Chapter 4
Chapter four
Gabe Thatcher
The Bench Social Media Group
Alex Norcross: Hi, everyone. Marge and Patti invited me.
Marge: We needed an inside man for what’s happening at The Keep.
Riley Novack: What’s happening at The Keep?
Alex Norcross: If Roe and Thatcher keep crossing paths, it may be a felony.
“No.”
My hand grips the ball hammer so hard, I think I might be imprinting the wood grain into my palm. I’m at The Keep, tearing out old wood from the locker room to make way for an update before season starts.
Roe Monroe stands with his arms crossed, stance wide like a hockey god, looking at me like I have two heads, his blue eyes practically twitching with his desire to roll them at me.
It makes me want to smile. I could spend all day irritating this guy and feel it was time well spent.
“You can’t be serious, Thatcher.”
“Yet I am. Deadly serious. Why on earth would I want someone with your reputation mentoring my twelve-year-old?”
Damn, that was harsh. I almost regret the words once they’re out. It’s just that Monroe is well into my personal space when I say it, and those pouty lips are smirking. He acts like he’s won something, but I had no idea I was even playing a game.
Not to mention Jamie. Fuck, Jamie. I practically got the silent treatment last week when I had that run in with Roe, despite being saved by Alex.
Jamie may have been in the locker room, but he knew something was up.
It isn’t often he puts his headphones on and buries his face in his phone, but he did that night.
And I let him.
Then all weekend there were these careful words offered to me from my son, like a gift or an explanation.
Roe helped me with my slap shot.
Roe says to take the shot on the five-hole early, it’ll throw off the goalie.
Roe mentioned my stick should be angled . . .
The truth wasn’t hard to read between the subtle lines of Jamie’s words. Then there was what I overheard him saying to his friend and hockey teammate Arch when Arch stayed over with Jamie Friday night.
Jamie idolizes Roe. A full-on, stars-in-his-eyes, hero worship.
Jamie and Arch watched clips of Monroe from when he played for the Knights. They waited until they thought I’d turned in for the night. But I hadn’t. I’d stopped on the stairs that lead up to Jamie’s room and the bonus room and listened to the reverent tones in my son’s voice.
I blink back to the present.
Monroe’s eyes narrow, his sharp jaw jutting out, but somehow, he gives me the impression he’s enjoying our back and forth. Those blue eyes watch me as if he already knows all my secrets.
He’s not buying my protest. Instead, he’s acting as if he’s waiting for me to figure out that he’s already gotten his way and I just don’t know it yet.
Infuriating.
“Did you talk to Jamie about it?” he volleys back.
“Did I ask my twelve-year-old to weigh in? No, I did not.” I push past Roe’s relentless smirk to reach for something—anything—in my toolbox.
I’m helping upgrade the visitor locker room at The Keep because it’s a great job, but also because I can keep whatever’s salvageable, and there’s a decent side market for upcycling the former components of the beloved team’s beloved space into other items. It’s also the locker room the Juniors use unless there’s a game, so I could hardly turn down the job.
And it’s incredibly close in here with Monroe in my space.
I’ve spent the better part of this week walking by the rink when this asshole is showing off on the ice. During practice, he often warms up without all his gear. Nothing but his black base layers—compression fit, no less—that stretch tight across his muscles, moving with him as he skates.
“Oh!” Alex darkens the doorway, gaze pinging between me and Roe. “I’m glad Mr. Monroe found you, Mr. Thatcher.”
“Thatch is fine.”
“Roe.”
We both correct Alex at the same time, and he just smiles. “Of course. So, I’m guessing you’ve had a chance to talk? About the mentorship?”
Monroe takes a step back from me, thankfully. It was getting hard to breathe with him so far into my space, the spicy scent of his soap all around me. For some reason it makes my head fuzzy, like it’s spinning.
But then he has to go and open his mouth again.
“Thatch was telling me how Jamie has really been listening to some of my advice,” Roe says with a straight face, yet still that damn smirk pulls at his full lips.
I blink, stunned by his sheer audacity.
He looks right at me then turns to Alex. “I can’t wait to see Jamie play tomorrow night. Watch him put a few things together in the heat of the moment.” Roe arches an eyebrow at me, as if he’s daring me to correct him. Daring me to wipe the smile off Alex’s face.
But that’s not it.
“Excellent!” Alex says. “I’m excited to see where this goes.” And then he leaves me alone again with Roe’s expressive blue eyes and damn smirky mouth.
I see it then. Roe isn’t daring me to make Alex upset; he’s daring me to upset Jamie.
And he somehow knows I won’t.
Cocky asshole.
I can feel the frown lines deepen on my forehead as I try to figure out how I was so easily played by a guy who barely even knows me.
“So, the Junior league obviously wants to push this whole mentorship thing,” I venture, gesturing to where Alex just was. “I’m assuming the Iceguard are all for it too?”
I cross my arms, making sure the implication is clear that he’s only doing this for himself.
“You want me to tell you that mentoring a junior player isn’t exactly the kind of thing they want to see from me?
Of course it is.” He raises a hand to cut off my sharp retort.
“But . . .” he says firmly. “That doesn’t mean Jamie doesn’t have talent.
Or that I don’t take it seriously. Both can be true, Thatcher. ”
I flip the hammer, letting the comforting weight fall back into my hand with a satisfying smack of skin.
This is why I like working with wood. Wood is honest. It shows its vulnerabilities.
Its limits. Its flaws. Wood doesn’t hide its imperfections, it can’t.
People are so rarely like that. All particle board and wood glue.
If anything I’ve read on the internet is true, Roe Monroe isn’t much more than a nice paint job over plywood. He reminds me too much of my father, too much of people who want to take a little bit of talent and make a life out of playing a game. Someone who can’t take anything seriously.
