CHAPTER THREE THE CAPTAIN’S LEDGER
The scoring system began on the back of a grocery receipt.
Tyler wrote GOAL = COMMAND while Brock drove them through downtown traffic.
The morning after their first night together had left both men too aware of every movement inside the truck.
When Brock changed lanes, his hand passed close to Tyler’s thigh.
When Tyler shifted in the passenger seat, Brock’s gaze flicked down and returned to the road.
Neither mentioned the bed.
“Assist equals request,” Brock said.
Tyler wrote it beneath the first rule. “Requests can be refused.”
“Commands too.”
“Then they’re not commands.”
“They are if refusal costs a point.”
Tyler considered that. “Acceptable.”
“Penalty?”
“Surrender.”
Brock’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Define it.”
“The man who takes the penalty gives up control for one round.”
“What if it’s a bad call?”
“The box doesn’t care.”
“Neither do you, apparently.”
Tyler smiled and added the rule.
At the practice facility, they folded the receipt between them and hid it inside Tyler’s wallet before entering.
They spent the day behaving like captains.
They ran drills, corrected rookies without humiliating them, stood side by side for sponsor photographs, and answered questions about what it meant to lead an expansion franchise.
No one looking at them could have guessed that Brock had woken with Tyler wrapped around him.
No one except perhaps Mara Singh, whose eyes paused on the matching bruises near their collars before she moved them two inches farther apart for a team photograph.
That evening, Brock found an old accounting book inside a built-in cabinet at the loft. Its canvas cover had faded to brown. Columns for BARLEY, HOPS, LABOR, and LOSS filled the first dozen pages in fountain pen from 1928.
“Absolutely not,” Tyler said when Brock placed it on the kitchen island.
“Historic property.”
“It belongs in an archive.”
“It belongs to the captains.”
Brock opened to the first blank page and printed THE CAPTAIN’S LEDGER across the top.
The name was ridiculous.
Tyler loved it instantly.
They established the rules over dinner. A goal earned one command.
An assist earned one request. A penalty meant one voluntary surrender.
A game-winning goal granted control until sunrise.
A hat trick earned an entire weekend. Points could be banked for seven days, traded only by mutual agreement, and never collected when either man was injured, impaired, angry beyond reason, or simply unwilling.
“We need a stop rule,” Brock said.
Tyler looked up from the page.
“One word,” Brock continued. “No arguments. No points lost.”
The seriousness in his voice stripped the joke from the ledger.
“Frost,” Tyler said.
Brock nodded. “Frost.”
Tyler wrote it beneath the other rules and drew a line around it.
“Nothing happens at the facility,” he added.
“Agreed.”
“Nothing affects line decisions, captain duties, or the team.”
“Agreed.”
“Nobody finds out.”
Brock leaned back in his chair. “You ashamed?”
“I’m practical.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Tyler closed the book. “The league spent ten years treating my private life like public property. I’m not giving it this.”
Brock’s expression changed. “Then nobody finds out.”
The answer came without teasing or pressure.
Tyler reopened the ledger. “Opening night is in six days.”
“Plenty of time to bank points.”
“Exhibition goals don’t count.”
“Convenient for a man who hasn’t scored one.”
Tyler threw a napkin at him.
For six days, the ledger lived inside a locked drawer beneath the old copper bar. It became the most powerful object in the loft.
Tyler noticed it while drinking coffee in Brock’s jersey because his own shirts were still at the cleaners.
Brock noticed it while cooking breakfast shirtless, apparently unaware that the sight of his back over a cast-iron pan made coherent conversation impossible.
They accumulated no official points, but they negotiated practice credits: a perfect zone entry might earn a kiss; winning a faceoff drill might buy ten minutes beneath Brock’s hands; a blocked shot might permit Tyler to choose where they slept.
The informal rewards kept them barely civilized.
The first test came during the final preseason practice. Keller divided the roster into two groups for a three-on-three tournament and placed the captains on opposite sides.
“Winner gets the good locker-room coffee for a week,” the coach announced.
“There is good locker-room coffee?” Tyler asked.
“No. But leadership requires optimism.”
Brock’s team scored first. He did not celebrate. He simply skated past Tyler and tapped one glove against his own wrist as if marking a private total.
“Exhibition,” Tyler reminded him.
“Practice credit.”
“Denied.”
Tyler tied the game two shifts later, stole the puck from Brock for the next goal, and assisted on the winner. When the team crowded around him, he looked over their helmets and found Brock watching with a mixture of irritation and appetite.
The expression stayed with Tyler through the sponsor event that followed.
