Chapter 13
THEO
Theo’s game day habits weren’t as rigid as Rowan’s, but he had a few things he liked to do. Nap, lunch, then a little video of the opposing team before he hopped into Vic’s car and headed to the arena.
That day, he’d agonized over what suit to wear, while Rowan wore the same dark gray suit he’d been wearing his entire career, switching up the shirt like that made him fashionable. He wasn’t even sure if Rowan could tie his own tie now.
Theo had sent a mirror selfie to Laurel before he got in the car, and followed it up with his critique of Rowan’s suit efforts.
He’d expected a laugh, or an emoji. Before they arrived at the arena, they would have a plan for later that night, a quick hook up so Theo could get home and get some sleep before they hit the road the next day.
What he got instead was a breakup text. Was it a breakup if you weren’t together?
Laurel: Babe, you’re hot and you know I like you and all, but I can’t take this anymore.
We gotta stop seeing each other. I can’t listen to you obsess over someone else for the entire time we’re doing this.
You can’t concentrate on anything else. It’s been good.
But you need to figure out whether you need to punch that guy or fuck him, and I don’t want to be around while you figure that out.
Laurel: Good luck though
“What the fuck,” Theo sighed. He was in the back seat of the car, while Vic and Rowan talked about the charity hospital visit they always did around Christmas. That was coming up.
“What happened?” Vic asked.
“I got, like, dumped. Via text.”
“Dumped by who?” Rowan asked, voice surprised. Theo was trying really hard to not snap at Rowan lately. Some moments were more difficult than others.
“Laurel.”
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.” Rowan’s voice was unreadable.
“Well, I didn’t. Just this girl, I guess. My regular hookup.”
“You sad, buddy?” Vic asked, with the true apathy of the newly in love. People in Vic’s situation couldn’t fathom being unhappy in a relationship. Theo remembered what that felt like. Distantly, but he remembered.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You’d know if you were sad,” Rowan said, looking out the windshield. Having a civil conversation with Rowan was a novelty, and the more it happened, the more Theo realized it wasn’t as unwelcome as he thought it would be in October.
“You’re probably right,” Theo said. He had no doubt he was sad when he and Rowan ended. He re-read Laurel’s messages. Obsessing over Rowan? He wasn’t, was he? He had a whole life outside of Rowan. But it wasn’t his fault Rowan was on his hockey team, and still living in his house.
Vic’s house. But whatever. It was Theo’s home.
* * *
He went through the motions as he got ready for the game.
His warmups, playing two-touch with the boys, listening to Coach Peters’ speech and the starting lineup.
By the time he made it out onto the ice for warmups, any thoughts he’d had of Laurel had disappeared.
Instead, he had the cool rush of refrigerated arena air on his face, the familiar and satisfying cut of his skates into the ice.
It was good to remember how lucky he was to get to play on the best ice, with the best equipment.
Rowan skated by, the strap to his helmet unbuckled, and gave him a soft smile as he shoved him into the boards. “You’re going to be okay to play, yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m okay,” Theo said. Rowan could have been checking in on him because he cared about the game. But Theo had known Rowan Foley since before he was Rowan Foley, and it felt genuine.
They were on the ice, though. Neutral territory.
The puck dropped at the beginning of the first, and from the second it hit the ice, Theo felt like he was flying.
Usually, this feeling was fleeting, and only came a handful of times throughout the season, but this year, he almost expected it.
Especially on home ice. Especially next to Rowan.
Hockey was 90% work and 10% fun most of the time, but this season already had a certain special air to it. Like it sparkled at the edges.
Theo knew Rowan’s shot was good as soon as it left his stick, and they were up 1–0 five minutes into the game. St. Louis was looking like an AHL team out there.
Rowan’s second goal came with ten seconds left in the first. Sammy could have left the ice and no one would have noticed with how much time the Serpents were spending in the attack zone.
“Boys are on fire tonight,” Aaron crowed in the locker room after the first.
“Keep yourself in check,” Vic said. “We don’t want to get cocky.”
Theo knew the wisdom of that. Feeling like there’s no way you can lose is a direct path to losing.
San Jose didn’t pull sold-out crowds often, but they had been on fire all season, and the fans were energetic as they came back out onto the ice for the second. Aaron got called for hooking right at the start of the period, and the Fangs capitalized on their man advantage. They were 2–1.
“We still got this, boys, no worrying,” Rowan hollered down the bench, and helmeted heads nodded agreement. They had this.
They kept St Louis from scoring again, but they weren’t able to put one in net that period. They still were up by one going into the third.
Rowan was on hatty watch, but no one was dumb enough to say that out loud.
St. Louis was getting tired. Theo could tell.
He knew what heavy legs looked and felt like.
Theo didn’t feel fresh as a daisy exactly, but he had as much energy as he was ever going to have in the third period of an NHL game.
He could tell Rowan felt the same. Nikita, the right winger on their top line, also had some pep in his step.
Nikita wasn’t as mind-melded as Theo and Rowan were, but he was worthy of the top line.
Their passes were connecting, their dangles sick, their plays precise.
Theo was going to do whatever he could to get Rowan his third goal. Not because he had any particular feelings about Rowan, but because that’s what you do for your teammate who was one goal away from a hat trick.
They got deep in the O-zone, and Theo had a good shooting lane, but he chose to pass it to Rowan. Rowan took his shot, and it bounced off the goalie’s blocker, and straight back to Theo’s stick. In times like these, you’d be an idiot not to bat the puck into the open net.
“You had a clear shot before you passed it,” Rowan shouted at him during their celly, while the goal horn filled every crevice of the building, and their teammates crushed around them.
“It went in eventually.”
“Don’t pass it to me if you have a good opportunity to score.
