Chapter 43
Jamie
Hartwell University.
Nobody's heard of them. That's fine. They've heard of us — or they will by the end of the first period.
The arena is packed in the way away games never quite are, a wall of noise from the student section that hits you the second you come out of the tunnel.
Lights up. Ice bright. The particular electric charge of a game that matters running through every guy on this bench.
It lands in my hands. In my legs. In the way my breath comes easier once my skates hit the ice.
This is the only place I've ever felt completely like myself.
"Nash." Fitch at my shoulder, low and close. "Eyes up. Stay clean. We win this one we're talking about Eldridge next week."
"I know, Coach."
"Do you know or are you ready?"
I look at him once and then back at the ice. "I’m ready."
He holds my stare, assessing, then nods once and steps back.
I look down the bench. Kowalski, already locked in, focused, reading the ice like a book before the puck even drops.
Bennett bouncing slightly on his skates the way he always does before a game, too much energy with nowhere to put it yet, this little rhythmic thing like his body physically cannot contain itself.
Cooper is talking. Obviously. Stick going, hands going, Bryce standing next to him slowly regretting his life choices, trying to lock in.
Rhys at the end of the bench. Helmet on.
Gloves on. Eyes forward. He looks composed, absorbed in the game to anyone who doesn't know him.
But I know him. There's a certain restraint carved into his expression that has nothing to do with Hartwell. I tap the boards once as I pass him and don’t say anything.
He glances at me and I hold his eye for one second, trying to convey everything I want to say with this one look, and then look back at the ice.
He exhales and his shoulders drop a fraction.
Good enough.
The first period is a fight.
Hartwell comes out harder than anyone expected — physical, fast, a defensive structure that clogs the middle and makes every rush feel like skating through concrete.
We get two shots in the first ten minutes that go wide and Fitch is already on his feet at the bench making a noise that isn't quite a word.
Then Rhys gets the puck at center. He takes one look at the ice, reads it in the half second he has before their defenseman closes on him, and makes a decision that I follow without thinking because I know — I just know — exactly where he's going.
I cut left. The pass comes.
Perfect weight. Just perfect.
Like he knew where I was going before I did.
I roof it.
The arena goes loud. Not our section — theirs. That particular stunned loud of a crowd that didn't see it coming.
I skate back to center and Rhys is already there. He doesn't celebrate, doesn't take a moment, just skates past me with his shoulder brushing mine and says without looking at me:
"Told you. Weak side center."
I keep my face neutral.
He's insufferable.
I've never liked anyone more in my life.
We go into the second up one.
Hartwell ties it four minutes in off a power play we should never have given them — Cooper taking a penalty that was unnecessary and expensive and earns him a look from Fitch that could strip paint.
The period gets physical after that. Board battles, late hits, the kind of game that gets inside your head if you let it.
I don't let it. I've been playing hockey my whole life in conditions a lot worse than this and I know how to slow the world down until it's just the puck and the ice and the next decision.
Bennett is a wall behind us. Three saves in four minutes, two of them with no right to go in the net, one of them that has the bench actually yelling. He punches the post after the third one like he's personally offended anyone even tried to get past him.
Mid-period, Kowalski walks one in from the point. No celebration. He's Kowalski. He just turns around and skates back to position like it’s the usual.
We’re all in it.
2-1.
Third period, six minutes left, and Hartwell pulls everything they have. The ice tilts. They're everywhere — bodies crashing, pucks bouncing, the kind of chaotic last-ditch pressure that wins games if you let it rattle you.
I don't let it rattle me.
I win a battle behind our net and find Rhys streaking up the right side and hit it to him with everything I have.
He takes it in stride, pulls their last defender wide, and at the absolute last second — when everyone in the building thinks he's shooting — drops it back across to Bryce charging late.
Bryce scores into an empty corner.
3-1.
Bench erupts.
We hold it.
Final buzzer.
The locker room afterward is exactly what months of building toward something sounds like when it finally pays off.
