Page 8 of Cold Comeback (Richmond Reapers #1)

Chapter six

Gideon

The taste of his sweat lingered on my tongue. In my head, I heard the sound of my name on his lips when he'd come apart, echoing like a broken record.

Discipline, I told myself. You've built your entire life on discipline.

One night. One spectacular lapse in judgment, and twenty-six years of careful design lay in ruins around me.

I considered the damage. I'd fucked a teammate. Worse, I'd fucked a teammate whose career was already under scrutiny. Worst of all, I'd done it as team captain—the guy who was supposed to set the example and uphold standards.

Even though I'd showered, I could still smell his body on me.

I climbed out of bed before I could do something stupid, like jerking off and coming again as I relived every second.

My morning routine was armor I could strap on piece by piece. Coffee: black, two sugars, same mug in the same spot. Protein shake: vanilla, because chocolate reminded me too much of his eyes. Practice notes: review special teams assignments and work on plans for defensive zone coverage.

Order. System. Control.

I had three years behind me in Richmond, and I spent most of my time managing other people's chaos. Knox's temper, Pluto's scattered focus, and Linc's tendency to get cute in his zone. I constantly redirected twenty different personalities into better choices.

Still, I couldn't manage my own fucking lust.

I checked my phone twice before shoving it in a kitchen drawer. No messages from him, which was smart. We both knew it couldn't happen again.

New plan, I decided, pulling on my jacket. Minimal eye contact. Professional communication only. Delegate his development to the assistant coaches. Keep it simple. Keep it clean.

It was a bulletproof plan until I remembered the way he'd whispered "yes, Sir" right before I'd—

I slammed the door hard enough to rattle the frame and pretended it was the wind.

I arrived at our practice facility forty minutes early, hoping to avoid the moment when Thatcher walked through the door and my carefully rebuilt walls crumbled like a house of cards.

At precisely 8:15, he appeared in the locker room doorway. He moved with easy athletic grace that made everything seem effortless. He glanced around the room, and when his eyes found mine, my pulse began to race.

My "minimal eye contact" rule was dead on arrival.

He looked away first, settling into his stall without his usual morning greeting. Smart. Professional. Everything we should be.

I focused on my tape job with laser intensity, wrapping each strip with mathematical precision. He had his own systems. His own need for control.

It was a new perspective on Thatcher. I'd been telling myself he was chaos incarnate, the thing that would destroy my ordered world. But watching him now—the methodical gear arrangement and precise movements—I realized he wasn't chaotic.

He was like me. Someone who learned that if you controlled the small things, you could survive the big things you couldn't control.

The problem was, I couldn't stop looking. Every time he moved, I had to check what it was. When he bent to adjust his shin guards, I stared at the curve of his lower back. When he stretched his shoulders, my mouth went dry.

Linc walked in, humming something that vaguely resembled music. He looked at me, then at Thatcher, then back at me.

He was reading the play before it developed.

"Morning, sunshine," he said to Thatcher, then louder: "Cap, you sleep okay? You look like you wrestled a bear."

"Slept fine." The lie was clipped and sounded professional.

Pluto appeared with a mangled breakfast sandwich gripped in his paw. "Morning, everyone. Ready to—" He stopped. "Okay, what's with the arctic tundra vibe in here?"

"Nothing." Thatcher's voice was carefully neutral. "Focused."

Practice was a train wreck disguised as routine.

On the ice, I tried to anticipate plays that hadn't developed yet, predicting where Thatcher would be three seconds before he moved. My captain's instincts turned against me—the same ice sense that made me good at my job was now tracking every shift of his weight and every turn of his head.

When Coach inevitably put us together for a two-on-one, I hit him harder than necessary. Not to hurt him. I'd never hurt him, but I needed the contact—a reminder that our contact was about hockey, not whatever had happened in his bedroom.

He came up grinning, checking me right back with a hip that sent electricity up my spine. "That's all you got, Cap?"

When I heard the challenge in his voice, I wanted to pin him against the boards and show him what I had. Instead, I skated to the back of the line and pretended I was still calm.

