Page 60 of Hard Check
“Come.”
The word sat between them. No pressure in Leo’s voice, no edge. An invitation, not a test.
“To the game?”
“No, to bingo night at the senior center,” Leo deadpanned. “Yes, to the game. Sit in the stands. Watch me play.”
Dawson’s gaze drifted past Leo’s shoulder. A hockey game. Public. His face in a crowd of people who knew him, watching a man they didn’t know he was sleeping with. Every instinct he’d ever built said no.
If you keep saying no, he’ll quit asking.Dawson knew the voice in his head was about more than the invitation.
“Yeah,” Dawson said. “Okay.”
Leo blinked. He’d been braced for yet another rejection. Dawson could see it in the set of his shoulders, the careful way he’d asked, leaving room for Dawson to back out. The tension dissolved. What replaced it was quiet and warm. Leo’s eyes wereon his face like Dawson had just handed him something he hadn’t been sure he’d get.
“Yeah?” Leo said.
“Don’t make a thing of it.”
Leo didn’t say anything. He held his gaze, and his hand came up slow and deliberate before pressing flat against Dawson’s chest. Dawson didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
“Saturday,” Leo said and took his hand back.
“Saturday.”
Leo stepped back. The grin that broke across his face was the one from the booth, the version with no polish on it, and it hit harder up close. Dawson’s breath caught, and he let it because he was done pretending he didn’t want to do more to put that smile on Leo’s face.
“I’ll be the good-looking one on the ice,” Leo said.
“I’ll try to narrow it down.”
Leo laughed and went back inside. Dawson stayed where he was, letting the cold settle into his skin, his hands unsteady against his arms. He’d said yes without first giving a litany of reasons it was a bad idea. That felt like progress.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Leo’s pulse was already up before he touched the ice. Not nerves. He didn’t get nervous before games anymore, hadn’t since juniors, when the stakes felt like the end of the world because he didn’t know yet that there was more to life than hockey. This was something else. A buzz running beneath the pregame routine, sharpening everything: the snap of his pads, the pull of tape around his shin, the cold air filtering through the tunnel as they lined up for warm-ups.
Dawson was in the building. Somewhere in those stands, behind the glass, in a seat he’d paid for and driven twenty minutes to sit in because Leo had asked and Dawson had said yes.
Leo grabbed his stick from the rack and filed out with the team.
The Forum was packed, the lower bowl loud in blue and silver. Leo scanned the crowd during warm-ups without being obvious about it, taking laps near the glass, and on his second pass along the far boards, he found him.
Dark jacket, shoulders tight, gripping his own elbows like he was holding himself in place. Surrounded by strangers in Stagsjerseys who had no idea what it had cost the mechanic from Wyatt’s to buy that ticket.
Their eyes met through the glass. Dawson didn’t wave, didn’t smile. He tipped his chin half an inch. That was enough.
Leo took a shot from the top of the circle and buried it over Ford’s glove. Skated back to center, grinning and not trying to hide it.
“You look happy,” Novo said, pulling up beside him. “That’s suspicious.”
“I’m always happy.”
“You’re never happy before warm-ups. You’re focused. This is different.”
Leo stretched his neck, rolling out the stiffness. “Maybe I’m evolving.”
Novo gave him a flat look and skated away, which was about as much engagement as Novo ever offered before a game. Leo didn’t care. He took three more shots, loosened up at center ice, and when the horn sounded for the end of warm-ups, he allowed himself one more glance toward Dawson’s seat.
