12. Maddox #2
He's staring at the ice with his mouth slightly open and tears, real ones, small, from overwhelm, shining along his lower lashes. A teammate to his left says something to the guy further down about the penalty kill and doesn't notice.
I lean back against the boards.
“Your line's up next shift,” I say.
He blinks at the ice.
“I can't.”
“You can.”
“Mad.”
I set my glove back over the knee of his pants like nothing happened.
“You can. You will. You're going to walk to that door. You're going to skate your line. You're going to come back and sit down. And I'm going to sit here and think about what I just did to you.”
He breathes.
Then he says, very quiet, “Okay.”
I watch him hop the boards ninety seconds later with his helmet back on and his gloves on and I want to do this every fucking game for the rest of my career.
We win 4–1 on Phoenix's empty-netter and nobody on our bench looks at me and Paul hasn't said a single word to me since the second period. I like that. He's saving it.
Horn goes. Handshake line. I skate through it like a normal person. I don't punch 44. I don't even look at him. I want him to spend the next year of his life wondering why.
We file off the ice into the tunnel.
Theo is in front of me in the line filing off. The back of his neck is that exact shade of pink. I walk so close behind him that our skates almost touch. Nobody notices. The chirps and the laughter of a team that just won are loud enough to hide anything.
At the mouth of the tunnel there's a hallway that forks off to the video room, the visiting trainer's office, and a storage closet I've been in exactly once, in October, when I came in at six in the morning to get a replacement stick out of a crate.
I know the door isn't locked. I know nobody on our staff is going to be down there for at least another fifteen minutes.
I grab Theo's sleeve.
“Left.”
“What?”
“Go left. Now.”
He goes left.
I shove him through the door ahead of me and shut it behind us and turn the lock.
Storage closet. Eight feet by ten. Metal shelves along one wall.
Boxes of tape, a crate of pucks, two spare sticks in the corner.
Bare bulb. Concrete floor. The door is the kind with a piece of frosted glass at eye level, so if anybody comes down the hall, I'll see the shadow before they try the handle.
Theo is breathing hard in the middle of the floor.
“On your knees.”
“Mad—I just—I came on the bench—”
“I didn't.”
He goes to his knees.
He's still in full gear from the waist up. The skates make him lurch when he drops. He catches himself on one hand on my thigh. I let him. I don't help him.
I'm already unbuckling.
I get my pants open. I get the cup off. I get the compression shorts down far enough. My cock comes out hard and flushed and already leaking at the tip from forty minutes of watching him try not to come in his gear.
Theo looks up at me.
His eyes are wet.
“Open.”
He opens.
I put two fingers in his mouth first. I run them along his tongue. I check whether he's there. His eyes close and he leans into my hand, and I know he is.
“Good boy.”
I swap my fingers for my cock.
I don’t go easy.
I get one hand on the back of his helmet that he forgot to take off, which makes a fucking excellent handle, and I guide him onto me until I feel him hit the back of his throat. He gags. I hold. Two seconds. He swallows around me and it's the dirtiest thing a mouth has done to me in ten years.
I pull back.
“Breathe.”
He breathes.
I go back in.
I set a rhythm he can follow. I'm not cruel about it. Cruel isn't the word. Cruel would be making him choose. I'm not. I'm taking. There's a difference, and his mouth knows the difference and opens for it.
“You came in your gear for me.”
He hums around me.
“You came in your gear in front of your father.”
He hums again, and I feel his throat move.
“Nobody in the history of hockey has ever loved getting someone's dick like you love getting mine.”
His hand comes up and grips my thigh.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, baby. Just like that.”
I feel it start to climb. I pull back once, all the way out, just the head on his lower lip, because I want to see his face for the next part.
“Where do you want it.”
He can't talk. He tries. He can't. He opens his mouth wider instead.
“Good.”
I push back in.
I come with my hand on the back of his helmet and his mouth sealed around me and his eyes on mine the whole time and I don't pull out until he's swallowed everything he can swallow and a thin line of it has run down his chin onto his jersey.
I ease out.
He sits back on his heels and coughs once into his hand.
“Sorry.”
“Don't apologize.”
“I—okay.”
I offer him my hand. He takes it. I pull him up and the skates make him stumble and I catch him against my chest and for half a second I hold him there with my hand on the back of his helmet and his face pressed into the front of my jersey and he's shaking. Not upset. Undone. I let him.
I give him exactly three seconds.
Then I step back.
“Go shower.”
He's still holding on to the front of my jersey with one glove.
“Yeah.”
“Fast.”
“Okay.”
I peel his hand off mine.
“We're going to a bar.”
He blinks at me.
“A bar?”
“You and me. Out of here in twenty.”
His mouth opens.
“I have a car in the lot.”
“We're taking mine.”
He glances at the door behind me like Paul might be through it.
“My dad—he'll expect me—”
“Text him.”
He pulls his phone out of his helmet liner where he stashed it pregame. Thumb hovers over the screen.
“What do I say?”
I shrug.
“Anything that isn't the truth.”
He almost laughs. It's a wet, shaky, coming-off-the-edge sound, and it is exactly what I wanted out of him tonight. He wipes his mouth with the back of his glove and looks at me with his pupils blown to hell and his hair stuck to his forehead and says, “Okay.”
“Good boy.”
I unlock the door. I check the hallway through the frosted glass. Empty. I open the door a hair. Nothing. I slide out first.
At the end of the tunnel Paul is standing outside the office with his arms crossed talking to the assistant. He doesn't look up.
I walk past him like I own the building.
I pretty much do tonight.
I hear Theo's skates on the concrete ten seconds behind me, heading the other way to the showers.
I'm smiling.
I shouldn't be.
I am.