Page 26 of Gap Control (Lewiston Forge #3)

Chapter twenty-one

TJ

T he Forge locker room looked like it had a case of holiday split personality.

Half-strung Christmas lights drooped across the top of the stalls, blinking out of sync.

Someone had stuck a sad paper turkey to the bathroom door, and it stared at me every time I walked past like it knew its days were numbered.

Tinsel kept turning up in weird places—inside skate bags, coiled in someone’s glove—and no one was claiming responsibility.

Lambert stomped in and held up a glitter-coated sock like evidence from a crime scene.

“This is warfare. I’m filing a grievance with the union.”

Monroe didn’t even look up from lacing his boots. “Do it. You’ll lose.”

“I’ll go public.”

“With what? Sparkles?”

“You laugh now,” Lambert muttered, pulling the sock on anyway.

I leaned back against my stall, still catching my breath from practice, and let the noise roll over me.

My phone sat silent in my bag—no notifications, no Brady texts about damage control, and no reporters sliding into my DMs. Last week's big hockey news was all about a goalie fight in Duluth and a mascot falling through a stage in Nashville.

We survived Thanksgiving with turkey sandwiches, off-brand cranberry sauce, and a stack of rom-coms at my place. Mason fell asleep halfway through While You Were Sleeping , head on my shoulder, mouth slightly open. He snored once. I didn't move.

Now, he was across the room, sitting on the floor with one leg stretched out and the other bent, adjusting his skate blades. Someone tossed a towel too close to his sketchbook and got the death glare for it.

I nudged his shin with the toe of my skate. “You doing Secret Santa?”

He looked up. “Yeah. Why not?”

“No concerns about drawing Mercier and ending up with six pounds of unmarked protein powder?”

“Honestly, that sounds useful.”

“It would be if he labeled anything. Last year, Monroe thought he was making a shake and ended up eating half a jar of pre-workout.”

Mason didn’t laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitched like he wanted to. His hair was still damp from the shower, curling slightly at the ends. I tried not to stare.

Mason dropped his skate tool, and I bent to hand it back. Our fingers brushed. He didn’t pull away. Neither did I.

Coach had a post-practice surprise. He herded us all into the video room. The overhead lights buzzed. Monroe sat cross-legged on the floor sorting through protein bars.

Mercier gave him the side-eye.

"What?" asked Monroe. "The boxes exploded in my gear bag."

Coach pointed his remote, and the latest version of the Forging Ahead trailer appeared on the screen. Dramatic music. Cuts of us skating like we were headed into battle instead of the second half of the season.

I barely glanced up—until the narrator said Mason’s name.

I was locked in.

A flash of the locker room. Two players walking past. And there, pinned to the board behind them, barely in frame but unmistakable if you knew what you were looking for, was Mason’s sketch.

It was quick. Maybe a second. No focus pull and no commentary. There.

Monroe sat up. “Hey, that’s yours, right?”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

Lambert leaned forward on the couch. “They didn’t even explain it. Should’ve been a full segment.”

“They probably weren’t supposed to show it at all,” Mason said.

I walked over, careful not to step on Monroe’s protein bar collection. Mason popped open a lime seltzer.

“It looked good,” I said.

“It was half-finished.”

“You say that like it matters.”

He shrugged.

Back on screen, Mercier launched his glove into the air after a shootout win. The music swelled and then cut. Segment over.

No one said anything for a few seconds.

Mason took a sip from his can and didn’t comment on the trailer again.

He hadn't watched it. Not really. That said enough.

We left the arena in comfortable silence. By the time we settled in at my place, Mason had his sketchbook out again.

He was sketching on the couch. Nothing big, just the edge of a scene—part of a locker, the arc of a helmet strap, and lines forming and dissolving as he adjusted weight and angles.

I scrolled through my phone, half-watching some movie on the TV. My feet were on the coffee table. Mason’s toes were tucked under my thigh.

It was a normal evening—the good kind of normal.

Then I saw the moment from the trailer again. Someone on social media had grabbed a still from Forging Ahead , brightened the sketch, and posted it with the caption: "Okay but why did no one talk about this??? This art is insane."

I smiled, scrolling through the replies. Hundreds of likes. People zooming in, tagging friends. Someone wrote, "let this man paint the Sistine Chapel of Hockey." Another added fire emojis to a screenshot.

"You're going viral," I told Mason.

He kept sketching. "Didn't sign it."

"Doesn't matter. They know."

I kept scrolling, warm pride spreading through my body. More reposts. More praise. I wasn't ready for the change in tone.

"Wait is this the same guy from all those relationship posts?"

"Pretty sure this is that fake dating thing everyone was talking about"

"Talented but also sus timing lol"

My thumb slowed. The comments were shifting, getting longer and more speculative. People dug through post histories and connected dots. The art praise was still there but buried now under theories and hot takes.

Finally, I hit the one that made my stomach drop:

"Forge Center's Gay Boyfriend Makes Him Pretty Pics ??"

I kept scrolling, hoping it was just one asshole. It was a thread.

"Honestly feels like he's using hockey guy for clout. Like draws one picture and suddenly he's an artist? Meanwhile actual artists are struggling—"

"This. The whole thing screams desperate wannabe. Bet he never drew anything before he started fucking the hockey player."

My hands shook. They weren't satisfied with attacking Mason's relationship with me—they were attacking what made him uniquely him. The part of him that existed before hockey, before me, and before any of this noise.

Mason didn’t ask.

He didn’t have to.

I set the phone down slowly. I wanted to punch something, or delete the internet, or both.

“They’ll move on,” he said, voice flat.

“They never should’ve moved here in the first place.”

