Power Play (21 page)

Drake snapped a salute, thoughtfully closed the door behind him, and vanished.

Misha sat on the edge of his desk, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “I think this is not the best place to talk about this.”

“Why not? It seems the entire team already knows the thing we’re talking about,” Max said, trying to lighten the mood. Misha looked so… defeated, as if he already knew where the conversation was going and what the outcome would be.

It occurred to Max that, with the exception of their reintroduction by way of Jack Belsey, the only time he and Misha reacted around each other without overthinking things to death first was while they were playing hockey. “I have an idea. Take Drake home, grab some gear, and meet me back here in an hour.”

“Gear?” Misha shook his head. “I’m not doing a bag skate, Ashford.”

“We’re not doing a bag skate, Samarin,” said Max. “We’re going to play some hockey.”

WHILE MISHA
went to take Drake back to the house, Max jumped in his Jeep and headed back to his apartment—where he did not intend to spend another night if he could help it—and rummaged through the boxes stacked in his living room.

Finally he found some old gear and one of his old jerseys, threw it all in a bag—which, wow. He didn’t miss carrying that shit around or how it smelled—and notched the heat down out of a sense of optimism. He’d be miserable enough if he ended up back there. It wouldn’t matter how cold it was.

The rink was quiet, the ice sparkling in the muted lights as Max sat on the bench to tie his skates. Misha, who lived closer to the rink than Max did, was already on the ice.

He was wearing a jersey too. A Bruins jersey.

Max stared at him, stuck between the perfectly rational hatred an ex-Hab should feel for an ex-Bruin, and lust at how hot Misha looked skating. Max saw him on the ice practically every day, but there was a difference between Coach Samarin in his black fleece, with his silver whistle and ever-present glower, and Misha the player, wearing that hated spoked B, looking taller and broader in all his gear.

Max skated out to meet him and nodded at the jersey. “Fucking Bruin. Your team was a bunch of thugs, you know.”

Misha responded, not with words, but by making a diving motion with his hands.

“Oh, fuck you,” Max laughed, pretending to go for his gloves. Instead he skated a circle around Misha and he stopped when he saw the back of the uniform—
Samarin
with the number sixteen. Max waited to see if it gave him any kind of chill, but it didn’t.

“Come on,” he said and dropped the puck.

“I’m a defenseman,” Misha reminded him, as he fell in stride beside Max. Neither of them were particularly fast, seeing as how they were the ones leading the conditioning instead of doing it, but they weren’t bad for a couple of retired players.

The puck danced on Max’s stick as he skated. “So defend. Also remember I can’t see to my left. And if you apologize, I’ll slew foot you.”

“Just like a Hab,” Misha chirped, and Max felt a rush of pure, unadulterated joy as he took off down the ice with a former Bruin chasing after him. He always loved Habs-Bruins games. There was no other rivalry quite like it in all of professional sports.

Max was a little faster on skates, but he got a cramp as he neared the goal, and Misha appeared—on his right side, not his left—and nimbly stole the puck. He didn’t start back down the ice, though. He looked about as winded as Max felt. “Strange that I spent twenty years doing this every day.”

“I know. Right? It makes me feel a little bit bad about those bag skates.”

“Not me,” Misha said. “I did enough of those too.”

“Bruin,” Max huffed. “Seems like even your coaches were thugs.”

“Mostly it was when I was younger. In Russia.” Misha’s long-legged stride was hard to keep up with, but Max could feel the burn in his lungs and the fatigue in his muscles give way as his body warmed up to the familiar activity.

“Why did you want to be a defenseman? Besides the fact you’re eleven feet tall and all limbs, I mean.” Max darted over and tried to steal the puck. Misha gave him an offended look and shifted it on his stick, but then sent it back to Max with a saucer pass.

Max concentrated and sent a slapshot straight down the ice. The puck hit the back of the net, but the goal light wasn’t connected, so there were no flashing lights or sounds. Still it was always satisfying, even if it didn’t count. Max threw his arms up in victory.

Misha skated forward and scooped the puck out of the net. “My father bullied everyone he knew. I liked the idea of defending something. Protecting it. I couldn’t do that at home, but I could on the ice.”

