2. Tyler
Chapter Two
TYLER
I watched my best friend’s back as he receded through the gathering crowd at the Thinker. He had spent his people tolerance reserves tonight. He needed the silence.
I couldn’t blame him. The beginnings were always busy.
Warming up and getting back into the flow of things could exhaust anyone.
Catching up with friends and teammates, slogging through a pile of work, and searching the crowds to make eye contact with a good agent were all the things one needed to do. And that was without actually playing.
Unlike me, Sebastian was an introvert. He loved people, he just didn’t love being around them for too long. There wasn’t a bad bone in his body, so when he needed his peace and quiet, I didn’t take it the wrong way.
Today, the team spent most of our time together. We’d gotten together before the game, played for the crowds, and had then gotten together for drinks. Rounds followed rounds, and Grayson Reed’s arrival promised another one.
I was sorry to see Sebastian sneak away, but it wasn’t like he would miss something important. Besides, that thing with Jennifer was so sweet and promising that I couldn’t do anything other than cheer him on. He deserved some happiness.
The last couple of years had been tough on him.
Several relationships had fallen apart, gone up in flames, or sank to the bottom of the ocean.
And that was all without the struggles back home.
His parents were getting increasingly agitated with Sebastian’s participation in a team as rainbow-colored as ours.
I’d stopped going there over the summer breaks for the looks his father was giving me and the wrinkling nose his mother couldn’t hide.
Sebastian knew. He just didn’t know how to deal with it.
It had started with Riley and Cameron. Our former captain and his long-lost lover returning out of nowhere.
Last year, they had gone to hell and back, pushing and pulling and ultimately getting together.
After winning the Frozen Four, Riley and Cam threw their helmets off, wrapped their arms around each other, and kissed so passionately that no historian would ever mistake them for roommates.
Then came the concerns. Sebastian’s mother slipped in a few comments and then his father doubled down on them.
Was this a gay team? Was Sebastian not bothered that such people led him?
Was it not against all his teachings to denounce it rather than stand by and watch those perverts and dandies represent him?
Would people not think Sebastian subscribed to the same kind of mental twistedness if he didn’t stand against it?
That was when I left their home forever, my stomach turning.
I’d grown up in the same neighborhood as Sebastian.
We had been best friends since before we were born.
Our mothers had been close until mine packed her bags and left town.
Even then, the two women had stayed in touch, even if I hadn’t heard much from my mother in ages.
But the two of us? We were besties. We’d been born into those roles and it had been pure luck that we had grown into them, too.
My friend was a beautiful person. His parents were his only weakness.
However much he disagreed with them, he couldn’t push back.
But he never called me out on stopping the visitations.
Sunday lunches over summer breaks had always been a tradition in their home and I had always had a place at their table.
Nevertheless, after the bullshit they had said — and the sneaking suspicions that I might be a corrupting influence on their least favorite son — I preferred eating canned soup with Dad.
That was another thing, I thought to myself as I finished my beer.
Grayson’s order was coming in hot and my stomach was starting to bubble.
It was my simmering rage. Sebastian had been dealt such a shitty hand.
His parents couldn’t see why chasing a puck like a dog chasing a car meant so much to their little boy.
Could he not become a priest like his eldest brother?
Or a doctor like the middle one? What they had in store for their daughter, I didn’t know, but I dreaded to think about it.
They would either exercise the same sort of pressure on her to accomplish what the elder brothers had accomplished, or they would make her small and invisible.
I knew it bothered Sebastian. I knew what a burden it was to think about his little sister’s future with the flood of indoctrination from their old man.
“…a mustache on him while he’s zoned out.” Laughter roared around me and I realized I had been transported to another world. Sawyer was pitching some unholy prank on me.
I smiled at him. “Do it. It’ll be the closest I ever get to growing one.”
Our goalie’s face went sullen. “It’s no fun if you’re in on it.” The guys laughed again and I joined in on the fun.
It was good to see Sawyer plotting pranks and laughing so easily.
