CHAPTER ONE THE COLLISION #2
He stopped inches away. Their chests nearly touched. Brock straightened slowly, forcing Tyler to tip his head back to maintain eye contact.
“You’re slow,” Tyler said.
Brock’s hand settled around Tyler’s hip—not gripping, not quite, but large enough that the fingertips reached toward his back.
“And you keep coming close enough to catch.”
The contact lasted less than a second. Brock released him before a coach could object.
Tyler carried the sensation into every remaining test.
He won flexibility while Brock stood near the end of the table and watched Tyler’s body fold forward.
Brock won the weighted sled by leaning into the straps and driving two hundred pounds across the turf with brutal, steady power.
Tyler won lateral agility. Brock won grip strength.
Tyler held the plank longer. Brock carried the heavier sandbags.
By the final conditioning circuit, the entire room had recognized the contest. Teammates gathered around the last station, shouting as Tyler and Brock dragged identical sleds toward the line.
Tyler’s lungs burned. His thighs trembled. Beside him, Brock moved like a machine beginning to break apart without permitting itself to stop.
Tyler reached the line first by the length of one hand.
He collapsed onto his back, chest heaving.
Brock dropped beside him. Their shoulders struck. Neither had the energy to move away.
“Fast,” Brock managed.
“Strong,” Tyler answered.
Brock turned his head. Tyler did the same.
They lay sweating inches apart while teammates argued over the result. Brock’s eyes moved down Tyler’s body. Tyler felt the attention like another touch. Even exhausted, even surrounded, his arousal returned with humiliating speed.
Brock noticed.
The front of Brock’s compression shorts tightened in response.
Tyler sat up quickly and reached for his towel.
“Baseline established,” the strength coach announced with determined professionalism. “Hydrate. On-ice scrimmage in forty minutes.”
Tyler walked to the locker room without looking back.
He knew Brock was following because every nerve between his shoulder blades felt watched.
The cold shower did nothing useful.
Tyler stood beneath it longer than necessary, palms braced against tile while water moved over his shoulders.
He told himself the reaction was chemical: adrenaline, competition, exertion.
His body had always confused danger with desire.
It was one reason his dating history read like a list of men his publicist had specifically advised him to avoid.
Brock Lawson was not Tyler’s type.
Tyler preferred elegance, intelligence, a certain degree of polish. Brock looked capable of repairing a truck with his hands and then lifting the truck when the jack failed.
Tyler shut off the water.
For several seconds he remained facing the tile, letting the last streams move down his back.
He had built a career on control. Control of an edge at full speed.
Control of a puck moving faster than thought.
Control of his expression when reporters asked whether being openly gay made every road arena more difficult.
He knew how to smile while sponsors discussed his marketability as if he were not in the room.
He knew how to turn his body into an instrument and ignore everything it wanted until the game ended.
Brock had disrupted that discipline without doing anything more complicated than looking at him.
That was the humiliating part. The man had not flirted elegantly.
He had not offered Tyler a drink or searched for some flattering excuse to touch him.
Brock had simply stood there, huge and unembarrassed, letting Tyler see that the attraction affected them both.
The honesty of it felt more indecent than any practiced seduction.
Tyler took a clean towel and dragged it over his hair.
The mirror above the sinks returned flushed skin, damp blond hair, and pupils still too wide from exertion.
He looked less like the polished face from endorsement campaigns and more like a man who had spent the morning imagining exactly how much of Brock Lawson’s strength was deliberate.
He disliked the answer forming inside him.
He wanted to find out.
When he turned, Brock stood at the next shower wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.
Water ran through the dark hair covering his chest. The towel sat low on his hips. His physical reaction remained unmistakable beneath it.
Tyler’s gaze landed there before he could stop it.
“Cold water not working?” Brock asked.
Tyler took his own towel from the hook. “Maybe I’m thinking about someone else.”
“Then he’s having a very good morning.”
“He usually does.”
Brock moved closer. Wet footprints marked the tile between them.
“You always get like this when somebody beats you?”
“You didn’t beat me.”
“Bench. Grip. Sled. Carry.”
“Sprint. Jump. Agility. Endurance.”
“Tie, then.”
“I don’t tie.”
Brock’s gaze moved over Tyler’s wet body, pausing where the towel failed to hide his response. “No. You definitely don’t.”
