuff tomorrow?

What time? Shannon wrote back, suspiciously quickly.

Lunch. I won't be long. I'll just pack some of it up and then I'll get out of your hair.

Fine. OK.

While it was somewhat short notice, Ryan was able to book a U-Haul and pick it up so that he could make the drive once the Beacons were finished with their morning skate on the first day "off." He assumed that Shannon wasn't going to be there when he got home, which was fine. He wasn't sure how he would have reacted if she had been. It would be his first time seeing her since they'd broken up, but also since he'd...done whatever he'd done with Aronson.

Ryan figured that he probably should have been freaking out a little more about the fact that he was, apparently, at least slightly gay. There really wasn't any way around it. Making out with Aronson had been one thing, exchanging blowjobs was absolutely another. That was several steps significantly further along the Kinsey scale than he'd ever thought he would go. But he couldn't really freak out about it too much when it had felt that electric. That intense.

Sure, Aronson was still an asshole, they still butted heads at practice, especially when it came to Jesse Keen's ice time and deployment, but whatever he was like at the rink, Ryan couldn't get out of his head what he was like off it. What his mouth had felt like, the noises he'd made, the way his hair felt under Ryan's fingers.

Maybe this was what happened when you got old and lonely, that literally anyone who would touch you looked like a sure bet. But Ryan knew, with a kind of stunning certainty he couldn't entirely track, that it wasn't just Aronson's availability. It wasn't just Aronson's grudging willingness to blow him. Ryan was famous; Ryan was a Boston legend. If he had wanted to go out and pick up, he could have done it, no problem. He could've met women his age or probably even women his players' ages, if he'd been into that.

He had never really felt the urge to do that.

He'd always been so devoted to Shannon that he'd never even considered it, and then she'd ended their relationship, and then this thing with Aronson had just sort of—happened before he'd had a chance to even recover. The first time without his conscious intention or input, and the second, with the kind of curiosity that ached like a wound. He'd gotten a taste, a hint , and he had just had to know what it was like. And the answer had been...

Ryan's cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he almost fell out of his chair with the shock of it. He'd been really stupidly lost in his thoughts, that was for sure. He managed to keep his balance, fish the phone out and answer. It was Murph, of course.

"Hey, buddy," Murph said. "Hadn't heard from you in a few days, so I just thought I'd check in and see how you were doing."

Ryan looked down at the papers scattered all over the desk, whiteboard ink smudging his fingers, his iPad warning him desperately that it was entering low-battery mode. He thought about sitting on that desk in the middle of the mess last night, about Aronson on his knees, mouth around Ryan's dick.

"Great, great," he said, and hoped his voice didn't sound too weird.

Of course, Murph knew him well enough that he wasn't fooled. "Really?"

"You've seen the games, right? We're doing great. Still .500 on the season."

"Sully, bud. I didn't mean the games."

Ryan exhaled. He had always told Murph everything. It felt strange and wrong to keep a secret from him, especially a secret this huge and life-changing. But it was still so uncertain and new and dangerous, it didn't feel right to tell anyone, even Murph. It wasn't just his secret, it was Aronson's, too. There was a lot on the line. He trusted Murph with his life, but he just—couldn't say it. Not yet. But he had to say something; the silence was stretching out, uncomfortable and pulled tight like an aging rubber band.

"It's been weird," he said, finally. "You know. Shannon dumping me like that. I'm going to get my shit tomorrow, whatever she hasn't thrown out already."

Murphy exhaled, too. Ryan could tell that Murph didn't believe him, but he trusted Ryan's judgment enough not to push. "Y'all should've stayed in Dallas."

"Of course you still blame all of this on moving to New Hampshire," Ryan said, so fond it ached.

"Was I right, though, or was I right?"

"Probably. I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to talk to her again outside of a courtroom, but I think that probably uh... Dallas wouldn't have helped."

"Probably not," Murph admitted. "Still. Wish you guys had lived down here. It'd be good to see you again."

"You and Tara are welcome to visit anytime you want. I'll get you tickets. Although you'll probably want to stay in a hotel. I, uh. Well, right now my apartment's just an air mattress."

"Jesus, that's the most divorced-guy thing I think you've ever said. What are you eating, ramen packets?"

"I can cook," Ryan said, stung. "And besides, we still have catered meals after games at the rink."

Murph's booming laugh cheered him up immeasurably. He could almost picture the way Murph would've brushed his hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. "Well, we'll have to take you up on it, one of these days. Once you get a little more settled. Maybe we'll bring the kids. They'd love to see Uncle Ryan again."

