Page 75 of Bro Code

Relationship? Was that what this was?

Suddenly, Louis felt nervous too. It was always weird seeing someone again after a few days, but this felt extra weird. It felt like something had changed between them, and neither of them quite knew what to do.

“How’s your head?” said Louis. He was aware that he was also smiling awkwardly.

“It’s fine. How was home?”

Louis rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “It was fine. It was a lot. It was – it was a lot.”

He looked up, straightening his glasses. Riley looked like he wanted to sit down, but wasn’t sure if he should, which was resulting in a kind of anxious hover. Louis badly wanted to tell him to sit, to catch up, hell, to throw Louis down on the table and attack him with those perfect, puffy lips. But there was like, less than an hour before they landed in Carolina, and at that point he’d have to start prepping for tonight’s game. There was no way he was going to get everything done.

“Ah…I’m really sorry.” He scratched behind his head. “I just – I have a lot to catch up on…”

Riley’s face flickered, and he quickly nodded and said, “Totally, yeah, no, I wasn’t – I have stuff to do too.”

He looked disappointed. Louis felt such a strong urge to pull him in and kiss him he was worried he might actually stand up and do it. But that would be way out of bounds on a team flight.

Stupid work. Stupid NHL. All this work and money, and the schedule, and rules, and the grueling practices, and the late nights, and barely having time to visit his mother with cancer, and the press, and Riley being injured, and for what? For a game? He wanted to heave the laptop onto the floor and never read another line of code for the stupid league again.

Then Riley smiled, and just before he turned to go back to his seat, he said, “I’m really glad you’re here.”

Louis felt the words land hard behind his ribs. Because as exhausted as he was, deep down, he was glad to be here, too.

Tonight, he got to watch Riley play hockey. He got to help Riley play hockey. And if they won, he’d be part of it. The fans would be happy, and that felt good. At the end of the day, he liked that his job was just making people happy.

He held Riley’s gaze and smiled back. “Me too,” he said, and meant it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Riley

“Rye, my man. How are things? Good to be back on the ice, I bet.”

Riley sighed, pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder as he opened the fridge. He’d been taking calls from Rick all week, dealing with the Okafor thing. He felt like he was finally getting the attention he’d wanted from his agent. Too bad it was for such a shitty state of affairs.

He’d hardly seen Louis all week, except for a slightly desperate and very short “welcome back” fuck in his hotel room right after the game in North Carolina. Louis had mountains of work to catch up on.

“First game’s tonight,” he told Rick. “We’ll see how it goes.”

The media was having a field day with the “gay reckoning.” The brawl between Arsenault and Okafor had kicked off a whole media shitstorm. A couple of incidents had been reported that week with fans getting out of hand. A fight had broken out in the parking lot at a game in San Jose. His first game back was a home game against Denver, and Riley was nervous. Nic and Liam were still benched, and without them, he felt like he’d be out there alone.

The arena was packed as he stepped onto the ice to warm up. The air was electric and the crowd was noisy. Riley did slow laps, scanning the bleachers, feeling the scrape of the ice under his skates and breathing the cold air.

He told himself it was good to be back. He had Louis’ note tucked into his shinguard, and he was running down all their behavior hacks in his head to keep from worrying. Tennis balls. Face-off. Track track track.

He was going to be fine. The worst thing that could have possibly happened to him had already happened and he was fine. He’d survived a hate crime. Nothing could be worse than that.

But a little voice in the back of his head kept whispering things.

What if that wasn’t the worst that could happen? What if someone started another fight? What if he got hit? What if he injured his spine this time? What if he never played hockey again?

Needless to say, he played like shit.

Every mistake seemed worst than the last. He lost the first face-off. He failed to cover defense with Liam when Arsenault took a run on goal, leaving a shooting lane wide open. He nearly fell over on a tight turn when they lost possession after a breakaway pass. By third period he was so mad at himself he was throwing out hits like a petulant child, and ended up in the penalty box.

The locker room was uncomfortably quiet as the team showered and dressed and packed up their things to go home. No one would quite look him in the eye. It was like New York all over again.

He ignored his phone, which was buzzing with messages, and stomped into the tunnel after a shower with his duffel bag over his shoulder and his hood up. He was shouldering open the door to the parking lot when he heard, “Not your best ever.”