Bro Code
CHAPTER ONE
Riley
The anthem ended and the puck dropped. Riley stopped thinking.
His body knew what to do – go into the corner, come out with the puck. Nothing difficult. Just air so cold it made your lungs raw, the other guy’s shoulder bashing yours, the rasp of skates on the ice, and the dull roar of the crowd behind that.
It was good to be back on the ice.
He stripped the puck no problem and was about to pass it when a stick shot between his legs, captured it, and left him standing like a pylon as Nic Arsenault skated away with his prize.
“Thank yah kindly!” Arsenault called over his shoulder.
That motherfucker…
Riley sprinted after him, “Cut the chirping and save your breath for the game, Arsenault!”
“Manners cost nothing!” Nic sang, sending the puck into the net.
Riley slammed his stick into the boards in frustration as the crowd screamed and rattled the bleachers. They were wild tonight. No surprise: first game of the season – Arsenault wasn’t the only one wasting his breath. It was like the fans had forgotten they still had eighty-one games to go.
He managed to keep it one-nil through the first period, which was respectable, given the circumstances: they were playing Montreal, and Montreal was stacked this season.
Not only did they have Nic Arsenault on defense – the Canadian golden boy who seemed to have forgotten that his job was defending, not scoring – but they now also had his boyfriend Liam Harris, who traded up to Canada from the States at the end of the summer.
Harris and Arsenault together were a lethal combination: when Nic was busy showing off instead of defending, Liam picked up the slack, occupying any ice he left unguarded like a massive granite slab – a surprisingly nimble granite slab.
Riley had been on a team with both of them at the Olympics in the spring. Back then, Harris and Arsenault had been a powerhouse duo he was happy to have on the ice. On the opposing side, they were a nightmare.
He managed to slip one past the goalie with ten seconds left in the period and tied it up. Relieved, he went into the locker room and drank water and listened to Coach Bertrand talk about their penalty kill.
The second period was when things started going wrong.
It was nothing, at first. Riley got bumped off the puck at the wall, which was fine. That happened – you reset and you went again. He reset. He went again. Couldn’t quite make the angle. The shot went wide. The crowd did a gasp of relief.
Fuming, he sat down at the line change after his shift, already tracking the puck, running the next sequence in his head. He chugged water and watched the play, and when he went back out two minutes later he was ready.
Except he still wasn’t.
He won the puck and tried to thread it to Lindholm, but the pass was late.
A second, maybe a second and a half, but it was enough.
The opposing defenseman – Arsenault again – got a stick on it and took it away.
When Riley got back to the bench, everyone was quiet, the way they were when something was off and nobody wanted to say it.
Next shift, Lindholm got a pass to him and Riley tried to score – it glanced off the post, and instead whooshing a gasp of relief, the crowd cheered this time. Like they were happy to let him know he’d failed. Fine. His team was on enemy soil: no one here was rooting for him.
“Dogshit,” he muttered, dropping onto the bench beside Lindholm after the shift.
“The post is your friend,” Lindholm said, in his lilting Swedish accent. “The post keeps you humble.”
“I don’t need to be humble, I need to be up by one.”
Next shift, he got to the puck a step slow, and took a hit he should’ve avoided. Harris slammed into him like a boulder and the crowd reacted as he went down. Somewhere inside the noise of their reaction he could swear he heard his own name.
Which was impossible, obviously. It was eighteen-thousand fucking people.
He was pretty sure he heard it, though.
“Mon dieu!” Arsenault sang as he sailed up and offered a hand to help Riley up. “Did we forget to eat our Wheaties this morning, Webb?”
Riley glared, ignoring the hand as he got to his feet. Down the other end of the ice he could see Liam Harris, already resetting his position, and tracking Arsenault like a dog tracking its person. He nodded at him.
“Maybe if I had a man servant cleaning up my messes for me, I could afford to gallivant all over the ice like a fucking ballerina, too.”
Nic narrowed his eyes through his visor as he coasted around Riley in a circle. “Let’s keep this polite, eh? No need to bring my man servant into this.”
Late in the second period Riley and Lindholm set up for a shot that should’ve been a shoe-in. The play was easy: Riley would drive, Lindholm would send him the puck, Riley would shoot. They’d run it in practice thirty times.
Riley drove. Lindholm sent him the puck. Riley shot.
