Chapter 11
I saw him two weeks later, late in the second period.
The play had just whistled dead, icing on the Falcons, and I was coasting toward the bench when I looked up at the stands. He was three rows back from the glass, arms crossed, watching me like he'd never left.
I don't remember the shoulder check. I remember looking at Joel, and then I was on my back with my helmet ringing and Malcorin skating away with a grin on his face.
The refs didn't call it. I'd had my head up when I should have had it down, which made it my own fault, which made it worse.
I got to my feet and skated to the bench. My ears were ringing and my shoulder throbbed where I'd hit the ice. Santos asked if I was okay, and I said I was fine, and I didn't look at the stands again because if I looked at Joel I was going to do something stupid.
Next shift, Malcorin lined up across from me at the faceoff.
He was still grinning. He'd caught me watching something else and put me on my ass for it, and he thought that made him special.
The puck dropped. I won the draw, sent it back to Hayes, and dropped my gloves.
Malcorin wasn't ready. His hands came up too late, and my first punch caught him on the ear, snapping his head sideways. Then we were both swinging, grabbing each other's jerseys, skates scraping for purchase on the ice as we tried to stay upright and keep hitting.
He was bigger than me. I kept swinging anyway.
I got three good shots in before he connected.
His fist caught me across the mouth and I tasted copper, my lip splitting against my teeth.
The linesmen were pulling us apart, and I was still trying to get at him, blood running down my chin, because the anger had nowhere else to go and I'd rather break my hand on Malcorin's face than think about Joel sitting in the stands watching me.
The ref pointed me to the box, and I went without arguing. Five minutes was worth it.
I sat there with my gloves off, pressing a towel to my lip while the blood soaked through. The cut was deep enough that it would need time to close. I ran my tongue over it and winced at the sting.
I didn't look at Joel. His attention pressed against me anyway, a specific pressure I'd learned to recognize even when I couldn't see him.
He'd watched me take hits before, that night he came to the game with his manager. He'd never seen me throw punches like I wanted to break someone's face open.
I pressed the towel harder against my lip and stared at the ice until the five minutes were up.
We won 4-2. I got an assist on the third goal and didn't look at the stands once, which was a lie I told myself while I was doing it.
I knew exactly where he was sitting the whole time. I just didn't let myself turn my head.
The locker room was loud after the win. Santos grabbed me in a headlock and called me a crazy bastard. Someone asked about going to Boxcar and I said I had to check on my dad, and the lie came out easy. I'd gotten good at lies.
I showered fast, kept my head down, and waved off the trainer when he offered to tape my lip. I didn't want anyone's hands on me right now. No, I wanted Joel’s hands, and that was worse.
I walked out to the player lot with my bag over my shoulder. The night was cold and clear, that sharp November dark that cut right through your jacket.
Joel was leaning against my truck.
My hands curled into fists at my sides before I could stop them. He'd vanished for weeks without a word, and now he was standing in my parking lot like nothing had happened, like he could just show up whenever he wanted and I'd be waiting.
I was too pissed to be careful. I walked straight toward him.
He watched me come, arms crossed, shoulders hunched against the cold.
"Get in the truck," I said when I was close enough.
"Nice fight." His eyes dropped to my mouth, to the split that was still swollen and dark. "I liked watching you bleed."
"Get in the fucking truck, Joel."
His jaw tightened. He pushed off from the tailgate and walked around to the passenger side without saying anything else.
We both got in. The cab was cold, my breath fogging in the air, and I didn't start the engine. I just sat there with my hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead at the empty lot.
"You’ve been gone for weeks," I said.
"I had things to handle."
I turned to look at him. He was watching me with that unreadable expression, the one that made me want to put my fist through it just to see what was on the other side.
"You could have shown up," I said. "Any morning. You knew where I'd be. Instead you just vanished and let me show up to an empty rink every day like an idiot, waiting for someone who wasn't coming."
"What do you want me to say?" He shifted in the seat. "That I'm sorry? I'm not. I had to leave. I left. I'm back now."
"And I'm just supposed to be grateful you came back?"
"You can be angry about it," he said softly. "I'd rather you were."
"Why?"