Guys yelling, gear flying, Bennett getting mobbed by Cooper and nearly taken out at the knees.
Fitch standing in the middle of it with his arms folded and the look of a man who has been waiting for this and is not going to show how much it means to him.
"You guys got lucky," he says, which from Fitch is a standing ovation.
I do the rounds. Hand on Kowalski's shoulder.
Clapping Cooper on the back even though he still owes me for that penalty.
Finding Bennett in the middle of the chaos and telling him quietly that he won us that game, which is true, and watching his face do the shy thing it does when he gets too much attention.
I'm looking for Rhys. He's at his stall.
Not celebrating. Not talking. Just sitting with his elbows on his knees and his helmet in his hands and his eyes somewhere else entirely.
The room is loud around him and he's in the middle of it and I can’t reach him.
I've never seen him look like that. Like he’s not even here.
This is rawer than anything else. This is the look of someone who just won that means they have to do the harder thing. It makes everything real now.
I cross the room and sit down beside him. Way too close, how he likes it.
"Hey."
He looks up. His eyes find mine and he doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything, just looks at me like I'm the only thing in the room right now and he’s trying to latch onto me like a life raft, before he floats away.
"We play them next week," he says, dejectedly.
"Yeah, but it’s a good thing. Focus on the good."
"Marcus will be there."
"I know, but I’ll be there too."
He looks back down at his helmet. His hands are gripping the helmet hard enough that I can see the strain in his knuckles. "I know I said I could do it," he says, in a whisper. "I just—" He stops. "I didn't think we'd actually win."
I look at him. At the set of his shoulders. At the way he's holding himself like if he loosens his grip on his helmet he's going to come apart. "You can do it, Rhys," I encourage.
"You don't know that."
"I do." I grab his chin and make him see the certainty in my eyes, my need to comfort him stronger than my need to hide. "He doesn't get to take the ice from you. I won’t let him."
The room is still going around us. Someone's turned music on. Everyone’s talking and cheering and celebrating.
None of it matters right now. It’s just me and him.
"Can I—" Rhys starts. Stops. I wait. "Can I stay over again," he asks, shyly. Like it embarrasses him to have to be this vulnerable. "I don't want to be alone tonight."
I look at him for a long moment. At this person who walks into every room like he owns it.
Who makes everything a joke before anyone can make it something worse.
Who has been alone in the ways that actually count for longer than anyone knows.
Baring his insecurities to me, when I now understand how difficult that is for him.
How special it is that he is finally letting me see the real Rhys.
"Yeah, of course," I say. "Let's go."
My room is dark when we get there. I don't turn on the overhead light. He looks at me and I see it—all the things he’s feeling but can’t say.
Frustration. Need. Anxiety. Loneliness. I feel it too.
The kind of ache that makes you reckless.
So I give him what he wants, what we both need right now, which is to not think, just feel.
I grip his face, thumb dragging over the sharp line of his cheek. “On your knees, baby.” He hesitates, just for a second—then understanding sinks in and he drops down slowly, never breaking eye contact. He fumbles with my belt, yanks my jeans open, rough enough that the button nearly flies.
I fist my hand in his hair, guiding him to where I want him, and he grins up at me, filthy, before taking me in his mouth.
My head tips back, eyes closed, hand tightening in his hair as he sucks me down, messy and eager.
He doesn’t tease—he goes straight for it, deep and sloppy, saliva dripping down my shaft as he gags and moans around me.
“Fuck, baby. That’s it,” I grunt, hips twitching. He looks up at me, eyes watering, and I can’t help but thrust shallowly, using his mouth. “You like it when I call you that, don’t you?” He groans, the sound vibrating down my cock. I pull out, dripping, breath ragged. “Get on the bed. Now.”
He wipes his mouth and scrambles up onto the comforter, stripping as he goes.
I watch him as I do the same—the tattoos, the muscles, cock already flushed and leaking against his stomach.
“Spread your legs for me,” I order. He does, no hesitation, baring himself for me.
He’s so fucking perfect I almost forget how to breathe.