July

Sometimes it felt like Aiden Campbell had closed his eyes at twenty-six and woke up thirty-six. One day he’d been a kid with a kid’s body and energy and recovery time. And then the next, he had to be even more religious than he used to about stretching and yoga, or his body tied itself up in knots and ached when he lowered himself into bed.

Sometimes it did that anyway.

Normally, at this point in the offseason, Aiden would be headed to the gym, the same way he had done for countless mornings over the course of almost two decades. Or he’d be driving to Tarrytown to get some work in on the ice. Even in the summer, there was never much of a break.

Today, Aiden had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, nothing to do.

It was the first day of the offseason after the New York Liberty had been eliminated from the playoffs, but he couldn’t even accurately call it the offseason anymore.

With the season over, Aiden was officially retired.

The decision hadn’t really been deliberate. He’d been getting hurt a little more often these last few years, a groin pull here, a tear or a sprained ankle and a knee surgery there, the kinds of betrayals his body never used to make. When he’d have to wake up for morning skate, instead of feeling the thrum of excitement in his veins, he just felt tired.

Gabe Walker, his backup, took over the bulk of the starts.

When the last year of his contract came up and talks should have started, he’d put off reaching out to his agent for long enough that it started to get uncomfortable. He’d put it off until Caroline, because she was used to him, called and asked, “So do you want to make a decision, or is this your way of telling me you’ve done it already?”

Aiden thought about it. The pause went on longer than it should have. Finally he said, “Caroline, I think I’m done.”

He didn’t have many regrets. He’d brought two Cups back to New York. His home was decorated with individual awards. He’d been the backbone of the team for years. He was a lock for the Hall of Fame, first ballot or otherwise.

He’d known, in the very back of his mind, that it would be a good idea to make plans for the rest of his life. Consider the direction he wanted to take. Figure out where he was going from here. It had been too much. Instead, Aiden had boxed the thought up and put it away. The same way he boxed up every thought that he didn’t want to consider, the things that were out of his control, the messy, unpleasant aspects of life he couldn’t ignore. It was easier not to look at them.

He’d focused on the things he could control, which in this case turned out to be shepherding a team full of playoff virgins through the postseason. That had taken a lot of time and mental energy, and it had worked.

But now the playoffs were over.

It wasn’t working anymore.

Aiden went downstairs to make himself breakfast in his white and shining kitchen. He had eaten basically the same thing every day for fifteen years, but he still took care in preparing it. The Routine was important, even if most of the Routine had been ripped away from him along with hockey itself.

Aiden took the toast out of the toaster.

Mom had been asking when he was coming home, but he didn’t know when he wanted to do it. If he wanted to do it. He’d stopped going back to Winnipeg in the offseason about five years ago, after his last long-term boyfriend had broken up with him. That had been when his parents really started pressing him about whether he was happy, whether he was going to meet anyone, if he thought maybe one day he’d like a family of his own.

Instead of answering, he’d quietly shelved his plans to buy an offseason residence in Manitoba and went all in on New York.

Aiden spread cashew butter on the toast and poured himself a cup of coffee.

Today was the first day of the rest of his life.

These days, Aiden’s phone notifications were full of missed calls, voice mail and passive-aggressive text messages from his family.

A voice mail from his mother: Give me a call, beta, I’m worried about you. Even the childhood endearment, in his mother’s comfortingly warm, brisk voice, didn’t make him feel any better. A text message from his sister: You’re really not coming home? That was more aggressive than passive-aggressive; Aiden hadn’t been answering his sister’s calls for a reason. He didn’t know how to answer. So he didn’t.

Hannah meant well, but she worried, the same way his parents worried. Aiden didn’t have an explanation or anything to say about what his future held. He didn’t want to spend his time reassuring the family that he would be okay. He would probably be okay, but he didn’t know how, and he didn’t know when.

Mostly he just wanted to be alone.

Aiden locked the door to his empty house and went for a walk.

New York City in the summer always felt bittersweet. This time of year, his mind wandered to the past. Running used to help, but the older he got, the harder it was to deal with the brutal heat and humidity. By the time he had gone a few miles, his shirt stuck sweaty to his back and he wished he’d remembered a water bottle.

He ended up in Central Park, sitting by one of the fountains and watching children splash and play in the water even though they weren’t supposed to. A twenty-something kid recognized him and came up for an autograph; Aiden sighed and signed the snapback shoved into his hands. He politely but firmly shut down the attempt at starting a real conversation and started walking again.

