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He’d probably already figured it out; after Aiden and Walker had left the bar, Matt made it a little under fifteen minutes before saying, “I have to go.”

The look Miles had given him said it all.

The stupid, self-destructive part of him, the part that had reached out to Duncs in the first place, said: Ring the bell. He’s still in there. Go talk to him. Actually talk to him.

The part of him that had any kind of self-preservation whatsoever said: run .

He made himself consciously put one foot and then the other down those stairs. Forced himself to walk away from Aiden’s beautiful, soulless brownstone. Forced himself to walk away from beautiful, soulless Aiden.

It shouldn’t have been possible that a brief encounter in a crowded bar could have messed him up this badly, thrown him out of the carefully controlled routines of his existence like that.

It wasn’t like he had never seen Aiden over the years. Their teams played each other at least three times a season; they both appeared in the All-Star Game every few years. They’d been on the same Olympic team once and won a gold medal together. He’d survived all of those things. None of that was the same as looking up and feeling the immediate gut punch of seeing Aiden’s face, really seeing him, for the first time in over a decade.

Aiden hadn’t even looked the same. His light brown skin had a grayish pallor. His hair had gotten long and shaggy and he had a scruffy beard that did nothing to hide the lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His wide brown eyes looked haunted. There were dark circles under them like he’d been punched repeatedly, and his expressive mouth, which Matt mostly remembered smiling and laughing and teasing, turned down at the corner in a frown. The whole effect was a little like a medieval painting of a saint being martyred. He’d looked so worn down that despite everything Matt had felt the immediate urge to fold him up in his arms before he realized how fucking stupid that thought was.

Aiden’s body had felt the same, though. He’d panted for it the same eager way he always had. The noise he’d made when Matt took what he wanted from him had been the same. The faint, dark brown freckles on his nose were the same. Matt wondered whether the freckles on his shoulders were, too.

God, what the fuck had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking. Not with his head, anyway.

He walked briskly down the street back toward the house. When his parents had said they wanted to visit New York, he’d protested, but hadn’t fully been able to explain why. It was a huge city, and he hadn’t even known where Aiden lived anymore. As far as his parents knew, he had moved on when he married Emily. If anything, they were still worried about him after Emily, two years post-divorce, and that was why they’d dragged him down here. Part of him had dreaded going. And part of him had hoped that even in a city of eight and a half million people, there was a chance—a chance.

Still. The universe’s mysterious conspiracies weren’t a good excuse for stupid decisions.

He tried to open the door quietly, but his hands were still shaking as he fumbled with the key.

Aiden Campbell.

Aiden fucking Campbell, after ten years and change.

There was a time when Matt, young and stupid, had really fucking thought things were going to last forever. When he’d bought a ring and everything and he’d had all kinds of big, expansive plans about coming out, about telling the Montreal media to go fuck themselves if they had a problem with him, when—

It hadn’t mattered. None of it had mattered. Heart in his throat and all of the stupid fucking hope in his chest, he’d asked, would you marry me? and Aiden had looked back at him with those big, sad eyes and said that they wanted different things, and he couldn’t be what Matt needed him to be, and he was sorry.

I’m sorry, Matty, Aiden kept saying, and I just want to do what’s best for you.

His stomach lurched, remembering. Even now he could recall with exact clarity the sick, sharp nausea he had felt in that moment, like he’d been thrown physically back into it. The despair when he’d insisted, I know what’s best for me, and that’s you.

By the time Matt stumbled into the living room, Miles was still up, watching TV. He’d clearly been waiting, and he looked sharply at Matt’s disheveled state. “Jesus fucking Christ, Matt, where the hell were you?”

“I have to. I gotta, bathroom—”

On his knees on the cold tile, he leaned over the toilet and puked until there wasn’t anything left. Until his stomach heaved and twisted and acid soured his tongue, nothing to give but trying to expel it anyway. He didn’t feel any better afterward because the problem wasn’t the alcohol. As much as he wanted to, it had become really fucking clear he couldn’t purge Aiden from his system.

Matt stripped off his come-and sweat-stained shirt and shivered, sweat beading cold on his back under the blast of the air conditioner. He counted to fifteen. He stood up, swaying. Ducked his head under the running water from the faucet, drank and spat it out in the sink.

“What the fuck happened ?” Miles demanded, when Matt came out of the bathroom. “Matt, I was fucking worried about you.”

“I—I had to take a walk,” Matt mumbled. He couldn’t look Miles in the eye. “I had to clear my head.”

“Don’t fucking tell me you—”

“I didn’t. I didn’t. I just—I just had to clear my head. I was more fucked up than I thought I was.”

“Because Jesus, Matt, we were all with you through that and I—he’s not worth it . That piece of shit isn’t worth one more second of your time or effort or emotion.”

“I know. I know, Miles.”

Miles stared at him again, a combination of worry and pity and fury, and Matt had to look away so he wouldn’t throw up again. “I’m just... Matt, you know how much we all love you, right? He’s not worth it .”

“I have to go pass out. I—I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

Alone in a bed that wasn’t his, Matt lay on his back, stared at the ceiling with his hands folded over his chest. He wondered what the fuck, exactly, he thought he was doing.

I wonder if he’s thinking about me.

It took him a long time to fall asleep.

Aiden didn’t sleep much that night.

He watched the sunrise on his roof deck, because eventually he’d just given up.

Pears texted him around five in the morning: Gabe said you had a rough night, everything cool?

Aiden typed you’re not my captain anymore and deleted it. He said, Everything’s fine.

Copacetic, bro. But he said Safaryan was there, so I was just thinking, maybe not.

I left right after we ran into them. We didn’t talk.

OK, Soup. Yo, just because you’re not technically on the roster anymore doesn’t mean you’re not a Lib. Got it?

Thanks, Pears.

I can send you a playlist.

No, thanks.

Pears sent him the playlist anyway. It was called some classic songs to get over your ex to because it’s been maaaaaaybe a lil too long . The first song was Juice Wrld’s “Life’s a Mess.”

Thanks, Isaac.

Anytime, he said, with a sunglasses emoji.

Aiden went to the gym. He came home. He sat in his house. He did not bother putting on pants. He did not look at the front door. He got up. He picked up a book on the history of goaltending he’d been meaning to read, but only made it about two pages in before he put it down. His eyes wouldn’t focus. He spent an hour folding laundry. He did meal prep for the next few days. He played the guitar, but he couldn’t remember any of the songs he was playing.

He did not touch the tender bruise on his neck. He looked at himself in the mirror, the lines on his face, the dark circles under his eyes. He sat down on the couch and flipped through various cable channels he wasn’t interested in watching. Finally, he just stopped and sat, and put his head down in his hands.

Aiden woke to find the sun already down, the doorbell ringing. He stretched out the knot in his shoulders and neck and unlocked his phone. He had about thirty texts from Gabe he didn’t read. He opened the door camera app.

Matt, again, pacing on the stoop like a caged animal.

Aiden took a deep breath. He thought: maybe I won’t answer.

He went down the stairs.

Matt’s shoulders were hunched forward, tense and miserable, by the time Aiden opened the door. It was raining, not hard but steady, and Matt’s hair and jacket looked damp.

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know .”

“Why are you in New York?”

“My parents wanted to take a family vacation.” His laugh was low and bitter. “We’re here for another week. My parents and my brother; his wife and kids. And me.”

“Why—”

“It’s not a small city, I didn’t think there was any chance of, of running into you.”

“I—Jesus, Matt. It’s been—”

“A decade. More.” They stared at each other for a long time before Matt said, again, “Let me in.”

Aiden took a step back, and Matt closed the door behind him. He slipped the wet jacket off and dropped it on Aiden’s floor.

“The kid. Walker. He’s...?”

“My replacement.”

“You’re not—”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Matt, he’s twenty-two. He was my rookie. No , I’m not.”

“I’m sorry, I just—the way he looked at you, the way he touched you—”

“It’s been a decade. You got married . Even if I did, it’s none of your business.”

“I know,” Matt said. His voice was very small and very rough. “I know .”

Matt’s hand on his shoulder, in a way that used to feel warm, steadying. Aiden couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

“Tell me to go.”

“Matt—”

“If you want me to go, tell me to go.”

Matt’s mouth set in the same determined way it used to look when they played each other, right after they’d broken up, like he was ready to crash the crease and fight Aiden at a moment’s provocation, like all he needed was a signal.

They’d done it, once, right after Matt got married, beat the shit out of each other before the linesman could get in between them, kept fighting even then. Matt, focused only on Aiden and flailing, had blacked the linesman’s eye. They’d both gotten game misconducts. It was the only real fight Aiden ever had. After that, Matt barely even looked at him unless he was shooting on the net, and Aiden thought, every single game, about slashing his leg with his stick, giving him a shove, getting some kind of reaction, any reaction.

He never did.

Now Matt’s eyes fixed intently on Aiden’s face, the same look that used to make him shiver, like Matt could see right through him, like Matt knew everything about him and still desperately wanted to know more. Aiden licked his lips, trying to think of what the hell to say, but all he could do was lean forward and crush his mouth against Matt’s.

“Tell me to go,” Matt mumbled into the kiss.

You know I can’t, Aiden wanted to say, but instead, he walked Matt backward to the couch. It wasn’t a very comfortable couch, made more for aesthetics than with the expectation that anyone would sit on it, but it was wide enough.

He pushed Matt down to a sitting position. Slid down to straddle his lap. It was surreal how much time had passed but how his body still remembered so clearly doing this hundreds of times before, remembered exactly how it felt to press up against the hard length of Matt’s body.

“Aiden—”

“This is so goddamn stupid.”

“Mm,” Matt agreed, because Aiden was kissing him again, because his hands were sliding under Aiden’s shirt, tugging it up.

“You shouldn’t be here. This is such a bad idea.”

Matt’s thumb caught against Aiden’s nipple, lightly, then a sharp press of his nail. He swallowed Aiden’s gasp with his mouth. Did it again. “Tell me to go.”

“I hate you,” Aiden said instead.

It didn’t sound convincing. He didn’t even mean it, not anymore, he was just so tired. It had been so long since he thought about this. It had been so long since he put it to rest. And now his entire body was on fire with the way Matt touched him, the way he touched Matt.

Matt, surging up against him eagerly, grinding his hips into Aiden’s. Matt’s hands, teasing and searching for the sensitive spots he still knew on Aiden’s body, laughing when he found them, and Aiden swore and twisted against him.

“I know,” Matt said.

Aiden mouthed at his jaw. Bit his earlobe, sucked it briefly and dug his teeth in again.

Matt groaned. “ Fuck. God—I hated you, for so long, for so—”

“Matt, can we just—can you just—without—”

Matt stopped moving, his hands very still on Aiden’s collarbone, his neck. Then his thumb brushed a line along Aiden’s shoulder. His voice was scoured raw. “Whatever you want, baby.”

Aiden’s dick jerked, leaking, and Matt swore. Maybe Aiden should have been embarrassed, that he was still so easy for Matt’s endearments, Matt’s hands, but he was too busy exploring Matt’s body. The same boy he’d always known; the man he didn’t know at all. He was still just as responsive under Aiden’s hands, still just as eager, although Aiden’s fingers caught on old scars he’d never seen before, tracing the lines of them at Matt’s shoulder and his hip and his knee.

Impatiently, he tugged Matt’s shirt up and over his head, but he didn’t have much time to admire the view before Matt pushed Aiden off his lap and down onto the couch. They wrestled, flailing arms and limbs, the same way they always had. The only difference was that Matt felt heavier on top of him, pinning him down.

Maybe that was just Aiden, getting old and tired.

Aiden pushed experimentally at the hands circling his wrists, but there wasn’t a lot of give, and he wasn’t trying to turn this into a real struggle. Matt stared down at him with a wild, half-panicked expression, like if he looked away, Aiden would disappear. Aiden couldn’t tell him, in enough words, how he could never do that.

“Can I suck you off?” Aiden asked instead, a faint feeling of satisfaction when Matt swallowed hard. “You should do it like this. Hold my arms down, fuck my face, come on .”

“Jesus Christ, Aiden, you haven’t changed at all.”

Matt pulled away to struggle out of his pants and boxer briefs, and then he was moving up Aiden’s body, dick nudging at Aiden’s lips, his hands pinning Aiden’s arms down again.

Aiden looked up, ran his tongue over the head of his cock. Too light, too teasing.

Matt said, “ Fuck this,” and pushed forward.

Aiden stopped fucking around and swallowed him down. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable position—his wrists hurt, his shoulder ached, Matt was rough enough that Aiden choked a little—but he closed his eyes and breathed through his nose and relaxed into the discomfort, the familiarity of it.

“God,” Matt was saying, above him, “god, god —”

It had been a while since Aiden had done this, either with a boyfriend or a casual hookup, but the weight of Matt in his mouth, the way he felt at the back of Aiden’s throat, the way Aiden’s eyes watered when Matt’s body thrust forward, the broken sounds Matt made, the bruising weight of Matt’s hands on his wrists...he fucking loved it. He moved his tongue when he could, relaxed his throat when he couldn’t, and just took it , because he didn’t have any other choice.

Because he’d already made his choice.

Matt fell forward with his weight on his hands when he came, gasping. Aiden gagged again, not quite able to swallow everything at that angle. Did his best anyway. His whole body buzzed, the kind of endorphin high he hadn’t felt in longer than he wanted to think about.

Matt pulled out, shifted so his weight was back on Aiden’s hips, and before Aiden could wipe away the mess with his aching arms, Matt was kissing him, lips trailing down the side of Aiden’s mouth, his warm tongue cleaning up what he’d left behind.

Aiden closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at Matt after that.

“What do you want? Hand or mouth?”

“Your mouth.” Aiden’s voice sounded wrecked, hoarse and scratchy. “It—it’s not going to be long now.”

“I forgot just how fucked up you get from sucking cock,” Matt said, too soft, yanking Aiden’s underwear down and looking at the painful situation he had going, the wet spot on the fabric and the sticky streaks on his skin, how absolutely desperate he was, hips hitching up in search of anything . Matt’s thumb traced the cut below Aiden’s abs, a touch so gentle that Aiden thrashed under him, like that could somehow get him more. “How could I forget— Jesus , Aiden—”

Aiden shoved his head down so he’d stop talking , and Matt snorted but didn’t fight him. Matt’s mouth on him felt like being thrown backward in time, like dying, like the best thing Aiden had ever felt. He struggled up onto his elbows so he could watch Matt doing it, because he was ruthless, cheeks hollowed out, looking up with something almost like defiance. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it was probably only a minute or two before his body seized up and his brain shorted out.

When he opened his eyes again, Matt was crouched over him, looking down with the same cocky little smile he used to get sometimes, if Aiden had especially embarrassed himself. “Still easy,” he murmured.

Aiden, panting, tried to get his stuttering brain back online. It didn’t quite connect.

“Aiden—”

Aiden, still trapped underneath the full weight of him, pushed at his chest. “You should go.”

“You don’t—”

“You should go .”

Matt moved away from him and stood. Aiden tried not to be too obvious about staring as Matt leaned forward to grab his underwear and pants, turning away as he struggled into them and went to search for his shirt.

Aiden watched him do it in silence. He shrugged his jacket on. His face looked the same way it did when he first showed up on Aiden’s doorstep, lost and furious and so fucking sad.

“Aiden?”

“Don’t. I’m telling you to go.”

Matt’s shoulders slumped, but he opened the door, and left without another word.

Aiden took a while to get up from the couch. He wasn’t really sure what was going on in his head. It felt like screaming static, a whiteout without any thoughts or feelings.

Eventually, he stood up and put his boxers back on. His phone rang. Gabe. He shouldn’t answer, but the last thing he wanted right now was for the kid to turn up on his doorstep again. When he could think again, when he could—function—he had to talk to Gabe about boundaries, apologize for any wrong ideas he might have inadvertently given him.

“Hello?” His voice sounded just as bad as it had right after Matt finished.

“Soup? I just—you haven’t been answering my texts, and I was really worried about you after the other night.”

“I’m fine. Gabe, you need to, you just need to give me some space, okay?”

“You don’t sound okay, Soupy, and you’re, uh, really important to me, so—”

“Gabe, please . You need to back off.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Okay,” he said, finally, very hurt and extremely young, and Aiden felt like the biggest asshole in the world.

“I just have to figure some things out. Then we’ll talk, okay?”

“Okay.”

Aiden went upstairs and took a long, cold, shower.

He was going to get his life together, and he was going to make better choices about it.

He was going to be better.

There was just a single problem.

Matt hadn’t been sure what to expect when he came to New York with his family. He was familiar with the city; there were obvious reasons he’d visited the most of anyone in his family. He had figured it would be a long, boring trip.

It was just...he loved Miles and Jess. He loved being an uncle to their two small children, Ellie and Theo. He loved his parents. What he didn’t love was the way everyone treated him with kid gloves, the way they danced around the fact that he was thirty-five and divorced and alone. That was the thing about families, especially happy families: they felt that if you didn’t have that too, you were somehow less than, and they were determined to fix it.

Or in Matt’s case, fix him .

It was tough in close quarters like this, when he couldn’t evade the questions about whether he was seeing anyone, if he’d talked to Emily recently, if he wanted the phone number of one of Miles’ teammates’ sisters. Always a woman, like they didn’t know he was interested in men, too. He had never lied to his parents, but they had never been exactly comfortable with it, even if they’d accepted Aiden up until the disastrous end of things. And after that, it had been like they’d hoped he’d come to his senses and settle down, provide the horde of grandchildren they’d always dreamed of. They’d been overjoyed when he had met Emily. It had been tough over the years, even the years that he hadn’t really thought about Aiden very often.

But now it was impossible to think of anything else.

He hadn’t intended to go back to Aiden again. He told himself that he absolutely couldn’t go back to Aiden again. But it was like his whole body oriented itself magnetically toward that house, knowing that Aiden was there, knowing that Matt would be able to touch him again.

