CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The following evening, Graham followed Connor into the visitors’ locker room in the New York Rockets’ arena after warmups, nodding along as he ranted.
“Fuck! I hate playing this team,” Connor grumbled. “Their fans are obnoxious and every fucking time something happens. I am going to spend the whole first period waiting for shit to go sideways.”
“What do you mean?” Graham asked.
Connor pulled off his gloves and tossed them into his stall.
“I mean, they have a bunch of assholes on their team and Crawford’s always getting into it with this one fan.
The dude must have season tickets or something, because he never misses a game.
Hell, I think he’s showed up to a couple in Boston when New York is playing there even.
He shouts at Crawford from the penalty box like it’s his fucking job.
” Connor’s glowering expression lightened, and he shot Graham a small grin over his shoulder.
“To be honest, he’s gotten some good chirps in over the years. ”
Graham laughed. “Yeah, I remember hearing Crawford bitch about the guy.”
“That’s because he’s an asshole,” Luke groused as he lumbered past, already stripping off his gear. “And so is Renner.”
Connor rolled his eyes at the mention of the New York player, Mirsad Renner. “Plus, Tanner’s got beef or whatever with Coach Rasmussen’s son. Did you see them going at it across the red line?”
“No,” Graham said, but he’d been focused on his own routines and not close enough to hear what they were saying.
“They were antagonizing each other the whole fucking time.”
“I mean, it’s to our advantage if Tanner makes Leif lose his cool,” Graham pointed out with a shrug. “He’s too fucking good.”
Leif Rasmussen was the son of famed former player Aksel Rasmussen. After Aksel’s retirement, he’d turned to coaching and was now the associate coach for the Harriers.
Leif played for the New York Rockets and was a young up-and-coming superstar.
He had the icy good looks and determination of his supermodel mother and an absolute sniper’s aim from his father—the kind that made even seasoned goaltenders quake in their skates.
Breaking his concentration could only be a good thing.
“Yeah,” Connor said drily. “Except he tends to make Tanner lose his cool too.”
“He does not!” Tanner protested from across the room.
“Oh, come on,” Connor scoffed. “Every single fuckin’ game we play against them.”
Tanner scowled.
“What’s your beef with him anyway, Clay?” Graham asked, taking a seat in his stall and double-checking the tape on his stick.
“He’s—he’s just a fucking dick, okay?” Tanner said, yanking off one of his skates. “We played together in Juniors in Massachusetts, and he always acted like he was so much better than everyone else.”
“I mean, he was,” Connor said with a laugh. “They kept calling him a prodigy, even if he was a little undersized for a while. And his skating wasn’t quite there yet. But we could all see the potential. Tons of teams were hoping they’d get him in the draft. I know Boston was for a while there.”
“Yeah, well it got really fucking old to play with him when he was acting like a snobby-ass bitch all the time,” Tanner snapped, unlacing his second skate.
“Why do you fucking care? He’s a forward and you’re a defenseman, it wasn’t like you were competing for spots on the roster or anything.”
Graham ripped off the tape, catching a glimpse of Tanner’s scowl.
“We were on the PP unit together a lot. And I had to put up with him being a dick about it, acting like he knew how to play my position better than I did.”
Tanner yanked off his second skate and stalked across the locker room, disappearing into the equipment area.
Connor winced. “Shit. I probably made this worse. Now he’s really going to lose it tonight.”
“You want me to talk to him?” Graham asked with a frown.
Connor grimaced. “Would you?”
Graham set his stick aside. Mickey had risen to his feet too, frowning after him but when Graham frowned, silently asking Mickey if he wanted to take over—he was Tanner’s roommate, after all—he shook his head, then nodded for Graham to go after him.
Graham found Tanner still in the equipment area, sitting on the floor in his gear and holding one skate. Not doing anything with it, just staring at it.
The sullen, quiet stillness was so unlike him it sent a flicker of unease through Graham’s body.
“Uhh, hey,” he said quietly. “Everything okay there, Clay?”
“Yes,” Tanner snapped, then sighed, all the fight going out of him. “No. I don’t know.”
“So, you and Leif—”
Tanner’s head snapped up. “What about me and Leif?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like you take the stuff with him pretty … personally. Normally it rolls right off your back. What’s that all about?”
Tanner exhaled and let his head fall back until it thunked against the wall. “I don’t know. I—you know me. I always want to be friends with everyone. And Leif … he was always kind of aloof.”