"Get a room, not the corner," Knox shouted during a water break, and the team laughed.

"Focus," I barked, louder than necessary. It only made everyone laugh harder.

During a passing drill, Pluto stage-whispered about "Captain's mood swings" while Linc commented on me being "twitchier than a rookie in his first NHL game."

I snapped at both of them, then immediately felt like an ass. They looked up to me. They counted on me to be steady and reliable—a foundation they could build on.

One big mistake with Thatcher Drake, and I was already failing at key elements of my job.

After practice, I aggressively organized my stall, folding towels with military precision and arranging gear like I was preparing for inspection. The locker room emptied around me until only Knox remained, sitting on the bench across from me and watching me refold the same towel three times.

He wasn't known for his emotional intelligence. His idea of counseling usually involved beer and creative profanity. So, when he cleared his throat and asked, "Want to talk about it?" I nearly dropped my helmet.

"Nothing to talk about." I shoved the towel into my bag. "Just tired."

Knox nodded slowly. "Junior year in Saskatoon, I fell for my center."

It was a verbal blindside check. I froze, towel half-stuffed in my gear bag. Knox didn't talk about personal stuff. He complained about line combinations and the price of beer. He didn't—

"Two years on the same line. Glued at the hip. Rinks, bars, buses. All of it." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, staring at the floor. "One night after a win, too many beers, and… yeah. We crossed the line."

I listened, and my carefully maintained composure cracked slightly.

"I lost my shit," he went on. "Convinced myself it'd wreck the team, us, everything. So, I iced him out. Switched lines. Pretended it never happened." He let out a bitter laugh. "Torched the best thing I had going."

The regret in his voice was raw, unguarded in a way I'd never heard from him.

"What happened to him?" I asked quietly.

"Transferred. Didn't say goodbye." Knox finally looked at me. "Kid did fine—AHL, a couple cups overseas. Me? You see where I'm at."

I swallowed. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head, slinging his bag over one shoulder. "Don't be sorry. Just don't be a dumbass like me. Fear'll fuck you worse than the thing you're afraid of." He started for the door, then stopped long enough to pin me with a look. "Don't run, Sawyer. That's the worst play you can make."

I sat in the empty locker room, surrounded by the ghosts of my teammates. Twenty stalls, each with its own personality and mess I helped contain. The one I couldn't handle sat in stall fourteen.

I heard the echo of Knox's words in my head.

Don't be the guy who runs.

Too late—I'd already been that guy once before.

The memory of David's face hit me in fragments: his hands around a chipped campus mug, steam curling and dying in the air. He leaned across the tiny café table, eyes burning like he was begging me to lace up for overtime.

"We could do this, Gideon. Actually do this. Together."

I remembered staring at my own coffee, watching it go cold. It was the same panic Knox described.

I threw back at David, "Other athletes don't have what I have to lose." Fuck, the words still tasted hollow.

What had I really been protecting that day? A career that wasn't even real yet? Or the illusion that hiding made me safer?

The truth gripped the back of my neck: I hadn't been protecting anything. I'd been running. And David had been offering me everything—love, partnership, a life where I didn't have to keep my head down and mouth shut.

I'd sabotaged it. Not because I was afraid of losing hockey.

I was afraid of deserving him.

You're not protecting your career, Gideon. You're hiding from your life.

Those were his final words before he walked away. Everything we'd built crumbled because I couldn't be brave enough to choose him over fear.

Was I still hiding? Still choosing the safe play over the right one?

The next day blurred into meetings and video sessions. When Thatcher stayed late to work on penalty kill footage, the video systems suddenly needed my attention. When he grabbed lunch at the protein bar across the street, hunger struck me, too.

Good captaincy, I reasoned. Player development. Perfectly normal mentoring behavior.

The justifications grew more elaborate and transparent.

On day two, I executed more of the same choreography.

Our hands brushed, reaching for the same water bottle—pure coincidence, obviously.

He looked at me during film sessions—meaningless eye contact, nothing more.

When he said "Yes, sir" during drills, the way my stomach dropped was just.. . indigestion. Had to be.

