Unrivaled, page 20
He was still in a good mood when he picked up Jess, Polly, and Amanda from the airport. Jess flung herself into his arms like a kid. Her grin stretched from ear to ear. Grady didn’t need to ask what had put her in such a good mood.
He remembered Amanda from the first time Jess dated her; she was a tall, pretty blond with broad features and an easy smile. “Merry Christmas, Baby Armstrong.”
Grady hugged her too. “Good to see you, Amanda. Merry Christmas.”
“And this is Polly.”
“Nice to meet you.” Polly was probably a normal height when she wasn’t standing between Jess and Amanda, who were both close to six feet. She wore a nose stud and a bright red undercut.
Grady might need to put a king bed in his guest room. “Same,” he said. “Car’s this way.”
Mercifully, Jess held off on interrogating him until Polly and Amanda excused themselves to go to bed. Grady needed to go to sleep soon too—the Firebirds would play Pittsburgh tomorrow and the Monsters the next night—but he wanted to talk to Jess more.
As soon as Polly and Amanda were upstairs, Jess turned to him in the armchair and curled her legs up in her seat. “So. Tell me about Max.”
He’d thought for sure she would realize Max meant Max Lockhart, the hockey player Grady had been bitching about for years. But nothing in her expression or tone suggested any suspicion. Then again, she probably hadn’t thought much about Grady’s love life for the past few days. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, for starters, when did he get upgraded from Shithead?”
That one was easy. “Officially? The night my trade to Anaheim fell through.”
She put her chin on her folded arms and leaned closer. “Why then?”
“He found out before I did.” Grady thought back to that night. “The game was a shitshow, but I kept thinking to myself, ‘At least it’ll be over soon,’ because Erika had told me a trade was in the works. Then I got home and Max had TSN on and they were running the story about Baller getting traded.” He huffed. “He could’ve been an asshole about it. I can’t say I wouldn’t have been, if I were him—”
“If you were him?” Jess interrupted. She narrowed her eyes. “Wait a second, are you saying Max is also a hockey player?”
There it was. “Yeah.”
“And he was hanging out at your house instead of playing? Does he play in the AHL or something?”
“No.” Grady braced himself. “He was injured.”
It still took her a moment. “Grady,” Jess said slowly, “are you sleeping with Max Lockhart?”
He couldn’t read her expression. “Surprise?”
“What the fuck! Grady!” She ran a hand down her face. Okay, that didn’t fill him with confidence. He’d thought she’d be happy for him. “Since when?”
“World Cup.”
“What!”
“It’s your fault,” he accused. “You’re the one who downloaded Grindr instead of an actual dating app—”
“Oh my God.”
“And then Max and I matched, and he didn’t believe I was really me because I used my headshot from NHL.com. Apparently that’s a no-no—”
“Oh my God!”
“So he said if you’re really Grady Armstrong then prove it, and one thing led to another….”
“Oh my God!”
This was getting rude. Grady was only dating one guy he used to hate. Jess had started dating her ex-girlfriend and her ex-girlfriend’s girlfriend, and he was being way more chill about that. “Anyway, the sex was”—great, amazing, transcendent—“good. So we kept hooking up. And I explained why I had Grindr in the first place, and Max helped me download an actual dating app. But it turns out I suck at dating, so Max was giving me pointers—”
Jess made an incredulous noise.
Finally Grady stopped trying to explain. “What? You asked.” Besides, she was the one who’d ended up in a porny Lifetime movie.
“Yeah, but you just… trusted him?”
“Believe me,” he said, “nothing Max suggested could’ve made the situation any worse.”
That, at least, Jess seemed to accept. “Okay, but dating a rival player who once broke your arm?”
“That was an accident.” Of that, Grady had no doubt. “Look, it just happened. Like I said, I found out Baller got traded instead of me, and Max could’ve been a dick about it, but he said he was sorry and the situation sucked and then he asked if I wanted to get high.”
“Grady!”
If she was reacting like that over a little recreational marijuana, he definitely wasn’t telling her he’d let Max fuck him bare. “Don’t even, Jess. You live in Colorado. It was pot. We ended up talking and he invited me to Christmas with his family.” Jess didn’t need to know she was the whole reason Grady had gone in the first place.
“Just like that?”
“I don’t know what you mean ‘just.’ We’d been sleeping together for months by then.” Grady squared his shoulders. “I get that you’re surprised—I was too—but Max is great. I mean, he’s the one who figured out what was going on with you and Amanda and Polly, right?”
From her expression, this hadn’t occurred to her. She looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. “I guess.”
Grady didn’t know what else to tell her, or how. He feels safe? He’s kind and generous and makes me laugh? He helps me remember what it’s like to be able to rely on someone other than you? Everything seemed too emotional, or too private, or too… damning. He didn’t know how to say those things to Jess without her taking it personally. She’d done the best she could raising him. He’d always be grateful for that.
So he settled for, “I like him a lot, okay? He’s a different person off the ice. I mean, he’s the same, but he doesn’t take any of it seriously, if that makes sense. I could learn a few things.”
