7. Novi
SEVEN
Novi
It’s possible I’m overdoing it. Coach Kessinger immediately worked with Jeremy to come up with a training plan that would strengthen my knees, and I have been working at it like a man possessed. Not that I will admit to anyone that I’m having trouble.
I will not let my career end on a low, not after having made hockey my entire life. I’m ready to fight if I need to.
Besides, the more I am working out, the less I am seeing of Kessinger. He has to know that I am avoiding him by now, and he’s letting me do it. I hate it as much as I love it because I am no longer tense about him telling my secret. Instead, the tension is something more primal.
Something that reminds me of how close I was to touching a man all those years ago.
The two years left on my contract felt like such a short time when I walked into training camp on that first day, but now they feel like they’ll never end.
I don’t wish my career away, but I’m almost forty, and for the first time in my life, I’m really craving sex.
Not in a horny way, but in a way where I’m with someone.
Where I can touch freely. Kiss. Maybe hold him afterward instead of sticking my dick through a hole while a stranger on the other side blows me.
That used to feel good. Used to take the edge off. But every time over the summer that I gave in and used a glory hole, all I walked away with was frustration and something that almost felt like shame.
I sink lower against the wall in the training room, legs straining under the pressure of my squat. I’ve been holding it for longer than I’m supposed to, but the burn is taking over everything else, and I like the way it’s all I can focus on.
A bead of sweat rolls from my hairline and down my face before I finally push back to my feet.
“You’re in early again,” Turkey says as he walks over. He’s texting rapidly, gear bag hanging from his shoulder and LA hat on crooked.
“Training.” I grab a band and stretch it across my chest.
“You got preseason jitters?”
I don’t think I have ever had jitters. Even in my rookie year, I was calm as a bug. Still, it’s easier to lie. “Da. Nerves. Many nerves.” Nearly all of them belonging to Coach Kessinger.
Turkey dumps his bag and tosses his phone on top.
“Why are you here early?” I ask since he’s usually one of the last people to arrive.
“Jitters.” He grabs a band to stretch next to me. The silence in the room is the heavy kind though.
Turkey slants a quick look my way. “So, you and Kessinger?—”
My gut twists painfully at that short sentence.
“—used to play together?”
My thoughts are too conflicted to answer, so I grunt in response. He can interpret that however he wants to.
“Is that why you’ve been so weird?”
“What do you mean?”
“The way you run out of a room when he walks in. How you refuse to see him about game tape. I thought you were doing some not wanting to catch the gay thing, but … I dunno, he seemed friendly with you.”
“He is friendly with everyone.”
“Right.” Turkey grabs the band in both hands, then stretches it across his chest. “So what’s the reason?”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you not to be a dick to him for no reason, and you said there’s a reason. I thought it was you being homophobic, but …”
I’m not used to the way this heavy weight sinks through me. Not used to the sweat I’ve worked up cooling so rapidly on my skin. No one, ever, has gotten close to the truth, so I’ve never had to face this moment before. “I … ya ne uveren … and then … eto potomu chto.” I’m not sure … It’s because.
A laugh breaks through my panic.
“Come on, Novi, you can tell him.” Kessinger is grinning at me from the doorway, and it doesn’t do anything to make my body feel alive again.
His gray eyes slide from me to Turkey. “Look at him wanting to protect my reputation. I was a cocky shit with none of the skill to back it up. I never let Novi forget that I was a top ten draft pick, and look which one of us made it.”
Cocky … yes. Slowly, my brain comes back online. “Was very irritating.”
“At least you don’t have to hear about that anymore,” Kessinger says.
Maybe, but that never bothered me. He was a top ten pick. It was that he thought that was all he had to do to make it and then choked when it wasn’t enough. I felt bad for him and knew he could do better, but he didn’t give himself the humility to learn how.
“Now I can taunt you about how I’m a Frozen Four–winning coach instead.”
I squint at his teasing. “Tell me. Is Frozen Four ranked higher than Stanley Cup?”
“Don’t worry, I plan on adding ol’ Lord Stanley to my list of accolades. Watch out, Novicov. You haven’t won yet.”
“And when I’m in Hall of Fame, you can finally admit defeat.”
“Has to happen first.” He brings his hands together. “But to get there, we have work to do. I want to run you through some footage from training yesterday.”
“This is a waste of my time.”
