Chapter 5
TAYLOR
So, being on the same page as Vasily was great and all. Yesterday’s conversation definitely helped put my mind at ease and put some of my ridiculous issues to bed.
I wouldn’t say it helped me concentrate on hockey, though.
We had a game tonight, so we needed to be laser-focused today, but one look at Vasily in the locker room completely blanked my brain. He’d been out on the ice by the time I’d started putting on my gear yesterday. Today, I walked in just in time to be treated to him in his base layer.
Holy. Fuck .
Every hockey player developed a certain recognizable physique—low body fat, a lean upper body, asses and thighs for days. That wasn’t a novelty anymore.
But the guys at the NAPH level were even more sculpted and powerful.
Though Vasily was still regaining his game condition, he clearly hadn’t slacked off during his recovery.
The way his back muscles moved under his thin black base layer was mesmerizing.
The shape of his waist, ass, and thighs—Jesus.
There was no way this man could buy pants off the rack. No. Way.
I busied myself putting on my own gear, and I miraculously kept myself from having any, shall we say, visible response to my hot teammate.
God, Taylor. Get a grip. He isn’t the first gorgeous man you’ve seen in a locker room.
Very true. And heaven help me if I ever made it to the NAPH team where I was surrounded by Greek gods.
I shook myself and focused on pulling on my own base layer. I was stupid. So, so stupid. I’d been a gay man in hockey locker rooms since forever. I never paid attention to my teammates while they were changing. Not even when it was a teammate I’d wanted so bad I couldn’t see straight.
At least Vasily and I had put that part to bed, and I didn’t feel like such a damned tool about it. Just walking into the same locker room as Morris had been mortifying, and I would never stop being glad that asshole was gone.
Without thinking about it, I glanced Vasily’s way.
Oh, fuck me.
During the few minutes my brain had been spinning out, he’d put on his chest protector and most of his other pads. Was he hot in all that? Of course he was. I didn’t imagine there was much that wouldn’t make him look hot.
I once again tore my gaze away, and I finished putting on my gear. Then I headed out to the ice to warm up and pull my stupid head together. I really was glad Vasily and I had talked things through, but goddamn, he was a lot more distracting when I wasn’t irrationally pissed off at him.
And as I warmed up my legs and lazily shot a few pucks, it occurred to me that I probably hadn’t been as mad at him as I’d let myself believe.
It had just been easier to be salty about being rejected than it was to let my guard down and admit how strong this attraction really was.
That attraction was a whole lot easier to ignore when I convinced myself I didn’t like him.
I did like him. And fuck if that killed any chance I had of ignoring this attraction.
Eh. It’ll be good practice for if I ever make an NAPH roster.
That thought made me chuckle, which pulled me partway out of this fog. Enough to skate and get myself focused enough to at least make it through practice without making an ass of myself.
As my teammates—including Vasily—came out to the sheet, my thoughts were divided between him and hockey.
Even as we ran through some drills, I couldn’t help turning one of Vasily’s comments over and over in the back of my mind.
He’d said it was probably just as well we hadn’t hooked up, and that we’d have had some serious regrets the next day.
When he’d said that, it was like realizing I’d come close to some catastrophic injury or something without even knowing it.
It was the feeling of “oh, shit, that could’ve been super bad!
” that left me out of breath and my brain reeling from the reality of the bullet I’d dodged.
That feeling had intensified after Vasily admitted that his ex was his first and only.
What if he’d slept with me and regretted it?
Even if we hadn’t had to face each other as teammates, I felt awful just imagining him walking away like that from a hookup with me.
I could stomach making my own mistakes; I was horrified by the idea of being someone else’s regret.
Just the thought of him thinking back on a night with me and wishing he could undo it—God, I never, ever wanted to do that to someone.
That night wasn’t one of my fondest memories, but at least it hadn’t played out like that .
So… all’s well that ends well, or however that saying went. Now we could move on with our lives, be friendly, and—for the next two weeks—be teammates.
Especially since having him here was a great opportunity to learn from him.