Finally Jess cracked a smile. “Who are you and what have you done with my baby brother?”
“Hey,” he protested. “A guy can’t grow as a person?”
“A guy can, sure. But you?” Her smile softened. “I’m sorry I’m being so… whatever. It’s not like I don’t have teammates who ended up with someone from a rival team. But I thought the two of you hated each other.”
Grady shrugged sheepishly. “So did I. But Max never did.”
Jess reached out and squeezed his hand. “I worry about you, is all. Big-sister thing. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I know.” Grady had worried about that in the beginning too. “He’s not going to fuck me over on purpose, okay? We had that talk way early in the….” Relationship. God, he’d been dumb.
Judging by Jess’s raised eyebrow, she thought so too. “Oh? What did he do?”
It didn’t seem fair to hedge now. “He brought up our, uh, off-ice activities on the ice. I said we could fuck around off the ice or on it but we weren’t going to do both.”
She snorted. “Nice phrasing.” Then she shook her head. “Okay, tell you what. I’ll reserve judgment until I meet him in person.”
“Great,” he said immediately, “because I invited him for New Year’s.”
“Grady!”
She was going to wear out his name at this rate. “Come on. It’s not fair if you get two dates and I don’t even get one.”
“Fine.” She shot him a small smile. “But I better not hear you having sex.”
“No promises.”
The next day Grady and the Firebirds played their best game of the season—maybe the best game they’d played in years. He was thrilled to get to do it while his sister and her girlfriends watched from glass seats. Barny stopped all twenty-seven shots for his first-ever career shutout, and the whole team mobbed him afterward.
There was no way Grady could skip out on the celebration, so he texted Jess that he’d be late and not to wait up.
Then he texted Max. Barny pitched his first no-hitter. Go easy on us tomorrow, we’re gonna be hungover.
send me a drunk naked selfie and ill think about it
No, he wouldn’t, but Grady smiled anyway.
The twenty-eighth dragged. Grady wanted to prove to himself—okay, and Jess—that he and Max were on the same page. Ever since she’d voiced her concerns, he’d been a little on edge. It was normal to be nervous before a define-the-relationship talk, right? And Jess had him second-guessing himself.
But he knew what he wanted. He thought he knew what Max wanted. He was pretty sure it was the same thing. The last step was admitting it out loud to each other.
And he’d have his chance after the game.
“All right, boys, just like last night, eh?” Coop said as they headed onto the ice in Newark. Grady bumped his fist the same as everyone else.
Monsters fans hated Grady the way Firebirds fans hated Max—they booed every time he set foot on the ice, every time he touched the puck. They cheered when someone knocked him on his ass. But the noise never bothered him. It always felt right.
Tonight it sent a frisson of energy down his spine. Grady caught Max’s eye during warm-ups and Max winked at him. Grady skated away laughing.
If anyone on the team thought his good mood suspicious, no one said anything to Grady. Maybe they attributed it to last night’s win, to momentum. Either way, it felt good to give the Monsters a fight for once. Puck possession and scoring chances were about even going into the second, with the score tied at zero. Coop spent two minutes in the box for tripping Max, the Monsters’ goaltender got slapped with a slashing penalty for trying to break Grady’s ankle—just another rivalry grudge match. Grady’s bruises had bruises and his blood sang in his veins.
Early in the second, he and Max got into a puck battle against the boards. Grady was fighting for possession with everything he had, and if Max’s cursing was any indication, he was too. After fifteen seconds Max let out a giggle at the absurdity—they were wedged into the corner with their sticks on the puck, neither of them giving ground. It was kind of ridiculous, enough that Grady found himself fighting back a laugh too.
But that was all the window Max needed to leverage Grady’s stick off the puck and flick it back to his team. Grady cursed and took off for the defensive zone with Max on his heels.
He shouldn’t have let his guard down, but he couldn’t blame Max for it. Besides, he might’ve lost that battle anyway. He’d win the next one.
With a few minutes left in the period, Grady chased the puck into the corner and got the business end of one of the Monsters’ sticks across the cheek. The crowd roared as the ref blew the whistle, and Grady pulled off his glove to touch tentative fingers to the sting on his face. They came away bloody, which meant a power play for the Firebirds.
Grady went to the bench to have the cut glued shut and then skated back to the dot to take the faceoff.
Hedgie lined up across from him, smirking. “Hey, Ace. You have a good Christmas?”
Max probably told him they spent it together. That was a normal thing to tell a friend, and it wasn’t like he was being mean. He was making small talk, hoping it’d throw Grady off. That wasn’t Max’s fault. He couldn’t control what his teammates did.
Grady exhaled sharply, rapped his stick on the ice, and bent over to signal he was ready for the linesman to drop the puck. “Better than yours.”
But uneasiness ate at him, even after the Firebirds scored. Could Jess have been right? Had Grady made a mistake trusting Max?
