Chapter 13
Aaron
Sasha Vorontsovsky is not listening to a word I’m saying.
I’ve been talking for ten minutes about Minnesota’s defensive scheme and how their top pair likes to pinch at the blue line, which leaves space behind them if we can get a forward to the far post on the breakout. Sasha is walking beside me eating an apple and looking at the sky.
“Their left defenseman is six-four,” I say. “He’s slow on the pivot. If we run a give-and-go through the neutral zone and force him to turn —”
“It’s a beautiful morning,” Sasha says.
“— force him to turn, Robertson can cut inside and —”
“Aaron Kelly. It is a Sunday. It is eight in the morning. Look at the sky.”
The sky is blue. Clear, deep, early-fall blue, the kind you only get in New England in September. The campus is empty — Sunday at 8 AM, nobody is awake. Just us, walking the path between the science building and the athletic complex, our breath not quite visible, the grass still wet.
He’s in a hoodie and joggers and his hair is loose and he’s eating the apple like he has nowhere to be for the rest of his life. His cheeks are pink from the morning air.
“I’m trying to plan our season,” I say.
“You are trying to plan our season on a Sunday morning when we don’t play our first game for three weeks.”
“Three weeks isn’t a lot of time,” I say. “We need to talk about Michigan too — they’ve got two new freshmen on defense who were first-round picks in the USHL draft. Big guys. Physical. If we don’t adjust our forecheck —”
“What did you eat for breakfast?” Sasha asks.
“What?”
“Breakfast. Did you eat?”
“I had a protein bar.”
“That’s not breakfast. That’s a wrapper with ambition.” He takes another bite of his apple. “You need real food. Let’s go to the dining hall.”
“The dining hall doesn’t open until eleven. It’s Sunday.”
“Sasha. I’m talking about Michigan’s defensive recruits.”
“And I’m talking about the fact that my co-captain is running on a protein bar and expects to plan a championship season.” He bumps my shoulder with his. The contact sends a jolt down my arm. “You can tell me about the freshmen over real food when it opens.”
The answer to that is something I’m not going to say out loud on a campus path at eight in the morning.
We pass the dining hall — closed, dark, nobody around — and the path slopes down toward the athletic fields. The football field stretches out ahead of us, empty, the goalposts sharp against the blue sky. The bleachers are aluminum and sun-warmed and completely deserted.
“Sit,” Sasha says, heading for the first row.
“We could go to the film room. I have Minnesota’s game tape from last season on my laptop —”
“Sit, Aaron Kelly.”
I sit. The metal is cool through my jeans. Sasha drops down next to me. Close. His knee presses against mine. He stretches his legs out, crosses his ankles, tips his head back. His throat is long and tan above the hoodie. I look at the field.
“Okay,” I say. “Minnesota. Their penalty kill was ninety percent last year. That means our power play has to be sharper — we can’t just dump it in and cycle. We need set plays. Clean entries. You on the half-wall, me in the bumper —”
“Do you ever stop?”
“I’m being responsible.”
“You’re a sports nerd, Aaron Kelly. When you’re not being an academic nerd, you’re being a hockey nerd. You have stats memorized for every team in the conference.”
“That’s called preparation.”
“It’s called being a nerd.” He grins. “Good thing I find it hot.”
My face goes warm. “Can we focus?”
“I am focused. I’m focused on the fact that my co-captain has a ninety-percent penalty kill stat memorized on a Sunday morning and it’s doing something for me.”
I don’t have a comeback for that. The football field is empty and the bleachers are empty and his knee is warm against mine and he’s not wrong.
“I want to talk about us,” he says.
“We are talking about us. Our line. Our strategy —”
“Stop.” He turns his head on the back of the bleacher seat. His eyes are very blue against the sky behind him. “Not hockey us. Us.”
My chest tightens. My knee starts bouncing.
“Diego texted me last night,” I say. “He’s got three more sponsor meetings lined up for October. One is a sportswear brand — they want both of us for a campaign shoot in New York.”
“Good. More excuses to go to New York.” He pauses. “You changed the subject.”
“I didn’t change the subject. I’m telling you about a work opportunity.”
“You changed the subject because I said the word us and you panicked.”
“I didn’t panic.”
“You’re bouncing your knee. You always bounce your knee when you’re nervous.”
I stop bouncing my knee.
“I need to tell you something,” he says.
My stomach drops. “What?”
“Relax. It’s not bad.” He shifts so he’s facing me, one leg tucked under him on the bench. “I want to wake up next to you, Aaron Kelly.”
The words sit there. Morning air. Empty bleachers. His eyes on me.
“What?” I say.
“I want to wake up next to you.” Simple. Like he’s telling me the time. “We’ve been doing this for over a year. Sneaking around. Hotel rooms for a few hours, a few stolen nights. And every time, one of us has to leave.”
He’s not smiling. “I don’t want to keep sneaking, Aaron. I want to fall asleep with you and wake up and you’re still there.”
I stare at the football field. The yard lines are freshly painted, bright white against the green. A bird lands on the goalpost and takes off again.
“I want that too,” I say. My voice comes out rough.
“Then let’s make it happen.”
“It’s not that simple. Cooper and Robertson are in the house. If I don’t come home —”
“You’ve stayed out before.”
“Not all night. Not —” I run my hand through my hair. “People would notice.”
“You can tell them you were studying. You can tell them you were at the library. You can tell them anything.” His hand finds my knee. Warm through the denim. “You figure everything out. Your schedule, your grades, your game plans. Figure this out for me.”
The morning is so quiet I can hear the flag snapping on the pole at the far end of the field. His shoulder is touching mine. His hand is on my knee.