"Yeah, sure," Ryan said. "Let me know in advance, we can bring them to a morning skate, too. I'm sure the boys would humor them."

"You're the best," Murph said. He had the kind of vehement sincerity that would have embarrassed Ryan, if it had come from anyone else. But that was Murph. They'd grown up together. He felt the same way.

They chatted a little bit about what they had been up to as well, and Ryan realized, belatedly, that despite his best intentions, he had probably been talking too often about Aronson. About Aronson as a person, not just a coworker. It was an uncomfortable thought, particularly because Murph usually noticed those things. "Okay, I gotta get back to it. Are you satisfied I'm not withering away into dust, Mom ?"

"There's still something weird going on and I'm gonna get to the bottom of it. But for now, yeah."

Ryan hung up before he could say anything else that might give him away.

In a way, he was glad that they had the next few days off. Things with Aronson had been understandably fucking weird. They'd gotten through the practice without incident, but Ryan was aware he hadn't been up to his own usual standards. He'd been awkward and distracted, too self-aware of where he was skating, mostly talking with Petey and Heidi.

"The face-offs," Heidi said, skating up to him, "are grim ."

"You want me to see if I can get Conroy to hire a face-off coach?" Ryan said, only half joking. Andy Chernoff, the Beacons' owner, had deep pockets, and Conroy had indicated to Ryan that as long as it was a reasonable request in service of player development, he would entertain it.

"I can work with them," she said, rolling her shoulders, "but it's going to be a seasons-long assignment, at this point. We're seeing some improvement working on the drills in a game-like simulation, but... Williams gets beat clean, a lot."

"What do you think the issue is?"

"Could be experience. Could be—he's got to learn how to use his size a little more forcefully. It's not a problem on the ice. Just getting the timing right in the dot."

Heidi was a machine when it came to face-offs: you could drop a puck in front of her and no matter how you tried to angle it, she was almost always able to sweep it back clean. She had a way of positioning her knee just right, so that a linesman wouldn't kick her out. But the way she balanced allowed her to get a head start muscling into the circle. Ryan had always been happy he hadn't had to worry about them in a game simulation, although he'd taken many against Murph when they were just fucking around at practice. Murph had always enjoyed shoving him down on the ice.

The face-off talk was a good distraction, but he was still aware of Aronson, where he was off working with the power-play unit. It didn't help that Aronson kept watching him without doing it obviously, from the corner of his eye. Every time Ryan caught him at it, he could feel his whole skin prickle, like the rink had suddenly dropped another twenty degrees. It was ridiculous, and Ryan had never been so happy to get the hell out of the rink before.

I-95 was a nightmare usually, but it felt even worse when he was kind of dreading the destination. It also felt worse driving an insanely cumbersome truck. There wasn't any reason to suspect that Shannon would be waiting there when he got home, but the part of him that was able to anticipate plays on the ice felt off anyway, the hair prickling at the back of his neck. On the ice it had always meant a goal coming. Now, it just spelled impending disaster.

He'd lucked out, though, because the U-Haul had Bluetooth. It was a little childish, but he scrolled through his saved albums and put on Nevermind , an album that he'd loved so much as an angsty teenager that he'd worn out several tape versions of it. With the windows rolled down to the chilly November air and the familiar riffs of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blaring from the speakers, he felt like he could finally exhale, at least a little.

The feeling didn't last long. It slipped away faster and faster the closer he got to Newfields. Then it was like the walls closed in again, the familiar tightening in his chest of going back to a home that had never really felt like home. It was funny, the way he felt like that in Boston and at the house he'd owned with his ex for so many years. He wondered, briefly, whether he'd ever have a place that felt comfortable to return to. Someplace his .

The house looked exactly the same as he'd left it. Either Shannon was mowing the lawn, or she had hired someone to keep up with the upkeep; it looked as immaculate as ever. She had put in new window boxes with professionally designed plant arrangements, a riot of red leaves and knobby sticks and whimsical shapes. Ryan had never seen the point of anything like that—half of the arrangement wasn't even planted in the box; it was just shoved in there with stakes. He'd never said no to them—he had made enough money over the course of his career that he rarely said no to anything Shannon wanted—but once he'd offered his opinion, Shannon had never asked again.

He parked the van in the driveway and thought he'd have to ask Shannon to hold on to some of his workshop equipment a little longer. That would require a house of his own, and he had no idea when that would be possible or even really feasible. Right now, even furnishing a two-bedroom apartment seemed almost insurmountable.

Shannon opened the front door and Ryan almost tripped over his own two feet, right there in the driveway.

