Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Leo’s pulse was already up before he touched the ice.
Not nerves. He didn’t get nervous before games anymore, hadn’t since juniors, when the stakes felt like the end of the world because he didn’t know yet that there was more to life than hockey.
This was something else. A buzz running beneath the pregame routine, sharpening everything: the snap of his pads, the pull of tape around his shin, the cold air filtering through the tunnel as they lined up for warm-ups.
Dawson was in the building. Somewhere in those stands, behind the glass, in a seat he’d paid for and driven twenty minutes to sit in because Leo had asked and Dawson had said yes.
Leo grabbed his stick from the rack and filed out with the team.
The Forum was packed, the lower bowl loud in blue and silver. Leo scanned the crowd during warm-ups without being obvious about it, taking laps near the glass, and on his second pass along the far boards, he found him.
Dark jacket, shoulders tight, gripping his own elbows like he was holding himself in place. Surrounded by strangers in Stags jerseys who had no idea what it had cost the mechanic from Wyatt’s to buy that ticket.
Their eyes met through the glass. Dawson didn’t wave, didn’t smile. He tipped his chin half an inch. That was enough.
Leo took a shot from the top of the circle and buried it over Ford’s glove. Skated back to center, grinning and not trying to hide it.
“You look happy,” Novo said, pulling up beside him. “That’s suspicious.”
“I’m always happy.”
“You’re never happy before warm-ups. You’re focused. This is different.”
Leo stretched his neck, rolling out the stiffness. “Maybe I’m evolving.”
Novo gave him a flat look and skated away, which was about as much engagement as Novo ever offered before a game. Leo didn’t care. He took three more shots, loosened up at center ice, and when the horn sounded for the end of warm-ups, he allowed himself one more glance toward Dawson’s seat.
Dawson was watching the ice. Not the Jumbotron, not his phone. The ice.
Leo headed for the tunnel with his pulse running a few beats faster than warm-ups should’ve left it.
Rockford came out hitting, but Leo’s legs were under him from the first shift.
He drove wide along the boards, cut underneath the D-man, curled back toward the slot.
Carter found him with a pass that threaded two sticks.
Wrist shot, top corner. The net snapped back, the horn blew, and the building went wild
Jonesy got to him first, both arms around Leo’s neck, helmet crashing into his.
“V! You absolute animal!”
Carter was next, glove tapping his back. Leo skated past the bench and knocked gloves down the line. Every pass had connected. Every shift mattered. Those cheers were for him, and Dawson was here to see his goal.
He didn’t look at the stands. He didn’t have to. The awareness of Dawson watching had been sitting low in his stomach since the puck drop, steady as a second heartbeat, and it was making him play harder than he had since his rookie year.
The second goal came off a one-timer from the top of the circle, Carter feeding him through traffic.
The horn again. Leo’s hands went up before he processed it.
Carter skated past with a nod that carried more weight than Jonesy’s celebration.
The assist came in the third, a stretch pass that caught Novo in stride, and Jonesy grabbed Leo’s shoulder on the bench and shook him.
“Hatty watch! Come on, V, one more!”
“I’ll settle for the win.”
“You’ll settle for nothing. You’re a menace, and I love it.”
When the buzzer sounded at the end of the third period, the Stags had won four to two.
The locker room was chaos. Jonesy had the speaker at full volume, something with too much bass that rattled the stall dividers, and Carter was doing a dance that Leo hoped was ironic. Riggs pelted Leo with a wadded-up roll of tape from across the room.
“Two and an apple, V. That’s a steak dinner.”
“You’re buying?” Leo caught the tape and fired it back.
“I said it’s a steak dinner. I didn’t say I was paying for it.”
Leo shook his head. “Real generous, Riggsy.”
“Best game I’ve seen you play in blue,” Ford said.
“Best game I’ve played in blue.”
Ford leaned back in his stall. “Keep that up, and I’ll stop worrying about you.”
“Were you worrying about me?”
