“—and you’ve never looked at any of them the way you do at Jackson Monroe.”
“I don’t…”
“Stop.” He holds up a hand. “I’m not saying the gossip is true. I’m not saying you have to do anything about it. What I am saying is that you need to get your head straight. Whatever’s going on between you two—friendship, more than friendship, whatever—you need to figure it out. Because this?” He gestures at me. “This isn’t sustainable. You can’t keep running to the rink every time shit gets complicated.”
“Since when did you become a therapist?” I try for humor, but it falls flat.
“I’ve been where you are, believe it or not.”
I snort. “Right. When have you ever dealt with campus gossip about your love life?”
He exhales slowly, the kind of breath that carries weight. His chair creaks as he pushes back from the desk. He rises and crosses to the window in three measured steps, hands clasped behind his back. Through the glass, the empty rink gleams under the fluorescent lights, white and pristine where I’d left it scarred with blade marks and puck dents. “You know, Drew, this isn’t the first time BSU has dealt with this kind of thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back when I played here in the early nineties, we had our own version of the Ice Queen.” He turns back to me with a wry smile on his face. “Only back then, it wasn’t online. It was in theBerkeley Shore Gazette. Some anonymous writer who called themself ‘Skater Boy.’”
I sit up straighter. Coach never talks much about his college days. I know he was captain, and that they won championships, but he’s always been tight-lipped about the details.
“They followed the team around, reported on everything, including personal things. Relationships. Who was hooking up with whom.” He runs a hand through his hair, and for a second, I see a flash of the player he must have been. Young, cocky, probably devastating in his own right. “Senior year, they went after Gavin Gunnarson and me.”
My brain short-circuits. “Wait. Gavin Gunnarson? As in?—”
“Gerard’s father, yes.”
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.My mind races as I try to process this information. “You and Gerard’s dad were…”
“Together.” He says it matter-of-factly, like he didn’t just drop a nuclear bomb of information on me. “Skater Boy had a field day with it. Every week, there was some new article about us. They got creative with the descriptions too.”
He walks back to his desk and pulls out a yellowed newspaper clipping from a drawer. “Here. I’ve kept a few, though only the Lord knows why.”
I take it with shaking hands. The headline readsHockey’s Hottest Couple Heats the Ice. My eyes scan the article, and—Jesus Christ. “‘Donovan’s dick-tugging fingers?’” I read aloud, voice cracking. “‘Gunnarson’s cock-swallowing massive ass.’ Oh my God.”
“Yeah.” Coach laughs, and it’s like seeing a unicorn in the middle of a field of flowers. “They weren’t subtle. Every practice, every game, every time we were seen together, it ended up in print. Complete with colorful commentary about our physical attributes and what we supposedly did with them.”
I’m still staring at the article, trying to reconcile it with the Coach Donovan I know. The man who commands respect with a single glare and is never rattled. “How did you deal with it?”
“At first? Badly. It got in my head, made me second-guess everything. I started avoiding Gavin in public, which only made things worse.” He takes the clipping back, studying it with an expression I can’t quite read. “But then I realized something. People were going to talk whether we gave them something to talk about or not.”
“What did you do?”
“Stopped giving a fuck.” He grins, and it’s sharp, wolfish. “We decided to focus on what mattered. Each other. The team. Hockey. That year, we took BSU to their fourth consecutive Frozen Four and won.”
“With everyone talking about your…dick-tugging fingers?”
“Especiallywith everyone talking about them. It was true, after all. I did a lot of dick-tugging in my college days. And Gavin’s ass was exceptionally…” He shakes his head and leans against his desk. “Here’s the thing, Drew. People will always have opinions. They’re going to create narratives about your life, whether they’re true or not. You can either let it control you, or you can control what matters—your performance, your relationships, your happiness.”
I slump back in my chair, mind reeling. Coach and Gerard’s dad. The parallels to my situation. The fact that Gerard apparently comes from a legacy of hockey players with celebrated asses.
“Did you love him?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
The hard lines around his mouth relax, and something warm flickers in his eyes. “Very much. Still do, in a way. First loves always leave a mark.”
“What happened?”
“Life. Different career paths. He met Gerard’s mother near the end of our final semester, and I met Alex’s mom around the same time too.” He shrugs. “I have no regrets. Well, maybe one.”
“What’s that?”
