Page 4 of Man Advantage

He shouldn’t have said it. Do what’s right for you. I don’t want you passing it up because of us. He’d stood in the kitchen and all but ushered Cole to the door. The whole time, something in the back of his mind had been screaming the opposite so loud he was surprised it hadn’t gotten out.

Stay. Don’t take the place over the hardware store. Stay in the room that’s yours and keep making my kid’s breakfast and let me look at you across the counter for another season while I go on pretending that’s a normal thing for a grown man to need.

That’s what he should have said.

He’d said what Cole needed to hear instead, putting what he wanted on the back burner. He was good at that, but not once had it made him happy.

His reasons were sound, at least. He ran through them at the first red light, the same way he’d run a shooter’s tendencies before a breakaway. Cole was twenty-eight and could get called up if he kept playing like he had been. You didn’t build a life around a guy who kept himself ready to leave, no matter how long he’d already stayed.

Then there was Charlotte, who’d claimed Cole as hers within a week of him moving in and had never once wavered in her adoration. She didn’t need her dad making it worse by wanting Cole to stay for reasons that had nothing to do with their friendship.

His hip had been bugging him all morning, a hot line down the outside of his thigh that ran worse this year than last. When the light changed, he pulled through it and drove the next stretch sitting crooked, weight tipped off the bad side. The relief scared him as much as the pain did. He was only thirty-four. He was supposed to have years left before his body started falling apart.

He’d gotten good at ignoring his own discomfort. He’d been ignoring his screaming body since February. He’d been doing it with Cole a good deal longer than that.

It had been almost a year. Cole was originally only supposed to be there a few weeks, and Ford had never once let himself sit down and work out why he’d never said a word about making it permanent.

He knew why. He liked his house better with Cole in it, plain as that, and it had stopped being about having another adult around the house a long time ago. He just wasn’t brave enough to look straight at what it had turned into instead. He pulled into the rink lot, glad, for once, to be done with the inside of his own head.

The locker room was lively as he walked in. The guys were like kids at the start of the school year, excited to be with their buddies again. That would die down by the first game of the season, and everyone would walk in grumbling about being there so early. Riggs and Vargas were deep into a fight about whether a hot dog counted as a sandwich, and Vargas was losing.

“It’s one piece of bread, folded,” Riggs said, in the patient voice he saved for stupid arguments. “Structurally, that’s a taco. At best.”

“A taco isn’t a sandwich either, so congratulations, you’ve said nothing.”

“Then what is it, Vargas? Use your words.”

“It’s a hot dog, Riggs. It doesn’t need a category. Leave it alone.”

Ford dropped onto the bench between them and started pulling his gear out of his stall. Vargas wheeled on him like he’d found the tiebreaker. “Cally. Hot dog. Sandwich, yes or no.”

“I’m not touching that.” Ford worked the first pad up over his knee, careful with the angle to avoid tweaking anything. If anyone noticed the subtle changes in how he dressed, he hoped they were smart enough to keep their mouth shut. “If you want someone to take sides, ask someone without kids. I’ve got one at home who’ll argue either side for an hour, and I’ve learned there’s no winning an argument like this.”

The row laughed. Ford went back to getting ready and let himself glance where he’d been keeping himself from looking since he walked in.

“Englund, what do you think? Is a hot dog a sandwich?” Leo seemed determined to get someone on his side.

“Sure, whatever.” It was obvious Cole wasn’t paying any attention to the antics of their teammates. Down the bench, two rookies had gravitated to him, the way the young guys always found someone they viewed as non-threatening, and he hadn’t waved them off. Ford watched him settle Beaudry, up from juniors and jumpy about it, with maybe four low words over a new pair of gloves, watched the kid stand an inch taller for it, and marveled at how naturally Cole put them at ease. With a few more years under his belt, he’d make one hell of a captain somewhere.

His thoughts drifted from Cole’s people skills to the near-perfection of his body. His forearms under shoved-up sleeves. The unbothered set of his mouth. The easy weight of him on the bench, taking up exactly as much room as he wanted and not an inch more. Ford felt the pull come up warm and low and made himself look down at his own skates before he popped wood in front of his teammates.

Deluca came out of his office with the whistle already between his teeth. He seemed to be in a mood, which wasn’t surprising coming off the recent preseason loss to Duluth. There had been plenty of stupid mistakes, and he looked like he was going to make sure they didn’t happen again on the upcoming road trip to Columbus.

“If you’re not already dressed, you’re late,” he announced to a room that was mostly not dressed. “Goalies with me. Skaters, blue line. And so help me, if I catch one more of you filming yourselves in my tunnel, I am mailing the footage to your mothers with a note asking if you didn’t get enough attention when you were a kid.”

“My mom would love that,” said Novo, who was twenty-two and beloved and entirely without shame.

“Your mom deserves better than every one of you,” Deluca said, and blew the whistle.

Those who were already dressed made their way toward the ice. Cole came past Ford’s stall on his way out and slowed. He glanced around and pitched his voice low so his words stayed between them. “Hip gonna let you skate this morning?”

Nobody else in the room knew to ask. As far as Ford could tell, he’d done a good job hiding the severity of his injury from everyone but Cole. As long as it didn’t cost him a game, there was no reason to worry the guys.

“It’ll hold,” Ford said, which was as close to the truth as he gave anybody.

“Sure it will.”

Cole didn’t buy it. Luckily, he didn’t push. He scooped Ford’s water bottle off the bench along with his own stick. By the time Ford came out through the gate a minute behind him, the bottle was already sitting up on top of the net where Ford liked it, so he didn’t have to make the slow trip back for it first thing in the cold. Cole was down at the far blue line by then, stretching, not looking over.