“One of Diego’s New York trips,” I say. “We’d have the hotel room. Nobody would question it if we both stayed over because of early meetings.”
“Yes.”
“Or —” I’m thinking now. Actually thinking, not deflecting. “Away games. Road trips. We share rooms sometimes anyway. If I asked Coach to pair us up —”
“You would ask Coach Rafferty to room you with me.” He raises an eyebrow. “The guy you supposedly can’t stand.”
“I’d say it’s for team chemistry. Captains building trust. He’d buy it.”
“Aaron Kelly, strategic mastermind.” His smile is wide and real and it hits me in the chest. “So we have a plan.”
“We have the start of a plan.”
“Good enough.” His thumb moves on my knee. “I want to see what you look like when you first wake up. Before you’ve fixed your hair and put on the Aaron Kelly face.”
“I don’t have a fake face.”
“You have many faces. I want to see the one nobody else gets.”
I can’t breathe. My throat is tight and my hands are shaking and I don’t know what to do with someone who wants less of the performance, not more.
“I look terrible in the morning,” I say.
“Impossible.”
“My hair does this thing where one side sticks up and the other goes flat.”
“I want to see it.”
Why does his accent still have this effect on me after all this time?
“It’s not attractive.” I try not to smile.
“I’ll decide that.”
We sit there. The sun is climbing. The metal bleacher is getting warm under my legs. A jogger appears on the track around the football field — loops once, headphones in, doesn’t look up — and disappears.
I look at his mouth. I shouldn’t. We’re outside, in daylight, on the football bleachers. But his jaw is sharp with stubble and his mouth is full and slightly parted and right there.
“I wish I could kiss you right now,” I say.
It comes out before I can stop it. Falls out of my mouth into the open air, and I hear it and my chest seizes because we’re outside —
Sasha stands up.
He grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet and I stumble after him down the bleacher steps and under the aluminum framework.
The space beneath the bleachers closes around us — metal supports, angled beams, bars of shadow and sunlight striping the grass.
It smells like cut grass and warm metal.
It’s not hidden. Someone could see us if they walked close enough, looked at the right angle.
“Say it again,” he says.
“I want to kiss you.”
He puts his hands on my face. Both hands, palms warm against my jaw, his thumbs on my cheekbones, fingers sliding into my hair. He tilts my head and looks at me. Those blue eyes, close, in the striped light coming through the bleacher slats.
He kisses me.
His mouth is warm and tastes like apple and I stop thinking.
My hands come up — one grabs the front of his hoodie and the other finds his hair.
His hair. I’ve thought about his hair all summer, the weight of it, and it’s longer now and my fingers slide into it at the back of his neck and it’s soft and thick and warm from the sun.
He makes a sound against my mouth. Low. His hands tighten on my face and the kiss goes deeper — his tongue sliding against mine, slow, and my back hits one of the support beams. Cold metal through my shirt. His chest warm against mine. The contrast makes me gasp and he swallows the sound.
My fingers tighten in his hair. He groans into my mouth and presses closer.
His hips pin me against the beam and I can feel the length of his body against mine — chest, stomach, thighs — and his hands slide from my face to the back of my neck, pulling me in, and I am not being careful.
I am not being quiet or cautious or any of the things I always am.
I pull him closer by the hoodie. He comes, easy, willing, his mouth moving to my jaw, the spot below my ear that makes my knees weak.
His lips drag across my skin and I tip my head back against the beam.
His stubble scrapes my throat and his breath is hot and I can feel his pulse in his wrists where they rest against my neck.
“Aaron.” Against my skin. My name in his mouth and his accent and I feel it in my spine.
I pull his mouth back to mine. Kiss him harder.
His lower lip between my teeth — I bite down gently and his whole body jerks against me and the sound he makes vibrates through my chest. My hand in his hair tightens and his hips roll forward and I feel him, half-hard against my thigh, and the heat that shoots through me is blinding.
Somewhere beyond the bleachers, a door closes. A building on the far side of campus. We both freeze — his mouth on mine, my hand in his hair, breathing hard.
Nothing. No footsteps. No voices. Just a bird and the wind and the September morning.
He breathes out against my lips.
“I think that was a door on the engineering building,” he says. “Relax.”
“I’m relaxed.”
“Your whole body just turned into concrete.”
“That’s what happens when you’re making out under bleachers like a teenager.”
“You were never this fun as a teenager. I can tell.” He kisses the corner of my mouth.
“This is insane,” I whisper.
“Yes.” He kisses the other corner. “Do you want to stop?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I flew fourteen hours to get back to this and I’m not done yet.”
He smiles against my skin. Presses his forehead to mine. His hands are still on my neck, his thumbs resting in the hollows behind my ears. My fingers are still in his hair. We’re both breathing hard.
“We should stop,” I say.
“Probably.”
His nose brushes mine. He kisses me again — soft this time. Slow. Just his mouth against mine, barely any pressure.
My chest aches.
He pulls back. Forehead against mine. His hands are still on my neck.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. Quiet.
“Yeah,” I say. “We will.”
He kisses my forehead. Then my cheekbone. Then the corner of my mouth, barely a touch.
Somewhere in the distance, a church bell rings. Eight thirty.
“We should go,” I say.
“Probably.” He doesn’t move. His thumb traces the line of my jaw. “You have game tape to watch. Penalty kill stats to memorize.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you. I told you. I find it hot.” He steps back. Grins. Fixes the collar of my shirt where he messed it up. “You’re a disaster. Fix your hair.”
I drag my hands through it. He watches me do it with an expression that makes my stomach flip.
In a minute we’ll walk out from under these bleachers and back across campus and go back to being co-captains and nothing else.
But Aaron Kelly is so tired of being Aaron Kelly.
And Sasha is all I care about.