Page 22

“Cap,” Jack said, after morning skate. Matt was sitting on the bench by the boards, and Jack had skated up to speak to him.

They were playing Minnesota at home later that night, and it was a day where Matt had had to sit out of practice, because his knee was aching so bad. That didn’t mean he wasn’t present: they had video to go over with the coaches, stretching and other exercises to work on in the gym, a hundred other things he had to check in on and manage. Sometimes, he felt like he was another member of the coaching staff, with all of the suggestions he gave to his trio of rookies. There were worse things to be, he supposed.

“Yeah, Jack.”

“The three of us were talking, uh, and we’ve been keeping an eye on you over the last couple of weeks, and we noticed that, um, Campbell hasn’t been around anymore, and you’ve seemed pretty...pretty sad, so we just wanted to check in. You know.”

Matt closed his eyes and exhaled. “I’m fine. I’m touched by your concern. But really, you, ah...don’t need to worry about me.”

“No?” Jack said, skeptical.

“No.”

They stood in awkward silence for a few minutes. For as young and slight as Jack was, he had the steely expression that Matt had worked on adopting over the years down pat. “You know,” he said, after a long moment. “Just because you’re the captain and you’re responsible for looking out for us doesn’t mean you need to...like...handle all of this stuff on your own. I was thinking about what you were telling me. About the captaincy and the burden. You know? It doesn’t need to be like that.”

Matt ran a hand through his hair and smiled, a little wry. “Probably not. That’s how I’ve always been most comfortable doing it. I don’t know anything about your personal life, Jack, beyond what you’ve told me, but it’s something that for a long time I had to keep to myself. And then I just got used to that.”

“That’s really kind of sad, though.” Jack was still in his pads and jersey, sweat from the practice beaded on the visor of his fogged-up helmet. “Like, who can you even talk to about that shit?”

“That’s what a therapist is for,” Matt said dryly. “Rookies aren’t therapists.”

Jack rolled his eyes. He was a handsome kid, from a small town in BC called Anahim Lake, but he had adjusted very quickly to the pace and pressure of Montreal. Some people were meant to play here, Matt had always believed: he’d been one of them, and he felt Jack was another.

“I’m not saying I’m a therapist, I was just saying, if we can do anything for you, the way you’ve done shit for us over the last couple of seasons, we’re all happy to do it. I don’t know what that is , but it’s on the table.”

“Thank you,” Matt said, weirdly touched. “I honestly don’t know what that could be, either. I guess the important thing is that Aiden isn’t in Montreal anymore. And I’m just...well, I’m just playing and dealing with my knee and that’s all I really have to say about it.”

Jack’s dark eyes met Matt’s, almost like he was daring him to get really crazy, be super vulnerable about it. “Okay. Well, you know we’ve got your back. For whatever that’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot.”

Matt wished his knee wasn’t so fucked. He wished he could just get on the ice again. He would’ve felt a lot better about all of this if he could’ve just worked it off, pushed himself with the kind of physical activity that would wipe any of the sadness from his mind and heart, at least until later. He’d have that for the game, but Jack asking him these questions felt a little like peeling a scab that hadn’t healed.

“Well, I won’t bother you anymore, Cap. I’ll let you get ready for the game. But, I don’t know. Think about it.”

Matt thought about it, and about his apartment at home, the laundry piling up and the dishes he hadn’t had time to wash, and nodded. “I will.”

He did not think about Aiden. He didn’t.

It was bitter cold outside, but Aiden rolled the window down as he took the car to Midtown. He rarely had a reason to go there, and he tended to avoid driving in the crowded New York streets especially. But that’s where the framing shop was, and that was where he had to go. He certainly couldn’t lug the jersey back on the subway.

The proprietor looked up in surprise when Aiden came into the store. He couldn’t tell if that was because the voice mail about the pickup had been left in July and it was January now, or because Aiden was fairly unrecognizable these days if he didn’t pull his hair away from his face.

“Uh, sorry this took so long,” Aiden said, “I’m here to pick up my jersey.”

