Chapter 3
Chapter Three
LAPORTE SCORES TWICE IN FIRST NHL GAME
No one knows why he finally decided to return, and he doesn’t seem willing to enlighten us. That has not stopped speculation—many believe it to be bad blood with ex-teammate Nick Tiernan, who has been notably silent on the subject.
Nick Tiernan had better watch out; there’s a new name coming for his crown!
—HockeyTalk, October 8th, 2022
Things between Nick and Connor have always been complicated.
Connor didn’t like him at first. Nick was a mouthy little shit at fifteen, all of five foot six and desperate to prove that he deserved to be on that ice a year early.
Connor was hockey royalty—tall and quiet with an attitude like no one was worth his time.
An attitude Nick would later learn was actually just disguising his constant, crippling anxiety.
Nick’s French was terrible and Connor refused to speak to him in English, despite being fluent, but the second they were put on the same line…
Magic.
The pair of them connected on-ice like nothing Nick had ever experienced in his young life, and it showed in their stats.
It was only a matter of time before that connection became off-ice too.
Within two weeks they were practically inseparable, a matched pair on and off the rink.
Nick was in love before he even knew how to stop it.
Connor was his everything. His best friend, his linemate, his captain, his billet brother. And then one night, buzzed on cheap beer and a 7–0 victory, things changed. A shy kiss in the dark of a teammate’s back yard; a bolder kiss in their shared bedroom when they got home.
It was beautiful, at first. Everything Nick had dreamed of. He could see his future stretched out in front of him, Connor at his side, and he wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything.
And then, in a blink, it was over. Nick was alone, the only thing in his future the endless sands of the Nevada desert and thousands of furious fans who felt robbed of the “Greatest Rivalry of Modern Hockey” and who held him responsible.
Nick scrubs at his face and tugs at his hair, leaning against the wall of the elevator up to his apartment as the memories threaten to overwhelm him.
He kind of hates Connor for coming back now of all times, right as the media is starting to jump on Nick for “losing his touch.” It’s not Connor’s fault, but it feels intentional.
Like he’s been waiting in the wings for Nick to slip, so he can swan back in and reclaim the crown he never should’ve lost to begin with.
But hell, at least it would mean Connor’s been thinking about him.
“You’re pathetic, Tiernan,” he grumbles to himself as he unlocks his front door, bracing for the tiny ball of fluff that launches itself at him. “Pathetic. Right, baby?” he reiterates, holding the cat up nose-to-nose with him. She stares back, unblinking.
It’s embarrassing how little progress he’s made in getting over Connor in the last five years.
Even more embarrassing, how quickly any hopes he might’ve had were shattered when they met again—barely ten minutes into their reunion lunch in some diner in Montreal.
Connor was twice as handsome as he had been as a teenager, finally having grown into those awkward limbs.
“I’m seeing someone,” he said, and Nick’s stomach sank through the floor.
“I mean, like, a therapist,” Connor clarified right after, his pale skin flushed pink, but the damage was done.
He’d seen how those words made Nick react, and it became abundantly clear to Nick that he was an idiot to think this would go any other way.
He’s glad, truly, that Connor is back. Not only because a player like that deserves to be in the NHL—he’s glad for himself, too.
Connor’s absence has been a gaping chasm in his chest for the last five years, and Nick is just self-aware enough to know that he never would’ve begun to start healing that chasm without closure.
But God, the process fucking sucks.
Nick has tried to be mad at Connor. But he’s never really been able to do that.
So he said yes and agreed to start over.
He pulled on every ounce of the laid-back facade Vegas had forced him to build and mentioned with a laugh that they never would’ve worked out anyways.
They parted ways with promises to keep in touch and a long hug that Nick swore he could feel in his bones for weeks afterward.
Now he’s mad. He’s furious—irrationally so, but at himself. Here he is, feeling butterflies around a hot guy for the first time in forever, and the second he’s alone he starts feeling the itch of betrayal. Guilt over a relationship that hasn’t existed in years.
He’s even more mad that this is taking up so much of his thoughts at all when his hockey career is in the state it’s in.
