Page 73

And then it was done. Desrosier trod the carpet back to the bench and disappeared into the dark interior. The announcer said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, house lights will come on momentarily. In fifteen minutes, warmups will begin for tonight’s game.”

A sharp pang caught Cross in the chest, and he swallowed hard.

The team left the blue line and he skated to meet them.

They swung past him one by one, offering fist bumps, hugs, back pats, and loud chirping.

Good thing the arena sound tech had remembered to cut the mic.

When Zykov, the backup goalie, last of all, had thumped Cross’s arm and skated away, he turned back to Rusty.

“Come on, old man,” Rusty said. “Get off the ice and let the Zamboni guy do his thing.”

Cross skated to him and stepped onto the carpet, blades suddenly earthbound.

He wished he’d skated one more lap, snowed to one more stop in this arena, but the moment was past. Ten steps and the door to the ice closed behind him.

He followed Rusty into the tunnel and back toward the locker room, swallowing his emotions to accept the handshakes and pats and thumbs up from the coaches and staff.

Then he paused outside the locker room and put his shoulders to the wall, suddenly unwilling to go in. He was done. “My shoes are in there, mon chou,” he murmured. “And my jacket and socks.”

“Stay here. I’ll get them.” Rusty slipped away, returning a moment later with the clothes. “Everyone says go have a drink for them.”

“Hah. I would die of alcohol poisoning.” He bent but Rusty was ahead of him, going to one knee to unlace Cross’s skates.

“Wow, that’s service.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Rusty opened the boots wide, the normal left one and extra-wide right to accommodate his reformed ankle, and eased them off.

Cross braced a hand on Rusty’s shoulder to stand on one foot as Rusty peeled off the skating socks, slipped on ordinary black ones, and then his lace-ups.

Rusty tucked the thick socks in his skates, tied the laces together, and stood, skates dangling from one hand.

Cross held his jacket, trying to sort through the feelings swamping him.

This was the right decision. He knew it.

When he’d put his new ankle through a whole battery of testing in September, his doctor had laid his prospects out clearly.

Almost no chance of ever skating at the intensity required for the NHL.

A strong possibility a hit at the wrong angle could leave him worse off than ever.

He’d bitten the bullet and called the Rafters management.

It wasn’t fair to keep stringing them along for nothing.

He’d known leaving would hurt, but the ache in his chest felt like a heart attack.

The one thing tethering him to the moment was Rusty. “Come on.”

“Where?” Rusty followed willingly.

“This way.” He led them through familiar hallways, passing the occasional well-known face with a nod or a wave. Around one more corner and, “Here.”

“What’s here?”

“A strange dead-end hallway.”

“Ah.”

Every arena had its hidden spots, the places you could go to be alone, or in happier moments, to make out with a girlfriend.

Or boyfriend. Cross had used this one once or twice alone to get back his game face, and assumed he’d never use it for its other purpose.

On this night of firsts, why not one more?

He caught Rusty’s hand and pulled him around the support strut and into the small private space.

“Are you—?

Cross cut off Rusty’s words by hauling him down into a kiss.

“Oh,” Rusty mumbled against his mouth. “Sure.” He hauled Cross into a tight, satisfying embrace.

Cross kissed his boyfriend as a collage of images flashed through his mind, of a hundred arenas, a thousand moments, of the joy of the sport but also the loneliness as his teammates dated and flirted and boasted while he sat to the side, alone.

Even with Willow, his relationship had felt like a tepid imitation of the real thing everyone else cheered about. He’d blamed himself.

Until Rusty came along and turned the intensity dial to eleven.

This wasn’t tepid. This wasn’t an imitation of anything.

Rusty’s mouth on his was life and breath, his arms were defense and support, his blue eyes at unfocused distance held a promise of forever.

They kissed fervently, with heat and tongues, and then slower, gentler, winding down into a hug.

Cross laid his head on Rusty’s shoulder. “I love you.”

“Back atcha. That ceremony was pretty intense, huh?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“Satisfying, though.”

“A bit, yeah.” At Rusty’s laugh he admitted, “Okay, a lot.”

“Are we meeting with your folks?”

“Nope.” Mom, Dad, and Marie had been in town for two days leading up to this, while Rusty was on his road trip, and Cross had done lunch, and brunch, and dinner with them.

Marie still had a tendency to hover, his kidnapping perhaps giving her more nightmares than it did Cross.

