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abqturkeysnhl (December 21, 2023): The Turkeys fall to the Brawlers in a 0-1 shootout loss. Briggs played a fantastic game in net, stopping 34 shots in regulation and an additional 5 in OT. The Turkeys put up 29 shots on goal total. Not enough to crack Barlow in the opposing net. One more before the holidays, Turkey Fans!

Dylan (December 2023)

Come over?

And I know I might be getting a complex for no reason

But I’d really love to have you in my bed for once

Not that your bed isn’t nice

Fuck I’m doing this wrong

Will you please come to my house for dinner?

I’m making steaks

And I’m doing laundry

And I’ll bring you breakfast in bed so you can sleep in before practice

And anything else you want to make this happen

I just want to see you sexed out in my bed

I want my sheets to smell like you for days

I want to take care of you

This is part of the more we talked about

Please

Henri

Send me the address

CHAPTER 38

Cowardly as it was, Henri didn’t want to go to Dylan’s house. It was childish of him to avoid it, his excuses paper-thin, and his deflections so obvious he was embarrassed each time he texted them. If it had been in person, he was sure Dylan would’ve charmed him to the outskirts of Albuquerque within seconds, but they had carefully avoided any non-hockey talk at practice and games.

(Not that it seemed to fool Novak. He watched them carefully, as if he could sense the shift between them. But they gave him nothing concrete, so he kept his suspicions to himself. Or at least kept them from Henri. He had no idea what Novak and Dylan talked about when it was just the two of them.)

It wasn’t Dylan’s fault that his home was like Pandora’s Box. Henri didn’t know what evils might lurk inside, but he was wary to find out. Dylan had acknowledged that he and Sokolov had been…involved, for lack of a better word. Henri had already known they were roommates, the whole league had known they were best friends, and it was this fucking house where it had all gone down.

Was it cursed? Probably not (that would be silly), but Henri didn’t want to share the same space that the two men had shared for the better part of a decade. Their relationship might be over, but it was still a wound for Dylan, a scab not fully healed. Henri didn’t want to walk the same places they’d walked together, didn’t want to have sex in the same places they’d had sex, didn’t want to try to drown out all those old memories, good or bad.

And as much as he recoiled internally from the idea of going there…he didn’t want to hurt Dylan by outright refusing. He also liked that picture Dylan had painted, where he made Henri come in his bed and marked the space again and again with his scent. There was no way Henri could hope to erase or undo everything that Dylan and Sokolov had shared. He could, however, strive to make the present so much better that it would overshadow all of that.

He tried to wear that intention like a shield. He would do his best to make Dylan look only forward, never back.

Yet he drove with a death grip on his steering wheel. Henri didn’t possess the kind of swagger necessary to pull off that plan, and he knew it. Fuck.

As expected, Dylan lived outside the city-limits in a neighborhood filled with picturesque mansions. Henri had grown up in a town where people took walks, but Henri saw no one as he drove the empty streets to the very end. The long driveway led to a house that was, quite frankly, exquisite. Lynwood’s home had been a very traditional, large home with an expansive driveway. Impressive and relatively standard across all player homes Henri had seen.

Dylan’s home had a large courtyard with a fountain in the middle, the house sprawling around that central space. One end had a room rounded like you’d see in a castle, and there was an inordinate amount of floor-to-ceiling windows. Yet it was secluded, with trees blocking the view to the other nearby homes and the house backing onto nothing but desert hills. They’d have more to worry about from coyotes than paparazzi.

But his most pressing concern was where the fuck to park his car. The courtyard space was circular, the fountain was in the way, and he couldn’t tell which way led to an actual garage. Did he just leave his car in the middle at some weird angle? The answer was yes because there was no other option. He doubted Dylan had invited anyone else over, so he pulled up next to what he guessed was the main entry and turned off the car.