Page 19 of Stubborn Puckboy (Puckboys #9)

EIGHTEEN

Colby

I knew Novi was going to take the online comments badly, but this is a whole other level. By the time we get Novi in Connor’s car, drive back to the hotel, and then help the practically passed-out big guy upstairs to his room to sleep it off, Connor’s phone is nonstop ringing.

We both heave Novi onto his bed, where he gets comfortable. But instead of wriggling up the bed, he pulls a pillow down to him and then proceeds to roll over and snore.

Meanwhile, Connor and I are breathing heavily, and his phone is still going.

“You can answer … that … now.” I feel like I’ve carried a couch up three flights of stairs.

“Can’t.” He pants. “Talk.”

I break into laughter. “Shouldn’t you be fitter than this? At least I have an excuse. I’m rarely on the ice anymore. Plus, you’re, like, ten years younger than me.”

“Novi’s a heavy fucker.”

Novi slurs something in Russian.

“Who’s calling so much?” I ask.

He takes out his phone. “Ugh. Both of them.”

“Your brothers?”

“Worse. My brother and my boyfriend.”

He taps his screen and holds his phone to his ear, but I’m still tripping over his words. He did say … boyfriend, didn’t he? And his boyfriend, not East’s? Did I hear wrong?

“Come up to room 1402. We have a … situation.”

“You can go if you need to,” I tell him.

He waves me off but keeps talking into the phone. “Do you need a key or … That’s handy. Thank Turkey for me. Now I don’t have to go get you.”

Turkey? He went to bed ages ago. He’s back downstairs?

I’ve just about had all the drunk hockey players I can handle tonight.

Connor ends his call and stares at Novi’s sleeping form. “He looks so peaceful and cute.”

“Now that he’s not putting his full body weight on you and rambling about his phone going swimming, you mean?”

“Exactly. He’s not scowling at me or telling me I was terrible at hockey. I think this is the most agreeable Novi I’ve ever met. Hey, Novi, am I the best hockey player there ever was?”

“Nyet. Still shit.”

Connor leans closer to Novi. “I take back the agreeable thing. Is he sleep talking, or do you think he’s still awake?”

“Why? You going to draw a penis on his face like we’re twelve?”

Connor’s face lights up. “That is a great idea.”

I shake my head. “It’s really not.”

“What do we do with him?” Connor asks.

“Let him sleep it off and wake him in time for the plane tomorrow?”

There’s a knock at the door, and Connor goes to open it.

“What’s the situation?” Parker Duchene, my future husband, according to Turkey, asks.

And I really do hate to break poor Turkey’s gay dreams of us, but by the look of it, Parker Duchene is a taken man.

By Connor Kikishkin. One of his players and the person currently kissing the fuck out of him.

Connor’s early retirement makes a whole lot more sense now.

“What happened to Novi?” Easton asks.

Connor pulls away from Parker. “The backlash from tonight’s press conference happened.”

“Actually, it was probably that a giant bottle of vodka happened,” I say.

“Because of the presser.”

“I’m … confused,” Easton says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because he’s been known as the homophobic Russian his whole career. Why is it getting to him now?”

Connor looks at me, and I hang my head. Connor can think it has everything to do with me, but I don’t think it’s that. Me and him hooking up is probably a factor, but I doubt it’s the main reason.

“I think he’s tired. He doesn’t want to fight it anymore. But he says he’s worried his sister might get arrested if he comes out and she supports him. She loves Russia too much to leave, but she loves Novi too much to denounce him.”

Easton rubs his chin. “Huh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Connor asks.

“It’s interesting to me that siblings can be unsupportively supportive in any language. You’d be the same. If someone asked you to denounce me, you wouldn’t.”

“I’ll denounce you right now,” Connor snarks.

East grins. “No you wouldn’t. You big protective brother, you. Who’s a good boy protecting me like a guard dog?”

Families, man. Hooray for being an only child, I guess?

“Either way,” I cut in. “Let’s leave Novi to sleep it off, and I’ll deal with him tomorrow.”

They murmur their agreements and head for the door, but before they can leave, Connor turns to me.

“You mind if you keep this a secret?” He waves a finger between him and Parker.

“Of course.”

“I figure you’d understand.” He glances back at Novi’s sleeping form. “And after tonight, I’m guessing you understand more than anyone.”

That even if Novi could come out, I still couldn’t be the one beside him publicly because of who I am to the team? Yeah. I understand how upsetting that is.

Despite my rational side telling me that Novi is a grown-up and I don’t need to stay in his room, I don’t want him to wake up alone. I also don’t want to make him more confused or add to his stress by sleeping in the same bed as him.

And that’s how I’ve ended up sleeping on the uncomfortable day lounge in the corner of the hotel room. I’d contemplated the floor, but I’ve already had sex on dirty hotel floors once this trip. I wasn’t going to bathe in the remnants of all the people who’ve had sex in this room too.

I don’t sleep well, if at all, but it doesn’t have anything to do with how uncomfortable the chair is.

My heart yearns while it also breaks for him, and all I want to do is be able to fix everything for him, but I can’t. There’s nothing I can do but show him he has support.

The other thing keeping me awake is wondering if I’m making things worse by being in his hotel room. Being around him. Being friends. I can’t stop being his coach, but if he needs me to step back, I will. I’ll stop fixating on him. Stop emailing him other than the footage he needs to review.

