Page 30 of Caught Offside

So Asher peeled himself off, one inch at a time, the worst kind of slow. He got his fly done up with hands that weren’t cooperating and watched Patrick do the same. They were both aching, both a mess, both grinning a little at how stupid it was to want something this badly and walk away from it on purpose.

Patrick walked him to the door. They stood in the entryway facing each other, Asher’s jacket in his hand.

“I’d ask you to come to a game,” Asher said, “but I already know what you’d have to say.”

“We could clinch this week.” Patrick’s jaw worked. “After that, it’s playoffs.”

“I know.” Asher wasn’t going to make him stand in his own doorway and turn Asher down. “Forget I asked.”

“I’m not going to forget it,” Patrick said in a low, almost rough voice. “I’d be there if I could. You know that.”

“I know.” And he did, which was the whole problem. Patrick had a playoff run starting. Asher had a full season in front of him and a call-up he was pretending not to chase. The timing of the two of them was a joke.

“So, when do I see you again?” He kept it light. It didn’t come out light.

“I don’t know.” Patrick didn’t dress it up. “Soon as I can. I can’t tell you when that is.”

“Yeah.” Asher pulled his jacket on. “Soon as you can.”

“Goodnight, Asher.”

“Goodnight.”

Asher stepped into the hall and the door shut behind him. He stood there a second with his hand on the back of his neck, not pressing the elevator button, his pulse still nowhere near its normal rate.

He drove home with the windows cracked despite the cold, his mouth still warm and his hands still remembering the heat of Patrick under his shirt. An hour in, the high wore off, and he started working the problem instead.

The Fireflies opened in four days. After that it was a game most nights until September, a Monday off if he got lucky, half of every month in some other city. Patrick had two weeks of regular season left, games every other day, then a playoff run that wouldn’t turn him loose until summer. He went through the schedules, looking for a day they could both spare. There weren’t many. The best case was a stray Monday that lined up with one of Patrick’s nights off, with Asher home instead of on a road trip, with everything breaking right at once.

He didn’t have an answer for when. What he had was four days until the season swallowed him whole, a man he could still taste, and the slow, sinking understanding that wanting Patrick and finding time for him were going to be two separate fights.

He pressed the gas a little harder. It didn’t help. Nothing between here and September would make this any easier.

CHAPTER NINE

The Syndicate clinched a playoff spot on a Thursday, in Columbus, with Patrick on the ice for the final two minutes of a game they won by three.

They’d needed one point from their last two and took the whole thing in the first, a flat, structural win nobody would remember by morning. Patrick logged twenty-four minutes, blocked two shots, and sprang the breakaway with a stretch pass in the second. When the horn went, Patrick tapped gloves down the line, took a shove from Pruitt, and for once, didn’t go looking for what came next. They’d clinched with a game to spare. He stood in the noise with the guys banging their sticks on the boards and let himself be glad.

The celebration was still going, Pruitt loudest of anyone, when Patrick got to his stall. He dropped onto the bench and stayed there longer than he needed to, in no hurry to get home to the quiet.

Dev dropped into the stall beside him. “Bar. You’re coming.”

“Yeah, okay.”

That got a grin out of Dev. “No fight? Somebody check his head.”

“It’s the clinch.”

“You hate bars. You’ve told me, more than once, they’re where conversation goes to die.”

“I’m making an exception.” Patrick reached down and pulled his skates off, his feet aching back to life.

“Huh.” Dev was still grinning. “Look at you. Being a whole person.”

“Don’t.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”