He hadn’t been to the MoMA in years; he had no reason to go. Today, Aiden spent a few hours walking around the exhibits, looking at the art in complete silence, avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes. No one bothered him.

He stood for a long time in the contemporary gallery, looking at the wall with Cy Twombly’s Leda and the Swan , and wondered how the hell he ended up here .

The days went by.

Aiden’s phone rang while he made himself lunch. He didn’t pick up.

He checked the voice mail a few hours later: Your jersey is ready, please come and get it anytime during regular business hours. After every season he’d played, he framed the jersey, from mini mite to the Harriers, his juniors team; Worlds and Olympic and All-Star jerseys, his minor league gear and every single variant of the Liberty’s jerseys from the first year he’d played through his penultimate season, when they’d had a new third alternate.

The one he was avoiding picking up was the last game-worn jersey he’d ever put on his body, framed and ready to hang, the capstone to his collection. Aiden knew it was stupid. Leaving the jersey at the store didn’t change the fact that his career was over. But he still wasn’t ready to pick it up yet, and he didn’t know when he would be.

Aiden woke up.

He went to the gym.

He came home.

He sat on his couch and stared at the ceiling.

He ignored phone calls from his mom, texts from the team, phone calls from Hannah.

He remembered to eat mostly because paying careful attention to his meals, macros and intake had been ingrained in the Routine for years.

He sat on his roof deck and stared at the skyline.

He intended to fall asleep at a reasonable hour.

He did not.

Aiden woke up.

The Routine had used to help him feel grounded and at ease. But now, at a certain point, he realized he was more bored than he had ever been in his entire life. Before, he always had something to work toward, but now it didn’t matter how many times he went through his yoga routine in the morning, how long he spent in the gym after. No matter what he did, it felt like running in a hamster wheel.

A few of the guys from the team texted him regularly, the ones who stayed in New York City over the summer permanently and the ones who just hadn’t left yet. Even then, Aiden was painfully aware that he was five or ten or in some cases fifteen years older than them, and he couldn’t bring himself to accept any of the offers to hang.

Eventually he stopped responding at all.

For the last few years, there hadn’t really been anyone steady in his life. When he had first—when it had happened, at first he had slept around for a while. For a long time after that, he’d dated, serially monogamous relationships that would always fizzle out around a year, when the other guy realized Aiden couldn’t give him what he wanted. That even though Aiden could commit to a relationship, that no matter how good the sex was, sex and companionship was all it was ever going to be. Aiden was never going to be emotionally available the way any of them wanted.

And it wasn’t like he never hooked up, but at a certain point it was almost more effort than it was worth for an ultimately unsatisfying reward. None of those men understood what he wanted—and he’d learned, a long time ago, that with the wrong person, even asking for it could be disastrous. You couldn’t just say to a guy you barely knew hey, I’m in kind of a mood today, you should hit me so my brain will shut the fuck up, and expect anything like what you were looking for. Anything like what he’d—

So in the end, sex was just that. Sex and nothing more.

The worst part was that he didn’t even know why dating felt so empty. It wasn’t even like he really wanted romance. It was just that sometimes, he thought he’d kill to be able to talk to someone the way he used to talk to—

Well.

What it came down to was: there were no answers he could give himself about how to fix this. At a certain point you woke up, realized you were almost middle-aged by normal standards and already ancient by hockey standards, and that you had spent the first half of your life failing to set yourself up for the second.

Aiden went running.

It was a hot day. It felt good to sweat and suffer. For a time, he could stop thinking, exist only in the pounding of his feet on the pavement, the gasp of breath in his lungs and ears, the city streaking by.

He stopped to stretch out his legs and rest his knee. Someone said, from behind him, “Sooooouuuup!”

Aiden sighed, turned and smiled. He posed for a picture.

Aiden went running.

The thing was. He couldn’t outrun the past.

The doorbell rang.

Aiden checked his phone and sighed. There was Gabe, on his stoop, arms folded over his chest, tapping his foot impatiently. Against his better judgment, Aiden slipped on a pair of shorts and went downstairs to answer it. He had the feeling that if he didn’t, Gabe would still be there hours later. He was stubborn that way.

When Aiden opened the door, Gabe’s face visibly brightened. “Soupy! You’re alive!”

“Still breathing, anyway. What are you doing here, Gabe?”