The Frost had constructed a temporary studio beside the rink for promotional photography. Tyler and Brock spent an hour in full uniform standing back to back, shoulder to shoulder, and finally face to face beneath artificial snow.
“Closer,” the photographer said.
Brock stepped forward.
The fronts of their jerseys touched.
“More intensity.”
Tyler lifted his chin. Brock’s pale eyes narrowed.
“Perfect. Hold that.”
The camera flashed while Tyler felt the heat of Brock’s body through both sets of equipment. Fans would see rivalry in the finished image. They would not know Tyler was remembering the weight of Brock above him or that Brock’s thumb had settled against the hidden inside of Tyler’s glove.
“Great chemistry,” the creative director said.
Tyler nearly laughed.
During the video interview, they sat on stools beneath the Frost logo and answered rapid questions.
Most competitive?
They pointed at each other.
Worst loser?
Each pointed again.
Most likely to take a bad penalty?
Tyler pointed at Brock. Brock pointed at himself.
“At least we agree,” Brock said.
“Put it in writing,” Tyler answered.
Only they understood the reference.
The clip went online that evening. By bedtime, it had accumulated half a million views and thousands of comments analyzing their apparent hostility. Tyler read three before putting his phone facedown.
“They think we hate each other,” he said.
Brock sat at the kitchen table oiling the leather cover they had fitted over the ledger. “Useful.”
“One person says we should fight shirtless to settle the captaincy.”
“Insightful fan base.”
“Another thinks we secretly live together.”
Brock looked around the loft. “Ridiculous.”
Tyler crossed to him and picked up the ledger. Brock had added two ribbon markers, one black and one white, along with a small brass clasp. The care taken with the absurd book made warmth spread through Tyler’s chest.
“You restored it,” he said.
“Protected it.”
“From what?”
“You spilling skin serum on it.”
Tyler struck him lightly with the book. Brock caught it before it landed, caught Tyler around the waist with his other arm, and pulled him between his knees.
“Practice credit,” Brock said.
“You lost.”
“I blocked four shots.”
“That’s your job.”
Brock pressed one slow kiss beneath Tyler’s jaw. “Request.”
Tyler’s resistance weakened. “Unofficial.”
“Still asking.”
That mattered. Beneath the accounting, the language, and their relentless need to turn desire into competition, Brock continued to ask.
Tyler set the book safely on the table and placed both hands on Brock’s shoulders.
“Granted,” he said.
The requested kiss lasted long enough for the online comments to become irrelevant.
The night before the opener, neither man slept easily. Tyler found Brock at one in the morning standing on the roof in sweatpants and a thermal shirt, watching fog move between downtown buildings.
“You nervous?” Tyler asked.
“No.”
“Bad liar.”
Brock handed him a mug of coffee. “My mother has forty people coming tomorrow.”
“Forty relatives?”
“Some relatives. Some people who claim they taught me to skate. Two guys from my dad’s old shop. My third-grade teacher.”
Tyler leaned beside him on the railing. “Your third-grade teacher is still alive?”
“I’m thirty-five, not eighty.”
“Difficult to tell in this light.”
Brock bumped him with one shoulder. Tyler returned the contact and let it remain.
“Who’s coming for you?” Brock asked.
“My agent. Two sponsors. League inclusion people. My mother said she’ll watch from Arizona.”
“You invite her?”
Tyler stared into the coffee. “She hates flying.”
It was true and incomplete. His mother also hated crowds, questions, and being identified as Tyler Hayes’s mother by strangers with opinions about her son’s life. Years of attention had taught both of them to celebrate apart.
Brock seemed to hear the missing part.
“You can borrow some of my forty,” he said.
Tyler glanced over. “Is the third-grade teacher available?”
“She likes wingers.”
Tyler smiled despite himself.
They remained on the roof until the coffee cooled. Nothing sexual happened. Brock’s hand rested on the railing beside Tyler’s, close but not touching, and the restraint somehow felt more intimate than their nights together.
Before returning downstairs, Brock said, “Tomorrow, whatever happens, you won’t be alone out there.”
Tyler answered with the only shield he still trusted. “That a promise or a request?”
“Neither.” Brock opened the door. “Captain’s order.”
At the rink, they maintained distance. At home, the distance rarely survived the front door.
Sometimes competition drove them against the brick wall before either had removed his coat.
Sometimes they sat at opposite ends of the sofa through an entire game film, exchanging glances that made the room feel too small.
Twice Tyler woke in his own bed and found Brock asleep beside him without remembering which man had crossed the loft.
They still called it uncomplicated.