But what if … what if he needs me to be a constant in his life? What if I give him something he has deserved to have his whole adulthood? Will that make him feel better or worse about his situation?

Novi groans in his sleep and stirs.

When I look at my phone, I realize it somehow became morning, so I guess I did get some sleep throughout the night. Today is going to be rough for me though.

Not as rough as what Novi has coming his way, but hopefully, coffee will fix both of us. I pick up the hotel phone and order room service, making sure Novi gets a good, hearty breakfast that will either cure his hangover or make him puke. Either one will make him feel better.

He has seemingly gone back to sleep, and I don’t want to disturb him, so I go back to the tiny sun lounge I don’t fit on and then check the cesspool that is the internet.

With any luck, the presser drama will be over already.

News like this doesn’t tend to stay around long in hockey circles.

NHL players might like to think they’re famous, but the truth is, while a lot of people might know their names, they’re rarely recognized out there in public.

They’re not Hollywood A-listers, so their gossip tends to die down quickly.

While there are a few new articles like the ones last night, there’s really only one that stands out. Mainly because my face is all over it. And Connor’s. And sandwiched between us in a photo that someone obviously took on their phone because it’s all grainy is a very drunk Novi.

It was taken in the hotel lobby, but I don’t even remember seeing someone with their phone out to take photos of us. Then again, all I was focused on at that point was not dying under Novi’s weight.

I’m terrified of what the article says, let alone the comments, and as much as I wish I could not read it and pretend it doesn’t exist, I need to know what it says.

“Kikishkin and Novicov Friends After All?”

Okay, that’s not too bad. And hey, maybe this is a good thing because it shows—Ope. My thoughts are getting ahead of myself.

When the entire article is about how the queer population are still good people, even to those who hate them, I feel sick.

Not only because it’s the same rhetoric as last night, but it’s also bullshit.

I’ve been in queer circles a long time to know that you can be under the LGBTQIA rainbow and still think one or more of those letters don’t belong there.

I hate people like that, and they’re also most likely the ones to say that Novi is a coward for not standing up to his homeland and coming out already.

Anyone can be a judgmental asshole, and the internet gives them free rein to do it.

Room service arrives, and either the smell or the noise wakes Novi. The hotel worker leaves, and as soon as the door closes behind her, Novi sits up with a scrunched brow and a confused look on his grumpy face.

He seriously looks like one of those memes where a kid is trying to look grumpy, but he’s so damn adorable you can’t help but say, “Aww.”

“Why you still here?”

I hold my heart. “Thank you, Colby, for looking after me last night. Thank you, Colby, for risking hypothermia and fishing my phone out of a lake. Thank you, Colby, for ordering my hungover ass breakfast.”

Novi doesn’t react because he’s Novi, but he does stand and walk over to the table where the food is. “I need vodka.”

“As one of your coaches, should I be worried about your drinking?”

“Hair of dog. Best hangover cure ever.” Novi’s accent is thick this morning. He must be really hungover.

“Sorry. No vodka. You drank it all last night.”

“Drank all of it? In this hotel?”

“In the entire United States.”

He rubs his jaw. “Including Hawaii and Alaska?”

“Yes.”

“Why you lying to me?”

Because I’m worried about you.

I don’t say that though. Instead, I lift the cloche off the plate of food and move it closer to him. “You should eat up. We’ll have to have our stuff packed for the team bus soon.”

He takes the plate and goes back to bed to eat, but as he sits, he eyes me hard. “Why did you stay?”

It’s a fair question. Why did I stay? I shouldn’t have, but I did.

Novi might be the man I once had a crush on a long time ago, but now, all he is is a risk to my career. A risk I have to be sure I’m willing to take.

If it was a promise of something more, of something other than sex, it might be worth going back into the closet for a while. But he can’t promise me that, and I can’t promise that if we did start dating that we would last. And then if we didn’t, we’d still have to work together, see each other.

Would it be better to step back now and deal with the cravings my body has for him on my own, or do I risk an uncomfortable future at my job to see if grown-up me is still as gone for Novi as teenager me was?

“Colby?” he prompts, breaking me out of my inner ramblings.

I don’t want to lie, but I can only tell him a version of the truth. “I wanted you to know that you have my support in whatever you decide to do in regards to the news articles about last night’s press conference.”

He throws his head back. “So you stayed to babysit me. Is that why you slept on couch?”

“We need professional distance.”

“I’ve never had a coach sleep in my room before.”

“That’s good. I’m the first one to cross that power imbalance line. Fun for me.”

“You know what I mean. To me, you’re not my coach. You’re Colby first. Kessinger. My best friend in AHL.”

I’m trying really hard not to cross the room and dump all his food off the bed so I can tackle him and kiss that delectable mouth the way I did only a few nights ago.

Time is a bitch. A few nights without him have felt as long as the seventeen years I did actually live without him.

Novi forces a full American accent as he says, “Yes, Novi, you’re my best friend too.”

The sad thing is? I think that’s true. Back then and now.

I always thought the best friend feeling I had with Novi was about wanting to jump his bones, but I’ve had best friends in the past who I’ve fucked, and once it was over, I no longer felt drawn to them—as a friend or as more.

Since getting off with Novi, all I’ve wanted is more.

So as much as I think I’m being strong, I’m really not. I’m on the verge of breaking, of throwing everything I’ve worked for out the window, and for what? A man who can’t even acknowledge me in public?

How did this get so messy so damn quickly?