Chapter 48 Brothers
Hayes
I needed to blow steam off, to clear my head my head and since the boys were coming here I decided to come along. I haven't been coming here of recent because I've been occupied with my little koala. She's such a handful. I even brought her here when she asked for a date, it's the perfect scenery.
I didn't have much experience with dates but my research or rather the info I got from Jax told me a little about it. He was so excited when I asked him about date ideas. Weirdly excited it creeped me the fuck out.
Everything was going alright even though she pretended she hated the place. But her smart ass went ahead to see a stray puck lying around. What took those siren blue eyes over there?
I don't think she's dropped the matter but I managed to distract her from the thought so, I'm sure she wouldn't read too much into it. She shouldn't pry much or she'll end up in trouble.
This place was a cathedral of violence under a fat, bruised moon. During the weekends, we came here. It was a routine. A sacrament, almost.
The ice at the lake wasn’t smooth, it was a scarred battlefield. The air bit with a cold so deep it felt holy, smelling of pine, blood, and the sharp tang of adrenaline.
Below, the game churned. It wasn’t the usual hockey. It was an exorcism. No pads. No whistles. Just blades, wood, and the raw need to prove you could still feel something through the numbness.
We watched from the old boathouse roof, a vantage point high enough for dominion, close enough to hear the wet thud of a fist meeting flesh. The five of us. The only ones who really mattered.
Jax was to my left, his usual flirty grin absent, replaced by a focused, predatory calm. You barely see this side of him. He sipped from a flask, his eyes tracking the chaos like a mathematician solving for pain.
To my right, the Caldwell brothers. Hector, a live wire in human form, vibrated with a barely-contained fury, his knuckles white where they gripped the rusted railing. Every vicious check below made him twitch with vicarious pleasure.
Beside him, Elian, ‘El’ was his opposite. Still as the deep ice, his gaze was analytical, dissecting each move, each feint, each moment of weakness. He didn’t cheer. He catalogued.
And then there was Reed. Alistair Reed. Posh, British, with a voice that could cut glass and a lineage that probably included a king or two. He stood a little apart, elegant in a long wool coat, looking down at the barbaric spectacle as if it were a mildly interesting play. A silver flask, not tin, glinted in his hand. He belonged here more than any of us. The coldest fire burns blue.
Hector, El and Reed belonged to the Rogues hockey team. Yep, my hockey team’s archenemies. But we are a part of something bigger and much fun than playing rivals on the Ice. I wouldn't say I love them but we are brothers, and not in the biological way. A different way.
The crowd around the lake’s edge wasn’t large, but it was fervent. A select congregation. They roared not for goals, but for impacts.
People come here because it strips everything down to the truth. Out there, they pretend, dress it up as civility, morality, control. But it’s all performance. In here, none of that matters. The noise, the blood, the tension, it lets them feel what they really are without having to apologize for it. They don't have to be hypocritical about their true nature. Not like a certain someone.
I groan as I shift my balance from one foot to the other. She just keeps invading my thoughts.
A cheer goes up as a player from the black sweaters catches an opponent with a two-handed slash across the back of the knees. The guy went down with a cry that was swallowed by the night, a dark splatter fanning out from his nose onto the ice.
Messy, but effective.
My mind, though, kept drifting from the ice. The roar of the crowd thinned to a distant buzz, replaced by the echo of a sob in my ear.
Again, Tegan.
Her tears on the phone had been a jagged, irritating sound. Weakness. But my memory, the traitor, refined it. It filtered out the panic, the fear, and left only the raw, wet sound of her breath hitching.
It blended seamlessly with another memory, the choked, guttural sound she’d made in my closet, her lips stretched, her eyes rimmed with tears. Those tears were pure. A physical reaction to being overwhelmed by me. They were the only ones I had any interest in seeing on her face again.
I pictured getting her to that point again. Not in a fury, but with a slow, deliberate cruelty. Making her kneel. Watching those plump, pink lips, lips that talked back and grumbled about our relationship being twisted and fucked up quiver before parting.
Teaching her that her mouth had a better purpose than forming clever, snarky words. It was for forming a silent ‘O’ as she took me deep, for letting tears of effort and submission track through the dusting of freckles on her cheeks as she made me come.
A sharper roar from below yanked me back to reality. One of the pledges, a young, hungry defenseman trying to earn his place, had just slammed an opponent’s head into the goalpost.
Not an accident. A statement. The kid skated away, his stick held high like a trophy, the crowd screaming his name. The injured player lay still, a dark pool haloing his head under the stark moonlight.
The pledges. The hungry ones. They were the ones who’d caused the trouble with Ethan. Too eager, too stupid, playing games they didn’t understand in a place that wasn’t theirs. Now their chaos was my problem. Our problem.
Reed spoke, his voice cutting through the cold air like a scalpel. “The young bull is energetic. But he lacks finesse. He’ll be trouble if he’s not… guided.”
Hector snorted. “I’ll guide his face into the ice.”
El didn’t look away from the scene.
“The cleanup is already in motion. The accident is being absorbed. The narrative is shifting.” He meant the Ethan issue. He meant the puck. He meant the entire fucking mess. He spoke about burying a death the way another man might discuss reorganizing a filing cabinet.
I kept my eyes on the ice, where two players were now bare-knuckle brawling, slipping in their own blood.
I think I miss my little princess. And for the first time, I'm eager to see her. But, that has to be at our away game In Brooklyn, under the blinding lights of a real game, with thousands watching, she would sit in my jersey and learn what it meant to be owned by me.
She’d watch me play, and she’d know every shift, every check, every goal was a step closer to her payment coming due.
The thought was the only warmth in the freezing night. The game below was a brutal, beautiful routine.
But Tegan Vale was becoming my new religion.