He had always been a bit of a broody soul.
Not that long ago, the very guy paying for my beer tonight had broken our teammate’s heart.
Avery had been a victim of a silly bet between friends.
Grayson had vowed to take him out on a date as part of his bargain with a former friend; the two had fallen in love, but the truth caught up with Grayson Reed.
Soon after, Sawyer’s fists caught up with Grayson Reed, too.
And while Grayson and Avery managed to work out their differences in a weird stripping routine in the snowy front yard of our team house — an event that was still etched in my memory as the weirdest of all the things I had witnessed in my time as an Arctic Titan — Sawyer became known for his violence on the ice.
Nobody was messing with him for a time and he had to sit out a couple of games until all the facts were assembled.
Grayson, who not only felt he had deserved the punches, but seemed genuinely grateful for them, hadn’t pressed charges.
We were a good bunch. Just looking around the table from where I sat, I saw guys willing to risk their careers for their teammates. Sawyer could have gotten expelled had Grayson acted any differently.
I checked my phone while the other guys resumed their conversations.
Courtney had left a couple of messages some time ago, but I didn’t have the mental clarity to chat endlessly.
I was on my third beer. Even though it took much more to get me drunk, my vision wasn’t as sharp, and my thoughts were slowing down. I was tired, truth be told.
Asher and Phoenix were the next two to leave. Asher dropped a few terse words to his older stepbrother, Jordan, and the big guy pinched the bridge of his nose. I wouldn’t trade places with either of them. Their frustrations were reaching the boiling temperature.
Phoenix dragged Asher away from the table and waved back to us.
Beckett said something calming to Jordan and then the big guy nodded and lifted his hands in surrender. “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” Jordan said. I wasn’t sure how true that was.
When a yawn crept up on me from nowhere, I pushed my chair back. “I’m heading to the house, too. I hope I don’t lose my head along the way before I get to my bed.”
Guys protested briefly but released me from the group.
Without Sebastian around, I could be involved for only so long.
We were all friends, but even so, most of us had a smaller number of very strong relationships within the bigger group.
Beckett and Caden were the power couple taking us to new heights, while Beckett and Jordan were childhood friends.
Sawyer and Avery had clicked together on the day they’d met.
And there was Sebastian and me, having been born a couple of weeks apart and growing up together ever since.
He was the closest thing to a brother that I had ever had.
And he was as much my family as my father when my father wasn’t fighting his demons.
On the flip side, I was nothing like a brother to Sebastian, who had know-it-all brothers with plenty of opinions on how Sebastian was wasting his life chasing a rubber disk.
And that was precisely what Sebastian needed me to be.
I made my way back to the team house through the streets of Northwood’s huge campus.
The tavern was in its very heart with student facilities surrounding it.
There were faculty buildings, specialty areas, and dormitories, as well as a score of facilities for athletes studying at Northwood.
Our incredibly modern rink, a huge football field, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a baseball field, and one defunct lacrosse field that was waiting to be converted into something less obnoxiously rich all formed the outer circle of the campus.
Not far from the larger structures that were made into dormitories for the majority of students living on campus, there was an entire lane of houses.
Fraternities, sororities, and team houses were in a colonial revival style with spacious front yards and plenty of rooms housing students from all over the country and the world.
Steam rose from my mouth as I sighed at the vibration in my pocket. Courtney. Shit, I’d forgotten to text back. I picked up and pressed the phone against my ear. “Hey babe,” I said cheerfully.
“Where are you?” Courtney asked.
“Walking to the Titanic,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes and explained that Sebastian and I called our team house the Titanic, then held back from saying that I had already explained this before. I was smart like that, picking my battles and all.
“Oh. Right.” Courtney’s voice was distant for a moment. “Anyway, are you coming over?”
“Not tonight, babe,” I said. “I stayed late with the boys.”
“Sure,” Courtney said, her voice a little colder.
“Aw, I’m sorry, Court. I didn’t think you’d mind,” I said. “I had a few drinks. I should sleep it off.”