ROUGHING THE CAPTAIN

CHAPTER ONE THE COLLISION

Tyler Hayes knew Milwaukee intended to test his patience before it tested his body.

The wind coming off Lake Michigan hit him the instant he stepped out of the black team SUV, found the gap between his coat and collar, and cut straight through every expensive layer he had put on that morning.

Across the frozen parking lot, the Milwaukee Frost’s new practice facility rose beside the unfinished lakefront arena in steel, black glass, and enormous banners the color of midnight ice.

BUILD SOMETHING FEARLESS, one banner commanded.

Tyler stared at it through his sunglasses.

“Adorable,” he muttered.

Two months earlier, he had been the leading scorer for a club one good playoff run away from a championship.

Then came the expansion draft, the carefully worded press release, and a call from his former general manager explaining that a twenty-nine-year-old winger with three All-Star appearances and one of the league’s most recognizable faces had become too expensive to protect.

Milwaukee had selected him first.

The new franchise called him its future. Sports television called him the most important gay athlete in the Midwest. His former team called the decision financial.

Tyler called it abandonment.

He shouldered his equipment bag and crossed the parking lot.

Several photographers waited behind a temporary barricade near the entrance.

They called his name, asked how he liked Wisconsin, and requested that he remove his sunglasses.

Tyler gave them the smile that had sold watches, underwear, protein powder, and one memorably terrible cologne.

He lifted two fingers in greeting without slowing.

Inside, the building smelled of fresh paint, sharpened steel, coffee, and new rubber flooring.

Everything gleamed. The Frost logo—an angular white wolf formed from fractured ice—appeared on the walls, carpets, doors, and the enormous screen above reception.

Somebody had spent a fortune ensuring no player could forget which corporation now owned his working life.

A staff member led Tyler down a corridor lined with photographs of Milwaukee hockey history: frozen ponds, neighborhood teams, high-school champions, minor-league crowds packed into old barns. The final display remained empty beneath a polished metal sign.

OUR FIRST CAPTAIN.

Tyler slowed.

“Optimistic,” said a deep voice behind him.

Tyler turned.

The first thing he registered was size.

Brock Lawson stood at the end of the corridor wearing faded jeans, work boots, and a black Frost sweatshirt that pulled tightly across a chest built to absorb collisions.

He was several inches taller than Tyler and substantially broader through the shoulders.

Dark hair, cut short at the sides, showed the first trace of gray near his temples.

A scar divided one eyebrow. Another disappeared beneath the collar of his sweatshirt.

His face was hard without being cruel, the kind of face sports photographers loved after a fight: square jaw, broken nose, heavy stubble, pale blue eyes that looked almost colorless under the fluorescent lights.

Tyler had seen that face above him once before while arena noise collapsed into a distant roar.

Three seasons earlier, Brock had caught him skating through the neutral zone with his head turned toward an incoming pass. The check had been clean. It had also lifted Tyler off his skates and removed eleven minutes from his memory.

“Lawson,” Tyler said.

“Hayes.”

Brock approached without hurrying. He carried no equipment bag. Of course he did not. Milwaukee’s returning hero probably had an attendant following at a respectful distance with his gear and a brass band.

“I heard they dragged you out of retirement,” Tyler said.

“I heard they had to change the locks in Los Angeles to make you leave.”

“Boston.”

“Was it?” Brock’s gaze traveled slowly over Tyler’s coat, tailored trousers, and polished boots. “All the coastal teams blur together.”

Tyler smiled without warmth. “I remember you more clearly. Usually when the weather changes and my neck hurts.”

“You remember the hit because it was the last time anybody caught you clean.”

“I remember waking up to your ugly face.”

Something shifted in Brock’s eyes—not offense. Interest.

“You looked better on your back,” he said.

The staff member made a small choking noise and hurried ahead to open the locker-room door.

Tyler let Brock enter first, mostly so he could study the width of the man’s back beneath the sweatshirt.

The impulse irritated him. He had spent years surrounded by professional athletes.

Large, hard-bodied men were not rare in his world.

He had dated two, slept with more, and learned that muscle did not automatically make a man interesting.

Brock Lawson’s body interested him anyway.

The Frost locker room was circular, with individual walnut stalls surrounding the illuminated team crest. TYLER HAYES had been engraved above one stall. brOCK LAWSON appeared directly across from it.