He stopped to look at it in the car. Like always, they had done a professional, quality piece of work. Despite the fact that he spent an hour sweating his ass off in it that last game, it looked smooth and pristine beneath the glass. It sat on the passenger seat, like it was watching him accusingly.

It wasn’t one of his favorite jerseys the Libs had ever worn, he had to admit. In Aiden’s mind the only true shade of Liberty green was the one he had worn his first few years. The periodic attempts at redesign always left him cold.

But that was all it was: his last jersey, framed.

He had thought it would feel different picking it up. Crushing. He didn’t feel any of that. Mostly he just wanted to get it home because he had a lot of other things he needed to do.

Aiden had been getting his hair cut by the same woman in Brooklyn since the year he moved to the city. He texted her in between dropping the jersey off in his memorabilia room and packing his bags to see if she could fit him in.

She texted back, for you? of course. can you be there in 20?

Aiden eyed his bags, which were already mostly packed. It hadn’t taken long: he had a house full of stuff, but none of it was really necessary right now. And it was even possible that most of his clothes were still in Montreal.

He wrote back, yes , and headed out to his car immediately. His flight wasn’t for another few hours, but when he wasn’t flying on a team plane, Aiden was the kind of person who showed up at the airport at least an hour early, just in case. He’d almost missed enough flights and buses in his career to know better. A quick visit to Alyssa probably wouldn’t kill him, though.

Her eyes widened a little when she saw him, but because she was a professional, she didn’t say, what the hell happened to you. Instead, she asked, “What would you like me to do?”

“I just want to look like myself again,” Aiden said, a weird lump in his throat. “It’s...been a while.”

The thing he always liked about Alyssa was that she didn’t make him talk when he wasn’t in the mood to, and her hands were firm and gentle. She worked in silence, and it was like he could feel the weight of the hair falling away as she did. He watched himself in the mirror, and he could see Aiden Campbell slowly emerging from beneath all of it.

“Do you want me to get rid of the beard, too?”

“If you could just trim it.”

When she finally finished, Aiden looked at himself again. Alyssa cut his hair similarly to the way he used to wear it. It was just a little lighter, the kind of dark brown-and-gray that was only noticeable in the right light, or in the clumps of it on the floor, somehow more visible there. He didn’t look the same as he did when he first took over as the starter from Ward, but that was to be expected.

He was thirty-seven; he wasn’t a boy anymore. His face had the laugh lines and frown lines he had earned over the last sixteen years. The freckles were still the same, maybe more of them, but his eyes were so tired. Really fucking tired. And he looked sad, even at rest.

“Are you okay?” Alyssa asked.

“I’m going to do my best to be,” Aiden said, surprised to find that this time, he fucking meant it.

The flight Aiden picked got him into Montreal while the Royal were at l’Arène, in the middle of a game against the Minnesota Northern Lights. It was cold but not as cold as Winnipeg, and so while he was technically underdressed, he could suffer through. He dropped his shit off at the hotel room he had reserved, just in case. He took a cab to Matt’s condo and sat down on the steps to wait. There wasn’t much to do, and it was actually cold enough that his phone was going to die if he took it out of his pocket, so he just sat on the stoop, zoned out and concentrated on his breathing.

Aiden didn’t even know what time it was when Matt approached the steps, but he did know he had lost feeling in his fingers.

Matt stopped abruptly when he noticed Aiden sitting there, and Aiden wondered whether he was just going to turn around and walk away, even though it was his own condo.

“Matt,” Aiden said, getting awkwardly to his feet. The blood rushed back in, the pins and needles echoing the jumpy, nervous feeling in his chest. “Please, can we talk?”

“How long have you been out here?” Matt asked. His voice was soft and even, hard to read.

“I don’t know. What time is it now?”

“One in the morning.”

“I don’t know. Four hours? Four and a half?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Aiden. And you—your hair—you cut it?”

“Yes. It was time. Can we?”