It was the first time he'd seen her in person since the morning of his birthday, and he was almost relieved that he still found her incredibly attractive—so he definitely wasn't 100% gay. Her face had more stress lines than it had had when they'd met, but she was still a beautiful woman—a few inches taller than he was, with curly black hair she usually wore swept up in a bun. She had really striking light blue eyes that looked right through you and she'd always dressed in a way that really accentuated her face and her body.

"Hello, Ryan." She couldn't quite meet him in the eye.

"Hi...uh, you know, I wasn't expecting you to...well, be here at all, really."

"I know. I was thinking about it, though, and it's been a while since we were able to actually talk, and I didn't know if you were going to bring anyone to help you pack."

"Murph's still in Dallas. And you know I wasn't going to ask any of my brothers."

"Yes." She took a deep breath, one that visibly moved her shoulders up, and exhaled, long and slow. "Look—do you want to come in? We can have lunch, and then we can start packing."

Ryan didn't know how he felt right in that moment. He'd never felt the betrayal that he thought he'd have felt when she ended things. He didn't resent her. He felt wary, unsure of what was coming next, but not any of the things you probably should've felt in a situation like this. "Yeah, okay."

It was even weirder going back into the house. It still had the same smell that he associated with being home, but it didn't feel like home anymore. Shannon had already done a few things to change it up: she'd taken down the small amount of hockey memorabilia she'd permitted upstairs; she'd hung up a few new pieces of art. There were a few amateurish ceramic bowls and sculptures on display on the coffee table. She'd been burning an unfamiliar candle, on top of the familiar smell of the house layered a fir and pine winter scent.

In the kitchen, Shannon had already set up lunch. She'd made something she used to make for him all of the time during his playing days: poached chicken salads with quinoa and chickpeas and a thick, herby yogurt dressing. The same way she always had, there was a little pitcher of ice water with slices of lemon and lime in it, some of the herbs left over from the salad muddled in the bottom. It was all so familiar that he felt a brief pang of missing her, missing this , before he remembered what he was there to do.

"Ryan—" she started, right at the same time that he said, "Shannon."

"You go first," she said, after a second.

"Look, Shan, I just wanted to—I don't know. I wanted to let you know I don't have any hard feelings about the way things ended. And that I'm sorry I fucked things up so bad. I knew you wanted a life without hockey, but I'm just not ready to give it up. I can't give it up. And that's not fair to you. And it wasn't fair to expect you to be okay with it. I just—I love you, but I did a really shitty job of showing that, especially these last few years."

Shannon stood for a minute with her arms crossed over her chest, like she was hugging herself. She laughed, short and a little sour. "I thought a lot about getting an apology like that from you over the years. It's weird that I'm getting it now and I'm still mostly just relieved that we're done. Is that weird?"

"No," Ryan said, and he was surprised to find that it was true.

She took a step forward and picked up the plates, setting them out on the table. "Jesus, Ry. We got married so young, you know?"

"Yeah, I do, I was there," he said dryly, and she laughed again, more genuine this time. "Maybe we should've waited. Maybe you would've realized that you didn't actually want to marry a hockey player after all. Do you regret it?"

"Sometimes," Shannon said, slowly. As she spoke, she spooned out the salad on the plates, poured him some water. "Sometimes I think I could've had more years doing things I loved without fighting with you about hockey all of the time. But maybe I wouldn't appreciate where we are now as much as I do without that."

"Look at you, getting philosophical on me. You know I'm just a hockey player, right?"

"Stop," she said sharply. "You might be a hockey player, Ryan, and you might be a fucking idiot when it comes to anything involving emotional intelligence, but you're not stupid . You're probably one of the smartest people I know. That's what made this so frustrating over the years."

Ryan stared at her. "Shannon, seriously?"

"I'm being serious, Ryan. I don't know anyone who studies that damn game as seriously as you do. I don't know anyone who'd be up at all hours of the night reading about neuroplasticity or fucking Sun Tzu. I think part of this whole problem is just you didn't—I don't think you know what you would have been capable of without hockey. And you never wanted to, I get it. That's fine. But it's just—it makes me so sad, sometimes, thinking about what we could have had."

Ryan thought about it, too. He knew Shannon had wanted kids, at one point, but it had never worked out. He knew Shannon had wanted to get more involved in art education: he'd encouraged her to take classes, but he didn't have the vocabulary or the time to talk to her about it at home. Somewhere, in some parallel universe, there were a Ryan and Shannon sitting in this same house, while the kids were running around upstairs screaming, talking about a new class she was directing or—but it wasn't a parallel universe. It was this one. Here he and Shannon were, in their forties, looking down the barrel of a no-fault divorce.

