3. Brody
I don’t remember leaving the office.
I remember the door, and then I’m in the parking garage with my truck keys in my hand and no memory of the stairs in between.
I drive. No destination, no plan. Over the river and back. Past the practice rink. An hour of it, maybe more, radio off, both hands on the wheel. The heater’s on too high and I don’t touch it.
My knuckles are still split from the Dorn fight, and every time I flex my hands on the wheel the scabs pull.
His scent came with me. It’s in my nose, in the cab of the truck, on my collar where it has no business being, because he never came within six feet of me. I roll the window down. It doesn’t help. It’s not in the truck. It’s in me.
I pull into a gas station north of the river and don’t buy gas. I sit in the lot with the engine ticking and watch a man fill a minivan, a regular guy having a regular Tuesday, and I want to trade lives with him so badly my teeth ache.
A kid in a Barons hoodie comes out of the station with a slush drink, clocks the truck, clocks me, and his face lights up.
I sign his cup and take a selfie with him, the boy beaming into the camera like he won the lottery.
Here’s what I keep coming back to: Gordie had a son.
I found out about him, same as the rest of the team, after Gordie died and the question of who now owned the franchise came up.
All Sacco had to say about the guy was to wrinkle his nose as if the mere mention of the guy brought a bad smell to the room. He wouldn’t be drawn on anything else after that.
I figured they’d fought, the way father and son sometimes do. I’d googled him, thinking I’d need to know the new boss, and not found much. Everett Rourke had lived in Europe for years, working in banking or something equally dull.
But that wasn’t the issue. I’d known Gordie Rourke for years. I’ve lost track of the dinners I’ve had at his table, barbecues at his house. He knew my mother’s name and my sister’s kids’ names and remembers the names of dates I’ve had that I don’t even remember.
And in fifteen years he never once said the word son. No family photos. I was vaguely aware that he’d been married before and got divorced, but that had been years ago. The subject simply didn’t come up. I got the impression Gordie didn’t think about her much.
Everett Rourke hadn’t been at the funeral. I knew that much. Even if I’d not noticed him, I’d have noticed that scent.
JP stood beside me at that service with his hat crushed in both hands and cried without any embarrassment at all.
I kept my eyes on the casket and spent half the time thinking that I didn’t believe that Gordie was actually in there. That felt nuts. The whole thing was surreal.
The house is dark when I pull in. My phone buzzes just as I pull through the security gate. I park then pick it up.
JP: how’d it go with the new boss? am I traded? do I get your parking spot?
Then, a beat later: you good?
I type fine. I delete it. I type he’s not what I expected. I delete that too, then put my phone in my pocket without replying.
That’s the first time I lie to JP Tremblay, by saying nothing at all.
My house is a big place up the hill, trees on three sides, a garage under the house, and a security system JP talked me into after a fan found my old address and left love letters in the kitchen.
I know what Everett Rourke is to me. He’s my mate. He’s my scent match at minimum. Maybe even a prime match.
The last few weeks have been nuts. First Gordie dies and then I find out his son is my true mate.
My skates are by the door where I dropped them after morning skate, back when today was still a normal day. I stand in my own kitchen with the lights off for a minute, watching the trees move in the wind.
The house was supposed to have somebody in it by now.
I’d bought the house thinking I’d have a mate in it one day, and then one day just seemed to be a little further away until it seemed like it was never going to happen.
My sister has two kids who are amazing. I’d kind of assumed that I wasn’t going to end up having any of my own. Today that’s changed.
Most nights I don’t hear the empty. Tonight it’s loud.
I get a beer and sit down with my laptop and type his name.
I’d done it when I knew he was the new owner. That was different. Now I know that it’s him.
Everett Rourke gets me a private equity firm’s leadership page. London. The photograph looks retouched but probably isn’t: dark hair, gray eyes, an expensive suit.
His bio tells me that he has two degrees and has lived in multiple cities. There’s stuff about corporate banking that goes in one ear and out the other. Nothing about hockey. Nothing about a father.
I keep snooping. He’s all over LinkedIn, a site that I’ve never seen the point of. He doesn’t seem to have much social media or none that I can find.
Finally, in my second hour of unashamed investigative work I find a clip of him mentioning Gordie.
He’s at some conference answering questions from the audience about leveraging something or other.
Someone says: “You’re Gordon Rourke’s son, aren’t you? The Barons? What was that like?”
On the video, something crosses his face, quick and cold, there and gone.
Then: “We’re not close.” And a look down that straight nose that closes the topic so completely the moderator apologizes.
The accent catches me off guard. American underneath, London laid over the top of it, like he packed the Rourke out of his voice along with everything else.