Matt’s teeth dug against his lower lip and Aiden could see him doing the math of all of this behind his eyes.

Aiden took a deep breath. “I understand if you don’t want to, I understand I fucked it up again, I understand you don’t owe me anything—I just—I’m so fucking sorry , Matt, and I want to explain.”

Matt exhaled. “Okay. Come on up.”

He followed Matt into the living room. The condo felt different than when Aiden left it last. Because he’d been home so often and Matt hadn’t, Aiden had assumed the responsibility of keeping things spotless and organized. Tonight he saw how Matt had been living without him, which was piles of laundry on the couch, some dishes and pots stacked in the sink and a general air of chaos that hadn’t been there when Aiden was.

And Matt himself: he looked just as exhausted as Aiden felt, and Aiden wanted more than anything to take him in his arms, wrap his arms around Matt’s waist, throw himself at Matt’s feet and beg for forgiveness. Anything. He stood there instead, trying to rub the feeling back into his hands, red from the cold.

“Talk,” Matt said. He had his arms crossed over his chest, still standing.

“I’m sorry,” Aiden said, realizing, belatedly, that he hadn’t thought about what he was going to say once he actually got there. “I love you so much that it kind of makes me a little crazy. Or maybe I already was...and I’m sorry. This last year has been—I haven’t handled it well. I didn’t know how to handle it. I thought I was trying, but I was afraid to be honest with you, about how bad things were and how frightened I was, of fucking this up, of losing you again—”

Matt made a noise in his throat that Aiden couldn’t decipher but didn’t move toward him. Aiden kept talking.

“It just felt—like I could be happy again when you were here, when I could pretend I wasn’t flailing and drowning and miserable, and then when you left it was like—all of that just came rushing back in, and I wanted you to be happy, and I thought you were happiest with the team, playing. I didn’t want to force you into a situation like me . And then I was thinking about doing this for another season, what would happen when you realized I wasn’t getting better, when I fucked things up again, and I panicked, so I—so I just—I ran away. I was scared, and I ran away, because that way I could control it. I’m sorry... I’m so sorry. I hope you can forgive me eventually.”

He could see Matt’s face, watch the corner of his mouth twitch, the way he couldn’t look anywhere except Aiden. Finally, Matt said, “I didn’t know how to feel when you left. I never knew how to feel when you left. I didn’t expect you to come back this time, either.”

“I wasn’t planning to come back until Gabe slapped some sense into me and I realized if I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life and—I don’t know what’s going to happen, what I’m going to be able to actually do, but I just want you to know that, that if I’m doing anything, I want you to be there. I want to do it with you . I want you to be in my life and I want to be in yours and, and I’ll do my best to actually deserve that this time.”

“Jesus, Aiden, it was never about deserving it . It was just about being here, staying here, letting me in your life and being in mine, and trying to... I don’t know. Trying to make it work however we could.” He stared at Aiden like if he did it hard enough, Aiden would finally, finally understand what he was trying to say, that intense dark gaze that stripped him right down to the bone. “The last few months, having you here again? Coming home from roadies to you? Having you here in our home and taking care of me...making me laugh. Being able to take care of you —you have no idea what that’s meant to me. I love you, you know that? Always fucking have. It’s always come back to you, no matter how I tried not to.”

“I’m going to try. I promise you, Matty. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Matt held out his arms and Aiden half-stepped and half-fell into them. Matt took Aiden’s freezing hands in his own, his breath hot on Aiden’s fingers. “Just be honest with me.”

“Yes.”

“Stay with me.”

“Yes,” Aiden said. “Yes.”

“Come to bed?”

Aiden said, again, “Yes.”

They were both exhausted, Matt from the game and Aiden from everything else, but side by side in the bed, staring at each other in the dark, Aiden couldn’t help leaning forward to kiss the stupid smile off of Matt’s face, couldn’t help running his hand over Matt’s cheek and jaw, couldn’t help sighing with dumb, pleased satisfaction when Matt mouthed wetly at his neck.

