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“This is how we used to make maple syrup.” Jason gestured at one of the few trees on the farm that they hadn’t converted to the more modern tubing system, then turned back to his tour group. “We’d drill a tap hole right about here?—”

“Tap hole,” a tall guy at the back of the twelve-person group muttered with a snicker, his hood tied so tight that it squished his face into wrinkles.

His friend—equally bundled in winter wear with nothing but his eyes showing—sniggered, and they quietly laughed like two boys who’d gotten away with a prank.

Jason sucked in cold air through his teeth and forced himself to keep going. There was an asshole in every crowd. “A spile—” He took one out of his coat pocket to demonstrate. “—which is basically a spout, gets inserted into the hole.” He pushed it into the pre-drilled hole. “Then this bucket—” He picked up a metal bucket off the ground. “—gets hung on the hook that dangles from the spile. We fit a lid over the bucket to keep out rain, snow, and other debris, and then...” He waggled his fingers, making jazz hands at the kids at the front of the group. “Sap falls into the bucket. Just like that,” he added as the tap-tap-tap of sap dripping into the bucket echoed around them.

“Whoa,” one of the kids breathed.

“Once we have enough sap, we take it to the sugar shack to make maple syrup, using the same process I walked you through earlier.”

“What if there’s no sap?” another kid asked.

Jason grimaced, though with his scarf pulled up to his nose, the kid couldn’t see it. “No sap means no maple syrup.”

And no maple syrup meant the farm was in trouble.

The thought stayed with Jason as the crowd dispersed to other parts of the farm now that the tour was over, some to the gift shop, others to wander along the designated path through the forest where the wind didn’t cut so deep, and still others toward the family fun area.

Moon Meadows Maple Farm’s annual Maple Syrup Festival was in its second week, and despite how cold it still was in March, the townspeople of Maplewood, Vermont, had shown up anyway, eager for maple syrup candies and pony rides. Jason didn’t normally lead the farm tours, but it had been so busy today that he’d stepped in wherever he was needed.

Dad asked him to ferry visitors from the entrance to the sugar shack? He hooked the wagon onto the tractor and got to work.

His sister needed him to grab extra maple candies to give out as samples? He chopped them into smaller pieces, then handed the tray over to one of their part-timers to hand out.

Dad asked him to?—

“Jase!”

Well, hell. Speak of the devil.

Jason sought him out, but the wind played havoc with his senses—it sounded like Dad’s voice had come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“Jason!”

Ah. There he was. Striding toward Jason from a booth where a local business was selling kettle corn.

“Sheila could use some help in the shop,” Dad said when he neared.

“An opportunity to get out of this cold? I’m so in.”

Dad chuckled. “Don’t get too excited. I’ll need you to come with me to check the lines in the east quadrant once we close up for the day.”

“No problem,” Jason said. It was always warmer in the forest anyway. Plus, he could check on his side project while he was out with Dad, though how he’d do so without his dad seeing was a problem for later.

He’d tell him about it eventually, once he had more evidence that his project would help them diversify in the face of climate change.

Fuck climate change. Seriously. When you were a farmer, it was no fucking joke.

Jason dodged a toddler who’d escaped his parents, yelling “Tractor!” at the top of his lungs as the farm’s tractor, driven by one of the seasonal employees, returned from the sugar shack, pulling a wagon filled with people. Then Jason nearly tripped over the toddler’s older sibling, who marched after the wayward two-year-old with a huffy expression that said she did not enjoy being responsible for said younger sibling.

“Sorry, Jase,” the kids’ mother tossed over her shoulder as she chased after them.

“All good, Mia.”

Small towns. Everyone knew everyone.

His footsteps crunched on patches of snow that hadn’t yet melted as he strode toward the gift shop, bypassing the stage he’d helped erect just yesterday. Later this afternoon, the Rocktogenarians would take the stage for an hour, though how a group of eighty-year-olds would be able to play their instruments when it was this cold was beyond him. He’d added outdoor space heaters, but still.

“Don’t worry about us,” Rae Moan, the Rocktogenarians’ front person, had said when Jason had called earlier today to reschedule the band to a different—potentially warmer—day. “We’re made of thick skin.”

He’d have to take them at their word.

His phone rang as he edged around a group of teens playing lawn bowling—with the pins made up of empty plastic maple syrup bottles—and he dug it out of his parka’s pocket. Grinning, he took off a glove to answer the video call. “Hey, Ry, what are you—” Cutting himself off, he squinted at his younger brother. “Why are you dressed like Big Bird?”

“What?” Ryland petted the feathers at his throat. “No, it’s a chicken costume.”

“Well, you look like Big Bird. Why are you dressed like a chicken anyway?”

“It’s for a team bonding thing.”

Jason snorted a laugh. “Since when does the NHL require you to wear costumes to bond with your teammates? Don’t you just sit around comparing the size of your salaries? And possibly your dicks?”

“Ha ha.” Ryland rolled big brown eyes. “No, we— You know what? This isn’t why I called.”

“I’m screenshotting this and sending the picture to the family group chat.”

“Asshole,” Ryland said, but he was laughing.

“Why did you call?”

“I forget now.”

Jason laughed, drawing the attention of a group of twenty-somethings. Not the festival’s usual clientele, and definitely not its target market, but they did sometimes attract groups of friends from nearby towns looking for something to do on a wintery Saturday afternoon that wasn’t skiing.

Jason waved at them. They waved back.

“Who’s that? Is that Denver?” Ryland asked, naming his childhood best friend who helped out at the farm during sugaring season. “Tell him he still owes me twenty bucks from that time he bet against me when we played Chicago.”

