Chapter 19
Aaron
Sasha is taping his stick and I’m trying to give a pep talk and these two things should not be in conflict but here we are.
He’s in the stall across from mine, winding white tape around the blade in slow, precise loops.
His head is down. His hair is tucked behind his ears.
He didn’t shave this morning and I’m noticing that from across the room, which is a problem, because I’m standing in front of twenty-two guys who are waiting for their captain to say something inspiring and I can’t stop looking at him.
“So.” I clear my throat. Lean against the whiteboard. “Last game before break.”
The locker room is loud with pre-game energy. Sticks getting taped, pads getting adjusted, music playing from someone’s speaker — Robertson’s pregame playlist, which is always too much bass and not enough actual songs.
Sasha is still taping. Those hands. Long fingers, precise movements, the same hands that wrapped around my wrists in that hotel room in —
Focus. Pep talk. Twenty-two guys waiting.
“I just want to say —” I look around the room.
Cooper, lacing up. Nakamura, stretching his neck.
Young, bouncing on his toes like he’s about to rob a convenience store.
Bennett, calm as always. Callan in his pads, already in the zone.
Elliot cracking his knuckles one by one, which he does before every game and which drives Cooper insane.
“I know I came in last year as a transfer. You guys didn’t have to welcome me so much as your teammate and your co-captain. But you did.”
“We knew you’d make a good roommate too,” Robertson says. “You’re way too tidy looking to be the guy who leaves the dishes in the sink for days like the rest of us.”
A few laughs. I let them settle. Across the room, Sasha almost smiles. He’s still looking at his stick but he’s listening. He’s always listening.
“My point is — you accepted me. You didn’t have to and you did.
This team had its own identity before I got here.
Its own history.” I don’t look at the rafters but everyone knows what I mean.
The banners. The retired numbers. The legacy this program carries from the guys who came before us.
“And this season, what we’ve built together —” I gesture at the whiteboard behind me, where the win streak is tracked in blue marker.
Seven straight. “That’s not me. That’s not Sasha.
That’s this room. Every guy on every line, every shift, every blocked shot at two in the morning on a Tuesday road game when nobody’s watching. ”
Nods. A couple of stick taps on the floor. Robertson smacks his pads. Nakamura gives me a short nod — the kind that means more from him than a standing ovation from anyone else.
“So let’s go out there and make it eight. Last one before break. Let’s send everyone home feeling good.”
More stick taps. A few whoops. I step back and look at Sasha. His turn.
He finishes the last loop of tape. Tears it clean with his teeth. Stands up.
He’s already in full gear except for his helmet, and in pads he looks even bigger than he is — shoulders wide, chest broad, the blue Sentinels jersey stretched across his frame. He surveys the room like a general inspecting troops before a siege.
“That was very nice,” he says. “Very touching. Aaron Kelly is a good man and you should appreciate him.”
“Get to the point, Sasha,” Young calls out. His jaw is fine. The bruise from last week has faded to yellow.
“The point.” Sasha cracks his neck. Rolls his shoulders. “The point is that Michigan flew here to play hockey against us, and we are going to make them regret getting on the plane.”
The energy in the room shifts. Louder. Sharper.
“They are eighth in the conference. We are second. They have lost four in a row. We have won seven.” He holds up seven fingers.
Looks at them. “Actually, I don’t know why I’m counting.
The number doesn’t matter. What matters is that they walked into our building thinking they have a chance, and it is our job — our responsibility — to make sure they leave knowing they were wrong. ”
Robertson bangs his stick on the floor. “Let’s go!”
“I’m not finished.” Sasha holds up a hand. The room goes quiet. “We’re going to play fast. We’re going to play hard. And when it’s over, we’re going to send them back to Michigan in body bags.”
“You can’t say body bags,” Cooper says. “That’s a war crime.”
“It is not a war crime. It is hockey.” Sasha grabs his helmet and tucks it under his arm.
The room explodes. Sticks banging, guys yelling, Robertson doing some kind of war cry that sounds like a wounded animal.
Even Callan is grinning behind his mask.
Young is already at the door, helmet on, practically vibrating.
He catches Sasha’s eye on his way out and points at him — no hard feelings, all gas, the fight from last week already ancient history in Young’s goldfish brain.
My speech was solid. His was a performance.
I watch him across the room as the team starts filing out.
He’s adjusting his gloves, flexing his taped hand — the one that hit Young, the one I wrapped last week in this exact room while nobody was watching.
The knuckles have healed. The tape job is long gone.
But I remember the feel of his hand in mine, the warmth of it.
The team files out fast — skates clattering on rubber mats, the tunnel pulling everyone toward the ice.
Robertson and Cooper are the last ones through the door. Cooper glances back at us — a quick look, nothing suspicious, just checking that the captains are coming. I give him a nod.
Then it’s just us.
I catch Sasha’s arm as he reaches for his helmet. My fingers close around his wrist — bare skin, warm, his pulse quick under my thumb.
He goes still. Looks at my hand. Looks at me.
“Body bags?” I say.
“Too much?”
“It was perfect.” My hand is still on his wrist. I should let go. The tunnel is right there. Someone could come back. “Hey. What are you doing for the holidays?”
His eyebrows lift. “Holidays.”
“Thanksgiving. Christmas. The whole stretch.”
He shrugs. The one-shoulder kind. “Training. Studying for finals. The dorm will be quiet. I’ll get a lot done.”
My stomach does something uncomfortable. “You’re staying here? The whole break?”
“Where else would I go?” He says it simply. No self-pity. Just a fact — the way you’d say the sky is blue or ice is cold. “Most of the international guys go home. I don’t go home.”