“Yeah, yeah. Humor me.” He leaves, expecting me to trail after him like a good little player.
Considering I now vow to only see him as a coach, I do. At a distance. So he knows this is reluctant and that I might not always do as he says. The second I walk into the room, he quickly closes the door and turns to me. His gray eyes hit mine, and I immediately realize I’ve been played.
His voice is too familiar. “Are you okay?”
“This is not about hockey?”
Kessinger gives me a flat look, and it’s hard to remind myself he’s my coach when the professional line dims between us. “I know your conversation with At?turk was getting uncomfortable, but I didn’t expect you to panic like that.”
“I was not panicked.”
“Uh-huh.”
This time, I give him the flat look. “I don’t panic.”
“Okay, so you weren’t panicked, I didn’t save you, and I won’t say you’re welcome. I’m also not surprised about how you’ve managed to keep your business under wraps for so long when that’s how you get whenever someone comes even vaguely close to figuring you out.”
“No one gets close to figuring me out.”
“Then—” Something clicks for him. “I’ve seen you brush off questions about the LGBTQ community for years in press conferences, and I thought you did it so easily because you really didn’t care. But it’s because it was all unfounded speculation, isn’t it? No one knew anything. Whereas back there?—”
I drag my sneaker over the highly polished floor. “He was close to truth. It caught me by surprise. Surprise. Not panic.”
“Right. Well, we’ll have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
I reluctantly look back up at him. “We?”
“I know we haven’t been friends in a long time, but it doesn’t change that I cared about you at one point. If your sexuality getting out will get you or your family into trouble, of course I’ll be on your side to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
My mouth inches open as I search his eyes.
He said that so easily. That he cared about me.
I want to question him more, find out if he cared the way I cared or if it was all friendship with flares of horny moments.
Or … moment. One moment. That one moment that ruined everything between us.
Maybe that’s why I’ve been so on edge about whether or not he was working here.
Colby Kessinger was the first and last man I let myself care about.
While I am confident about many things, talking about whatever there was between us is not one of those things. So I don’t make him talk more. Just mutter, “Thank you.”
“I’ve got your back.” Then, before I can react, he reaches out and squeezes my upper arm.
A bolt of lust spears through it, and my whole body locks together. The warmth from his hand burns. Bare skin on bare skin. Lingering contact that raises a longing in my gut so powerful I can’t even speak.
Kessinger’s expression tightens, and slowly, he peels his hand away. “Sorry,” he croaks.
It’s hard to work out if I’m shaking or if it’s the adrenaline making it seem that way. Somehow, with that one touch, we’re standing closer than the comfortable distance from a moment ago.
My teammates and I touch all the time, but the difference is that I don’t desperately want to fuck any of them. And I haven’t wanted to fuck any of them for almost twenty years.
Kessinger manages an awkward laugh, and the way it brings cute lines beside his mouth has fluttery wings in my gut. “I wasn’t thinking,” he says. “I promise I won’t do that again. Now, footage?—”
He goes to turn away, but before he can get far, something completely uncontrollable comes over me. My hand lifts, and my fingertips skim his collarbone.
Only the very start, at the base of his throat, the prominent curve that sinks beneath the collar of his shirt.
His skin there is so soft, and I’m mesmerized as his chest expands on a sudden, deep inhale.
“Novi …”
My eyes snap to his as my hand drops. There’s so much questioning in the way he looks at me, the way those forehead creases deepen as his eyebrows arch. I’m still too caught up in the way he felt to have any answers for either of us.
“I think the footage can wait,” he says. “Coach Whelan will want you on the ice soon.”
I know his words are supposed to make sense, but my brain has gone very stupid. “Coach.”
That small, crooked smile again. “On the ice. Yes.”
“Yes.”
His smile twitches wider. “Da.”
“Da.”
This time, he full-on laughs, and it breaks through my misty brain. “You really need to stop looking at me like that.”
I blink back to reality, and what happened hits like an anvil to the head.
My heart rate takes off worse than when I’m on a double shift, chasing an opponent down the ice.
“Blyad. You have food on face. Very messy. Embarrassing for you,” I choke out before almost wrenching the door from the hinges and storming from the room.
It’s only once I reach my locker that I realize it looks like I was running away from him. Radimir Novicov doesn’t run from anyone.
Not even messy, sexy, annoying men who I wish had stayed in my past.