Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Roe Monroe
The Bench Social Media Group
Marge Calloway: UPDATE. The old bar is officially under renovation. Roe Monroe just pulled the permits himself.
Patti Jensen: So he did buy it? That rules out (1) Thatcher’s secret side project, (2) the supposed investor from Chicago, and (3) the ghost of the guy who ran it in the ’80s.
Ash Patel: But what about the rumor it was for the team? Or a youth hockey nonprofit? Or a speakeasy??
Marge: I don’t know. I heard all of those rumors again just in the past week!
Stan Gordon: I still think Thatcher owns it and Monroe is just the muscle.
The bar looks worse in the daylight.
Not that I’ve had much time to really look at it.
Between the road games, The Freeze, and whatever is happening with Thatcher, it’s mostly been something I wave at in passing.
But tonight, the team’s coming over, and prepping for a house full of hockey players is basically a full-contact sport.
I told everyone to bring something, but Thatcher had meat on the smoker since before our morning workout.
All he asked me to do was a liquor run. I’m swinging by the bakery too.
Which brings me here, with a little pocket of time for checking out the only thing I’ve ever actually bought with my hockey money.
No car, no condo, didn’t even pay for rehab out of pocket.
I always took whatever housing the team arranged—close to the rink, close to the clubs.
More money to blow, more people around to make sure I didn’t feel alone.
So yeah, this feels different.
I knew what I was getting into. It took actual detective work to figure out who even owned this place under the layers of small-town gossip and forgotten paperwork. But now I’m here, standing in the midday light while it cuts through the rafters and catches on the dust.
It’s rough.
But it’s mine.
The quiet settles in, not heavy, just . . . present. There’s no master plan. No investors. No safety net.
That’s kind of the appeal.
I walk the perimeter, slowly, mapping it out in my head. The bar will run along that back wall. Plumbing’s a question mark, but it’s there. Most of my ideas are still just sketches on the backs of receipts and corners of notebooks. I haven’t shown anyone—not even Thatcher.
Someone took the first step in converting this old bakery into a bar, but that step appears to have been only halfway done before it was abandoned. It may be that the half-hearted attempt will just mean more work for me.
Part of me wants to text Thatcher. Ask if he still has that salvaged maple. Float an idea about the walk-in fridge.
But I don’t.
Because this didn’t start with him. Or my agent. Or the team. This started with me.
Back when Thatcher was just the hot dad I figured might be good for a distraction. I rub at my chest. Yeah. That’s not what this is anymore.
But this bar . . . it’s the first thing I’ve done in years that isn’t about damage control. Not a comeback. Not a fix. Not a fuck you to anyone. Just . . . a step forward.
A real one.
It’s also this tangible acknowledgment of life after hockey.
I run my hand along the far wall, picturing where the windows will go. How the light will come in. I imagine framed photos of local games, a wall to highlight the locals, maybe a stick from Jamie’s first season. A place that feels like it’s always been here.
“You’re gonna be a lot of work,” I tell the building. Then softer, almost without thinking, “We’ll get along just fine.”
I take out my phone, and open the note labeled “The Five Hole.”
***
Thatcher knows how to host a handful of hockey players.
Some of the guys already had plans to watch the game in a bar the next town over, but about five of us land at Thatcher and Jamie’s.
Thatcher opens up the patio doors due to the nice weather, and that seems to enlarge his living room.
He has the couch against the wall and the game projected on a screen in the house and the TV also showing the game outside.
Platters of ribs and burgers are piled high on the table, with sauces and sides—from Thatcher’s own smoked mac and cheese, to the hodgepodge of contributions from all of us.
It makes quite the spread in the end, and I eat enough of the mac and cheese for two hockey players.
Which is fine, because the rest of the guys are easily eating for three, and I like the way Thatcher flushes when someone compliments the food.
While Thatch cooked, I cleaned and organized the area and made sure we were party-ready, including setting up a mix-your-own-liquor table and putting plenty of beer on ice.
Jamie and his friend Arch stuff themselves, their eyes bouncing between the screen and the players in the room.
Of course, when the puck drops we’re all yelling at the television, especially when Benji hits the ice with the third line.
Arch and Jamie are right in there with the rest of us, and any awkwardness or hero worship gets traded for high fives and shared cheers.
It’s a great evening. Benji plays some of the best hockey I’ve seen from him, and it makes me proud for him as his teammate.
Dom, the rookie hotshot, has a great game. He’s on fire tonight. While that will help the Knights get a win today, it may also hurt the series if he keeps running hot and cold on the ice.
With the people and game buzzing around me, I can easily take a step back and appreciate having this. Appreciate that I know how to tease Diggs and Manchester, one of the defensive men. It’s a sort of camaraderie that I haven’t had with a team since my younger days.
Also, I like helping Thatcher host, to know that people are having a good time and that I helped facilitate it.
It’s kind of funny how my party-hard lifestyle in the NAPH twisted that part of my personality all wrong.
But a lot of that scene was me trying to make sure everyone around me had a good time.
Huh.
Late in the third, the game’s pretty much in the bag for the Knights, and our cheers and yelling turn into simply enjoying the game.
Thatcher mutters under his breath when the team is playing, and like I noticed before, he knows his hockey. I think about what he told me about his dad, and I wonder what his relationship with hockey would be if his dad hadn’t been chasing his own dreams at the expense of everyone else.