"I'm sorry," he said. "And I do mean that."

"It's okay...and maybe it's weird to say, but I do mean that, too. It might have taken us a hell of a lot to get here, but I'm not... I was angry when I first kicked you out. But I've been working with someone on this and I'm learning to, like...let it go. You know?"

Ryan last year would have made a joke like, Sure, Elsa . Ryan this year said, "I'm really proud of you, Shan," and meant it.

Shannon swallowed and looked away, busying herself with pushing him a plate. "Yeah, well. We've both grown up a little, at least."

They ate the lunch without talking about heavy topics, just logistics about Ryan's workshop and some of the things he would need to leave by necessity. It was like a weight was lifted off his shoulders, knowing things weren't as fraught, knowing he no longer had to worry about her dumping his shit on the curb for the trash men or giving it away. She helped him pack some of the more portable stuff: his clothes shoved in trash bags, his memorabilia wrapped up in newspaper, his books stacked in plastic bins she'd bought for him. It wasn't easy work, with just the two of them: a lot of trips out into the cold, with Ryan's arms stretched as wide as they could to hold the bins.

When they were finally finished, a few hours later, they paused at the doorway. Shannon looked at him with the kind of expression he might have been able to decipher, once, but couldn't now. She looked sad and relieved and longing all at the same time, and she held out her arms to him. The embrace was familiar and not familiar as well: her hair smelled the same as it always had; her body felt the same in his arms, the way they couldn't quite see eye to eye, no matter how he arranged himself. She hugged him tightly, so hard he could feel his ribs creak under the force of it.

It felt final. It felt like the goodbye he hadn't been able to get from her, the day she'd kicked him out.

"I'm glad we did this," she said, as she released him.

"It was fucking weird."

"Yes, it was. But I—I didn't want you to hate me."

He felt very tired, suddenly, ran a hand through his sweaty hair to get it off of his forehead and out of his eyes. "I could never hate you, Shan. You've been like—we grew up together. You were my whole life for decades. We just—"

"Grew into different people."

"Yeah."

"We still have the court date in December, you know."

"Yeah, I know. It's a date," Ryan said, flashing quick finger guns at her, and she groaned in exaggerated disgust.

"Jesus, I forgot what shitty dad humor you have sometimes."

"But Shan—you're okay? It's okay? That we're doing this?"

"Yeah," she said. The smile was still a bit sad. "I really think we're both going to be so much happier when this is done. And that's all I want. I never wanted to hate you. I just didn't want to be miserable anymore." Impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, then stepped back just as abruptly. "Drive carefully, okay?"

"You know me," Ryan said, "I'm always careful."

As he was driving home, his listen-through of "Little Fury Things" was interrupted by the phone ringing. Against his better judgment, he answered. "Hello, Dad."

"Where the hell are you ? Where are you driving to?"

"I'm driving back from Newfields."

"Newfields? Why the hell were you there? Did you come to your senses and take Shannon back?"

"Dad... I was picking up some of my things."

"Divorced," Dad was muttering. He sounded like he'd been drinking, his voice thick and a little slurred. "Never thought a boy of mine would ever get divorced . How're you ever going to show your face in the parish again?"

Ryan desperately wanted to say something about marrying a girl who was younger than your own fucking kids before your wife was even cold in her grave, but he had to be the bigger person when it came to Dad. Trying to fight with him just meant getting deeper into the muck and the mud yourself. You might win the argument, but you'd feel just as disgusting afterward. Instead, he said, "I haven't been to church in over five years, Dad."

"Maybe that's your problem," Dad said, gearing up to rant again. The irony was, of course, that Dad himself only ever went when one of his boys was getting married, or a grandchild was being baptized or having First Communion.

"Goodbye, Dad," Ryan said, and hung up.

It hit him all of a sudden, as he was driving. The grief and pain of losing Shannon, or more accurately, the marriage that had taken up the majority of his adult life. The stretched-tight tension he hadn't even realized he was feeling, being the mature and responsible and adult one, seeing his ex-wife and refusing to take his father's bait. Ryan didn't pull over on the side of the road, but he thought about it, thought about banging his head down on the steering wheel and seeing how that would feel.

It had been a long time since he remembered crying. He hadn't even cried, not really, when his mother had died. He wasn't actually going to do it now, but he thought that maybe if he was the kind of guy who cried, this would be the moment he did it.

Instead of any of that, another idea formed in his head, impossible to dislodge. It was a terrible idea, but it had some real appeal. Ryan kept driving, took a deep breath, touched his finger against the little text message icon on the car interface.