“Okay,” Graham said slowly. That explained some of it. Maybe.
“So, like, when we played together, I kept trying harder. And he acted like more and more of an asshole. And it turned into a thing.”
“What kind of thing?” Graham asked carefully.
“You know, I’d needle him, and he’d wind even tighter until he’d explode and it was funny. Well, I thought it was funny.” Tanner shot him a faint grin, looking a little more like his normal self. “He didn’t find it as hilarious.”
“I bet he didn’t,” Graham said with a laugh.
“There was this one road trip though. The spring before our draft. Someone snuck in booze, and we all ended up shit-faced in a hotel room. He wasn’t gonna drink but I—I goaded him into it. And later that night … I don’t know. A line got crossed, I guess.”
Graham frowned, not entirely sure what that meant. Sex? One of them saying something really out of line? With Tanner, who knew?
Graham was about to ask when Tanner spoke again.
“We had a big game against our rivals the next day. We were all hungover but Leif was especially in a mood. Coach kept yelling at us to get it together and stop arguing—but I couldn’t leave it alone.
It was dumb but I couldn’t stop poking at him and he kinda—he exploded, and his playing went to shit and we lost the game. ”
Tanner chewed at his thumbnail, looking uncharacteristically miserable.
“And he blamed you for that?” Graham guessed.
“Uhh, yeah. And worst of all, he—there was a scout there. A Boston scout.”
“Huh,” Graham said. “And he wanted to play for Boston, yeah?”
“That was all Leif wanted,” Tanner admitted. “It was all he could talk about. Getting drafted by them like his dad.”
“Ahh,” Graham said, wincing as some of the pieces starting to come together.
Aksel Rassmussen had been drafted by Boston, then played for New York for a while. There had been something strange about the trade, if Graham remembered right, though the senior Rasmussen had won back-to-back cups with New York, so he supposed it had all worked out in the end.
“And Leif blames you for losing that opportunity to play for the team that drafted his father?” Graham guessed.
“Yeah. He does.”
“And you feel bad about it?”
“I mean, kinda.”
“You could try being less of a dick to him now,” Graham pointed out.
Tanner grinned. “Well, let’s not get crazy here.”
Graham held out a hand. “Okay, c’mon. Let’s go. We’ve got some hockey to play.”
“Yeah, okay,” Tanner said, reaching out and letting Graham haul him to his feet, his familiar smile lighting up his face again. “I guess we can do that.”
Thad watched the play on the ice intently as Graham shot out from a scrum of players and across the Harriers’ defensive zone.
It had been a scoreless first period despite Boston’s best efforts.
But as Graham carried the puck across the ice, Thad could feel it in his gut that something was about to change.
A moment later, Graham deked, then rocketed a shot across open ice to Tanner, who snapped it over to Connor who waited in the slot.
Connor neatly tucked the puck into the net between the New York goalie’s blocker and pad and the lamp lit up.
Enthusiastic as ever, Tanner threw himself in Connor’s direction, hollering something and making his captain stagger back before he caught himself.
The rest of the guys on the ice piled on and Thad smiled at the sight of the team celebrating.
The end of last season had been rough on everyone and starting out the new one with a loss to New Jersey hadn’t made anyone happy.
A win here tonight would do wonders for morale.
The celly broke up, guys streaming back to the bench for a commercial break and Thad laughed at Crawford getting a grip on Tanner’s helmet and jostling him. He snapped a few photos of their interactions, knowing it would go over well on social media.
Those two always made him laugh. They acted like siblings—honestly, they reminded Thad of him and Gavin—and although they seemed like an unlikely defensive pair, they played well together.
He watched the crowd, taking a few quick photos of them too. But, as always, Thad’s gaze eventually drifted back to Graham.
He sat on the bench, talking intently to Tanner. Thad couldn’t quite get used to the funny little jolt he got at the sight of Graham now.
Looking at him made him want to reach out and pull him close. Hold him.
And though Thad couldn’t do it in public, certainly couldn’t do it during a game, even if they had been close enough to touch, it still left him feeling exposed. Like everyone would see how pathetically eager he was for Graham’s time and attention.
Graham laughed at something and without thinking, Thad zoomed in and got the shot. It wasn’t one he’d post on social media. From a compositional standpoint, it wasn’t very good.
But he liked the look on Graham’s face. The way his teeth flashed, even and white, as he opened his mouth to laugh.
That jolt went through Thad again. That desire to cup Graham’s cheek and feel him lean into it.