“Well...” Gabe trailed off and chewed on his lower lip. “I was worried about you. You haven’t really been answering anyone in the group chat.”

“It’s because I’m not on the team anymore.”

“Well, yeah, technically , but you’re still there in spirit .”

Aiden had never felt as old as he did in that moment. “Thanks, Gabe, I appreciate it. I’m fine, though, you don’t have to worry.”

Gabe was already pushing past him, and Aiden didn’t fight back. He allowed himself to be gently bodied aside. Sighing, he followed the kid into his own home and closed the door behind them. It was difficult to say no to Gabriel Walker, mostly because he always refused to accept no for an answer. Because he never had anyone have to tell him no.

Over his last season, Aiden had been for Gabe what Aiden’s own mentor, Derek Ward, had been for him almost two decades ago. Before Aiden’s retirement, he and Gabe had a good tandem going. No hard feelings on Aiden’s part when Gabe took over the crease. The experience of mentoring another goalie had been challenging but rewarding, especially as he started to see the tangible results; watch Gabe grow in confidence and ease in front of the net.

Gabe didn’t remind Aiden of himself at that age in anything except his level of play. Talented, driven, competitive, twenty-two years old, his whole future ahead of him. Gabe was all of those things. He was handsome, with his huge brown eyes and the kind of mouth and eyelashes that some people paid good money to obtain. Gabe was cheerful, goofy, a little arrogant, and one of the first openly gay prospects taken in the first round of the entry draft. He was the first openly gay prospect to play a major league game.

There were a few conversations they’d had early on that Aiden obviously hadn’t been able to with Ward. Mostly about being gay and a minority in a sport that was very straight and very white. Aiden’s mother had immigrated to Manitoba from Gujarat, and Gabe was a Black kid from Scarborough, but they had more in common than anyone probably would’ve guessed considering the disparity of their backgrounds.

Gabe had a chip on his shoulder the size of Nunavut when he’d come up, ready to fight anyone who looked at him wrong, even if they were a teammate. It had been on Aiden to tell him that wasn’t necessary here because the team was already used to it. And that neither Aiden nor Isaac Pearson, the Libs’ captain and official You Can Play Ambassador, would tolerate any shitty behavior from the team, on the ice or off it.

Gabe had stared at him for a very long time and said, “ You? Really?”

Aiden hadn’t really known how to answer that.

Aiden envied Gabe, the certainty and confidence he had at such a young age. Even though everyone on the team knew Aiden was queer now , he hadn’t ever come out to the general public. He couldn’t see himself doing it, either. It still felt uncomfortable, having eyes on him for things that weren’t related to hockey. Even when he didn’t play hockey anymore. But Gabe had never seemed to give a shit who looked at him, or why.

Gabe, frowning at Aiden, stood in his space. “But I’m serious, Soupy, I’m really worried about you, you know?”

“You don’t have to be. I’m enjoying retirement.”

“Doesn’t look like it from where I’m sitting.”

Aiden just looked at him, level and expressionless.

“Come onnn , Soupy,” Gabe said, cajoling. “Come out with me tonight? You can let yourself have fun for at least one day, and then you can go back to hibernating by yourself in here, or wearing your hair shirt, or whatever it is you’re doing, okay? I just think it’ll be good for you to get out of the house.”

Gabe’s hand rested on Aiden’s arm, and he looked up at Aiden with big, pleading brown eyes. Aiden had to shake his head to clear his vision, assaulted, suddenly, with a memory he hadn’t thought about for years. It was such a strong image that he almost felt like he had to sit down.

“Soup?” Gabe did sound really worried now. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Aiden said. His voice sounded hoarse, rusty with emotion or disuse. “I’m fine. You want to go out? Fine. I’m yours for the night.”

Gabe smiled and pressed his fingers against Aiden’s arm again. “Good. You won’t regret it.”

Aiden regretted it immediately.

They ended up at a dive bar not far from Aiden’s house, and Gabe kept ordering shots, which Aiden felt obliged to drink, and which he felt obliged to either match or pay for, because Gabe was on the last year of his ELC and Aiden was a multimillionaire.

Gabe set yet another round in front of him. “There you go, Soupy.”

“Another one?” Aiden asked, rubbing his eyes. He drank anyway. Gabe watched him do it. “Aren’t you training? Don’t you have to go to the gym tomorrow? Aren’t you going to regret this?”