Ford smiled, tired and knowing, and didn’t answer. Carter, two stalls down, folded his jersey with his usual precision and said without looking up, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”
Leo toweled his hair and reveled in the win.
Jonesy was telling Russ a story with his full body, bare-chested and gesturing, and Russ was laughing so hard he couldn’t get his shin pads off.
Novo leaned against his stall and shook his head at both of them.
Ski threw a water bottle at Jonesy and missed by a foot, and Jonesy didn’t even pause.
In Orlando, the locker room had been careful around him.
Friendly enough, but structured. Guys standing close without ever closing the distance.
Here, Riggs threw tape at his head, Jonesy announced his stats to the room like a town crier, and Ford had just called his game the best he’d played in blue.
Leo belonged in this locker room with these men.
His phone buzzed in his jacket. He reached for it while Jonesy argued with Ski about music.
Mom
Have you talked to Phil this week?
Leo looked at the screen, then looked around the locker room. Russ still wheezing, Jonesy dancing like a fool, Carter watching all of it with the quiet satisfaction of a captain whose team had just won by two.
He put the phone back in his jacket. It would’ve been nice if his mom had even mentioned tonight’s performance, but in her eyes, putting up numbers like he had was the way to get a ticket out of Wisconsin.
For Leo, it was starting to feel like a way to guarantee he stuck around here unless he was lucky enough to get called up to the majors, which would be a quick trip down the interstate to Chicago.
Leo came through the door of The Penalty Box with Jonesy, Carter, and Russ.
Jonesy made straight for the big booth. Leo was greeted with handshakes and shoulder claps on the way through, people he recognized from the hardware store, the diner, and even the barbershop.
Leo took all of it—the noise, the hands on his back, the win still hot in his blood—while his eyes moved past every face until they found the right one.
Dawson was at the bar. Same stool, book closed in front of him, a half-finished beer leaving a ring on the wood. He looked up when Leo’s group came in and watched him cross the room without turning his head.
Jonesy was already waving Leo toward the booth. Carter had slid in. Russ was flagging down Wes. The whole team was pulling him in one direction, but Leo’s feet went in the other.
He dropped onto the stool beside Dawson and signaled Wes for a beer. His pulse was doing something stupid. He’d just scored twice in front of seven thousand people, and the thing making his hands unsteady was a man on a barstool who’d shown up because Leo asked.
“So?” Leo said.
“So what?”
“How was I?”
Dawson took a drink. “You were fine.”
“Fine?” Leo turned on the stool to face him. “That was fine?”
“I don’t know hockey.”
“You don’t need to know hockey to know I was incredible.”
Dawson’s mouth twitched. He was fighting it and losing. “You were fast.”
“Go on.”
“And that second one, the shot from the circle. I’ve never seen a puck go in that fast.” Dawson mock-swooned.
Leo gave him a playful shove. “Neither did the goalie.”
“So modest, Mr. Vargas.” Dawson shook his head, but the twitch had turned into a real smile, unguarded for half a second before he caught it.
Leo added this moment to the collection of memories: the hand-holding in Milwaukee, watching the sunset over a secluded lake, the sound Dawson had made on his couch. Every piece this man gave him cost something, and Leo cherished all of it.
“I think you’re my good luck charm,” Leo said. Quiet enough that the bar noise swallowed it before it reached anyone else.
Dawson’s hand tightened on his glass. He didn’t look away. “I’m sure you did just fine without me watching you play.”
“Nope, definitely better when you’re there,” Leo admitted. “The first game you come to see, and it was like everything finally clicked into place out there. I might need you at every game going forward.”
“Correlation isn’t causation.”
Leo grinned. “Did you just drop a statistics term on me in a dive bar?”
“I went to college for a semester. Some things stick.” Dawson drank his beer as the tips of his ears were red. Leo wanted to touch them, wanted to press his mouth right there where the flush started and feel the heat of it. He kept his hands on the bar.
Wes put a beer in front of Leo without being asked. Spotted Cow on tap. Leo didn’t think too hard about how he’d ordered a vodka soda the day he walked in, and now he couldn’t remember the last time he’d drank anything other than draft beer.