No one cares that his stats last season were barely worse than they were the season before—they weren’t better, and the team didn’t get even close to a cup, therefore he needs to get it together or he’ll be searching for a new team come summer.
That’s the problem with Nevada hockey fans—so many of them joined because it was a winning team that stayed winning, and no matter how statistically impossible it is to keep doing that forever, their expectations are high. As the star of the team, Nick is the first one they’ll blame.
The last thing he needs on top of all that is a stupid crush on some boy in a band.
Nick is mostly prepared for the adrenaline crash that comes the day after a home opener. He’s a seasoned player, he knows how to pace himself, but there’s just something about the extra ceremony and pressure surrounding the first game that leaves him aching and fuzzy-headed.
Thankfully, it’s a rest day; there’s optional skate, but he’s senior enough to skip that without reprimand, so he’s perfectly at ease to stay in bed. At least until Dolly hops up on the bed and digs her tiny paws directly into all the sensitive parts of his abdomen, yowling for food.
“Okay. Come on, baby girl,” Nick sighs, scooping the little black and white cat against his chest and rolling out of bed. He drops a kiss to the space between her ears, shuffling towards his kitchen and humming under his breath.
Breakfast is followed by an easy workout in his home gym, stretching muscles that ache from a harder night’s hockey than he’s had in a little while.
His phone is used only for music; social media has a tendency to ruin his off-days first thing in the morning, so it’s a personal rule not to check anything but texts until after lunch.
All he’s had so far is a picture from Lindsay of a bottle of Dayquil captioned with a frowny face, so it doesn’t sound like Marco is going to be around for the day. That’s fine. Nick’s a big boy, he can entertain himself.
There are always re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy.
The rest of the day stretches listlessly ahead of him, and he finds himself wishing for the kind of mid-season schedule where almost every hour of his week is accounted for.
Nick doesn’t do well with boredom.
Hoping he doesn’t regret it, he sprawls out on the couch and grabs his laptop, opening Twitter, wincing at the maxed-out notification icon.
Most of them are tagged tweets of people talking about the game, his goal, his abs—he’s half-naked in the back of some celebratory locker room pictures again.
Well, may as well get it out of the way early.
There’ll be plenty more where that came from, internet.
Taking comfort in the fact that he put up a good enough show that his mentions aren’t full of abuse, he filters to check notifications from accounts he follows.
Right at the top, there’s a picture from the team account of him and Marco posing with the band.
It’s got over five thousand likes already, and he opens the replies—and immediately closes them again.
Homophobic hockey fans are the fucking worst.
Tearing his gaze away from the angle of Matt’s jaw as he grins in the picture, he clicks through to the band’s profile.
The header is a photo of all of them playing, and that’s how Nick learns that Matt is the lead singer of the band; he stands in the very center, guitar hanging from his neck but his hands wrapped around a microphone.
His hair is spiked up, the red even more vivid than it was in person, and his eyes are rimmed with black liner.
Not just a rockstar, but a frontman. God.
The rest of the band look great, too: Spencer sits behind a drum kit with his shirt off, Joel holds a black and silver guitar, and Casey strums a hot-pink bass that matches both her hair and her platform boots.
Nick opens Spotify. He did promise to listen to them, after all.
Sticks+Stones have two albums and an EP. Nick sees the title of the EP—Penalty Minutes—and grins. Perfect. He clicks play, and immediately an upbeat guitar riff kicks in.
And then Matt starts singing.
Holy shit.
He’s good, his voice confident with just an edge of a rasp to it, sticking at a throaty mid-range but then sailing up into higher notes with ease. It doesn’t blur into noise like a lot of that kind of music does for him. It’s got fire to it, a bite, something almost like pop that has Nick hooked.
He lets the music keep playing as he opens Instagram. He posted his own photos there last night: one of his jersey before he dressed for the game, and one that Kat sent him of them with the band.
It’s a different one than the Dragons tweeted—Kat is very hot on giving variety across corporate and personal accounts so they don’t all look like they were forced to make posts by management.
Nick’s post is informal, all of them mid-conversation while Casey signs Marco’s vinyl.
In the background, Nick is talking to Matt and Spencer, and he’s glad he’s side-on to the camera because that way you can’t see the gay panic in his eyes.