He shrugged. “It’s not new. They’re bored. They’ll find something else.”

I noticed that he didn't pick up his pencil again. His sketchbook was still open on his lap, but his hands were empty. One rested against the page, and the other curled under his thigh like it might stay there.

I wanted to fix it. I wanted to rewind the day and cut the trailer myself and tear that post off the internet with my bare hands.

Instead, I sat there. Not touching him. Not pushing.

Watching as the glow from the screen cast long shadows across a face that deserved better.

By the time I was ready for bed, the team had released a new version of the Forging Ahead trailer. The sketch was gone, like it never existed.

The following morning the locker room was quieter than usual. Not tense, muffled around the edges. Everyone knew something was off, but they couldn’t quite name it. Or, maybe they could, and no one wanted to be first.

Mason hadn't said much since the viral eruption. He didn't post anything or reply to any of the comments.

He left his sketchbook at home. That hit the hardest. He always brought it, even when he didn’t use it. Said it helped his hands stay sharp.

I found him in the hallway outside Coach’s office, phone pressed to his ear, leaning against the wall.

I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was headed toward the trainers’ room when his voice—quiet and low—cut through the hum of vending machines and HVAC.

“No, I understand. Totally. Yeah, I figured with the schedule change and everything…”

A pause.

“…no, I get it. No worries.”

He ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket.

I waited until he turned around.

“Was that about the scout from Duluth?”

“Scheduling conflict. They’re not coming.”

He said it like he believed it, or like he needed me to.

I didn’t answer right away.

Mason shrugged. “It happens.”

And that was it. No rant. No sarcasm. Not even a sigh.

He brushed past me and headed toward the ice, gear bag slung over one shoulder, and helmet tucked under his arm.

If you didn’t know him, you’d think nothing had happened at all.

I did, and it had.

I stood there for a long moment, watching him disappear across the blue line.

I'd seen how his face had gone blank during that phone call. How he'd stood there afterward, staring at the wall.

The thing that made him most himself—the sketching, quiet observation, and how he saw beauty in ordinary moments—had become a liability. Because of me. Because of us.

That's when I started walking toward the media office.

I didn’t plan it. Not really. I just kept moving past the weight room and the hallway where the team’s glossy promo banners lined the walls. Past the photo of me from last year that everyone kept saying made me look taller.

The media team had taken over a conference room next to the press box. Two laptops open, one monitor playing rough cuts, and a whiteboard covered in arrows and timestamps. Someone had drawn a cartoon stick figure with Lambert’s hair. I didn’t knock.

They looked up. Startled, but not surprised.

“Hey, TJ,” one of them said, the younger guy—Marcus, I think. “Everything okay?”

“Not really."

They waited.

I stepped inside and didn’t sit.

“You left Mason’s sketch out of the final cut.”

A pause.

“Not intentionally,” said the woman next to him, adjusting her glasses. “It didn’t fit the arc we ended up using. We had to trim a lot—runtime’s tight.”

“The trailer's still the same length.”

“Yeah, we—” She hesitated. “We’re still adjusting things. Feedback’s been… mixed.”

She didn’t have to say it. I’d seen the posts. So had they.

I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t pace. I hadn't come to argue.

I looked at them and said, “If you want to tell real stories, don’t cut the parts where someone learns how to love their whole life.”

Neither of them moved.

“You show the hits. The injuries. The speeches in the locker room. But you’ve got a guy in your footage who’s learning how to show up for something besides hockey. And you’ve got a team that lets him.”

I stopped there. Let the words settle.

Marcus looked away first. The woman nodded, once, slowly.

“I’ll flag it for post,” she said.

I nodded back. Not because it was enough but because I wasn’t there to beg.

I turned to leave.

“TJ,” she said behind me. “That line—about love. Was that off the cuff?”

I glanced over my shoulder. “No. That was lived in.”

When I arrived at Mason's place for dinner, he was in the kitchen, barefoot, stirring something on the stove. The apartment smelled like garlic and canned tomatoes. He’d grabbed a loaf of day-old bread from the grocery store and stuck it in the oven.

I dropped my bag by the door and didn’t say anything at first. I watched him in the low light. No sketchbook in sight.

Finally, I spoke up: “I stopped by the media office today.”

He didn’t turn around. “Yeah?”

“They’re going to put the sketch back in.”

He glanced over. Not surprised. Not smug. Just tired.

“You didn’t have to do that."

I shrugged. “I wanted to.”

Mason set the spoon down and turned to face me fully. "You talked to them? About the sketch?"

"Yeah."

"What did you say?"

I stepped closer. "That they had footage of someone learning how to love their whole life, and they shouldn't cut that part."

"You said that?"

"I meant it."

He reached for me then, hands settling on my waist, pulling me close enough to smell a hint of a new cologne on me. "You ordered that bubblegum cologne we saw on the infomercial, didn't you?"

I smiled sheepishly. "Someone had to try it."

Mason leaned in and gave my neck a good sniff. "I've been disappearing all week."

"I know."

"I don't want to anymore." His lips brushed my cheek. "Not from this. Not from you."

I kissed him. Slow, certain. When we broke apart, he reached past me to turn off the burner.

"Fuck the pasta," he said. "I want to show you something."

He led me to the coffee table where his sketchbook sat—the one he didn't bring to practice. He flipped to a page near the back.

It was us. On his couch, my feet on the coffee table, and his toes tucked under my leg. Not idealized or cleaned up. Real.

"When did you draw this?"

"Last week. Before everything went sideways." He touched the edge of the page. "This is what I want them to see, if they're going to see anything. Not only the hockey. This."