Chapter One #2
“Oh shit. Chiron, you goof! Don’t eat the equipment.
” The man who was probably Harris came to a stop in front of Troy.
“Sorry about him. He’s going to be a therapy dog, but he hasn’t started school yet.
” He gently removed the glove from the dog’s mouth.
“Those gloves cost like a jillion dollars each, buddy.”
Troy leaned forward and gave the puppy a tentative pat on the head. He’d never owned a pet in his life, not even as a child, so he was awkward around animals. “What did you say his name is?”
“Chiron. Y’know. Like the centaur.”
Troy did not know. “He’s cute.”
“You’ll be seeing a lot of him. He’s the new official team dog.
Oh, and I’m Harris. You’ll be seeing a lot of me, too.
” Harris offered Troy his hand. His handshake was a little too firm and a little too hearty, but it was the friendliest touch Troy had experienced in a while. He almost hated for it to end.
“I’m Troy.”
“Yep. I worked that out for myself.” Harris put his hands on his hips and smiled down at him.
Troy wasn’t particularly tall, but if he stood now he’d probably have a couple of inches on the guy.
“Part of the whole social media manager thing. It helps if you know the names of the players.” He laughed so loudly that Troy almost winced.
Troy’s eyes kept landing on the pins on Harris’s jacket. “You been with the team long?”
“Longer than you,” Harris joked. Troy got the impression that Harris was rarely serious. “It’s my third season.” He picked up Chiron, who immediately began licking Harris’s face. Harris laughed—again, too loudly—and said, “This is the most I’ve been licked by a member of this team.”
It was a ridiculous joke, but it still seemed shockingly bold to Troy.
Harris probably hadn’t meant to put an image in Troy’s mind of.
..licking him, but that’s where his imagination went.
He had never had such a vivid sexual thought in a locker room before because he always kept careful control over that sort of thing.
But he’d never been confronted in a locker room by someone who comfortably advertised themself as queer before.
And it didn’t help that the man was attractive.
He was also, Troy realized, talking to him. And Troy wasn’t listening.
“Sorry?” Troy said.
“Just sayin’ that you don’t seem to have a social media account.”
Not one that anyone knows about. “Uh, no. I don’t.”
“Management wants all of the players to have at least an Instagram account. Doesn’t have to be fancy or personal. You can just repost official team stuff if you’re not comfortable doing more. I can help you set one up, if you want.”
“It’s mandatory?” Troy hated publicity stuff. All he wanted was to play hockey and be left alone. The celebrity part of it sucked.
“Basically. But if it’s a problem I can probably—”
Nope. Troy wasn’t going to start out with his new team by reinforcing the notion that he was difficult. “I can set one up. It’s fine.”
Harris smiled like Troy had just told him he’d give him a million dollars. “Awesome! Also, I want to do a Q and A with you. Just a little video to introduce you to the fans. Maybe later this week.”
Ugh. “Uh, I guess. If you want.”
“I’ll go easy on you,” Harris promised with another flash of his warm, earnest smile. “Softball questions only.”
His eyes were a comforting mossy green and they shone with playfulness that wasn’t even a tiny bit mean. If Troy had to describe his own eyes, he would use words like cold and dead. And his smile wasn’t worth mentioning.
“We can wait until Sunday at least. Let you get a game under your belt.”
“Whenever.” Troy’s gaze found Harris’s pin collection again. What would it be like to be that comfortable—that open—about yourself?
When he realized he was staring, Troy snapped his attention back to Harris’s face.
Harris had stopped smiling. He was looking at Troy strangely—suspiciously—as if he’d spotted contempt in Troy’s expression when he’d been examining the pins.
Troy wanted to correct him. Explain himself.
But years of being rigorously careful made him unable to find the words now.
“Hey, Harris! Stop hogging the puppy!” That was Rozanov, interrupting Troy before he could make a fool of himself. But also before he could convince Harris that he wasn’t a homophobe.
One more disappointed glance from Harris, then the smile returned to his face as he walked off toward Ilya with the dog cradled in his arms. “I keep telling you to just adopt one of your own, Roz.”
“Who will take care of it when I am on the road? You?”
There was laughter on the other side of the room, and Troy was left alone and forgotten.
After all these years, Troy still got a thrill from stepping onto a pristine, freshly resurfaced sheet of ice. A couple of quick laps later, he began to feel settled. His life might be a mess, but hockey still made sense.
He knocked a couple of pucks that were sitting on the boards in front of the bench onto the ice and headed for the net with one. He fired a quick wrist shot that sailed into the top corner. Always satisfying.
When he turned back to the bench to grab another puck, he was surprised to find one already headed his way. He took the pass, then did a double take when he saw who’d fed it to him.
“Coach.”
“Barrett. First one on the ice. I like that.”
Ottawa’s head coach, Brandon Wiebe, was only in his early forties, barely older than some of his players. He’d had a long—though not exactly distinguished—NHL career himself as a forward, and this was his first season as a head coach.
Troy passed the puck back. “Just needed to clear my head a bit.”
“Best way to do it. You probably have a lot of shit to clear.”
That was the fucking truth. “I won’t be distracted.”
“Didn’t say you would be, though I wouldn’t blame you if you were.” Coach smiled wryly. “I think you’ll like it here, though. I’m a bit different from Bruce Cooper.”