“Hey,” Thatcher says, reclaiming his seat next to me on his couch. Diggs gives me a wink and wedges himself onto the same couch, pushing Thatcher and me even closer. To make room, Thatcher stretches his arm out over the back of the couch, behind me.
I lean in, practically groaning at how good he smells. How he managed to spend hours tending to his smoker and still smell amazing is beyond me.
He chuckles, angling his body for more room, and I lean into him.
It’s a coupled-up move but I don’t care.
I lean in and kiss his cheek quickly. His eyes are searing as they catch mine, and he moves his hand to the back of my neck.
His thumb stroking under my ear is enough to drive me crazy and make my skin rise and prickle, before he sits back when the game comes back on and takes a sip of beer.
Damn the man and his casual sexiness. I’m practically swooning.
The game ends with a predictable win for the Knights, and everyone quickly helps clean up, especially since there’s little food left.
Mostly, they take what they brought. We throw the last few dishes in the dishwasher, and I wipe down the kitchen and floors while Thatcher and Diggs, the last one to leave, put the living room back to rights.
“Jamie’s upstairs,” I tell Thatcher as he closes the door on Diggs’s retreating frame. I advance on him. “He and Arch are occupied—already online playing some video game with friends. House is taken care of and free of any other guests.”
Thatcher raises a sexy eyebrow at me, coming close enough to pull me to him.
I’m thinking he’ll kiss me—I want that kiss—but Thatcher just stares at me in a way I’m not used to. Like I’m water and he’s a man left too long to wander the desert.
His strong arms wrap around me, and I swear I shiver from head to toe.
“I’d like to take a shower; would you like to join me?” he asks.
“Well, your shower is the stuff dreams are made of,” I tease, although it’s no joke. That shower has more ways to direct water than a water park.
Thatcher captures my mouth, but I’m the one who can’t handle the surge of pure want that goes through me. I wrap my arms around his neck and push him into the wall so I can get him still and slot my thigh between his legs.
We make out like teenagers in his entryway. It’s raw and a little awkward, but oh-so good. It’s the best intimacy I’ve ever shared with someone. His kisses, his hands. Doing things together, like hosting my friends.
“Shower,” he growls in my ear.
Thatch somehow manages to start the shower and strip me down in no time, the water still slightly cool on our skin. Not that it matters to me; I’m too hot to care.
He soaps up a loofa and begins to carefully wash me—and my impatience must show because he kisses me, and then I feel the laugh against my lips.
“Patience. I like when you smell like my soap.”
God, that’s so fucking sexy and sweet at the same time. I grab him, pulling him in for another kiss.
“There are other ways to make me smell like you.”
Thatch just ignores me, focusing on my legs and even my feet. He pauses at every bruise from the last game and the yellowing ones from the games before, his touch even softer, gentler when they cover that skin.
He can see how hard my dick is as he bends down, but he ignores it and his own.
I lean my head back, enjoying the feel of being taken care of.
“If you touch my dick, I make no promises as to how long I will last.”
I get a laugh and a kiss for that, but I can tell, even though I’ve closed my eyes, that he’s worried about something.
“I want—” Thatch begins and shifts his feet.
I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling our bodies into just enough of the spray to keep us warm.
“What is it, Gabe?” I see the wrinkle in his forehead.
“I forgot exactly how to ask a guy what they’re . . . in to.”
“In to?”
I slide my hips closer, making sure he’s aware of how much I obviously want him. Clearly, I’m into him. But otherwise, I’m lost on what he wants.
“I want—wondered if you . . .”
Watching him struggle with wanting something he can’t ask for isn’t okay with me.
I grab the soap and begin slowly washing his incredible body—fit from work and an active life.
His bedroom eyes are back but he quits trying to find the words.
When I’m just about done, he turns the shower off and pulls me to him.
The kiss is deep. Fortifying.
“Rory,” he asks against my lips, before pulling back to look at me. “If I was to make love to you, how would you want it? Condoms or not? Would you want me inside you?”
I shiver at his words more than the cool air hitting my damp body and lay a kiss on him that should definitively answer his last question.
“I would love for you to top me, baby.” Blindly, I reach for a towel, doing the bare minimum required to dry us off, because now I’m more interested in getting him in bed than just about anything else. “I’m on PrEP. You?”
Thatcher shakes his head, following me out of the glass shower. “I don’t . . . you know, enough for that. I’ve had a checkup since my last hookup, though, and I was all clear. I just use condoms.”
I stalk him out of the en suite and to his king bed until he’s scrambling up, and I follow, walking on my knees toward him and only pausing to grab some lube from the bedside table where we have it stowed.
“What I’m hearing is that I could have you bare.”
Thatcher goes very still and his breath hitches.
“You would want that?”
“Hell yeah, I want that.”
I’ve no more said the words before I get to work prepping myself under his watchful gaze.
It turns me on. I know that I like to put on a bit of a show. Anyone who’s seen me on the ice can attest to that. Gabe’s eyes on me take that to a whole new level.
“Can I . . . ?” he asks, running his hands up my thighs. Those work-roughened hands are killing me, and I shake my head.
“If you get inside me—in any way—I may lose it, babe. I’m ready anyway.”
I back up, beckoning him a bit down the bed, and make quick work of straddling him.
“You sure?” he asks, as I line his impressive cock up.
“Literally about to die if you aren’t in me, Gabe. I need to know what that feels like. Don’t make me wait.”