3. TATE
TATE
September
It’s happened twice before, but not like this.
Well, three times if you count my childhood doll.
And never with someone that I wanted to fuck.
Obsession. The kind of obsession that results in me making very bad decisions.
I have an obsessive personality as it is, but this kind of obsession is dangerous.
Life-ruining. I can’t get him out of my fucking head.
I’ve devoted way too many hours imagining how I can abduct Ryan and keep him.
Ugh, but it’s against the law. Not that I care about the law, but it makes things difficult with everything else I have going on.
Spinning the flat metal talisman over my fingers, I lean back, my chair creaking, the sudden noise contrasting with the dead silence.
Practice ended an hour ago. I already wish I had them all back for another grueling couple of hours, but Shadowridge University frowns upon grinding its students into the ground. That doesn’t mean I don’t, I just have to be careful about how often I do it.
I didn’t think I’d love being a university hockey coach so much, and when Uncle suggested it, I thought it was another punishment. It’s hard to admit he was right, but not to admit—at least to myself—that I love it for all the wrong reasons.
Having men jump at my commands, sending them out to battle on the ice, winning—I love that kind of control.
Although Uncle Jasper would have known I’d love coaching for the wrong reasons. He knew it would hold my attention for a while, keep me busy. I like a challenge, and college hockey provides challenges in many forms.
Ryan. He’s a problem for me. He has the ability to make my life spiral out of control. If Uncle Jasper were still alive, he’d take him away just like he took away my doll.
Unless I can get him under my control.
“I don’t like the way you obsess over that thing,” he’d said. The doll was missing an arm. I’d found him—yes, him—that way, discarded at the park, and as soon as I set eyes on him, I knew he was mine. Just like with Ryan.
Mom let me keep him. From what I remember about her, Mom was an odd soul, like me.
She wore long black dresses, oversized cardigans, and always smelled like the incense of the day.
She only brushed and cut her hair on the full moon.
We washed his plastic body as best we could, scrubbing all the dirt out of the artificial folds of his elbows, but we were never able to rid him of every speck, and I liked that.
Liked that he was forever tainted. We put him in an infant-sized black and red hockey jersey.
Ryan’s jersey is black and red—but with gold.
Mom died. I brought the doll with me to Uncle Jasper’s. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I kept my love for her inside that doll. Or I associated it with her, and that’s how I loved her. I know that I wanted to love my mother.
But if I’ve ever loved anything, it was my big brother. And that fucking doll. If because my kind of love looks like obsession, and all the therapists Uncle Jasper made me see explained that obsession isn’t really love.
Even though it’s everything to me. Obsession is the most I care about anything. It stands out. The bright spots of color in a sea of endless gray.
I followed Luke around, wanting to be just like him. I carried the doll with me, sometimes in a case, sometimes with a cuff attached to another cuff that I wore around my wrist, and sometimes by that one good arm it still had.
And then Uncle Jasper made me watch as he melted my doll down to a pile of plastic and glass eyes. I wanted vengeance and blood. I was seven. They weren’t normal seven-year-old emotions. I snuck into his room that night with a butcher knife from the kitchen after I thought he’d be fast asleep.
He was waiting for me.
“Next time you want to kill someone—especially me—don’t make such a racket when you steal your murder weapon,” he’d said. Then he punished me soundly and succeeded in terrifying the ever-loving fuck out of me. I hated him silently for a while before I got brave again.
I haven’t talked about that doll in a long time, even though I’ve never stopped thinking about the way its body burned, never been able to smell melted plastic without flying into an irrational rage.
I’ve never told anyone outside my family about him, either.
Until fucking Ryan Savage. Why did I tell him?
I don’t have an answer. It’s eating away at my carefully constructed narrative.
Just yesterday, the dean stopped by to make sure I was alright.
“What happened to the pep in your step, there, bud?” he’d asked, his knuckles grazing my shoulder, a friendly punch.
Fucking Patrick. Always smiling. Always jovial.
Sunshine always shining out of his ass. It’s disgusting.
If only he knew the underbelly of the world, he’d know there’s nothing to fucking smile about.
But I forced one, seeing as my mask of choice in this subterfuge has always been the hockey coach version of every dad from a nineties family sitcom.
He placed a hand on my shoulder. I waited to see if the warmth I knew must be there would penetrate me. It didn’t. “Thanks again for recommending your brother to the English department. You’re a lifesaver.”
