Chapter Four
Adler
The fucker didn’t believe me.
That bounced around inside my head all during morning skate. How could he not believe me? I mean, come on, right? I tell the guy I’m gay and he looks at me like I’m the biggest liar in the world, then throws me out like a burger teeming with botulism. It wasn’t like I told people I was gay all the time. Apollo knew, but he was my brother from another mother… and father. Just Cole and Karrie Anne knew, and now Layton Foxx. None of them, aside from Apollo, had given two shits. How can you not give a damn about something as important as that?
“Is there a reason you’re standing there?”
I gave Coach Madsen a confused look.
“Offensive drills are done. This is a defensive meeting.”
I looked around and saw only defensive players staring at me.
“Oh right, yeah, I knew that. I was just wondering if anyone had seen that movie with the guy and that girl? No? Pity. It’s really good. Things blow up. I’ll just go now.”
Adler, you are a moron.
One of the equipment managers slid some guards onto my blades, and I thumped off, face red, stomach all sorts of knotted up, my goal the dressing room. Honestly. It had been my plan to shower and go home to talk to Apollo. Then I’d eat, come back to the barn, and go out there and beat the sass out of Philadelphia. But then I saw Layton Foxx in that tiny room, and all my plans went left of center. I stopped on a dime, took a step in reverse, and walked into the press room. His head came up and his eyes—they were incredible stormy gray eyes with thick, dark lashes—flared when he saw me. He grabbed the stapler.
“Okay, see here’s the thing…” I used my stick to shut the door. “I don’t think you get how hard it was for me to tell you that I’m gay.”
“I really wish you’d open the door.” He held on to that stapler like it was a Ruger or something. “We’re done for the day.”
“Yeah, I thought so too, but how you treated me is stuck in my chest.” I thumped on my breastbone with a gloved hand.
Layton eyed me nervously. He was so damn enticing in an uptight, corporate way. He needed me to peel him out of that spiffy suit, lay him over that ugly desk, and make love to him until he was loose as a damn goose. I bet he bottomed. I hoped he did. Also, he needed to let go of that stapler.
“Are you going to shoot me in the eye with a staple or something?”
“What? No.” He put the stapler down but left a well-manicured hand resting on it. He had nice fingers. Soft looking, like he never did dirty work or tinkered with engines. Not that I tinkered with engines either, but my hands looked like hockey player hands. Scarred up from fights and being slashed by opposing players. “You need to go, though.”
No, what I need to do is reach down and adjust my cock, Foxx. Christ, but your surname fits you.
“I think you should at least acknowledge how tough it was for me to tell you my sexual orientation.”
He studied me for a long moment, his fingers slipping from the stapler to rest on his piles of papers and forms.
“So can you cough something out, or not?”
“I understand how hard that must have been for you.”
“Thank you.”
I turned, opened the door, and went to the dressing room more confused than I had been before I’d intimidated Foxx into saying what I wanted. Shit. Now I felt like a dick. A dick with a boner. A double dick. I couldn’t shower until the fucking thing went down. The morning was officially a train wreck for the newest addition to the Railers team. I snorted at my own joke, then sat down to will my erection away.
* * * * *
“See, this is why I don’t allow you on Twitter,” Apollo huffed as he flung a plate of broiled chicken, asparagus and wild rice in front of me. “You have no filter. You just feel and talk. I blame it on Cole and Karrie Anne. If they’d actually spent some quality time with you when you were a kid, you wouldn’t feel this need to be rude and loud just to get attention.”
“I’m not rude,” I muttered, then began cutting my chicken breast into strips.
“Oh yes you are. You don’t mean to be, but you are. Cut that into smaller bites. I know my mother raised you better,” he sniffed before sitting down beside me at the island in my kitchen.
“I just wanted some fucking validation—is that so bad?”
“No, it’s not, but you need that from your parents and not some stranger.” He poured me some water, then gently put the glass by my plate.
“I’ll have better luck getting it from a stranger.”
“Oh Adler, shit, man.” He draped an arm around my shoulders as I chewed on his perfectly prepared chicken. It was tender and delicious and I’d yet again fucked everything up. Swallowing was hard for a moment.
“So how do I fix it?” I asked after getting the ball of chicken to go down. “The man looked terrified of me.”
“You are pretty intimidating with all your pads on and waving a stick around.”