“Well, yeah,” Gabe said, flashing his dimples. “But I don’t really get hangovers, at least probably not like you do, because you’re ol—you’re, you know, retired. So it’ll be fine, probably. Anyway, I can suffer a little tomorrow to cheer up my favorite goalie tonight.”

“I thought you were your favorite goalie.”

“You’re my other favorite goalie.” Gabe patted Aiden’s hand reassuringly. “And besides... I wouldn’t be half the goalie I am without you. Like. You know.” He looked away, suddenly shy in a way that was very out of character. “I owe you a lot, okay? So I really don’t wanna see you so sad all of the time.”

“I’m not sad .”

“Oh, right, Soupy, you were just hiding in your house for weeks and weeks not talking to any of us for no reason. Just some casual hermiting.”

“It wasn’t weeks . Gabe...come on, have mercy on an old man.”

“Nah, no mercy,” Gabe said, beaming, and then, “You are not drunk enough right now, and I told you we’re going to have a good time—hey, lemme grab the bartender—”

Aiden loved Gabe, but he was so young. He wondered, vaguely, whether any of his teammates had felt the same way talking to Aiden back in the day as he felt talking to Gabe now. That choking combination of fond protectiveness, absolute confusion, amusement and vague horror at the entropy of the universe in relation to himself.

Gabe, clueless, chattered on about anything and everything. “And then I told Richie that I’m going to work on my lateral movement, but I have a lot more explosiveness than they thought, they’re underestimating me, so...”

Aiden was drunk, but not drunk enough. He could feel himself fidgeting, the uncontrollable way his body moved sometimes, when he was overwhelmed and couldn’t handle it. Aiden’s leg jiggled, bouncing; the table on its uneven leg shook even worse. He didn’t want to be a dick, so he bit down his exhaustion and nodded and offered encouraging remarks at the appropriate times. Gabe bloomed under the attention, smiling and intent, kept touching Aiden’s arm to punctuate his points.

“Excuse me, Gabe,” he said, lurching to his feet. “I’m going to go get us a pitcher of water.”

“Oh—um, okay.”

Aiden took a deep breath as he wove his way through the crowd, fishing for his wallet so he could settle the tab, too. He leaned against the bar, waiting to catch the bartender’s attention. And then he looked up and the universe punched him in the face.

“Oh,” Aiden said, before he could stop himself.

Matthew Safaryan, the captain of the Montreal Royal, stood at the bar, apparently just as shocked to see Aiden. They hadn’t been this close off of the ice in over a decade. Seeing him, here in New York City, out of hockey pads and close enough to touch, almost took Aiden’s knees out.

Matt was still a few inches shorter than Aiden, but he’d filled out since his early twenties, broad and solid and muscular. His sharp, owlish features had aged well: laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, flecks of gray in his black hair. A scar still cut through one of his eyebrows.

It had been an errant skate blade; Aiden remembered watching the replay after the game and wincing as they tried to stop the bleeding before he vanished down the tunnel for stitches, then wincing again when Matt had gone back on the ice for the next period. Winced a third time seeing the blood still smeared on his forehead behind the cage.

The patchy beard Matt used to have was fully grown in now. His dark brown eyes fixed on Aiden’s face, but Aiden couldn’t read the expression in them anymore. Matt wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. Somehow, he was even more attractive than he had been when they were kids, all of the raw material he had weathered by time.

Aiden should say something. He had to say something. His throat felt like he’d swallowed a bowl full of glass shards.

Gabe stumbled up behind him and threw his arm over Aiden’s shoulders in a way that Aiden was really going to have to talk to him about later. When his heart wasn’t pounding so loudly.

“Safaryan?” Gabe said. “What are you doing here?”

“Not really your business, Walker.” Matt’s voice even sounded the same, calm and level, and he looked from Aiden to Gabe and back with something like disdain.

“Matt, what—?” Miles Safaryan, Matt’s little brother, appeared from the crowd behind Matt’s shoulder. His eyes narrowed when he saw Aiden. “Oh. Campbell. Jesus Christ, of course. Okay. Okay. This is—I can handle this. All right. Campbell. You need to leave.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Gabe cut in, “this is totally unnecessary, okay?”

“Oh, cute. You got a kid fighting your battles now?” Miles’ lip curled in a sneer. “Seriously, Campbell, fuck off and get the hell away from my brother.”