The goalie saved it.
He did it effortlessly. The kind of save that made a goalie look like he could predict the future, which was demoralizing when you’d thought, for a full half-second, that it was in.
The whistle blew. The crowd cheered. Riley skated to the bench and sat down and stared at the ice.
“You telegraphed that shot,” said Coach Bertram. “May as well have rented out a billboard to let everyone know it was happening. Maybe next time you can sell tickets.”
Riley said nothing. He knew. He didn’t need to hear it – he’d felt it: a half second of hesitation before he took the shot, that wasn’t nerves and wasn’t fatigue. He didn’t know what it was – and that was making the back of his neck prickle.
Lindholm sat down beside him. He was watching the ice, his expression neutral in the way it was when he was being diplomatic. He didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “Still a good play.”
“Bad shot, though,” Riley said.
“It was…” Lindholm tilted his head back and forth, “…not your best.”
“Fantastic. Great pep talk.”
Lindholm got up to shake sweat out of his hair, and Riley watched Arsenault and Harris making eyes at each other across the ice. If they kept that up, sooner or later it was going to come out that Harris was gay.
Earlier this year, Nic Arsenault had decided to take a massive leap and go public about being bi.
He was the first guy in the league to do it.
Riley had been on the US Olympic team with Nic and Liam at the time, and he’d been inspired to come out too.
They were all riding high: coming off a gold medal.
Riley had assumed all three of them would go public, since it was blatantly obvious to him that Arsenault and Harris were an item – but for some reason, Harris stayed quiet.
Riley and Arsenault gave an interview to Vanity Fair in June, and officially became the first two openly queer active players in the NHL.
Most of the ensuing media frenzy was focused on Arsenault – he was the instigator and the ringleader, and he had that shiny golden hair.
But there had been plenty of heat on Riley all summer too, and it had been more than he’d been prepared for.
He didn’t regret it, exactly, but as much as he tried not to resent Liam Harris for not going through it with them, sometimes, he couldn’t help it.
Especially when Harris and Arsenault were out there flagrantly eye-fucking each other in the goddamn neutral zone!
Maybe what he was mad about wasn’t Harris staying quiet. Maybe he was just jealous because he was chronically single and didn’t have anyone to eye-fuck in the neutral zone. Looked like fun.
Lindholm rapped him on the knee. Time for next shift. Riley got up and adjusted his gloves. He scanned the ice and read the play. He vaulted over the dashers.
Why did he feel like he could hear his name up in the crowd again?
He couldn’t shake the feeling the building was extra hostile tonight.
That they had some kind of vendetta against not just his team, but him.
But he was probably imagining it. Probably just projecting his own insecurities.
Just because everyone knew he was gay now, didn’t mean they were gonna start throwing tomatoes. Or something worse.
Harris may have been smart to protect himself by not going public, but that didn’t mean Riley was in any actual danger.
Right?
Bro Code is coming to KU this fall!
Pre-Order Now
One jock. One nerd. Zero chance this ends professionally.
Riley Webb came out as gay at the end of last season: the biggest season of his career. He expected backlash. He didn’t expect it to become the only thing anyone talked about.
Riley just wants to play hockey. But the media is in his head now, and his performance is slipping. And when it slips so far that he’s traded to Montreal less than a month into the new season, he finds a whole new problem waiting for him: Louis Debonnes.
Louis spent the last ten years hustling.
He left behind a conservative family who couldn’t accept him, and built a career and unapologetically queer identity in Canada.
But the job market is getting tough for a coder.
His new position might be the last opportunity he gets: performance analyst for his favorite NHL team.
The player he’s analyzing? Riley Webb. The problem? Riley refuses to admit he needs help. Especially not from some nerd.
Louis isn’t giving up. Riley is determined to keep him out. And somewhere between the grueling practice sessions and late nights scouring the data together, Riley is forced to admit the truth: he needs this nerd. In more ways than one.
But Louis is hiding pain of his own. And Riley may be too hung up on himself to see it.
Failure isn’t an option. The only way to win is to save each other.
Bro Code is a standalone, dual-POV, rivals-to-lovers MM hockey romance featuring a gay athlete owning his identity, a family reckoning, explicit open-door scenes, and a satisfying HFN.
Bro Code is coming to KU this fall!
Pre-Order Now