They were too tired for anything except making out like teenagers, Matt grinding sleepily into Aiden’s thigh, his breath hitching when Aiden took his cock in his spit-slicked hand, groaning when he slid it down Matt’s length, laughing when he got his hands down Aiden’s pants and Aiden’s confident motion stuttered.

Aiden didn’t want this to end, and for the first time he realized that it didn’t have to. There would be tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. To his surprise he realized that his eyes were stinging, and then that his cheeks were wet. His face was hot, the humiliation of his body doing something he couldn’t control. But once they’d started, he couldn’t seem to make them stop.

“Aidy?” Matt asked, his thumb brushing the track of moisture away.

“I’m sorry. I’m happy , I don’t know why the fuck I’m crying.”

He could still see Matt’s face, in the dark, and the intensity of the emotion in his eyes did nothing to stop those stupid fucking tears . Looking at Matt, just now, it seemed insane to him that he’d ever wanted to leave, even if both times, he’d thought he was doing something kind and necessary for someone he loved more than anyone or anything.

“You know I always liked it when you cried,” Matt said softly. So fucking fond. His other hand slowed where he’d been jerking Aiden off, thumb swiping over the head of his dick.

“These aren’t sex tears,” Aiden muttered. “They’re just...they’re just happening to me.”

Matt didn’t answer. Instead of his thumb, his mouth: lips pressed against the tear tracks, kissing the corner of Aiden’s eyes, hand cradled gently against Aiden’s cheek until he wasn’t sure if he was still crying or not.

Matt said, “I can’t believe you came back to me,” and Aiden said, “I can’t believe you let me come back.”

Matt kissed him again, one of those unbearably soft kisses that had always made Aiden feel like Matt could see right through him. “You belong here. You belong with me.”

“Do I?”

“You fucking do, Aidy. You always have.”

That was how Aiden came, eventually, legs tangled in Matt’s, smiling into Matt’s mouth.

When Matt woke up in the morning, Aiden was still asleep, curled up in the bed next to him, and the sun was streaming through the blinds in the window. His alarm was going to go off in a few minutes, so he’d have time to get ready for practice in the afternoon, so he fumbled for his phone and turned it off so he wouldn’t wake Aiden. As he sat up, he felt approximately fifty pounds lighter: Aiden coming back, being so honest with him, here to stay for good had done that.

He already knew what Miles was going to say. You’re like Charlie Brown and that fucking football, Matthew. What’re you going to do when he yanks it away again? And he already knew he was going to have to ignore it, because saying it’s different this time would sound silly and hollow. Because it was different this time, and he didn’t know how to explain it except for the deep sense of peace and satisfaction that he felt currently, his hand tracing the line of Aiden’s shoulder, thumb brushing over the freckles splattered across it.

Then he sat up, and felt the aches of his body, in his knee and in his back, which had taken a particularly nasty cross-checking during the game last night. If he were a different kind of player, today would probably be a therapy day. This late in the season, he needed to conserve his energy, but they were still in a playoff spot, and he wanted to keep them there. Shifted his weight and slid out of the bed.

When he did it, Aiden’s eyes opened and for a brief second, they shuttered between sleepy confusion and panic.

“Hey,” Matt said, “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

Aiden sat up and Matt couldn’t help staring at his naked body, draped in the soft nest of blankets in Matt’s bed. It still shocked him, how beautiful Aiden was. His lanky, spare muscle and surprisingly broad shoulders; the soft, dark hair on his chest. His face, with those soulful eyes that had cut right through Matt’s defenses the very first time he’d met them. Fifteen years later, Aiden threw him off guard just as violently as he had in that handshake line.

“Sorry,” Aiden was saying, sheepishly. “It’s been...a rough couple of weeks. I haven’t been sleeping very well. Slept better last night than I have in...fuck, I don’t even know how long.”

“Me, too.” Matt’s mouth was smiling without his brain’s input. “Look. I have to go to practice later today, but I...well, I still have all of the shit you like to eat, so let me make you breakfast.”