2. Mads #3
Coffee in hand and restless, I left my office, bypassing the changing rooms, the kitchen, the weight rooms, and in fact any place where I might meet someone and have to talk.
Which was how I ended up in the back corridor by the heap of storage boxes we used when playing away games.
Unfortunately, someone else was already there, seated on a box, cross-legged, staring at the wall.
Tennant. I stopped and backed away, but he’d heard me, or seen me, or really did have that freaky second sight that some of the pundits talked about.
“Mads,” he said, and leaned forward out of the shadows so I was able to get a good look at him. The dark blue hoodie with the Railers logo front and center suited him. That was all I could think.
“Ten,” I said, on autopilot.
“That guy, twenty-nine. Ulffson or something? He’s not finishing his checks. Wants to get the puck and score. That’s not good.”
I looked at Ten to see if he was teasing, but there was nothing on his face or in his beautiful green eyes that spoke of the declaration being anything other than a statement of fact.
“Noted,” I said.
“You knew that already,” Ten said, and untangled his legs, stretching them out in front of him one at a time.
“I did.”
Great, this was either the deepest conversation I’d ever had with another person, or just plain fucking stupid.
“Brady says hi,” Ten offered, and this time the stretching extended to him lifting his arms above his head, and yep, there it was, that strip of skin, of toned stomach, and yep, I looked. Sue me, Ten had a classic skater’s body, all muscles and planes and strength. A man could look.
And then I raised my gaze, and Ten was smirking.
Honest-to-God smirking at me. What did that mean?
Was it because he knew he looked good and he was appreciating the fact that someone had looked?
Or was it because Brady had told Ten about the threesome incident and he was hoping to push my buttons?
Either way, Ten was a bastard who was happy flaunting all his shit, and I couldn’t be interested.
I should just come out with it and call him on the smirk, tell him I might be bi but I wouldn’t be fucked around with.
But what if the smirk was because of something else, like a family joke that was about me?
So, I didn’t say a thing. I changed the subject and chalked up the reason for the smirk as nothing at all.
“Great. He actually emailed me,” I said, referring back to Brady, because I wasn’t going to smile back or rise to anything Ten was implying with that smirk.
At that statement, Ten’s expression changed.
From confident and happy, he became guarded.
“Don’t tell me,” he began with a heavy sigh.
“Big Brother wanted to warn you that I need to try harder on the breakaway, or that my forecheck isn’t as fast as we need, or hell, maybe I’m not in the right place for the tip in. ”
“No,” I answered, because the words Ten spoke were filled with derision, and I didn’t like him saying any of it. “Your brother is proud of you.”
All the tension left Ten, and he visibly slumped. “Yeah, I know he is. I’m proud of him and Jamie.” He looked right at me. “Don’t think for one minute we’re not one big happy family.”
Ouch. Something really hard underscored those words, and I wanted to fix whatever had stolen away happy, teasing Ten and left this shuttered man in front of me.
“He wanted to meet up one day for a beer,” I lied. Because whatever I tell my son about lying not being a good thing, lying is sometimes exactly what needs to happen.
“Oh.” Ten looked surprised. Then he smiled again, this time less confident smirk and more fond. “How’s Ryker?”
“Seventeen, hormonal, a pretty good left wing.” That was how I summed Ryker up in public. But Ryker was much more than my moody seventeen-year-old son who had a wicked slap shot. He was my life, and the reason I got up every day.
When I’d sat in that doctor’s office and listened, hearing words that meant very little to me, I’d interrupted him and asked him the one thing any hockey player would ask. Will I play again?
Only having my son in my life had stopped me from losing myself in pills and alcohol after the doctor had shaken his head and put the final nail in my hockey coffin.
You won’t be able to play professional hockey again.
So, yeah, Ryker was more than how I’d described him there, but I wasn’t ready to share that with anyone, let alone Ten, who I didn’t really know very well anymore.
“I friended him on Facebook,” Ten announced.
I wasn’t even Ryker’s Facebook friend. I needed to talk to him about that, because I should be, right? Isn’t that, like, number one on the list for parental responsibility or something? It was my turn to have him this weekend, and I added Facebook to my mental list of things to talk about.
“Good,” I finally answered. Probably with too much of a gap for it to be socially acceptable. Whatever I did wrong was enough for Ten to clamber off the crate and straighten up. He held out his hand.
“I’m going to like it here,” he said.
I took his hand. A man’s hand now. Not the same grip he’d had as a kid. I shook it firmly, and he had that same smile. Was I supposed to hug him now? Was that what a “bro” would do? He tugged away and slipped past me.
“Later,” he said.
And all I could think was that Ten had surely grown up fine.