“It’s not Denver. Just a bunch of guys here for the festival. I don’t recognize them.”

“A bunch of guys, huh? You’re a guy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you like guys.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So?” Ryland waggled his eyebrows. “Go chat them up. Make a ‘friend.’” He made actual air quotes around friend .

Jason almost choked on a disbelieving laugh. He didn’t need more “friends” and certainly not of the non-platonic kind. He’d learned his lesson the last two times he’d dated someone from out-of-town.

People were unequivocally more interested in his brother than they were in him.

Jason couldn’t even blame them. Ryland was fun and charismatic, and he had an energy that drew others to him as though he were the sun and everyone else was just... space dust.

Plus, he was Ryland Zervudachi, a professional hockey player, so that automatically made him part of the cool club.

Jason, by contrast, had always preferred plants to people and science to sports. Ask him about the cell configuration of sugar maples and he could go on all day.

Was it any wonder then that the last couple of guys he’d dated had only gone out with him for access to his brother? No. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt when they’d fucked off with barely a goodbye text after they’d gotten what they’d wanted.

Not that Jason had told Ryland any of this. Ryland didn’t need that on his conscience. None of it was his fault.

“Have you remembered why you called yet?” Jason asked, blithely changing the subject as he finally reached the gift shop. His one gloveless hand that was holding the phone was beginning to go numb from the cold. “I need to help Sheila in the?—”

“Sheila!” Ryland yelled in a volume best saved for a crowded bar. Or possibly a roller coaster. “I mailed her birthday gift. And I sent you the tracking number, so make sure you intercept it before Sheila gets the mail, okay? I want to hand it to her myself at the party.”

“Why didn’t you just bring it yourself?”

Their stepmom’s birthday party had been timed to coincide with the weekend in April when Ryland’s team would be in the state to play the Vermont Trailblazers.

“Because before we play Vermont, we’re playing New York, and Montreal before that,” Ryland said. “I didn’t want to lug it from city to city and risk it getting lost or broken. Just make sure you get to it first, okay? I wasn’t thinking when I shipped it, and I put her name on the package.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the tracking. Good luck against the Trailblazers tomorrow.”

Ryland’s team would be here next month, but they were playing Vermont in Columbus tomorrow.

Ryland’s usual affable expression turned ferocious. “Fucking Bellamy Jordan isn’t even going to be there.”

“Uh...” Jason hovered next to the entrance to the gift shop and blinked in confusion at the phone. What did Ryland’s longtime rival have to do with anything? Jason loved his brother, but he could freely admit he didn’t follow the Zervudachi-Jordan rivalry much. And besides, with Ryland in the eastern conference and Bellamy in the western, they didn’t actually face off on the ice all that much. “Why would he?”

“Wait, you haven’t heard?” It was Ryland’s turn to blink. “He got traded to the Trailblazers, like, five minutes before the trade deadline. My goddamn team.”

“You play for Columbus.”

“But the Vermont Trailblazers are my team,” Ryland repeated, ire making his eyes glow, even through a phone screen. “It’s the team we rooted for growing up.”

“They didn’t exist until you were, like, fourteen.”

“They had an opening on their roster and they gave it to fucking Bellamy fucking Jordan instead of me.”

“The Trailblazers need someone to plug up their third line, and Bellamy’s aces at making a nuisance of himself on the ice.” Okay, so maybe Jason followed their rivalry a little bit.

“Thank you so much for pointing that out.” Ryland let out a huff that was more of a breathy laugh.

“I didn’t realize you’re looking to leave Columbus.”

“I’m not... unless it’s to the Trailblazers. They’re my team,” Ryland said again.

“And the fact that home is less than an hour away from Burlington has nothing to do with it?”

“I mean, you guys are okay.”

They grinned at each other, Jason with his knit hat pulled down to his eyebrows and his scarf over his chin, and Ryland in a yellow chicken costume. Honestly, he looked like he should be the mascot for a fast-food chain. Jason wished he could reach through the screen and hug him. Ryland had always been a homebody, and being almost eight hundred miles away wasn’t easy for him.

A stream of customers entered the gift shop, chattering about the life-sized Jenga game by the lawn bowling.

“Listen, I’ve got to go,” Jason said. “Sheila needs my help in the shop. Have fun at your chicken bonding thing. I’m sure it will be tons of flocking fun.”

“My god, don’t even with the dad jokes.”

“Have a brooding good time.”

“I’m hanging up now.” Ryland did just that, his laughter echoing in the space he’d left behind.

Putting the phone back in his pocket and his glove back on—fuck, his fingers were so cold they hurt—Jason stepped into the gift shop behind a pair of customers.

Oh look. It was Tap Hole Asshole and Tap Hole Asshole’s Friend.

The friend threw his hood back and lowered the scarf down from his nose, revealing floppy dirty blond hair, pouty lips, an angular jawline, and a smirk Jason would recognize anywhere, whether it was directed at his brother or not.

Bellamy Jordan in the flesh, in Jason’s small town and on his family’s farm no less.

Jason opened his mouth to say something but quickly closed it. He had no interest in inserting himself in the Zervudachi-Jordan rivalry. That was Ryland’s mess to bear.

But then Bellamy grabbed one of the maple syrup bottle-shaped Christmas tree ornaments off a nearby display and waggled it at Tap Hole Asshole. “Unimaginative. Am I right?”

Oh, hell no. If Bellamy wanted to challenge and insult Ryland at every step of their careers, Jason would wisely stay out of it. A pro-sport rivalry wasn’t something he ever wanted to get in the middle of. But trashing his family’s business?

Squaring his shoulders, Jason stepped closer and?—