That made Max want to skate over, topple Misha down to the ice, and kiss him. Instead he bumped him with his shoulder. “I wanted to score goals and be a hero.”

Misha smiled down at him affectionately. “You must have been disappointed to end up a Hab.”

Max laughed and knocked into him a little harder. “And you had to defend the biggest bunch of thugs in hockey.”

Misha grinned, showing teeth, and stole the puck.

Max raced after him, laughing, but there was no way he was going to catch up. Misha had years of a professional career under his belt, compared to Max’s brief stint in the majors, and he easily sent the puck to the back of the net. It didn’t hurt that he was a thousand feet tall and worked out religiously. “I wasn’t really trying to stop you,” Max wheezed.

“You’re a sore loser,” Misha said, and there was nothing in his voice but warmth, affection, and teasing. It was strange that the one place they should be the most uncomfortable, the one place that should overwhelm them both with memories of the accident, was the one place it all fell away.

That’s how you win games. It’s just like Misha said at the beginning of the year. The past does not matter, or the future. Don’t think about the next game, or even the next period. Just think about the shot you’re going to take, and that’s all.

The past was over, and it was time to move on.

Misha passed the puck to him, and they spent a few moments in easy companionship, not skating as much as moving down the ice like a unit. Like a team. Pity they’d never gotten to play together. But they were there for a reason, and as much fun as it was, there were things that needed to be said.

Max shot the puck toward the net again to give him a moment to think as he went to retrieve it. “I still don’t see why you’re so disgusted with yourself, but not Drake, who did the same thing. And I mean, your life was in danger, Misha.” He finally understood what Misha had meant when he told Max his father was a butcher.

“I ran away, Max,” Misha said. “I left my sisters. My mother. With him. And I never once tried to find out if they were all right. I just left.”

Max sent the puck to him with an easy pass. “Do you think they wanted you to stay there and get killed for being gay?”

“No. My mother would have given me the money to leave if she could have. Sometimes I think she knew what I was doing to earn it.” Misha caught the puck on his stick and sent it back. He had a good, strong shot—steady and even. “One day my father will die. And then maybe I can look for her. For my sisters.”

Max was saddened at the necessity of that. But as he well knew, life wasn’t always fair, and sometimes you lost things you didn’t want to lose.

And sometimes you had to grab on tight to things and never let them go. “Look. I love you. And I think maybe I’m good for you. You laugh sometimes when I’m around. I’m not perfect but I realized after my accident that if I was ever going to be happy again, I had to learn to accept it and move beyond it. And you know what helped me do that? My family, who brought me home and helped me pay the bills I suddenly couldn’t pay. My friends, who told me it wasn’t stupid to want to coach and helped get me started. So maybe you don’t need me to give you space. Or maybe I’m just saying this because I don’t want to give it to you. I dunno.”

“But I do know that my apartment is fucking cold as… Siberia? The North Pole? Whichever one of those is colder.”

“For your birthday, I’m buying you an atlas,” Misha said and skated over to him. He put one gloved hand on Max’s shoulder. “I don’t know if I love myself, Max. But I do know that I love you and that you mean it when you say you love me. Maybe I can see myself as that man, the one you love, instead of the one I always see when I look in the mirror.”

Max stared up at him. “Wow, Misha. That was the cheesiest and most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.” But Max was certain his smile was as bright as any flashing light on any goal he’d ever scored. “But go ahead and keep thinking I’m awesome.”

Misha leaned down to kiss him—a little awkwardly considering their height difference, the ice, and the fact they were both wearing skates.

“Come home, Max,” said Misha. “And get your clothes out of the washer.”

Max checked Misha with his shoulder and went down the ice with the puck. Misha kept carefully to the side where Max’s peripheral vision wasn’t damaged.

Just like the last time they’d been together on the ice, something ended. But there was something better there to take its place.

MISHA STOOD
on the side of the rink and watched his team as they moved smoothly through the day’s drills. Max stood nearby, making notes and occasionally delivering an occasional back pat.

The Spitfires were winning games, which was a good thing, because it meant there was no new commercial set to “It’s Raining Men.” Neither of them would put it past Belsey.

