Chapter Twenty-One
Nate
Ihurt. Everything from my body to my heart hurt as I dragged myself into the locker room after practice. I had wrecked myself to stop thinking about Vee.
Yeah, that worked really well.
Six weeks later, I still missed him like I had on that day when Bo had dragged me off to his favourite bakery.
I got out of my skates, peeled off my clothes and protective gear, and limped into the shower.
We’d played the Osterfeld Gators two days ago, and I’d pushed myself harder than ever.
The pain and exhaustion helped my brain rest, at least for a couple of hours. But as soon as I got off the ice, my brain latched onto Vee again without fail.
My soul hurt even worse than the bruise the size of my palm Chase Fucking Harper had given me on my thigh. He was a cocky asshole, but that man played hockey like a god. Another thing I’d never admit out loud.
I snorted and held my face in the shower’s spray, desperate for the warm water to soothe my sore body.
I tried a few times in the last six weeks to find his cabin but had no luck. He had taken me there in the dark, and I’d been too distracted by everything that had happened to remember anything on the way back to Veitsreuth.
I was still tempted to get lost in the forest again. The hopeless romantic part of me hoped that Vee would come for me. It was getting colder though, and I definitely didn’t want to die from cold exposure in a Bavarian forest.
When I hadn’t been able to find Vee’s house the last time I’d driven out there—how the hell was I supposed to tell one part of these Bavarian woods from another—I had screamed for him for what felt like hours. In the end, my voice had given out before my heart had been ready to abandon the mission.
At one point, I convinced myself that he didn’t even exist and that my brain had just invented him as a trauma response.
And my brain was great, but it could never have made up someone so perfect.
So I did what anyone with ADHD and a slightly unnatural talent for sleuthing did: I searched his name on Kraken and dug up every shred of information I could find.
The top hits were from the Franconian Forest Protection Service website.
Vee worked on a team with Frederik Müller, who I had talked to on the phone.
I was surprised to find that he was another Elvertritsch.
Unlike Vee, he was softer around the edges and had a burnt orange and dark blue plumage.
The picture showed their only human colleague sandwiched between Frederik and Vee in all his rugged glory.
The caption told me that he was called Johann Schaller and had a dog named Brutus.
I filed the information away and kept digging through newspaper articles and blog posts.
I found Vee planting trees with a group of kids who all looked up at him in amazement.
There were pictures of him leading a group of pensioners on a hike through the forest, and the most recent one was an update on mushroom poachers who had turned out to be some kind of moss creatures who needed the mushrooms for healing purposes.
But what interested me more than moss people and mushrooms was Vee’s hockey past. Except what I discovered made me wish I’d never started looking. It finally made sense why he’d lied to me, but the reason for it? It was fucking terrible.
Vitus Kolb had played for the Pumas in his youth.
The few videos I found showed a D-man with bite.
God, he’d been so good. At a game against Canada’s junior hockey team, he’d been scouted.
19-year-old Vee had packed his bags and moved to Vancouver.
He had played there until a year before my career took off, or we might have played each other.
The final puzzle piece I had needed was a post on a newspaper website about the tragic death of a young hockey player on Vee’s team. Linden Hennessey, a promising winger, had had his throat slashed in a terrible accident.
A violent shiver raced down my body, and I turned the water warmer.
His team, their opponents, and the stadium of watchers had seen Hennessey bleed out on the ice. His family had been in the bleachers, too.
The condolence book on the Caribous’ website had hundreds of entries, the most recent ones were only a few weeks old. The latest entry had come from a V.K. on the tenth anniversary of Linden’s death.
’I still miss you. V’
It had taken me a couple of days to make sense of it all. After going through Linden’s ArgoS account that was still live, I was sure they’d been a couple. Vee quit playing when Linden died. He moved back to Germany and got the job as a forest ranger.
It didn’t make my situation easier, but I understood why he’d sent me away. He couldn’t live with the fear of losing someone else.
I didn’t bother looking for him again after that, but I set up alerts on all platforms I knew in case one of his old jerseys cropped up. It was a terrible idea and would hurt like hell, but then I’d have something to remind me about him.
