Chapter 5
Aaron
Sasha texted me fourteen minutes ago.
I know because I checked the time stamp twice before shoving my phone into my locker. He sent it right as I walked into the rink. The message is repeating in my brain while I pull my jersey over my pads: you look cute in your uniform, Aaron Kelly.
Ten lockers down, Sasha is taping his stick and talking to Bennett about something that has Bennett cracking up.
He hasn’t looked at me once. He sent that text while sitting right there on that bench, probably with that stupid little grin on his face, and now he’s acting like he didn’t just make my neck go hot in a room full of guys.
I slam my locker shut. The sound is louder than I meant it to be and Robertson glances over.
“You good, Kell?”
“Fine. Locker’s sticking.”
It is not sticking. I am a liar. I grab my helmet and head for the tunnel before my face gives me away.
September in Hartley is different than September in New York — it definitely feels like fall already.
Here, the rink is smaller, the boards are older, and the ice has a slightly different sound under my blades — softer, like it hasn’t been resurfaced as recently.
The banner situation is hard to ignore. Austin Nash.
Wyatt Tate. Their numbers hanging up there like a conversation I didn’t ask to join. Number 17. My number now. No pressure.
But the ice is the ice, and once I’m moving, the noise in my head goes quiet the way it always does. Crossovers, edge work, the puck snapping off my tape. This is the one place my body doesn’t need instructions.
Coach Rafferty blows the whistle and we set up for line rushes.
First line: Robertson on my left, Sasha at center.
We’ve been running together for three weeks now and the team energy is already coming together.
It shouldn’t work this well this fast. Robertson dumps it in, Sasha picks it up behind the net, and I’m already cutting to the slot because somehow I know exactly where he’s going to put it.
His pass hits my tape and I roof it over Callan’s glove and the guys on the bench bang their sticks.
“Filthy,” Robertson says, skating past me.
Sasha circles back to center ice. His hair is escaping his helmet the way it always does — dark gold, curling at the ends, damp with sweat. He catches my eye for half a second. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t nod. Just looks at me with those blue eyes and then turns away like it was nothing.
My hands tighten on my stick.
Stop thinking about the text. Focus.
We run it again. And again. Every rep, Sasha finds me like he’s got a tracking device on my blade.
His passes are precise, weighted perfectly, and every single time our gloves brush on a puck exchange, my forearm tenses.
Which is insane. I’m wearing three layers of gear. I shouldn’t be able to feel anything.
I feel everything.
Water break. I’m at the bench gulping from my bottle when Cooper drops down beside me, pulling his helmet off.
My roommate — one of three. Cooper, Robertson, and Nakamura share the second floor of our house on Maple Street.
They’ve been living together since junior year and they took me in this summer without making it weird.
No hazing, no earning-your-place bullshit.
Just here’s your room, here’s the Wi-Fi password, don’t touch Robertson’s protein bars.
His dark hair is plastered to his forehead and he’s got that dry half-smile he does when he’s about to say something he thinks is funny.
“So, Kell.” He tilts his bottle toward me. “Saw the article in the Globe.”
“Which one?”
“The one where they called you — what was it —” He pulls out his phone and reads in a fake announcer voice. “‘Boston’s golden boy takes on the Russian sensation in a battle for Ashford supremacy.’”
“Put that away.”
“‘A rivalry for the ages,’” Cooper continues, grinning now. “‘Kelly and Voront—’” He squints at his phone. “However you say it. Kelly and Sasha.” He rolls his eyes. “Must be nice, being so famous you only need one name. Anyway — ‘fire and ice.’”
“I said put it away.”
Young skates over, because Young has a radar for anything that might embarrass somebody. “Are we talking about the article? Because I have it bookmarked. I’ve been reading it to the freshmen at breakfast.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because it’s art, Kell. ‘Fire and ice.’ Like a cologne ad.” Young assumes a pose — chin up, smoldering expression. “You could be on a billboard. Both of you. Standing back to back. Shirtless.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Arms crossed. Brooding. Maybe some wind machines.” Young drops the pose. “Honestly though, I’m just glad you’re here. I’m tired of taking orders from a Russian bully who thinks he’s God’s gift to hockey.”
Robertson shoves Young off the bench. “Watch it. He’s still your captain.”
“Co-captain,” Young says from the ice where he landed. “That’s the whole point. Now we’ve got one captain who actually speaks to us like humans. No offense, Kell, but the bar was low.”
I shake my head, but I’m smiling. I can’t help it.
These guys have been giving me shit since the first article dropped and it’s the most normal thing in my life right now.
The razzing, the locker room, the way Robertson calls me Kell like we’ve been playing together for ten years instead of three weeks. This part I know how to do.