“I’m not—I wasn’t—” Aiden tried to work his way through a silent mantra, a breathing exercise, anything , but all he had was the yawning grief in his chest. “We’ll go. I was just settling the tab.”

“ Soup— ”

“I’m settling the tab, Gabe. Night’s over, buddy.”

The barest hint of a flinch flickered over Matt’s face. He hadn’t spoken since that first time.

Aiden looked away. Pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet, handed it to the bartender. “No change, please.” He turned and walked quickly through the crowd, his shoulders hunched and his head down, like that alone could make the rest of this, somehow, go away.

Outside, he tried to get air into his lungs. It was a summer night, thick and humid, so the actual air didn’t do anything to help. He tried anyway. Distantly, he could hear Gabe.

“Soupy? Are you okay? What the fuck was that?”

Aiden didn’t answer, just kept walking west down the street, ocean roaring in his ears.

“Hey!” Gabe said, grabbing his arm. “Soupy, please, you’re kind of scaring me, man. What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

Aiden didn’t know what his face looked like when he shook Gabe off, but he wasn’t far gone enough not to feel bad when Gabe flinched.

“Gabe, I’m sorry, I...” Aiden groped for something to say, anything to explain. “I’m sorry. I have to go home. I can’t. I can’t do this.”

“Soupy...” Gabe looked up at him, eyes wide, face flushed. He reached out to touch Aiden again. His hands were warm and soft. “Soupy, just tell me you’re okay.”

Aiden shook his head. Carefully disentangled his arm. He walked home, leaving Gabe behind.

Aiden walked into the empty living room of his empty house. He needed to scream. A curse, a cry, fuck , anything, rose up in his throat, but he choked it back. There wasn’t anyone to hear him; a display like that wouldn’t help anything.

He tried to get himself under control. He poured a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge. He drank the water. He rested his head against the cold metal of the freezer. It was past midnight and he was drunk; yoga and meditation were both probably out of the question. He could drink more, or he could just go upstairs and try to sleep. But that seemed like a stretch goal.

Aiden had been fairly responsible since his retirement, but this was an emergency. He tried not to feel too guilty for pouring himself a generous glass of whiskey. He drank the whiskey. He didn’t feel better. He didn’t even feel more drunk.

The doorbell rang and Aiden ignored it. The doorbell rang again and again and again and again, and Aiden set the glass down on his counter, turned to go to the door and fling it open and tell Gabe that he needed to mind his own fucking business .

“Gabe, you need to go home —”

Matt was standing on Aiden’s front stoop.

Matt was fucking standing on Aiden’s front stoop, handsome and furious and lost. He looked at Aiden like he was drowning, like he wanted to be anywhere but here, like he hated that he was. He said, roughly, “Let me in.”

Aiden instinctively took a step back as Matt stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him. “How did—how did you—?”

“I just asked Duncs.”

Aiden’s former teammate. Matt’s juniors buddy. A lump rose in Aiden’s throat the size of Mount Everest. Aiden couldn’t say anything, or move.

It didn’t matter. Matt moved for him. In two steps he closed the space between them and took Aiden’s face in both of his hands. Aiden had a brief moment of eye contact, staring directly at Matt: his pupils dilated and expression wild, entirely unlike him. He pressed his mouth against Aiden’s. It felt exactly the way Aiden remembered, the way he’d tortured himself remembering, warm and demanding and a little mean. Aiden opened instinctively, a muscle memory. But then he really was responding, tongue learning the new line of Matt’s teeth, the gap where one of them was missing. Rediscovering the way he tasted. Like whiskey, like salt.

Matt made a strangled noise, or maybe it was Aiden.

Aiden’s hands flew up to grab his wrists. At first, he wanted to push Matt away, but he couldn’t do it. Instead he ran his hands down Matt’s shoulders, his sides, half wondering at the now-unfamiliar lines of his body, half unable to believe he was here, real and solid under Aiden’s touch. Matt’s tongue, slick against Aiden’s. Matt’s hands, thumb stroking Aiden’s cheek, tracing the line of Aiden’s beard, his jaw, tangling into his hair. When he wrapped his fingers there and tugged, Aiden made an awful whimper, and finally pulled back to gasp for air.

“Matt, Matt— what —”

“Please,” Matt said, and his eyes were huge and so, so dark, “can we—not talk right now?”

This was a terrible decision.

It was the worst decision he’d ever made.

Aiden didn’t need to tell himself that.

