CHAPTER TEN THE PRICE OF STAYING #3
“No.” Tyler stepped close again, but did not touch. “You were honest in the Northwoods. You said you didn’t know how to ask me to want you without hockey. Now someone offers you a way to stay in hockey while sending me away, and you call it practical.”
Brock’s face closed.
Tyler saw the defense and refused to attack it physically.
“Speak,” he said.
“I don’t have anything else.”
“Then neither do I.”
Tyler left the gym.
He collected clean clothes from his room and carried them to the guest suite at the far end of the loft. The room had never been used. It contained a narrow bed, one empty dresser, and a window facing the brick wall of the neighboring warehouse.
Brock followed him to the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“In here?”
“Until you can speak honestly.”
“Tyler.”
The first name almost weakened him.
“No,” Tyler said. “You don’t get to make me leave for my own good and then use my name like a hand around my wrist.”
Brock stopped at the threshold.
Tyler closed the door.
He showered alone in the guest bathroom. The water pressure was weak. No cedar scent lingered on the towels. No dark hair gathered near the drain. His body remained painfully aroused, but he refused to use release as a way to quiet grief.
He climbed into the narrow bed wearing sweatpants and one of Brock’s old T-shirts by accident or instinct.
His phone lit the room.
New York’s formal offer waited in his email.
Seven guaranteed seasons. A signing bonus larger than the total value of his first three professional contracts.
Marketing approvals, housing allowance, private training resources, and a clause allowing his foundation to choose a city rink for renovation every year.
It was not merely money. It was power, security, and the ability to build something beyond hockey.
Tyler read every page.
Then he reached the blank signature line.
He pictured Manhattan lights instead of the Milwaukee river, a private gym without Brock’s weights, a bed large enough for two and empty by design. He could visit. They could schedule weekends, charter flights, and pretend proximity was the same as a shared life.
Tyler closed the document unsigned.
A message from Brock appeared.
You okay?
Tyler typed three answers and erased them.
Finally he wrote: Safe. Not okay.
The response came immediately.
Same.
Tyler placed the phone facedown. Honesty had arrived in two small words, far less than he needed and enough to keep him awake.
Through the wall, the loft made familiar sounds. A cabinet opened. The refrigerator closed. Water moved through pipes toward the main shower.
Tyler imagined Brock beneath it and turned toward the wall.
Across the loft, Brock entered the bedroom alone.
Tyler’s side of the bed remained unmade from that morning. A pillow held the shape of his head. One blond hair caught against the dark sheet. Brock stood beside it naked, frustrated, and exhausted.
His physical need had not diminished. Arousal remained hard and useless against his abdomen. He could have taken care of it alone. The possibility felt emptier than pain.
He climbed beneath the blanket.
Brock’s phone showed the coaching agreement beside Tyler’s message.
The offer gave him everything he had once imagined wanting after hockey: Milwaukee, purpose, a place inside the room, authority earned through fifteen seasons of impact. It also described his playing career in the past tense before he had chosen to end it.
He scrolled to the compensation page. The difference between his player salary and coaching salary nearly matched the amount Milwaukee needed to improve Tyler’s offer.
The math was elegant.
It made Brock feel disposable.
He had spent years believing usefulness was love in its most reliable form. Block the shot. Protect the crease. Carry the weight. Give up the roster space. Send Tyler toward the larger future before an aging body became an obligation.
Tyler had asked for something harder.
Stay visible while afraid.
Brock opened their message thread and typed: I want you here.
He stared at the words.
Then he erased them.
Wanting Tyler in Milwaukee felt selfish. Wanting Tyler in his bed felt desperate. Wanting him after the speed, contracts, and cameras ended felt so enormous Brock could not separate desire from the certainty that he would eventually fail it.
He set the phone beside Tyler’s empty pillow.
The physical frustration in his body began to fade. Emotional pain remained, heavier because it offered nothing to fight.
For the first time, Brock understood that making himself easier to leave was not the same as loving Tyler enough to let him choose a future for himself.
The mattress did not shift beneath Tyler’s weight. No cold foot found his calf. No restless body crossed the center during sleep. Brock opened one arm toward the empty space and closed it around nothing.
The absence made the enormous bed feel smaller than the guest room.
On the kitchen island, the Captain’s Ledger remained open between two tied scores.
Neither man crossed the loft to close it.