His hand came up, and his thumb found the edge of my split lip. The touch was barely there, just a brush of skin against the swollen edge, and I flinched anyway.
"Because you're better when you're angry," he said. His eyes were fixed on my mouth. "You played like you wanted to kill someone tonight."
His thumb pressed harder against the split, and the pain flared fresh, bright and sharp. I sucked in a breath, but I didn't pull away.
"I watched you beat that man's face in," Joel said. "I watched you bleed all over the ice and keep swinging anyway." His thumb dragged across the cut, slow, and my pulse throbbed in my lip where he was touching me. "I couldn't stop thinking about it."
"About what?"
"What you'd taste like after."
My cock stirred against my thigh and I hated how fast my body answered him, how little control I had over any of this.
"You're fucked up," I said.
"I'm not the one who started a fight because he was angry at someone in the stands." His thumb was still on my lip, still pressing into the split, and the pain was starting to blur into something else. "You wanted me to see it. You wanted me to watch you hurt someone."
He was right.
I started the truck.
I drove for ten minutes without saying anything.
His hand was on my thigh the whole time, his thumb tracing circles through my jeans, moving higher every few minutes until he was brushing against my cock through the denim.
I was fully hard by the time I pulled off onto the same stretch of empty road where we'd been before.
I killed the engine. The silence was loud after the rumble of the truck.
Joel climbed into the back seat without being asked, and something about the assumption of it, like he knew exactly how this was going to go, snapped the last thread of my patience.
I followed him over the console and shoved him down onto the bench.
For a second, we just looked at each other. Joel was underneath me and I had one hand fisted in his jacket and the other braced against the cold window. He wasn't fighting me. He was just watching, waiting to see what I'd do, already knowing I'd give in.
"I shouldn’t want you like this." My grip tightened on his jacket.
His hand found the back of my neck, fingers cold from waiting in the parking lot. He pulled me closer until our foreheads were almost touching. “But you do. You hate it, but you do.”
His other hand dropped between us and pressed against my cock through my jeans, grinding the heel of his palm against me until my hips jerked forward.
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to shove his hand away and drive him back to the main road and leave him there the way he'd left me.
Instead, I kissed him.
It was more teeth than tongue, and I bit his lower lip hard enough to make him grunt. His hand tightened on my neck, and he kissed me back just as brutal, and for a few seconds, it was just that: both of us trying to hurt each other with our mouths.
Then he pulled back just enough to look at me, and his thumb found the split on my lip again.
"I thought about this," he said. "In the stands. Watching you fight." His thumb pressed into the cut, and I sucked in a breath at the sting. "I thought about what you'd taste like with blood in your mouth."
"So find out."
He leaned up and licked across the split, slow.
The cut had started to close, but his tongue opened it again, and I tasted copper flooding fresh across my teeth.
He kissed me with the blood between us, swallowing the sound I made, and the pain blurred into something else until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other started.
When he pulled back his mouth was dark with it.
"You're fucked up," I said again, but my voice came out wrecked.
"You like it." He wasn't wrong. "Take off your pants."
"Make me."
His hand was in my hair before I finished, yanking my head back hard enough that my neck arched and my throat was exposed. His teeth scraped against my pulse and his other hand worked at my belt, getting it open one-handed while I was too busy trying to breathe to stop him.
"You want to fight me?" His breath was hot against my neck. "Go on, then. Fight me."
He shoved his hand down my jeans and wrapped around my cock, and I bit down on my tongue to keep from moaning. His grip was tight, almost too tight.
"Fuck you," I managed, but I’d stopped trying to get free.
"You like it. Don’t pretend you don’t."
He let go of my hair and yanked at my jeans, and I helped him because I was done pretending I didn't want this.
The cold air hit my bare skin, and I shivered, but then his mouth was on my hip bone, biting down hard enough to leave a mark, and the cold stopped mattering.
His tongue traced the edge of the bite, soothing and then not, his teeth scraping over the bruising skin while his hand kept working my cock.
I was leaking all over his fingers and I didn't care because his mouth was moving lower, dragging down the crease of my thigh, and when his breath ghosted over the head of my cock, I stopped breathing entirely.