He allowed Matt to push him backward and crowd him against the door, still kissing him furiously, desperately, like he’d die if they stopped. He allowed Matt to worm his hand under Aiden’s shirt, splay his fingers against Aiden’s abs, tracing the line of each ridge of muscle, a muffled noise of frustration when he realized that Aiden had the same definition he’d always had. He allowed Matt to trail from his mouth down the line of his jaw to his neck, eyes closing when Matt’s teeth dug into the particularly sensitive spot right below his ear.

Aiden felt like he had completely lost his mind, like this was some kind of fever dream. His hands were all over Matt, his hair, his biceps, his face, his ass, fingers digging into the muscle of it. No rhyme or reason to where he touched. Couldn’t decide what he wanted to touch first, wanted to touch all of him at once, wanted to cut him open and crawl inside.

Matt was still sucking a mark onto Aiden’s neck, hard enough that he gasped. Matt pushed up against him, hard enough that the friction made him squirm. Matt’s hands tugged Aiden’s pants down, and Aiden wanted to say no, stop, this is a terrible idea and Aiden wanted to say I missed you, I missed this, please, please, please.

He realized, belatedly, that he was saying, “Please, please, please—” whenever Matt allowed him to breathe. Begging over and over again for something he couldn’t even bring himself to describe. Not now, not from Matt, not after all of this time.

But Matt gave it to him anyway, his calloused hand too hot, almost feverish against Aiden’s skin. Aiden managed to get his hand down Matt’s pants, too; Matt hissed when Aiden rolled his thumb around the head of his dick and through the moisture beaded there.

Matt was so close there was barely any space for their hands to move, grinding up against Aiden’s body, their knuckles bumping, clothes pushed down and disarrayed. Matt wrapped his hand around both of them, and Aiden’s entire body flinched at the sensation as Matt’s hand sped up.

They had stopped kissing, didn’t have the coordination for it, just panting into each other’s mouths. The air was humid between them, lips barely brushing, and Aiden clutched Matt’s arms like that alone could somehow keep him on his feet. His entire body felt like it had been hit by lightning, an electric current running between all of the places his skin touched Matt’s. He was so keyed up, so sensitive, that he couldn’t possibly hold out long. Matt’s hand was merciless, on the edge of too much.

Aiden shivered and came, wet against his shirt, sticky between them. His knees buckled with the force of it, but Matt kept going, shoving him back against the door so he couldn’t move, so he had to keep standing. And then it was too much, oversensitive and rough, and Aiden’s gasps sounded very loud in the quiet house.

He didn’t say stop .

He didn’t want to stop.

He didn’t want—

Matt buried his face in the crook of Aiden’s neck when he came, and Aiden could almost feel the thud of his heart trapped between them.

They didn’t stay that way long. Matt pulled away and swallowed hard, looked down at the mess of his shirt and Aiden’s clothes, at Aiden’s softening dick hanging sadly out in the open. He pulled his pants up and tried to adjust his shirt while Aiden stared, dumb and unable to move, even to try to preserve his dignity.

Their eyes met and Matt’s face softened almost imperceptibly before setting in the mask again.

He said, “Let me go.”

Aiden moved to the side, and let him.

For several long moments after he left Aiden’s house, Matt stood on the front stoop, swaying on his feet.

He was fucked up , and even though he was still kind of drunk, his current state was only about a quarter alcohol. The rest of it was just Aiden Campbell, the same way Aiden had always fucked him up. He put his hand out to grab the doorframe and tried to process what he had just done.

Matt had been the captain of the Montreal Royal, an Original Six team and the oldest and most storied franchise in the league, for years now. It was a position that required steadiness and responsibility and always doing the right thing and being conscious of your public image. It was a commitment as much as it was a job. He’d voluntarily taken the honor and weight of that onto his shoulders.

The captain of the Montreal Royal didn’t get drunk in New York on a family vacation and fuck his ex against a door. Except, apparently, when he did.

It had been more than a decade since things fell apart. Matt had thought he was over it. He had done the work to get over it. It was very clear in that moment, shivering in the dark and still unable to get his feet to walk down the stairs of Aiden Campbell’s front stoop, that he wasn’t over it at all.

His head was still spinning and he knew his hair was sticking up at all kinds of insane angles, his face was red and his mouth swollen, and his shirt was a fucking mess . There was no way that he was going to be able to make it back to the house the family had rented without Miles asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions.