11. Open Ice
OPEN ICE
He came along the back road, pulling up next to the cabin. The sky had cleared overnight, the deep blue of late winter above the pines. The cold was just a little less sharp, not quite enough to make his face ache, which felt about right for the fading winter.
Smoke was rising from the cabin chimney before he reached the lake. He’d texted ahead this time: I’m coming at ten. Connor had replied: doors open. Two words, no punctuation, which Caleb had come to expect with affection.
He stood next to the truck and breathed in the air. The pines holding the last of the week’s snow on their boughs. The lake was unchanged from the day he had found it by accident on a wrong turn.
He crossed to the cabin and knocked. Connor opened the door before the knock had finished, which meant he’d heard the truck pull in and had been waiting.
He wore a faded Lakehead hoodie, dark curls loose, beard rough from the morning.
His eyes moved over Caleb’s face with the same attention he brought to the ice.
“Hey,” Connor said.
“Hey,” Caleb said. “I need to talk to you about September.”
Connor stepped back. “Come in.”
The fire was going, and the cabin smelled of woodsmoke and coffee. Caleb took the end of the couch that had become his. Connor brought two mugs and sat facing him.
“I emailed Frank last night,” Caleb said. “I told him I wanted the tryout.”
Connor’s face didn’t change. He’d been expecting this. “Good,” Connor said. “That’s the right call.”
“I’m not finished.”
Caleb had rehearsed this on the drive over. While he was on the road it had an opening, three clear points, and even a conclusion. In the cabin, with Connor watching him over the rim of his mug, all of it vanished.
“I had this figured out better in my head,” Caleb said.
Connor’s grip loosened slightly around the mug. “Take your time.”
“I told Frank I couldn’t come if it meant not being around here as much as possible, and I asked what that would look like if I made the roster.
” He held Connor’s gaze. “He wrote back this morning and said the Northeasterners play Thursday and Saturday nights. Thunder Bay is ninety minutes away. Some of the players commute farther than that.”
The fire cracked once, settling.
“Caleb…”
“I’m not asking you to decide anything,” Caleb said. “I’m not asking you to come out or change anything about your life here. I looked at the map. I’m just not ready to act like the distance is impossible before we’ve even tried it.”
Connor was silent again, and Caleb saw the man who had come home at nineteen and stayed.
“You’re nineteen,” Connor said. Not unkindly.
“I know how old I am.”
“You’ve got your whole…” He stopped. “You should be going to Thunder Bay and playing hockey and meeting people and figuring out who you are without…”
“Without what?” The question came sharper than Caleb meant it to.
“Without someone who sees me? Without the first person who’s ever told me I was better than I knew?
And I don’t just mean at hockey.” He had rehearsed none of this.
The words arrived unevenly, but honestly.
“I’ve spent my whole life being told who I was, who I should be, what I should want, and where I should go.
I’m not going to let you do the same thing, no matter how noble and self-sacrificing you think you’re being! ”
Connor opened his mouth and closed it.
“I want the tryout,” Caleb said. “And I want this. Believe it or not, I’m old enough to know what I want, even if you think I’m not old enough for you to fully believe it yet.
So I’m not asking you to decide or to promise anything, just to not make the choice for me by pretending you don’t want the same thing.
Do you even want the same thing? Because I think you do. ”
His hands trembled as he said the words he hadn’t known he needed to say. He pressed them together between his knees so he would not reach for the mug and spill it.
Silence settled between them.
“I want the same thing,” Connor said finally, his voice barely carrying over the fire.
“Do you?” Caleb asked. “Because I really need to be sure that you’re sure.”
“Of course I’m sure,” Connor said, more strongly now. “Ninety minutes is nothing.”
“Less than playing a full game of hockey.”
Connor looked at the fire. “I already checked the drive,” he said. “I was never going to not drive those ninety minutes, Caleb.” His thumb moved once against the mug. “There’s a motel by the rink. Nothing fancy, but clean enough.”
Caleb said nothing, his eyes wide.
“I looked it up yesterday,” Connor said.
Connor watched the fire before facing Caleb again.
“I’m glad you showed up on my lake,” he said.
The sentence was simple. It landed harder than any of the longer conversations they had ever had.
“Your lake?” Caleb said.
“Our lake,” Connor said. And then, because he was Connor and couldn’t quite let it go: “I mean, where would you be if not for my coaching? You were rough.”
“I was,” Caleb said. “I’m not anymore.”
“No,” Connor said. “You’re not.”
Outside, snow slipped from a branch and struck the cabin roof.
Connor set his mug down and turned to reach for Caleb. His hand came to rest at the side of Caleb’s face, thumb beneath his ear, certain and unhurried. Caleb closed the remaining distance.
He kissed Connor first. He tasted of coffee and the peppermints he kept in the truck. When Connor tried to change the angle, Caleb kept a hand in his hair and held him where he was and Connor relented. His mouth curved once against Caleb’s before he let Caleb take the lead.
When he pulled back, Caleb took Connor’s hand and drew him up from the couch. “Come here.” He did not loosen his grip when Connor rose.
Caleb’s pulse ran fast. Wanting Connor was not the same as knowing every move, but he would not give the lead back.
He guided Connor down to the rug and pulled the hoodie over his head.
One sleeve caught at Connor’s watch. When Connor reached to free it, Caleb gently pushed his hand away and did it for him.
He set the watch on the table, then traced the pale scar beneath Connor’s ribs, the one Connor had once dismissed as nothing, and followed it with his mouth.
Connor’s hands came up automatically. Again Caleb stopped him and pressed them back to his sides. “Let me.” And again, Connor relented.
Caleb knelt and took him into his mouth before Connor could make another move.
He varied the pressure until Connor swore and reached for him.
Pulling off, Caleb caught both wrists and this time pressed them to the rug above Connor’s head.
Connor tested the hold once. Caleb tightened his grip. Connor settled.
“My turn,” Caleb said. “Okay?”
Connor’s fingers flexed once against Caleb’s hold, then he nodded and went still.
Caleb reached for the lube and condom. He prepared Connor patiently, stroking him with his other hand and reading Connor’s small movements: a shift of one knee, a hand starting toward Caleb’s wrist, the faint crease between his eyebrows when Caleb missed the angle.
Then Caleb found it. Connor’s head went back against the rug.
“Your hands,” Caleb said. “Do you want them free?”
Connor tested Caleb’s grip again.
“No,” Connor said. “Keep them there.”
Releasing Connor’s wrists, Caleb rolled on the condom while Connor watched with hooded eyes, saying nothing.
When Caleb settled between his thighs, Connor reached for his hip.
Caleb smiled, returned both wrists above Connor’s head, and kept them there, the muscles in Connor’s torso, chest, and shoulders stretching beautifully.
“You said keep them there.”
Connor’s mouth opened, then closed. “I did.”
“Good boy,” he almost purred. He circled Connor with two fingers, sliding in, then out again, and again, and once more.
Then, shifting his hips, Caleb replaced his fingers with his cock.
He watched Connor as he pushed in, reading his expression and adjusting as he went.
He built the rhythm slowly, Connor gripping him hot and tight, feeling every inch of his length.
Caleb leaned forward until he could kiss Connor, their tongues meeting as their bodies ground together.
Pulling away from his mouth, Caleb thrust harder and faster, a little at a time.
Connor’s wrists turned once beneath his hands, but he didn’t say a word, didn’t offer advice. He was not the coach here.
From this side of the intimacy, Caleb learned Connor anew.
He discovered the angle that made Connor’s toes curl into the rug, his knees bending up into Caleb’s ass, and the rhythm that drew a hungry curse through his teeth, his wrists suddenly straining against Caleb’s grip and his own self-control.
And he learned to bring them together, their movements finding synchronicity, moving together like they did on the ice, like one.
Connor moaned Caleb’s name in that way that came as a warning, and Caleb kissed him, feeling the unfinished word against his mouth.
Connor was going to come, his neck craning back while his hands strained beneath Caleb’s.
Letting go of his wrists, Caleb intertwined his fingers with Connor’s, redoubling his effort, his own passion building to a peak.
Connor came only seconds before Caleb, still shooting onto his stomach and chest as he felt Caleb release inside him.
Both men cried out before collapsing into each other’s sweat-slicked bodies.
They stayed on the rug, naked and exposed. Connor’s forearm rested across Caleb’s waist. The fire had burned lower. Neither mentioned September again.
Connor’s fingers were still laced with Caleb’s. Caleb kissed his temple and left his mouth there until Connor nudged him with one shoulder.
“It’s not that cold out, you know. Not really.”
“I’m aware. What’s your point?” Caleb asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
Connor stood, holding out his hand to help Caleb up.
“Come skate with me,” Connor said. “Just like this.”
“You’re insane,” Caleb said. The flat declarative of a man stating a fact.