* * *
After that, they stopped competing.
Shane didn’t decide to do it and neither did Theo; it just happened, the body knowing before the brain. They were supposed to be auditioning. There was one call-up and a hole in Chicago and a coach who was watching them both, and the smart move, what every other guy in that room was doing, was to play selfish, to pad the stat sheet, to make sure your name was the one Mercer said. And instead, Theo, brace and all, played hockey so generous it bordered on reckless, setting Shane up, feeding him the puck on the power play, making Shane look like a star. And Shane, who could have buried his head and chased points, kept dropping back to cover, kept playing defense, kept making Theo look good, the two of them spending their own auditions trying to win each other the prize that would split them up.
A love letter written in plus-minus, legible to anyone who knew how to read it.
There was a game against Milwaukee that Shane would remember for the rest of his life, not because of the result (they won, three to one, it didn’t matter) but because of one shift in the second period that said everything. The Fury’s scout was in the building; everyone knew it. It was the night to be selfish, to pad the sheet, to make the highlight, to put your name in lights ninety miles down the road. And on a Blaze power play, the situation that was Shane’s entire calling card, the puck came to Shane at the point with a lane to shoot and a scout watching and a goal there for the taking. Shane saw Theo back-door, in a worse shooting spot but a better story spot, a defenseman’s goal, the kind that would make the scout write Lindgren. Shane passed it. Gave the goal away. Set up his husband in front of the man who’d decide which of them got the call, on purpose, because winning Theo the spot mattered more than winning it himself.
And Theo, who saw the pass coming, who understood in the half-second what Shane was doing, Theo didn’t shoot. He couldn’t. He turned and fed it right back, no-look, into the empty net Shane had skated into, gave the goal back, because he was doing the same thing, the same thing to the last detail, spending his own audition to make Shane look like the better call.
The puck went in off Shane’s stick. The building stood. The scout wrote something. And the two of them stood in the celebration with the team piling on, both of them having just tried and failed to give the other a goal that would take them away from each other. Shane looked at Theo over the shoulders of their teammates and Theo looked back. It was everything, the entire impossible thing, said without a word in front of twelve thousand people and a man with a notebook, and neither of them knew if the scout could read it, but they knew, with a cold dropping certainty, that somebody could.
Tripp Vandenberg knew how to read it.
Shane caught him watching from the bench, the kid’s clever eyes going from Shane to Theo and back, doing the math, and after the game, in the tunnel, Tripp fell into step beside Shane and said, low, friendly, terrible: “You guys are something, huh. You and Lindgren. You spent the entire third period feeding each other. Almost like neither of you actually wants the call.” He smiled. “Almost like there’s more you want.” And he clapped Shane on the shoulder, hard, and walked on whistling, and Shane stood in the tunnel with his heart going and understood that the clock had just gotten faster, that what they hadn’t named was now visible to a twenty-one-year-old who wanted what they had and would not hesitate to use what he’d seen, and that the wall at the end of the season had just rushed up to meet them at speed.
Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Marek knew. He’d known for weeks. Theo had seen it accumulating, the captain’s slow narrowed looks adding up to a verdict, but he didn’t say it until the playoff push was real and the call-up rumor was loud and the stakes had gotten too high for a captain to keep pretending he didn’t see what he saw.
He cornered them both in the video room after a Tuesday optional, the room he used for things he didn’t want overheard, and he shut the door, and he didn’t sit down.
“I’m going to say a thing,” Marek said, “and then we’re never going to talk about it again, and I’m going to go back to pretending I’m an idiot who doesn’t notice anything. Okay?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You two are together. Not roommates. Together. I’ve been watching since about December and you’ve gotten less careful every week, and last week Lindgren fixed Novak’s hair in the room like a — like a husband, and Vandenberg saw it, and Vandenberg’s been looking at you both funny ever since.” He held up a hand against the protests neither of them had quite managed to start. “I don’t care. Hear me: I genuinely do not care. You’re two of the best players I’ve got and you’re good men and who you love is nobody’s business. As a person, I’m happy for you. I mean that.”
The room was quiet. Theo could hear his own pulse.
“But I’m the captain,” Marek went on, and his voice changed, went heavier, “and as the captain I have to tell you what you already know and don’t want to hear. We are eight points into a playoff race that this organization has not made in three years. This room has guys who’ve waited their whole careers for this run. And there’s a call-up coming that’s going to take one of you to Chicago and leave the other one here, and the two of you are so tangled up in each other that I’m watching you spend shifts trying to feed each other the spotlight instead of playing your own games.” He looked between them. “If this gets out wrong, if it blows up in the middle of the push, if it becomes a story, if Vandenberg or anybody decides to make it one, it doesn’t just cost you two. It costs the room. It costs the run. Twenty guys’ season. That’s the part I have to care about. Not because your love’s a problem. Because the timing’s a grenade, and you’re holding it in a crowded room.”
“We’ve been careful,” Shane started.
“You fixed his hair in the locker room, Novak.”
Shane shut his mouth.
Marek’s hard face softened, just slightly, just for a second. “Look. I’m not telling you to stop. I couldn’t if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. I’m telling you I’m on your side, which means I’m going to do what I can to keep the lid on: I’ll redirect Vandenberg, I’ll squash talk before it starts, I’ll be the guy who saw nothing. That’s me protecting you. But I’m also telling you that the season’s going to force a choice out of you sooner than you’re ready for it, and you’d better figure out what you actually are to each other before it does, because if you go into the call-up still calling it ‘complicated,’ it’s going to tear you both up and take a piece of my room with it.” He opened the door. “That’s all. We never had this talk. Go drink water.” And then, lower, just to Theo, as Shane filed out ahead: “Figure out what you want before the season decides for you, Lindgren. That’s the onlyadvice I’ve got that’s worth anything.” And he was gone before Theo could answer.
Theo stood in the video room a moment. The door Marek had shut so carefully stood open again, and the sounds of the rink came through it (blades, someone running a drill, ordinary), and none of it reached him. Marek was right, and the choice was coming, and Theo was no readier for it than he’d been in December.
* * *
Tripp found Shane alone in the players’ lot. He leaned against Shane’s financed car with his arms crossed and his easy smile and said, “So here’s a fun thing I learned.”
The back of Shane’s neck went tight. “Move off my car.”
Tripp turned his phone around instead. On the screen was a county records page, the boring municipal kind, and on it two names. Lindgren, Theodor. Novak, Shane. December. Shane saw it before he could not-see it.
“Public record,” Tripp said, easy, like he was showing him a meme. He let it sit there a beat longer than was comfortable, then pocketed the phone. “Anybody can pull it. I just got curious, after the tunnel. Foreign guy, visa about up, marries a citizen mid-season.” He wasn’t smiling now. The not-smiling was worse. “Funny timing is all.”
“It’s real.” Shane’s voice came out flat and dead. “We’re married.”
“Sure.” Tripp pushed off the car, unhurried. “All I want’s the call, man. You and Lindgren keep going out there like one guy, keep making it look like the spot’s his — that’s the only thing keeps me curious about timing.” He didn’t say the rest. He didn’t have to; the phone had said it. “Play your own game. Let the best guy go up.” He walked to his own car, a nicer one than Shane’s,bought with bonus money, owned outright, and left everything he hadn’t said hanging in the cold, which was how Shane knew he meant it. “Big week, boys.”
Shane stood in the lot with his keys in his fist and his mouth shut.
* * *