“Hell of a game tonight,” Wes said. “Ford let in that soft one, but don’t tell him I said that.”
“I would never.”
Wes winked and moved down the bar. At the far end, Gunnar was restocking the cooler.
When Wes reached him, he said something low that made Gunnar’s mouth twitch.
Wes hooked a finger through Gunnar’s belt loop, tugged once, and kept walking.
Gunnar shook his head, but he was still almost smiling when he reached for the next case.
Jonesy materialized behind them. “V! Get over here. Carter’s buying a round because he’s the captain and that’s the rules.”
“Since when are there rules about who’s buying drinks?”
“Since I made them up thirty seconds ago. Come on.” Jonesy looked at Dawson like he was seeing him for the first time. “You should come over, too. Any friend of V’s is welcome.”
Dawson shook his head. “I’m good here.”
“Suit yourself.” Jonesy clapped Leo’s shoulder and was gone, weaving back toward the booth where Russ was already flagging down Wes.
Leo leaned toward Dawson, close enough that his arm pressed against Dawson’s on the bar. “Stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I mean—stay. I’ll be back.”
He joined the guys in their booth. Carter had, in fact, bought a round, and Leo slid in next to Russ and told the story of the second goal from his angle, how he’d seen the lane open before Carter even looked up.
Jonesy interrupted three times. Riggs called him a show-off, which, coming from Riggs, was a compliment.
Novo contributed a single dry observation about the referee’s eyesight that got the entire booth laughing.
Leo caught Carter’s eye across the table. Carter raised his glass a quarter inch.
His mother’s text was still sitting unanswered in his pocket. He didn’t remember it until Jonesy was buying the second round, and by then, it didn’t feel like something that needed answering tonight.
He’d been stealing glances at the bar between rounds.
Dawson hadn’t moved. Book open, beer replaced at some point, shoulders looser than Leo had seen them in weeks.
He looked comfortable on that stool in a way that made Leo’s chest tight.
Dawson being comfortable in public was rare, and Leo couldn’t go sit next to him and put a hand on his knee the way Wes had hooked Gunnar’s belt loop without causing tension between them.
He could see it. He just couldn’t have it.
Not here, not yet, and the gap between those two things had been pulling at him since the second round.
The booth thinned out. Russ left first, then Riggs, then Novo with a nod that passed for a goodbye. Leo slid out and crossed the room.
Leo popped back onto his stool. His knee pressed against Dawson’s thigh under the bar.
“You’re still here,” Leo said.
“Said I would be.”
“You’re reading tonight.”
“You were busy.” Dawson’s thumb stayed on the page, marking his place.
“I’m not busy now.”
Dawson closed the book. Leo watched the tendons in his hand shift as he set it on the bar. The game-high was fading. What replaced it had been running underneath all night, steady, waiting.
“Meet me outside?” Leo said.
They left through the front. Dawson first, Leo a minute later, long enough that it looked like nothing.
The cold hit him when he pushed through the door, November air sharp enough to cut through the residual warmth of the bar.
Main Street was quiet. A truck idled at the far end, exhaust visible in the streetlight.
Dawson was leaning against the side of the building, hands in his jacket pockets.
Same wall as Thursday night. Same distance.
But Thursday night, Dawson had been restless, pushing against his own limits, and tonight he was still.
He stood with his jacket open despite the cold, one boot flat against the brick, his head tipped back so the streetlight caught the line of his throat.
Like he’d already decided something and was waiting for Leo to figure out what it was.
“Follow me home?” As badly as Leo wanted to kiss Dawson, he wanted to get somewhere warm first.
“Okay,” Dawson said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He pushed off the wall and caught Leo’s wrist—two fingers pressing against the pulse point, brief, deliberate. Then he let go and headed for his truck.
Leo stood on the sidewalk, pulse hammering where Dawson had touched him without a second thought. Cold air on his face. Beer on his tongue. He was walking to his car before Dawson’s taillights cleared the block.