Matt had been sober—actually sober—for a few years after their first breakup, and he’d briefly attended meetings. He wasn’t sober anymore, once he’d gotten his shit together, but the first place his brain went was: this felt exactly like a relapse. It wasn’t alcohol, or Xanax, but... He was going off the rails, and it didn’t even matter when he had Aiden again, panting underneath him, wrists tense under Matt’s hands, eyes watering when he tried to choke Matt down.

It was ironic, that he’d spent time in player assistance after Aiden had dumped him and after he’d made the disastrous decision to propose to a girl he’d known for all of three months. Outpatient rehab and intensive therapy. The guilt and shame of knowing how badly he’d spiraled after all of it. How hard he’d worked to pull himself out of it. It had taken years of work, and he was better now . He drank moderately when he was out with the boys. He didn’t use any other substances. He had his shit together. And yet.

He had been sober from this stupid, destructive relationship for over a decade, watching Aiden from afar, and now... He knew better, he absolutely fucking knew better, and he was still making these stupid fucking decisions. It didn’t feel like making a decision so much as falling off of a cliff, the inevitability of going back there knowing that Aiden would open the door for him again.

It was easier when they were out and about doing the touristy things, but even that reminded him of Aiden now, of the summers they’d tried to sneak around under the radar in New York and Montreal and trips outside of the continent. He had a hard time getting through the MoMA because in every gallery they went to he had the most vivid fucking memories. The first summer he’d visited Aiden in New York and the two of them had gone through the whole museum, making out in the elevators after the doors closed and springing apart again when they’d opened, mocking the art they’d been too immature to actually understand.

That was the shit that really got him. Because even though he had Aiden for the week, physically at least, that wasn’t what he actually missed the most, what had screwed him the fuck up when Aiden had ended things.

He was the captain of the Montreal Royal. Hockey was a religion in Montreal the way it wasn’t anywhere else. He could hook up with almost anyone he wanted, if he’d been so inclined. That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that even though sex with Aiden felt like setting himself on fire, what Matt had really missed were the phone conversations on the road, the stupid inside jokes they’d built up over the years, the way he could make such a serious, tightly wound goalie smile and laugh in a way no one else could, the way Aiden had taken such good care of Matt when he got mono one offseason or was recovering from a concussion. He’d missed Aiden’s stupid dorky smile and the almost comically bad sock tans he got in the summer. He’d missed Aiden’s single-minded obsessions with hockey, but also with comic books and music. He’d missed how fucking weird Aiden could be, sometimes, the way he never reacted the way Matt thought he would, no matter how many years he’d spent trying to crack the code.

He’d just missed Aiden , the whole complicated package of him.

“Uncle Matt?” Ellie asked as they passed through the room with Leda and the Swan .

“Yeah, Ellie?”

“Are you okay? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

Matt hesitated. He was a little hungover, but that wasn’t the problem and that wasn’t what he’d wanted to explain to his five-year-old niece, anyway. “I haven’t been feeling so great this week,” he admitted.

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes were very wide. “Do you wanna sit down?”

“Sure.”

The two of them sat on one of the gallery benches and stared at the wall in silence. At the far end of the gallery, next to their parents, Miles carried Theo on his shoulders as they looked at one of the larger pieces near the door.

Matt sat in silence with Ellie and absentmindedly rubbed his neck. It was still a little sore; Aiden had left a dark, mouth-shaped hickey there last night. It was fucking stupid to have let him but like the rest of this insane, fever dream of a week, Matt had done all of the stupid things against his better judgment.

“You just seem really sad,” Ellie said.

Matt looked down at his hands. The problem with Ellie was that she was too fucking smart for her age, the kind of little girl who always had a notebook and prowled around the yard of her home, keeping tabs on the neighbors because she wanted to be a spy or a private detective when she grew up. He thought about telling her, I’m not sad , but he never liked to lie to the kids. They could see right through him half of the time no matter what he did.

“I’m okay,” he lied, anyway.

She looked sideways at him and frowned, like she was trying to figure out what was going on with him. Matt hoped to fucking god that she couldn’t. She frowned. “All right. If you’re sure.”

Matt absolutely wasn’t sure.

He somehow made it through the rest of the day, but his mind wasn’t in it. His parents could tell something was up—he was distracted and irritable and not very good at hiding it—but they didn’t press.

And when they were all about to leave for dinner, Matt took a deep breath. “You guys go on without me. I’m gonna meet a juniors buddy in Brooklyn.”

Miles looked sharply at him, suspicious, but he had enough sibling loyalty not to rat Matt out in front of their parents. He bit his tongue, even though it clearly pained him to do it.

And Matt, knowing better, hating himself, on fire with anticipation, made his way to the subway, knowing Aiden was waiting for him.