We shouldn’t be.
I’d given myself a week to grieve, maybe two.
A week and then fun Decks would be back.
And I somehow came back. I cracked jokes at practice and played great in the games. I pushed myself in the gym, but a part of me was still missing in the forest, yelling for Vee at the top of my lungs.
Losing him—and damn, I couldn’t believe how weird that sounded after less than one day together—hit me hard.
All day, every day, I prayed to whatever deity listened that the pain would become more bearable.
How the hell am I supposed to make it through the next fifty years?
Or would I simply fade away?
Is it possible to die of a broken heart?
How was I supposed to forget the emerald green plumage and blood red comb? I vividly remembered the texture of his feathers under my fingertips and I recalled perfectly that they were so glossy they felt almost wet. Oh, how he’d moaned when I had gone down on him in that shower…
Shit.
Getting a boner in our locker room was the last thing I wanted. I switched off the water and grabbed a clean towel from the shelf on the wall.
I tried my best not to think about Vee, but my thoughts strayed back to him like a mangy dog to the butcher’s shop.
I’m in so much pain, even my dick hurts.
It wasn’t the hurt he had caused me. God, it had hurt so fucking good. My dick wanted to feel his warm, slick beak surrounding him again. And yeah, I knew exactly how pathetic I was.
Vee was the first man I let inside me—repeatedly. How could I give up on him when I still felt his dick with that deep ridge in my ass?
Once I covered up my hard-on with my boxers and jeans, I collapsed on the bench and vigorously rubbed my hands over my face.
It was covered with a few days worth of beard.
It itched, but I didn’t find it in me to shave or care much about…
anything, really. I threw on whatever clean clothes I had without looking at my haggard, shaggy face in the mirror.
When my head emerged from my sweater, Arne approached me like a spooked horse.
He rested his hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Hey Nate, are you okay?” my captain asked, with a concerned expression. His dark blue eyes pierced me, and it made me feel like he saw straight through me.
“Yeah. Great, thanks,” I lied. “I’m not really on top of my game today.” I averted my eyes. I’d only confided in Bo what had happened in the forest. The others had got the vanilla version.
They didn’t need to know what still fucking broke me.
Arne stepped back.
“No partying with the guys tonight.” His eyes flicked down to the bruise at my thigh. “Get some rest, bror. And put ice on that.”
I nodded. “Will do, man.” I wasn’t in the mood for going out, anyway.
Bo had tried to coax me out of the house a few times but I stayed home and watched some old games or searched Vee’s name on Kraken for the umpteenth time, desperate for a new scrap of information I hadn’t found before, but only ran into dead ends.
I sighed and put on my long-sleeved shirt.
Coach Jerke’s only requirement was that we kept our muscles warm after practice. No suits. So German.
“See you on Monday.”
With no games, I had two days of pure boredom where I could fantasise about Vee.
Once I’d put my jacket on, the one with the pin Bo had got for me that read “Hearts Not Parts”, I waited for the green guy.
It wasn’t quite the same as Vee—I totally wasn’t into Bo at all, he was like a brother to me—but at least he was green and about Vee’s height.
If I squint…
Ignoring everyone, I followed him out of the rink’s back entrance. There was a commotion a few feet away, and I kept my head down and dragged myself behind my Trollish shield.
“Man, dich hab ich ja ewig nicht gesehen. Was treibt dich denn hierher? Nik, das ist Vitus,” Leo said. “Wir haben früher mal zusammen gespielt.”
I stopped dead and a gasp escaped me that sounded like someone had punctured a balloon. Shit, I had zero cool.
“Oh my God, Bo,” I said through numb lips.
“What’s going on?” he asked, raising his eyes off his phone display. “Nate, is that…?” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah.” I couldn’t move a muscle. My feet were glued to the asphalt, and I thought one push and my knees would buckle. Everything in me wanted to break down and let Vee pick up my pieces, but he surely wasn’t here for me.
Why is he here?
“What are you waiting for?” Bo raised both eyebrows and pointedly tilted his head over at Vee, telling me with everything but words to get my shit together and fucking head over to where he stood.