Of course.

Half the roster had already arrived. Some Tyler knew from years of playing against them; others were young call-ups or veterans the league had decided were replaceable. Expansion teams were built from men somebody else had been willing to lose.

That, Tyler thought, was one thing they all had in common.

Coach Dan Keller stood in the center of the room with a tablet tucked beneath one arm. He was a compact former defenseman in his fifties who looked as though he had been carved from an old hockey stick.

“Hayes. Lawson. Glad you could stop flirting long enough to join us.”

Several players laughed. Brock removed his sweatshirt without reacting.

Tyler forgot the coach for one dangerous second.

Brock wore a close-fitting gray T-shirt underneath.

The fabric stretched across heavy pectorals and a thick waist built less for magazine covers than for moving other men against their will.

Black ink covered one arm from shoulder to wrist: a frozen lake, pine trees, the Milwaukee skyline, and the number twenty-seven worked into the design.

Dark hair showed above the shirt’s collar and along his forearms.

Brock caught Tyler looking.

He said nothing. He simply held Tyler’s gaze while pulling the shirt over his head.

The scar beginning at his collar continued diagonally across his left pectoral. Smaller white marks crossed his ribs. He had the body of a man who had spent fifteen years treating impact as a professional obligation: powerful, damaged, unapologetically male.

Tyler’s body responded before pride could stop it.

Heat collected beneath his coat and traveled lower. He turned toward his locker before the reaction became obvious.

“Physical assessments begin in five,” Keller said. “Compression gear only. We’re establishing baselines, not making a calendar. Try to act like professionals.”

Tyler opened his bag.

Across the room, Brock laughed under his breath.

The assessment area occupied an entire floor above the rink.

Frosted windows overlooked gray water and a sky threatening snow.

Testing stations had been arranged across the turf: force plates, timing gates, weight racks, medicine balls, weighted sleds, flexibility tables, and enough monitoring equipment to make Tyler feel like an expensive animal at auction.

He stripped to black compression shorts and a sleeveless base layer. The clothing concealed almost nothing. It outlined the powerful thighs responsible for his acceleration, the narrow waist photographers loved, and every physical response he would have preferred to keep private.

When he stepped onto the turf, Brock was already there.

The defenseman wore dark gray compression shorts and no shirt.

Without loose clothing, he seemed even larger.

His chest and abdomen were thick rather than sculpted for display, the muscle dense beneath a natural covering of dark hair.

His legs looked capable of driving through concrete.

When he rolled his shoulders, the movement altered the entire landscape of his upper body.

Tyler’s gaze dropped despite every command he gave himself.

Brock’s shorts revealed that the interest between them was not one-sided.

Tyler looked up sharply.

Brock was watching his face.

Neither man smiled.

The embarrassment lasted only a moment before aggression burned through it. Brock had noticed Tyler’s reaction. Tyler had noticed his. The information sat between them, alive and undeniable.

“Eyes forward,” Tyler said.

“Mine are.” Brock’s gaze lowered deliberately. “Mostly.”

Tyler stepped onto the first force plate. “Try to keep up.”

The vertical jump belonged to Tyler. He exploded upward, touched the highest marker, and landed lightly. Brock’s attempt came three inches short.

“That all?” Tyler asked.

“You’ll want those three inches later.”

The strength coach coughed into her clipboard.

Brock owned the bench press. Tyler stopped at twenty-two repetitions; Brock continued through thirty without losing rhythm.

His chest and arms swelled with effort. Sweat darkened the hair across his sternum.

Tyler stood near Brock’s head to spot him and hated the fact that Brock could probably see the renewed tension beneath his shorts every time he drove the bar upward.

At repetition thirty-one, Brock racked the weight and sat up between Tyler’s legs.

For one suspended second, his face was level with Tyler’s body.

Brock looked up.

Tyler refused to step back.

“You done?” Tyler asked.

“Not close.”

They moved to the sprint track.

Tyler destroyed him.

He crossed the timing gate almost half a second ahead, turned, and ran backward while Brock completed the final meters.

“You skate that slowly?” Tyler asked. “No wonder you have to hit people. You can’t catch the puck.”

Brock bent with his hands on his thighs, breathing hard. Sweat moved down his abdomen and disappeared beneath his waistband. “Come within reach and say it again.”

Tyler did.