Jakob had visited Misha’s house and delivered a stammering apology to Drake for his homophobic comments. Max eavesdropped from the kitchen with absolutely no remorse and gleefully repeated the conversation later to Misha. The team was getting along well both on ice and off, and that was all that mattered.

Misha was not so sure he was making headway on Max’s insistence that he “love himself.” Misha understood the theory but thought it was a very American, self-help sort of concept that he was not capable of mastering entirely. But he did spend Wednesday evenings at the rink with his new houseguest. And in those evenings, Drake was Isaac and Misha was Misha instead of Coach. At first they simply played hockey and didn’t talk much at all. Misha found it enjoyable to play with such a gifted goalie, and it was difficult to score on him. When he was relaxed, Drake was a formidable obstacle, despite not having the width of shoulders and long legs that some of the others in the league had. He was graceful and confident and he smiled more than he scowled, but it wasn’t until early spring that he started to talk.

At first it wasn’t much, just a few pieces of information here or there about his life, his family, and how he’d been thrown out of the house at seventeen and had to give up his spot on a development hockey team because he couldn’t pay for it.

He was from Memphis and was living in Columbia, South Carolina when he heard about the Spitfires’ tryouts. Unlike the NHL or the AHL, there was no draft requirement for the ECHL, and teams could have open tryouts for their rosters. Drake only traded sex for money during the summers when he didn’t have the ECHL housing allowance to pay for rent, and he did so up in Columbia where he’d thought no one would ever recognize him.

“You’ll stay with me and Coach Ashford this summer and next season,” Misha told him. “Save your housing allowance. Have a savings account. Do not keep your money in a jar in your closet.”

“Mine’s in a box in my underwear drawer, but okay.” Drake tried once to bring up the money thing, and Misha shut him down by saying he played professional hockey for twenty years and barely spent any money, because, as Coach Ashford was always saying, Misha had a hard time having fun.

Drake’s stories gradually became darker, underlying the stark realities of living on the streets, and Misha found himself sharing his own memories with someone for the first time.

Even Max didn’t know the details that Misha shared with Drake, which was something Drake understood. “Coach Ashford always thinks people are good. Like he thinks everyone has a good heart, or good intentions, or whatever.” Drake’s voice went flat. “I don’t know if I’m glad there are people who think that’s true, or pissed off that I know it’s a lie.”

Drake’s story was nowhere near as horrific as Misha’s, but Misha was beginning to understand that he’d never let himself enjoy the life he’d nearly died trying to have.

And if anything helped him heal, it was being loved by Max Ashford and knowing that he’d very likely saved Isaac Drake from ending up like him. Drake was cracked around the edges, but not yet so broken that he couldn’t be fixed.

On the way home from their Wednesday night hockey game, Misha took advantage of the last few moments when they were simply Misha and Isaac to ask a question. “Was it really so obvious… about me and Max?”

Drake laughed. His feet were propped up on the dash and his arms wrapped loosely around his knees. Before he got out of the car, he always used a spare towel to wipe the footprints off the upholstery. “I was wondering if you were gonna ask me about that. The funny thing is, it wasn’t even me that noticed it. Gaydar fail. Right?”

Drake sometimes spoke in slang that Misha could not follow. He’d learned to file the expressions away for later and ask Max about them, even if his “What is a lolcat, Max?” reduced Max into fits of such loud laughter that Drake actually came downstairs to make sure they were okay.

“It was Murphy,” Drake said, grinning. “He was like, wait. They’re doing it. Right? And so obviously everyone looks at me like I’m the expert. Which, since most of the guys are straight, I guess I am.” He paused. “I mean, some of them are curious enough when drunk to make out at a party, especially if there are girls there who are into it. But… anyway.

“So Murph was like, ‘Don’t you guys notice that they’re always showing up together and leaving at the same time?’” Drake grinned. “But… uh, we all thought Coach Ashford was gay”—even in the safe confines of their Wednesday games and the car rides that were a part of that, Drake never referred to Max by anything other than
Coach Ashford
—“but no one believed it about you. Which is dumb, ’cause I’ve sucked a lot of dick and there’s really no way you can tell who’s into it. But I mean, Coach Ashford was always…. He watches you a lot. And smiles.” Drake made a face. “It’s kind of gross and sappy.”