I know what you’re trying to do. I’d rather win.
” Rather win than get the hat trick. They still weren’t saying it out loud.
It made Theo want to double down on his efforts.
Of course, Rowan didn’t care about the hat trick.
He already had plenty of them during his career.
It annoyed Theo.
With ten minutes left in the game, Aaron checked a St. Louis Fang awkwardly into the boards. It was a legal hit, but borderline, and the refs didn’t call it, so Aaron’s mark took it into his own hands, grabbing the collar of Aaron’s jersey. It only took a moment before fists were swinging.
There wasn’t always a clear winner in hockey fights, but that fight left no doubts. Aaron skated off to the box triumphantly, regardless of the blood that was dripping from his nose.
The Fangs got a bit of energy from that fight, and suddenly it felt like the Serpents were playing against a real team.
The challenge set Theo and Rowan into high gear.
With two minutes left in the third, the Fangs pulled their goalie, and though Theo had an open shot on a breakaway toward the open net, he chose to pass to Rowan, anyway.
This time, Rowan’s shot went right in. The Fang chasing them down broke his stick on the crossbar, and the goal horn went off again as hats rained down from the stands.
“You didn’t take your shot, asshole,” Rowan said, tapping his stick on Theo’s shin pads.
“You were leaving with a hatty if it killed me,” Theo called after him as they did their flyby, bumping fists with the guys on the bench. The rest of the game was just waiting out the clock.
The boys were congratulatory to Rowan, of course, but now that wins were coming nice and steady, it didn’t make as much sense to spend their time celebrating every one like they had won the Stanley Cup.
The locker room was filled with good energy, but toning it down was necessary if they were going to make it to the end of the season.
Theo stomped his skates over to his stall and started taking his pads off. He tossed his jersey in the laundry basket in the middle of the room, and Rowan caught his eye, calling him over to the media scrum around him.
“Tell them what you told me,” he said.
“Huh?”
“About the hatty.”
“Oh. I told him he was leaving with a hatty if it killed me.”
“Looks like you were working pretty hard out there to get him that goal, even when you had good chances yourself. Is that just the depth of your friendship, or on-ice courtesy?”
The depth of their friendship. Somehow, Theo didn’t laugh. Rowan threw an arm around his shoulders though, and it was the first off-ice casual contact like this they’d had since Rowan got there. It was weirdly nice. Theo didn’t shrug him off.
“He’d do the same for me,” Theo said, and he knew that was true. It might have been professional courtesy, but it was the truth nonetheless.
While the mood of the locker room was slightly calmer than it had been last year when they won a game, Theo was still buzzing with it. He didn’t get a hat trick, but it almost felt like it. He and Rowan both had ridiculous four-point nights.
“Hey, Laney,” Vic said, tossing his car keys toward Theo. Theo caught them. “I’m going to Uber to Julia. Take Foley back home and don’t murder him in the car. Think you can handle that?”
“I can handle it,” Theo said. Vic told Rowan what the deal was on his way out, and Rowan waited for Theo to get his suit back on after his cooldown.
There was always energy sparking between him and Rowan, but while it usually carried the undercurrent of anger, or at least frustration, this was something different.
Even when Rowan was pissing him off, Theo still felt some kind of magnetic force between the two of them.
It’s how he had ended up in Rowan’s bed to begin with.
When they would have nights like this as kids, putting up points like they ran the place, their evenings ended up in frenetic make-outs.
They’d park Rowan’s Jeep in the woods and go at it for a couple of hours until their lips hurt from kissing and they had dry humped themselves raw.
Okay, so maybe Theo didn’t miss the dry humping. He missed whatever it was they had, though, because on nights like that, Theo knew with every cell in his body that Rowan understood him to the core.
They parked in the garage and made it inside, and Theo couldn’t shake the energy buzzing through his body.
He felt struck by lightning, and it got stronger the closer he was to Rowan.
Rowan was looking at him with those big fucking brown eyes, and before Theo could think through what he was doing, he had shoved Rowan against the hallway wall.
Rowan’s suit was boring, but it was cut to show off his ass and thighs, and Theo was about at his limit with it.
Rowan was limp against the wall, not fighting back at all, and when Theo pressed his body closer, he could feel Rowan getting hard against his thigh. Theo pressed his own growing erection against Rowan, and felt him buck against him.
Rowan gasped, rolling his hips to ride Theo’s thigh a bit, and Theo’s head spun.
He couldn’t remember a time when he was this horny, when he’d wanted someone this much.
The hallway was dark, and Theo felt like they were just shadows.
He had Rowan’s damp, hot breath on his neck.
Theo had lost his grasp on any semblance of control he had, but at least he knew he couldn’t kiss Rowan.
He let Rowan keep working against him, and he pressed his forehead against the wall he had Rowan backed up against. Rowan got his hands on the fabric of Theo’s hips to pull them tighter, and Theo’s hand slid up under Rowan’s tie, resting right at the base of his throat, keeping him in place.
Rowan was panting, his eyes closed, holding on to Theo like he would be ripped into the void otherwise.
“Fuck, oh my God,” Rowan said, his hips stuttering as he came in his pants. Theo wasn’t far behind.
As he came back into his body, he realized what they had done. He was still holding Rowan against the wall with his hand at the base of his throat. Rowan was looking up at him, his full, wet lips parted. Theo wanted. Theo knew what would happen if he ever let Rowan back into his heart.
“Fuck,” he said, taking a step back. He had come dripping out of the leg of his boxers. He’d have to get these pants dry cleaned. Rowan was stock-still, frozen in place, before Theo bolted, tossing Vic’s keys on the kitchen counter before sprinting upstairs.
He didn’t expect Rowan to come after him, and he didn’t.