By Wednesday night, after unnecessarily extending a film session focused on Thatcher's play, I was losing what remained of my mind.

"Want to grab dinner?"

Thatcher was sitting on the bench in front of his stall. He looked up from his notebook, surprised. "Dinner?"

"Yeah. I mean—" I scrambled for a reasonable explanation. "Team bonding. Captain stuff. There's this sports bar that has decent food."

His smile was devastatingly slow. "Sure, Cap. Team bonding."

We ended up at Murphy's, a quiet place with good wings and enough ambient noise to make conversation feel private. For the next two hours, I forgot to be careful.

Thatcher told stories about junior hockey in Canada. He had a coach who made them practice in a barn so cold their water bottles froze. I talked about leadership philosophy and what it meant to wear the C, carrying nineteen other guys' dreams.

He had a way of listening that made me want to keep talking. He nodded like he understood when I mentioned the pressure of always being "on" as captain.

"Ever get tired of it?" he asked. "Being the steady one all the time?"

"Someone has to be."

"That's not an answer."

His hand nearly knocked over his beer when he gestured, describing some ridiculous penalty he'd taken in the OHL. I caught it without thinking. Our fingers lingered on the glass.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

The conversation shifted like a well-executed line change—smooth, natural, no awkward gaps.

He found the seams in my defenses, not forcing plays but waiting for me to give him an opening.

When I mentioned the isolation of leadership, he didn't push; he merely settled into the space I'd created and waited for the next pass.

—from hockey to growing up, from pressure to what we did when no one was watching.

When he mentioned learning to cook from his grandmother, I told him about the farm where I'd learned to skate on a frozen pond.

He traced patterns in the condensation on his glass. "Funny thing—half the time the shit we're scared of losing is the only stuff that actually makes us feel alive."

It was an observation that cut right to the bone.

I didn't have an answer for him.

Walking to our cars afterward, our easy conversation faded into something weightier. The parking lot stretched between the warm environment of the restaurant and the cold truth of going home alone.

Under the streetlight, Thatcher looked exactly like he had in his bedroom—beautiful, dangerous, impossible to resist.

We stood in a circle of artificial light, like it was a stage, performing the final scene of something we both knew couldn't have a second act.

He stopped and turned to face me. "Gideon."

He stepped closer. I should have stepped back. Should have said goodnight. Should have gotten in my car and driven home.

Instead, I stood my ground and let him close the distance.

"This is a bad idea."

"Terrible idea," he agreed, close enough to smell a hint of cologne.

The world around us faded with Thatcher close enough to kiss.

Then, he stepped back on his own. His smile was soft and understanding. "I should get home. Early practice tomorrow."

Thatcher was the one who was smart enough to walk away when I couldn't.

"Yeah," I managed. "Early practice."

He headed toward his car, then paused with his hand on the door handle. "Thanks for dinner, Cap. For the conversation, too."

I watched him drive away before trusting my legs to carry me to my car.

When I returned home, I sat in the driveway for twenty minutes, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles went white.

I could still smell his cologne and hear his laugh. Inside my empty apartment in the team house, standing alone with the lights off, I finally admitted what I'd been fighting all week.

Thatcher looked at me like he saw a leader, someone worth following. What would happen when he realized I was just as lost as everyone else? That being captain didn't make me brave—it only made me better at hiding?

I wasn't avoiding him. I was orbiting him like a satellite locked in gravitational pull, drawn by forces I couldn't fight and didn't want to escape. All my rules and boundaries were elaborate ways of staying close while pretending I wasn't.

Knox was right. I was already in deeper than I'd thought.

My phone sat on the counter, with Thatcher's contact still saved, never deleted. I could text him. Apologize for being a coward. Explain that I was scared and stupid and wanted him more than I'd wanted anything in years.

Instead, I set it down and went to bed, knowing that tomorrow would bring another excuse to seek him out. Another reason to be close to him. Another opportunity to pretend I had any control over this situation.

The captain who'd built his identity on steel discipline was losing the battle against wanting Thatcher Drake. Fighting it felt pointless now. I needed to stop pretending I could win a war I'd never really wanted to win in the first place.