A group of players entered the showers, breaking whatever had been building. Brock walked away without another word.
Tyler hated how strongly he wanted to follow.
Forty minutes later, the rink restored his sense of control.
Ice had always simplified Tyler’s world. Edges held or they did not. A lane opened or disappeared. The puck obeyed physics instead of emotion. He could convert instinct into speed and speed into certainty.
Coach Keller divided the team into black and white squads. Tyler pulled a black practice jersey over his pads.
Brock wore white.
“Keep it competitive,” Keller called. “But if either of you idiots turns my first scrimmage into a title fight, you’ll spend tomorrow cleaning the equipment room.”
Tyler pushed onto the ice.
Brock followed.
The first shift passed cleanly. Tyler tested the young goaltender with a low wrist shot and circled back. Brock defended the slot, using his size to move players without wasting energy.
On the second shift, Tyler carried the puck across the blue line.
Brock waited.
Tyler shifted left, sold the movement with his shoulders, and cut right. Brock did not bite. He stayed square, forcing Tyler toward the boards.
Tyler accelerated anyway.
The collision sounded like a door slamming inside an empty house.
Brock drove him into the glass with controlled force. Tyler’s shoulder struck first, then his hip. Brock’s body followed, pinning him upright. Their helmets nearly touched.
“Caught you,” Brock said through his mouthguard.
Tyler could feel the strength in the man’s legs, the pressure of his hips, the chest at his back. The protective layers did not diminish the intimacy of being held there. If anything, the equipment turned the contact into something larger and more consuming.
“Interference,” Tyler said.
“You have the puck.”
“Then holding.”
“You like being held.”
Tyler drove backward, separated them, and kicked the puck loose along the boards. Brock released him with a final shove.
Tyler retrieved the puck on the next shift.
This time he did not challenge Brock’s body. He challenged his pride.
Tyler slowed as he entered the zone, inviting Brock forward. The defenseman closed the gap. At the final instant, Tyler slipped the puck between Brock’s skates, spun around his left side, recovered it behind him, and accelerated toward the net.
He shot high over the goaltender’s glove.
The puck struck the back bar.
Tyler turned toward Brock and skated backward, arms spread.
“Caught you,” he called.
The black squad shouted and hammered their sticks against the boards.
Brock stared at him from the blue line.
Tyler saw the moment restraint failed.
On the next faceoff, Brock abandoned the puck and came directly for him.
The hit was legal enough to avoid a whistle and personal enough to start a fight. Tyler bounced off the boards, dropped his stick, and grabbed Brock’s jersey. Brock caught Tyler around the waist. Momentum carried them down together.
They rolled across the ice in a tangle of pads and skates. Tyler ended on top. Brock reversed them almost immediately. Tyler shoved a glove into Brock’s face. Brock tore off his helmet. Tyler removed his own.
“Enough!” Keller’s whistle shrieked. “Both of you, off the ice.”
Brock remained above Tyler for one breath too long.
Even through cups, pads, and layers of equipment, Tyler could feel the charged alignment of their bodies. Brock’s pupils widened. Tyler’s pulse hammered beneath the hand gripping the front of his jersey.
“Now,” Keller roared.
Brock stood and offered Tyler a hand.
Tyler ignored it and rose alone.
They skated toward opposite exits while teammates shouted jokes neither acknowledged.
Keller caught them in the tunnel. “I don’t care if you hate each other. I care if you make the rest of these men choose sides before we’ve played one game.”
“He came after me,” Tyler said.
“He embarrassed me,” Brock replied.
“That is somehow worse,” Keller said. “Shower. Go home. Tomorrow, try acting old enough to rent a car.”
Tyler returned to the locker room, stripped off his gear, and stood beneath another cold shower until the team began filtering in from the completed scrimmage.
He dressed quickly and left before Brock.
Or tried to.
Halfway to the parking lot, Tyler realized his phone remained inside his locker. He considered leaving it overnight. Then he remembered the messages awaiting him from his agent, publicist, new sponsor liaison, and mother.
He turned back.
The facility had become quiet. Staff moved somewhere above him, but the lower corridor stood empty. The automatic lights dimmed behind him as he approached the locker room.
Music played faintly inside.
Tyler pushed open the door.