And he wants to show Jamie how to do it.
Or, a little voice inside me says, maybe he just wants to show Jamie how to hit a great slap shot and the rest is just noise in your head.
I’m not an idiot. Jamie seems like a kid to me, and he is. But twelve is six short years from eighteen. Sidney Crosby had a thirty-goal season by eighteen.
I can feel Roe’s intense gaze on me, studying me, and I’m a little surprised he hasn’t said anything.
I straighten up and place the hammer back in my tool belt. Something about Roe’s focused gaze as I do makes me pause, shuffle my feet, and clear my throat as heat creeps up my face.
Something about his look makes me overly conscious of myself.
“Ground rules,” I say, and his eyes dart to mine from where they were watching my arms. I brush off my forearms, which are likely covered in wood dust or shavings.
“So, you’re in?” His face morphs into a smile, making his blue eyes dance and his entire demeanor change.
“Jamie wants this, Monroe,” I tell him. “I’m not going to deny him the chance to work one-on-one with a pro player.”
“One of the best centers in the league, actually. I won the—“
I cut off his boasting with a sharp look. Yeah, he’s a big deal. I got that from listening in the hallway Friday night and from a lifetime of hockey awareness.
“You don’t have to sell me. I get it. Mentoring like this doesn’t come along every day. I know.”
“But?” he asks, practically bouncing on his toes. “Ground rules?”
“Stick to hockey. Whatever you want to teach him on being a better player, or fixing a shot, just . . .”
Monroe waits, head tilted, eyes wrinkled at the edges making his blue eyes darker.
“You and I both know the statistics of anyone going pro in any sport. Not only that, but the chances of making a life out of it. Jamie’s young, too young to understand the realities of all of that. He doesn’t need to get ideas in his head, or be sold some story about fame and money and—“
“Thatcher.” Monroe gently cuts me off, and the soft way he says my name makes me blink. “You said you get it. I get it too. It’s just going to be hockey. No romanticizing the NAPH.”
I nod. “Just hockey.”
Monroe’s smirk transforms into a smile that rises just a little higher on the right side of his face.
“Ground rules established, Thatcher.”
***
It doesn’t take long for Jamie’s favorite topic of conversation to become Roe Monroe.
Home from practice, in the truck, to Arch who ends up at our house as often as he is at his own .
. . I feel as if I know all there is to know about the man.
Twelve-year-old boys have stream-of-consciousness conversations on a loop, and Arch and Jamie’s revolves around Monroe and hockey and very little else.
I go to every game, so of course I’m going to be there for the pre-season game that opens Jamie’s season.
I’ve been holding back from showing up too early into practice.
Running into Monroe makes me feel off my pace a little bit more with every smirk, and that happens often enough with me working on the locker rooms at The Keep.
After we pull into the parking lot at The Keep, I help Jamie unload his gear. He’s too old for me to help him carry it in, but he gives me a fierce hug, and we do our pre-game handshake.
I try to not feel relieved that he still wants to do it, at least for another year.
That familiar lump comes back into my throat as I watch him walk off toward the player’s entrance. The love I have for Jamie is overwhelming sometimes.
A tsunami of emotions—worry, hope, fear, love—hits me and washes over me in waves. So much damn love. I never knew I could love someone with no limits the way I love Jamie. I want to be the best version of myself for him. I want to help him become the best version of himself too.
When his mom left, it wasn’t much of a surprise. She liked being pregnant, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that most of that was the attention she received while she was.
She was a rich girl, who liked that I was a carpenter and worked with my hands and hadn’t bothered with college.
I liked that she was easy to keep at arm’s length but was more than casual.
It was comfortable. Liz never demanded hard conversations or for me to declare any feelings.
We never made future plans together, never thought to consult one another on the big decisions of life.
One thing I found out about myself early on, other than my bisexuality, was that I wasn’t made for baring my soul to someone else.
I’d tried that before. I had given one hundred percent of myself to being a son my dad could love, and it hadn’t been enough.
Trying that again, and with someone who wasn’t obligated to love me back at least a little bit, never seemed that appealing.
Liz never pushed. Never asked for us to move in together or even to have the kind of relationship that called for any kind of default assumption that our free time would be spent together.
We were dating, and together, but only when one of us would pick up the phone and ask the other to fill that role.
I never assumed my plans were with her, and she never did either. I never even stayed the night with her.
At the time, I would have said it was freedom—the ability to have a relationship, an ostensibly serious one, and still not have to reveal any of those soft vulnerabilities other people did with a partner. And so, it was easy, even with a kid in the mix, to go our separate ways.
There was no doubt, from the first second I held him, that Jamie would stay with me.
Jamie and I are a package deal. Always have been. Always will be.
I don’t and never will have the kind of money Liz’s family has. My dad didn’t leave me with anything except my grandfather’s tools and the desire to be nothing like him.
I’ve made myself comfortable living below my means, and it probably helps that I don’t need much to feel content. I’ve also made absolutely sure that everything Liz has given me in child support goes into savings for Jamie’s future along with the amount her family earmarked just for that.
There’s no way on this planet that I won’t support Jamie if he wants to pursue hockey. But he could have so much more.
Watching him on the ice with his team causes so many emotions I hardly know what to do with it. I take a deep breath; glad I’m sitting apart from the other parents and glad I’ve learned to keep this shit on the inside.
Monroe’s spicy soap tickles my nose. Something warm fills my gut and my skin prickles with awareness.
Weird.
“Hey man, Jamie’s looking good in warmups,” Monroe says, sliding into the seat next to me like I was saving it for him.
I try to glare at him, but that only makes him smile.