Troy’s throat tightened at the mention of his former coach. Cooper was a hard-ass, but he had liked Troy a lot.
Not as much as he’d liked Dallas Kent, apparently, because he’d insisted on having a final meeting with Troy, minutes after Troy had learned he’d been traded.
Cooper had spent several devastating minutes tearing a strip off Troy before he finally let him go home to pack.
Troy had left the office with his eyes burning and his stomach twisting with shame.
He’d always had a hard time withstanding the furious disappointment of men like Coach Cooper. Men like Troy’s father.
“I’m ready to work hard,” Troy promised. “I want to get us to the playoffs.”
Coach Wiebe smiled in a way that Coach Cooper and Troy’s father never did—warm and patient. “That’s good. I’m going to try you up front with Rozanov and Boodram.”
“Really?” Troy was used to being a starting forward, but it was still a surprise to hear his coach wanted to put him on the top line right away. “I mean, thank you.”
“Thank me on the ice, Barrett. Let’s show Toronto they backed the wrong horse, okay?”
Delight bubbled up inside Troy. He even came close to smiling. “You got it, Coach.”
Coach squinted at the bench, where several players were gathered and laughing animatedly. “Oh Jesus. They’ve got a puppy.”
Rozanov stepped onto the ice with Chiron bundled snugly in his arms. “He wants to try out.”
“Ten minutes with the puppy.” Coach’s voice was stern, but his eyes twinkled with amusement. “Then we’ve got work to do.”
“Twenty,” Rozanov countered.
Troy couldn’t believe his audacity. Was he about to witness Ilya Rozanov getting yelled at by his coach?
But Coach Wiebe only chuckled fondly and said, “Fifteen.”
Definitely a different coaching style than Cooper.
For fifteen minutes, the rest of the members of the Ottawa Centaurs frolicked on the ice with an excited puppy while Troy stood near the bench, watching and waiting for the real practice to start.
What the fuck was the deal with this team?
Was there going to be cake and lemonade at the end of practice?
“Are you allergic to dogs?”
Troy turned to find Harris standing in front of the bench, leaning casually on the boards. His golden hair was now hidden under a red-and-black Ottawa Centaurs pom-pom toque. In the bright arena lights, his green eyes looked more like sparkling emeralds than moss.
“No.”
“Phew. I should have asked before I brought a dog into the dressing room. I’d checked with everyone else already, but—aw jeez, look at that.
” He lifted his phone and snapped a few pictures of the puppy standing with his front paws pressed against one of Wyatt’s goalie pads. “That’s going on Instagram for sure.”
“He’s a popular guy.”
“Who? Wyatt?”
“The puppy.”
Harris beamed. “Of course he is! He’s new and adorable.”
And Troy was new and...not.
It actually made a ton of sense that he would show up at his first practice with a new team and only be the second most interesting thing there. If that.
His grumpy thoughts were broken by an air-horn-level burst of laughter from Harris. “Get him, Chiron! Atta boy!”
Chiron was trying to steal a puck from Zane Boodram. Everyone was laughing and having a great time, and Troy wasn’t sure what to do. He felt like he’d walked into a party he hadn’t been invited to.
“Do dogs like the ice?” Troy asked. Chiron seemed to be sure-footed and happy as he chased pucks, but he asked anyway.
“Not every dog, but Chiron is part Labrador, part mountain dog. He’s built for the cold.”
“And he’s going to be a...therapy dog? Like a Seeing Eye dog?”
“He’s going to be trained to assist people with anxiety or PTSD. If he gets in the program.”
“Does he have to write an exam or something?”
That weak joke earned Troy another horrifyingly loud laugh. “He just needs to be physically able to be a therapy dog. We’ll know in a few months.”
Harris kept talking about dogs, probably, while Troy’s gaze, once again, went to the rainbow pins on Harris’s jacket.
The stab of longing and intense jealousy that he always felt when he saw Pride symbols must have shown on his face as apparent contempt again, because when he glanced at Harris’s face, he found another disappointed frown.
Okay. Enough was enough. Troy needed to say something now to clear up any misunderstanding. He swallowed. “I, um—”
A whistle blew, and then Coach Wiebe called out, “All right, time to work. Harris, thank you for the special guest.”
Rozanov scooped up the puppy and brought him over to the bench. He booped the dog’s nose with his gloved fingertip, then very reluctantly handed him to Harris. “Where does he go when he is not here?”
“He stays at a training facility. They take good care of him, I promise.”
Ilya frowned. “Is it fun for him?”
“Definitely. He doesn’t have to start doing the hard work until he’s older. If he qualifies.”
“He will qualify. This is a good dog. Will he get big?”
Chiron licked Harris’s face. He licked his mouth and Harris didn’t seem to mind at all. Troy tried not to wrinkle his nose, but he probably did.
“He’ll be a pretty big boy,” Harris said. “Won’t be able to cuddle him like this for long.”
Coach blew his whistle again. “Roz, Barrett. Let’s go.”
Troy’s face heated. Why had he even been standing by the benches still? He wasn’t a dog person and he wasn’t friends with Rozanov or Harris.
“You are in trouble already,” Ilya said. His tone was flat, but his eyes were playful. “Bad start.”
Troy didn’t answer him. He just put his head down and got to work.