One of my coaches in Vegas had told us that whenever NAPH players joined us for brief stints, we had to take full advantage.
Even the ones who’d been sent down to unfuck themselves after lengthy slumps were still elite players; we’d be stupid not to learn as much as we could from them while we had the chance.
Vasily was no exception.
He was mesmerizing to watch. It was obvious he was still holding back a bit because of his injury, but Vasily Abashev at eighty-five percent was head and shoulders above most of us on a great day.
The speed. The precision. The way he could see the ice and make plays happen.
I aspired to be half the player he was, and the more I watched him, the more I understood I had a long way to go.
There’d been one guy in Vegas—Brandis—who’d played four games with us before returning to the Aces after wrist surgery.
He’d been such a dick. The man had been a first-round draft pick who’d never been to the minors in his professional career, and he wasn’t about to let any of us forget it.
If a teammate missed a pass from him, Brandis would berate them for “not bringing your fucking A-game” and “holding the whole goddamned team back with this amateur hour bullshit.” Didn’t matter that his pass had been trash, it was the fault of whichever lesser mortal hadn’t been able to handle it.
He was constantly acting like he was one of the coaches rather than a teammate, and his high-and-mighty bullshit had everyone hating his guts by the time he went back up.
We were all unabashedly gleeful when he finally left.
We also might’ve enjoyed the schadenfreude a bit too much when he was utterly snakebitten for his first two weeks, notching just two assists in seven games.
When Vasily finished in Everett, no one was going to be thinking don’t let the door hit you on the way out, dickhead. If anything, I suspected I wouldn’t be the only one missing him.
He worked hard , practicing like he was about to play in an NAPH cup final rather than a regular season minor league game.
Any time he wasn’t actively participating in a drill, he was watching those who were.
Sometimes he talked with the coaches while they watched, as if they were discussing how the drill was going.
Sometimes he’d pull aside a teammate and offer to help with something, or give him advice, and his help and advice worked .
He was always kind about it, too; he never tried to embarrass anyone or draw attention to their mistakes.
He was discreet and genuinely helpful, and by halfway through his second practice with us, even the most starstruck kids on the team were talking to him easily.
They regarded him as a veteran player who could help them develop and improve their game, which he clearly was.
After practice ended, Brown and Nixon asked if he’d stay out with them to help with their tip-ins. A solid hour later, as I was coming out of the lounge after eating, the three of them came trooping in from the ice.
“Be careful that close to the crease,” he was telling them as they clomped into the locker room.
“You want to get in the goalie’s face, but don’t make it easy for them to call goaltender interference.
” He tsked and rolled his eyes. “Some want to draw penalties, but some of them are babies about it.”
“Hey!” Hoskins glared at Vasily from where he was sitting by his locker stall, though there wasn’t a lot of heat behind the look. “We’re not babies!”
“Not all of you.” Vasily dropped onto the bench with a grunt. “But you do try to draw penalties!”
“So do you!”
“But that’s different.”
“What? How?”
Vasily peeled off his jersey, and I was so caught up in the sight of him in his pads and base layer, I almost missed him replying, “Because the penalties I draw give us a power play.” He undid his chest protector and smirked. “Goalie interference penalties are a pain in my ass.”
That had everyone laughing and Hoskins rolling his eyes. He threw a sweaty, balled-up sock at Vasily, who deflected it into Nix’s lap.
The guys launched into a spirited debate about whether goaltender interference was good or bad based on how often it worked in our favor versus the other teams’.
It was all lighthearted chirping, of course; we all drew penalties whenever possible, and Hoskins had drawn his fair share, too, which had worked in our favor.
It was just fun to talk shit because, well, that was half of hockey.
We all continued with our post-practice routines.
Before too much longer, the locker room had mostly cleared out aside from the equipment managers.
The lounge, however, was lively. Vasily, Brown, Nix, Hoskins, and I had all commandeered a table, and even long after they’d finished eating, we hung out.
“Okay, I have to know.” Brown thumped his knuckle on the table. “That time you and McLean threw down in the playoffs—was that really because he tripped Jorgensen? Or was there something else going on?”