Prim. That’s the word for it. He’s prim and about as far from Gordie Rourke’s open grin as a face can get.
I don’t see the resemblance much either. Maybe Everett looks like his mother.
I put the empty beer bottle into the recycling, then I wipe down a counter that’s already clean.
I haven’t replied to JP. I need to tell him what happened. This is going to affect the team, no matter how it goes. He deserves to know.
I get as far as picking up my phone before I put it down again.
All I can think of is the moment that scent hit me. The floor tilting. The way I instinctively stepped toward him.
And his face. I keep coming back to his face, because I’ve spent fifteen years reading men across the ice and I know what I saw.
Shock first. Then horror. Actual horror, the kind nobody can fake, aimed straight at me.
He gripped that desk like the room was moving, and he screamed at me to get out.
So that’s where it stands. Whatever hit me in that office hit him too, and he hates it.
Hates me, maybe. Although he doesn’t know me, clearly he didn’t like the look of me.
Not surprising. I’m a thirty-three-year-old hockey player on the tail end of my career, scars on my face and a false tooth. I wouldn’t pick me either.
For the record, I know how that sounds, and I’m not a sad case. I like my life. I’ve got a letter on my chest, a room that would skate through a wall for me, a house I paid for with a game I love, and a best friend who’d hide a body for me. It’s a good life.
Doesn’t mean some random person wants to automatically be stuck with it.
I go to bed and lie there for an hour, and then I give up and take a shower hot enough to hurt.
That’s where it gets away from me.
I’m not thinking about anything. I’m standing in the steam with my eyes shut, and the scent memory arrives anyway. Orange peel.
The exact line of his throat above that white collar. His voice cracking on the second get out, split right down the middle. He was losing control. Water is drumming on the back of my neck.
I should turn the water cold.
I don’t.
My hand is around myself before I think better of it.
I imagine him backed against that big oak desk, gray eyes gone black. His mouth saying my name instead of get out.
I know what his skin is going to taste like. It’s going to be that scent but even better.
But there are things I don’t know. Whether he’d be quiet or loud. Whether he’d give orders or want to take them.
In the fantasy he wants it. In the fantasy the horror on his face never happened. In the fantasy, he’s begging me for it.
I come hard enough that my knees nearly go, forehead against the tile.
I stand in the water until it runs cold, and then I stand in it some more.
I’ve never once jerked off to thoughts of a real person. I don’t know why. My fantasies have always been fairly faceless. I guess I think about the act more than the person. This time it was the other way around, just thinking about Everett Rourke’s scent was enough to tip me over the edge.
I’m in sweats with my hair dripping when the phone lights up on the nightstand. My stomach knows what it is before I do.
NOTIFICATION OF CONFIRMED PRIME MATCH. Compatibility index: 98.1%. Party one: Callahan, Brody M., registered alpha. Party two: Rourke, Everett G., registered omega. Registration references attached. Mine is dated fifteen years ago.
I knew it. How come it hasn’t come up before? The answer comes up right away. Because he’s not been in the US.
I don’t know what kind of Bureau system they have over in England, but it’s probably different.
I do know that his paperwork coming back to the country would require him to be registered.
I sit down on the edge of the bed. The mattress dips. The house is so quiet I can hear the water heater refilling two rooms away.
I registered at eighteen same as everyone else I know. It sat in a database for fifteen years while I played hockey and got older, and tonight, of all the nights of my life, it pays out. On Gordie’s son.
I think about calling my sister. She’d have opinions. Yeah, maybe not.
I know the basics. Everybody knows the basics. A prime match is legally binding. There are compliance requirements, there’s mandatory cohabitation somewhere in the fine print, and the penalties get worse the longer you pretend the letter never came. The Bureau does not do exceptions.
I look the rest up properly, sitting on my bed like it’s homework, and the word that comes back in every paragraph of every guidance page is mandatory.
Assessment meeting: mandatory. Notification to both parties: automatic, already done.
Cohabitation, where indicated by the compatibility index: mandatory.
I vaguely recall there was some court case some time ago that challenged it, but everyone knows you can’t fight the Bureau. Not really.
And I’m not sure if I want to. Yeah, he threw me out but he was in shock. So was I, I guess. All I can think about is those stormy gray eyes.
There’s a number to call for questions, open until midnight.
I get four digits in and stop, because the first question I have is not a Bureau question.
It’s whether he’s sitting in some hotel across town reading the same notification and hating it.
Hating me. Has the horror worn off? Was he also jerking off in the shower?
Then there’s the other problem. The stupid press is going to love it. But we’ll find a way. We’ll have to. It’s mandatory.