He’d found, to his surprise, that escaping this time had helped put his old fears on the back burner.

He was sleeping fine, especially with Rusty in his bed.

Rusty had also ditched his therapist after a couple of months, but Marie still sometimes called him out of the blue, a hitch in her voice.

His parents, on the other hand, had gone back to remote mode, other than persistent job offers.

The distance stung, probably always would, but he knew they loved him, in their own way.

Not how he’d needed as a kid, but he wasn’t a child anymore.

Still, Cross wasn’t sorry to say, “My family’s heading out now.

Marie has a meeting in Sweden tomorrow, and Mom has someone she wants to schmooze for charity. ”

“So it’s just us?” Rusty kissed his temple. “Can’t say I mind.”

“Me either.” He pushed away from his wonderful warm shoulder-pillow.

“You must be beat. Great game yesterday, though.” Rusty had two assists and a monster hit on an Edmonton forward, and a plus two, for his first game as a Tornado.

Cross had no doubt he’d be staying in the AHL.

Might even move up to the Rafters at some point, if they got unlucky with injuries this season.

He rapped a knuckle on his head to detoxify that thought.

“I bet you can come up with a suggestion or two for improvement.” Rusty grinned.

“Maybe don’t trip the guy on the breakaway?”

“He didn’t score on the penalty shot, though.”

“Uh huh. You got lucky.” And so did I. Cross’s active playing days might be over, but he still was in the game.

He had his boyfriend to nag into reading the opposition better, his teens to coach, and an interesting prospect in a seventeen-year-old junior with silky mitts and a crappy slap shot to take another look at.

He had his family, if he could accept them as they were.

Douchebag Tyler and his accomplice in kidnapping had taken plea bargains and were locked up for a minimum of twelve and ten years.

After that? Well, they’d worry about it when the time came, but who knew where Rusty might be playing then.

And out in the parking lot… “So, I did a thing.”

“What thing?”

“Uh, you might call it retail therapy.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Well, it might be hard to hide since I drove it here.”

“Hit me.” Rusty frowned at him, although his lips were twitching.

“Remember that Spyder I was looking at? In electric blue?”

“You didn’t.”

“I kind of did. But I agreed to sell the Cabriolet to Jojo, so it’s really not that big of a buy.” Jojo had seen the convertible and fallen in love with it, and who was Cross to keep a boy and his beloved apart?

“You’re ridiculous.” But Rusty looked excited. “I call dibs on driving it home.”

“Hey, wait. That’s my car.”

“Don’t you always say what’s yours is mine? So the Spyder’s mine.”

“I meant more like Mark Andre Furry when he’s hacking up a hairball.” They’d gotten three half-grown littermates and Furry was a menace in a black-and-white tuxedo coat.

“No, you didn’t.” Rusty looked deep into his eyes.

Cross had wondered for a long time if he was even capable of love.

He didn’t wonder anymore. He’d take on a pack of ravening wolves for this man, barehanded, and count it well worth the cost. “No, I didn’t.

Still, I feel as if driving the Spyder should be some kind of incentive.

A reward for, say, your first ten AHL points.

Or getting through a game without a goddamned tripping penalty. ”

“Or for falling in love with you? Do I get a reward for that?”

“You get me,” Cross pointed out. “But yeah, okay, you also get to drive the Spyder.”

“You do love me,” Rusty crowed.

“I do.” Cross set his hand against Rusty’s cheek and thumbed his full lower lip as their gazes met and held. “Now and forever.”

“Works for me.” Rusty took Cross’s hand and gripped it in his. “Come on, babe. We have three fur babies waiting to tell us how neglected they are.”

“And lasagna in the fridge, and a big soft bed.”

“Not sure which of those sounds best.”

“And an awesome car that does zero to sixty in three point two seconds.”

“Okay, I vote for that one. Although I hope it has enough of a trunk for my overnight bag. Or I’ll make you hold it on your lap.”

“Would I buy a car that impractical?”

“Is the sky blue?”

“This is Portland in the fall, so a good bet would be no.”

Rusty laughed and kissed him. “Ridiculous literalist.”

“Wild exaggerationist,” Cross countered.

“That’s us.” The love of Cross’s life tugged him away from the hidden corner in the arena that had been his life, toward the exit and all the rest of his wider world.

“Come on, babe,” Rusty said, and his words held everything Cross needed to hear.

“Good thing we love each other anyway. Let’s go home. ”

### thanks for reading Cross and Rusty’s story ###