“What about Thanksgiving?”
“I’ll find something. There’s a diner in town that stays open. Last year I ate a turkey sandwich and watched hockey highlights on my phone.” He tilts his head at my expression. “Don’t look at me like that. It was a good sandwich.”
“Sasha.”
“What? Americans are very dramatic about Thanksgiving. It’s one meal.” He shrugs. “Maybe I’ll actually open a textbook for once. Watch some old movies on TV. Work on my English.”
“I thought maybe — the Rafferty thing —”
“I’m not carving turkey at his house. I already let Lily know I won’t be there.” His mouth tilts. Almost a smile.
“Right.” My hand is still on his wrist. His pulse is steady now. Warm. “And Christmas?”
“Christmas is not a big holiday in Russia. We celebrate New Year’s. January seventh is Christmas, if you celebrate it at all.” He looks at me steadily. “I’ll be fine. I’m used to it.”
I think about my mom’s kitchen at Christmas.
The tree in the living room with the ornaments Caitlin and Mary made in grade school.
My dad in his recliner watching the Bruins.
Sean and his wife, Colin and his fiancée, everyone crowded around the table fighting over the last dinner roll.
Too much food. Too much noise. My mom asking me for the fifth time if I’m eating enough at school, and am I seeing anyone, and if I’m getting back together with Meghan.
I have all of that. More than I want, sometimes. And Sasha has a turkey sandwich at a diner and hockey highlights on his phone.
He has me, too. He just can’t tell anyone.
My fingers tighten on his wrist. All I want is to spend the holidays with him and I can’t say that out loud.
“We could go to New York,” I say. “Together.”
His eyes sharpen. “What?”
“Before Christmas. Before I have to go home to my family.” The idea is building as I say it, taking shape, and my pulse is climbing because this is stupid and reckless and exactly right.
“We’ll get Diego to set something up — an interview, a photo shoot, whatever.
Something real enough that nobody asks questions.
We’ll tell everyone it’s a Solstice thing.
My parents won’t bat an eye — they love the sponsorship stuff.
Your teammates won’t care because you’ve got nowhere else to be.
” I wince. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
“It came out honest. I prefer honest.”
He’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. Focused. Intent. Like I’m doing something he didn’t expect and he’s trying to catch up.
“And then we’ll have a night,” I say. “A whole night. An actual night where we go to sleep together and wake up together.”
His breath catches. I hear it — a small sound, barely there, but in the empty locker room it’s loud.
“You said you wanted that.” My voice is quiet. Quieter than I mean it to be. “On the bleachers. You said you wanted to see what I look like before I’ve fixed my hair and put on the Aaron Kelly face.”
“I remember what I said.”
“So let me give you that.”
He stares at me. Blue eyes. The locker room lights are harsh and fluorescent and unflattering and he still looks like — he looks —
God, I want this. I want to wake up next to him and have coffee and not check over my shoulder.
“You’re serious,” he says.
“I’m serious.”
“Diego will need to think it’s real. A work trip.”
“Diego always thinks it’s real. That’s the whole point of Diego.”
“I could tell him there’s a brand meeting. End-of-year campaign review.” He’s already planning. I can see it — the gears turning, the same focus he brings to game tape. “He’s been talking about a winter shoot for the spring campaign. I can push that up.”
“See? It’s perfect.”
“It’s not perfect. Perfect would be walking out of this locker room holding your hand.” He says it quietly. Not bitter — just true. “But it’s close.”
My heart is hammering. I’m standing in this locker room in full gear, minutes before a game, making plans to spend Christmas with my boyfriend in a hotel room in Manhattan, and my hands won’t stop shaking.
His mouth curves. Slow. The real smile — not the one for cameras, not the cocky grin he gave the locker room five minutes ago. The one that’s just for me. The one that knocks the air out of me every time.
“I’ll take care of everything,” he says.
“I can help —”
“Aaron Kelly.” He steps closer. Close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off his pads. His voice drops. “Let me take care of it. You’ve been taking care of everyone else all semester. Let me do this.”
My throat tightens. I nod. My hand is still on his wrist — I haven’t let go this entire time. His pulse is faster now. So is mine.
“Early Christmas in New York,” I say.
“Early Christmas in New York.” He looks down at my hand on his wrist. Turns his arm over so my fingers slide to his palm. Squeezes once. Lets go.
“Now put on your helmet,” he says. “We have a game to win and Michigan to send home in body bags.”
I laugh — too loud for a locker room where anyone could hear. He grins at me and it hits me the way it always does, right in the center of my chest.
I grab my helmet. Pull it on. My hands are shaking a little, which is going to be a problem for face-offs but I don’t care.
We walk to the tunnel together. Side by side.
The fluorescent lights wash everything flat white and our skates scrape the rubber mats and I can hear the crowd already — the buzz of seven thousand people filling the arena, the bass from the sound system, the energy building toward the opening face-off. My face-off. My center.
Sasha bumps his shoulder against mine. A teammate thing. A captain thing. Nothing anyone walking toward us would think twice about.
But he holds the contact for one beat too long. His shoulder warm against mine through the pads. And when he pulls away, his glove brushes the back of my hand — so quick I almost miss it.
I don’t miss it.
The tunnel opens to the ice. The lights are blinding. The crowd noise hits like a wall and the cold air rushes over us and somewhere in the student section someone starts the chant — SA-SHA, SA-SHA — and the whole building picks it up.
He skates out ahead of me. Stick raised. The crowd roars. That arrogant roll of his shoulders, like the whole building belongs to him. I’m right behind him, and I feel like I’ve already won something.
Before the puck even drops.