I exhaled a deep breath, and his head snapped up. Over the shoulders of my teammates he looked at me. There was so much longing in his gaze that the breath hitched in my throat.
“Nate Decker, you get over there to him right now, or I’ll make you.”
I glanced around at Bo. His fangs were bared and he glared at me.
“But what if he doesn’t want me?”
“Gods, Decks, you humans are so blind. Look at him. He looks like someone kicked his puppy. And he’s hot,” Bo added with a chuckle. “He came here, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” I looked back at Vee. He did look like someone hurt him. The feathers in his comb stuck up as if he’d run his hands through them a thousand times.
“He came here for you. Go!” Bo gave me a little shove and before I even knew it, I walked over to the flock of people, drawn by the tallest person in the group.He’s here. For me. Or maybe he was just nearby and wanted to see his former team mates.
“Hey Nate, meet Vitus Kolb.” Leo, one of our forwards, flung an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer.
He winced when he moved his shoulder, something he thought none of us had clocked yet.
Vee’s expression hardened when Leo touched me.
“He used to be on our team. Seriously, that was fifteen years ago?” He looked at Vee and recoiled a little at the dangerous expression on his face.
“Fifteen years,” Vee acknowledged in a stony voice and without taking his eyes off mine.
He held out his hand. I took it straight away and stepped out of Leo’s embrace.
“Oh, we’ve met before. Hello, Nathaniel. ”
Nathaniel? I suppressed a snort. Is he trying to show off how well he knows me? The others mostly still called me Nathan or believed my parents were crazy and named me Decks Decker.
“Vee, why are you here?” I asked, still holding his hand and not giving a damn what my teammates thought.
“Can we talk?” His voice was low and full of suppressed emotion.
Does he hurt as much as I do?
“Yeah.” I nodded, unable to tear my eyes away.
“Bis bald, Leute. War nett euch mal wiederzusehen,” he brushed them off.
The other guys looked confused and said goodbye to him. Then Vee and I walked down the street, still holding hands.
“How about coffee or a walk in the park?” I racked my brain for ideas on where to go. Maybe we can find a quiet corner at Bo’s favourite bakery, or—
“No. How about we talk at your place?”
I stopped in my tracks, and our eyes met.
Poor baby, he looks exhausted.
But a glimmer of hope sparkled in his eyes.
“Come on, it’s not far from here.”
We didn’t speak until we shut the door behind us and pounced on each other.
Desperate coos escaped Vee when he fought the urge to tear my clothes with his claws and tried to undress me properly.
“Just fucking tear them. I don’t give a shit. I need you naked!” I groaned and pulled him closer. He whimpered my name, then yanked my shirt off and planted open-beaked kisses on my chest. He dragged my jeans and boxers down my legs
Oh fuck yes.
Vee sank to his knees like a priest before the altar. His feathery palms gripped my hips as he deep-throated my dick.
The knot in my chest loosened, and I sank my fingers into his comb as his sleek feathers brushed over my skin.
“Oh, Pecs,” I groaned, almost doubling over when he sucked me deeper into his warm heat. “I’m not gonna last long. I’m sorry.” His amber eyes met mine as tears streamed down his face. “Sorry, oh God.” I slowed down and brushed his tears away.
Let’s not fuck his face like a man possessed while he cries, yeah?
Vee’s fingers dug into my hips and he cooed again. It sounded like ‘Let go.’
And I did. I plunged my dick inside his wet beak, needing to come. My hips snapped forward one last time, and I grabbed his shoulders to steady myself.
“Fuck, Vee. I missed you so much, baby.” My voice broke as every single muscle in my body clenched with the brute force of my orgasm.
He swallowed and cooed around my dick buried to the hilt in his throat.
I would’ve collapsed on top of him, but he held me up. Then he cradled me in his arms and carried me to the bedroom.
Vee placed me on the bed with a tenderness that made me want to curl up in a ball and weep.
He’s here.
He took off his clothes, climbed on the bed, and wrapped his arms around me.
“I love you,” he whispered into my hair.