“I can’t make myself smaller,” I mumbled, and ate in silence while Apollo tossed out about forty ideas of how to make things better with Layton Foxx. None of them would work in practical application. Could you see me giving the man a nice pen set as an apology? Really? Would that work? Hmm. Maybe… He seemed like the kind of guy who’d get into pens. And staplers. Oh yeah, a new stapler. That would be good, yes? Sure it would. Well, maybe not. Maybe office products that could double as weapons were something I shouldn’t give him. I’d buy him a new pen on the way to the barn and present it to him tomorrow after skate when I was being made into a more politically correct hockey player. And he thought I couldn’t be sensitive. Pfft.
* * * * *
“Did you know that everyone on your team hates you?” I asked the Philly winger who was nudging me around. “Seriously, they do. I heard them.”
“Whatever, Lockhart. How are things at Hogwarts?”
“Ah, I see what you did there. No one has ever commented about my last name and Gilderoy Lockhart before.” I rolled my eyes and leaned in to him as the centers lined up for a faceoff. “See, that’s why your teammates hate you. It’s because of bad chirps like that.”
The puck hit the ice. My center shoved it to me, and I flipped it over to one of our defensemen, who took off like a shot but ended up being knocked off his skates by one of the aggressive Philly wingers. That prompted a rebuttal from one of the Railers, who got a penalty call for roughing.
I skated off to catch my breath and wait for the first penalty kill unit to do their thing. Arvy sat next to me, flapping his gums about Philly and how they always worked the boards so damn well, did I have anything cooking after the game, and had I started my Christmas shopping, because he’d seen the bag from the office supply shop and wondered if his mother would like something similar.
“Yeah, they’re tough on the boards. No, it’s not a Christmas gift. Everyone likes pens.”
There, that should shut him up.
“You bought someone pens? Like a bag of Bics?”
Or not…
“No, man, not a bag of Bics. I got him a Montblanc set,” I told him as I tried to stay focused on the game.
“Him? Oh, you got pens for your father?”
“I got—what?” That brought me back to Arvy. I tugged off my helmet and waved at an equipment manager for a towel. “Sure, yeah, for my dad.”
I’d better pay closer attention to what was being said to me on the bench. I’d already gotten my ass chewed by Coach for showing up late. It wasn’t my fault that the dinky office supply store here didn’t have a Cartier boutique. I’d had to linger around while the dude in the dinky store called around to locate the nearest Cartier boutique—which was out in King of Prussia—and have them deliver it by hand to the Harrisburg store. That had tacked on another couple of hundred bucks to the sum, but so what? When you’re paying close to six hundred dollars for a pen and a leather business card holder, what’s another two hundred and fifty? It was a drop in the cash bucket for a Lockhart. Waiting had set me back over two hours, and I’d arrived at the game with just enough time to tape up and lace up. Hence the chewing out from the head coach. Foxxy man had better appreciate the gift.
“Let’s roll,” the associate coach barked over my head. I scrubbed my face, then threw the towel onto the bench. Slapping my helmet on, I tossed a leg over the boards and waited for the first penalty kill unit to come back. As soon as one man was off, I hit the ice, skating up to one of the Philly wingers and lifting his stick to steal the puck.
Someone shouted at me. I glanced across the neutral zone to see Tennant Rowe, who should have gone off, wide open. I shuttled the puck to him and we made a beeline for the Philadelphia end of the ice. The goalie dropped down, his dark eyes flicking back and forth as Rowe and I raced at him. The crowd was up and on its feet. Tennant passed to me, I passed back to Ten, and the Philadelphia goalie knew he was in trouble.
The pass from Rowe was a perfect tape-to-tape right in front of the Philly net. The goalie tried his best. He stretched out as the puck sailed in front of him, trying to poke check the puck away, but Rowe was demonically good at passing. The puck bounced off my skate right to my waiting stick, and I flicked it up and over the goalie as he scrambled to get back into his crease. Shaking twine. Red light. Thunderously happy Railers' fans. Now that was sweet. A shorthanded goal as my first point as a Railer. Hoped my old team back in Columbus saw that on the highlight reels and maybe had second thoughts about trading me.
Rowe and the other two Railers on the ice mobbed me. I skated to my bench and got twenty-something knuckle bumps and the puck for my collection. All in all, a damn fine play that led into a solid outing. Beating Philly always felt good.
Coach Madsen slapped my shoulder, then Arvy patted my helmet. I scanned the crowd for Apollo. He’d be out there, leaping around while wearing one of my sweaters. At least someone was there to cheer for me…