Across the rink, Sasha is working with a couple of the sophomores on faceoff technique. He’s patient with them — repositioning their stances, demonstrating the hand placement, running it over and over. It’s a side of him the guys on my end of the bench don’t see. Or don’t want to see.
Cooper watches me watching and I snap my eyes back.
“Speaking of Sasha,” Cooper says, quieter now. He leans his elbows on his knees. “Glad you’re here, man. Seriously.”
I take another sip of water. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s been —” He glances across the rink.
“Look, he’s a great player. Best center in college hockey, no argument.
But it’s been two years of everything being the Sasha show.
Every article, every highlight, every interview.
The arena chants his name and the rest of us are just background.
Now he’s cashing in on it too with all these sponsorship deals, and it’s like — we get it, dude. You’re a star.”
Nakamura, who has appeared silently the way Nakamura does, says, “He’s also kind of a dick.”
Cooper snorts. “He’s not a dick. He’s just —”
“Arrogant,” Nakamura says. “Walks around like he owns the building.”
“That’s what I mean.” Cooper looks at me. “So having another captain — someone the guys can actually talk to, someone who’s not going to act like they’re doing you a favor by passing you the puck — it matters. That’s all I’m saying.”
I nod. My jaw is tight and I don’t know why. “Yeah. No, I get it. Thanks.”
Across the rink, Sasha is laughing at something one of the sophomores said. His head tipped back, his throat long and exposed above his jersey collar, the sound carrying across the ice. My stomach does something I pretend is hunger.
“Actually,” I say, because I’ve been putting this off and this feels like the moment. “I should probably tell you guys something.”
Cooper raises an eyebrow.
“Diego — the agent. He signed me too. This summer. So you’re going to be seeing me doing the same kind of stuff. The articles, the sponsorship deals, all of it.” I rub the back of my neck. “I know it’s annoying. I’m sorry.”
Cooper and Nakamura exchange a look.
“Dude,” Cooper says. “That’s completely different.”
“How is it different?”
“Because we know what happened with your dad.” Cooper’s voice drops, not in a gossipy way. In a teammate way. “The cancer, the medical bills, losing your scholarship when you transferred. You’ve got actual loans to pay off. Nobody’s going to blame you for making money when your family needs it.”
“Sasha’s out there doing interviews so he can leave the rest of us in the dust and be the biggest star in pro hockey when he graduates,” Nakamura says. “You’re doing it because your dad got sick. That’s not the same thing.”
My throat tightens.
I think about Sasha at eighteen, leaving Omsk with everything he’d earn already promised to a family that needed it.
Sending money home every month. Supporting his mother, his brother, his sister — since he was a teenager.
I think about how nobody here knows that, because Sasha would rather eat glass than admit it.
I should say something.
He’s not what you think. He’s carrying just as much as I am. More.
“Thanks, guys,” I say instead. “I appreciate you not being weird about it.”
Cooper claps me on the shoulder. “Just don’t start doing cologne ads.”
“No promises.”
Rafferty’s whistle cuts across the rink. Back to work. I push off the bench and skate toward center ice and Sasha is already there, settled into his stance, stick across his knees. He looks up at me through his visor. Those eyes. That mouth.
You look cute in your uniform, Aaron Kelly.
“Nice of you to show up,” he says. Loud enough for the guys nearby to hear. “I thought maybe you were too busy being a celebrity.”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
He grins. Sharp, public. “Just try to keep up, Kelly.”
I bare my teeth at him in something that is technically a smile. My heart is slamming.
The locker room empties out in waves. Guys hit the showers, get dressed, drift off toward the dining hall or their dorms or wherever they go when they’re not here. The noise level drops in stages — trash talk, then normal conversation, then the last few guys calling out goodbyes.
Sasha left twenty minutes ago. I watched him go while pretending to take a very long time with my skate laces.
He’d pulled on that gray hoodie, shoved his hair behind his ears, slung his bag over one shoulder.
Walked out without looking back. The door swung shut behind him and the room felt bigger and quieter.
Now it’s just me and the drip of a shower someone didn’t turn off all the way.
I pull my phone out of my locker.
His text is still there. You look cute in your uniform, Aaron Kelly. Sent at 3:47 p.m. Read at 3:48 p.m. No reply.
I open the message thread. My thumbs hover over the keyboard.
You looked good out there today.
Delete.
I wanted to defend you and I didn’t.
Delete.
When can I see you?
Delete.
I stare at the empty text box. The cursor blinks. Somewhere in the building a door slams and I flinch like I got caught.
My phone buzzes.
Diego sent us both an email. First job together. Chicago in October. Overnight.
My pulse picks up. Another text comes through right after.
I want to teach you what I did to you in New York. If you’re interested.
I glance around the locker room. Empty. No one in the showers, no one in the hallway.
I text back: Looking forward to Chicago.
I toss my phone in my bag and walk out.