I’m an opportunist. I needed Luke’s help this season with my talented but fucking chaotic captain, Ace McKinnon. I have goals.
“It’s the least I can do, Patrick,” I’d said.
“Well, I owe you. And I’m happy to return the favor. If you need to bend my ear, let me know, pal.”
That was just great. Pathologically pleasant Patrick wanted to spark a friendship with me, because I haven’t been smiling as much as Fake Me is supposed to.
Can’t Fake Me have a bad day without alerting the sunshine police?
I promised him I’d get some sleep. Hopefully, he never brings up “being there for me” ever again.
It only got worse from there, though. The football coach, Taylor, who I’m pretty sure is more of a psychopath than I am, asked if everything was okay. And what did I do? Almost fucking told him it wasn’t. The words were on my tongue. Stinging. Burning. Wanting relief.
Can’t fucking sleep. Can’t stop thinking about him. And don’t get me started on whatever fucking sunscreen he was wearing all over that golden tanned skin of his. He smelled like a tropical fruit salad. I’ve been to every drugstore on and off campus, trying to find that goddamn sunscreen.
I almost asked Taylor how many bottles of sunscreen in my bathroom cabinet says sunscreen fetish.
I bit my tongue before I said anything stupid, but the next person who says to come to them for help gets a knife up their ass. But I got the message. Lie better. Stay away from Ryan Savage. Don’t even fucking think about him.
The fact that I’m once again thinking about him has me murderous. Killing someone would be a good time about now. I’m sure there’s someone on my long list.
There’s a knock on my office door. Ace McKinnon pokes his dark-blond head in. “Ah, Coach?”
“What?” I snap. He jumps. God fucking dammit. Ace knows me as his pal, his buddy, his confidant. I only lose my cool like this when we’re getting demolished on the ice. I take a calming breath, but it does little to quiet the itch under my skin.
“Bad time?” he says.
“Nope. Just tired,” I say, affecting Attentive Coach as much as I can after that little slip-up. “What can I do for you?”
Patrick says things like that. I’ve studied him. It seems to relax people. Make them feel seen.
Ace smiles, making himself comfortable in the chair in front of my desk. Uncle Jasper would have skinned me alive if I’d done that before he gave me permission to sit. I hated it, so you’d think I’d be opposed to it, but my nose reflexively wants to wrinkle over his lack of decorum.
“Just wanted to chit-chat about this season, Coach. I’ve got some ideas I think you’ll be into.”
McKinnon natters on about dryland training, schedules, and even on-ice drills.
He’s my captain, my workhorse—unless we’re talking about his schoolwork—and my cash cow.
I give him enough autonomy to keep him happy, but I make the final calls.
It’s going to be nice having my brother here to babysit his ass this semester.
I’ll have more time to do what I need to do.
There’s no way Ryan’s as much of a slacker as McKinnon is.
Henry Savage makes sure of that, I’ll bet.
My hands ball into fists, and the urge to pound on something becomes the air that I breathe.
The way he talked about Ryan as if he wasn’t there.
I didn’t like it. Henry was very close to being put on my list.
The only reason he hasn’t been—yet—is because I’m more often rational than not. No doubt Ryan’s a spoiled rich boy. He probably needs someone to temper him, and his father has a name to protect. I get all of that. Uncle Jasper beat it into me.
I privately assured myself that it was nothing more than a father making sure his kid minded his manners—something parents seem to do well past the age they should.
But my instincts know better, and they won’t let me sleep because of it. Those same instincts whisper things to me. They think I should claim Ryan as my own. Creepy little echoes in my head getting louder and louder.
Take him. Take him. Take him.
Another voice whispers, you knew exactly what you were doing. You marked Ryan with your cum.
I smile on the inside. I sure fucking did.
“…and that’s the plan. What do you think about it, Coach?”
I haven’t heard a word McKinnon’s said. But it doesn’t matter. He was born to hockey, and he knows hockey. “Love it. All of it,” I say. He beams, preening over the praise. McKinnon’s such a puppy. If he had a tail, it would be wagging right now.
“Can’t wait to crush North Point in a few weeks, Coach,” he says, standing. “The team will be ready for you.”
He leaves. As if I needed him to remind me of that inconvenient fact. Ryan will be here, and I won’t be able to stay away.