Doubt crept in. He did his best to focus on the game, but two minutes after the Firebirds scored, Grady turned the puck over to a rookie defenseman who had no business picking his pocket, and the Monsters tied the game.
He took another deep breath. Things happened. He couldn’t control everything.
Coop patted him on the shoulder as he went back to the bench, a show of wordless support.
Grady let himself lean into it and refocused on the game.
The clock ticked away to the end of the period, and Grady went over the boards for the last shift. All of Newark jeered when he got the puck on his stick and crossed the blue line into the offensive zone.
He was ready for the hard check to his shoulder—he’d already dropped the puck back for Coop.
But he couldn’t account for his skate blade catching in a crack in the ice, and he went down hard. He lost his stick, and the player who’d hit him tripped and fell too. He landed half on top of Grady and knocked the breath out of him.
“Fuck. Jesus,” Hedgie said. Somewhere in the distance, Grady registered the horn signaling the end of the period. “Think I just cracked you like that lobster you like so much.”
Grady’s mind went blank.
Oh God.
You crack me open.
Max had told him.
Shaken, he got to his feet and collected his stick, ignoring Hedgie. Coop met him at the tunnel, concern etched on his features. “Hey, you okay?”
“Fine,” Grady said, numb. Nothing hurt—not his chest or his arm where Hedgie had landed on it or the cut on his face. “I’m fine,” he repeated when Coop tried to catch his elbow, and jerked his arm away.
Coop raised his hands. “Okay! All right, I just—”
“Armstrong!”
At his coach’s voice, Grady glanced over.
“Trainer!” Coach barked. “Get yourself checked out.”
Fair enough—they’d want to make sure he hadn’t injured himself, disinfect his face again, and reglue the liquid stitches. As a bonus, Coop would have to stop looking at him like Grady might break at any second. “Yes, Coach.”
But even after the trainer and the team doctor had checked him out, they kept Grady in the trainer’s room. Did they know he was having a personal crisis? Had he somehow let on that he’d developed feelings for Max? Was he going to get chewed out for that? That might almost be better, if someone else yelled at him. Then at least he could stop being so hard on himself.
He felt sick, but he knew he hadn’t hit his head. This was a different kind of sickness, even if it was as disorienting as a concussion.
He’d trusted Max. He’d let Max in—he’d let down his guard and he’d…. Should he get tested? Had Grady put himself in physical danger, as well as emotional?
The third period had to have started by now. Why hadn’t the trainers released him? Grady clenched his hands into fists. He needed to get back on the ice. He needed to prove this mistake wouldn’t affect him. He—
The door opened to reveal not one of the trainers but Dan, their most junior coach. “Armstrong. Hey.”
Fucking finally. Grady pushed himself off the table. “Am I good to go?”
“Kind of.” Dan smiled softly. “Looks like you’re getting what you wanted.”
Grady blinked. So far nothing tonight had gone the way he wanted it to.
Then Dan said, “Hit the showers. You’re on the next flight to LA. You’ve been traded.”
Third Period
AFTER THE game, Max sat in the locker room, waiting for his phone to buzz. There was no word from anyone on Grady or why he hadn’t returned to the ice after the second, and he was worried. Surely Grady hadn’t been hurt too badly after Hedgie basically fell on him. He’d gotten up and skated away under his own power.
Anything could happen in hockey. Max had heard enough horror stories—someone he knew in juniors had taken a fall like Grady’s while in the early stages of appendicitis. The pressure caused the organ to burst, and he’d spent a month in the hospital with sepsis. If Hedgie had landed wrong, he might’ve cracked one of Grady’s ribs, punctured a lung.
And no one on Grady’s team knew they were together—or would be together, hopefully, if they ever managed to talk—so Max was in the dark with no one to give him an update.
He was in the middle of sending Grady a third text—the first had been r u ok? followed by ill kiss it better later—when a notification popped up.
Max was halfway through dismissing it when he realized it was a trade notification. Firebirds trade Armstrong to LA Condors.
His heart hit his knees. No wonder Grady hadn’t written back. He was probably on a plane by now, heading to the opposite coast. About as far from Max as he possibly could be and still play in the NHL.
Max’s stomach turned over. His palms felt clammy, and he wiped them on his suit pants.
Grady wasn’t going to come tonight, obviously. They wouldn’t get to have that talk. But would he still want to be with Max?
And why hadn’t Grady texted him to let him know he wasn’t going to make it?
A quiet voice in his head whispered that Grady had wanted this trade all along. Maybe Max had only been a distraction from his unhappiness with the Firebirds. Now that he’d been traded, he didn’t need Max anymore.
Max pushed those thoughts away. Grady wouldn’t do that to him. His nighttime confession by the pool had rung with truth. Even if it hadn’t, he’d asked—he’d trusted—Max to fuck him, skin to skin. Max knew Grady’s type. If Max had never done that before, Grady hadn’t either. So Grady had feelings for Max. He was surprised by the trade, which Max couldn’t blame him for. Midgame trades for players of Grady’s caliber didn’t happen every day or even every season. It was all very dramatic and only reinforced Max’s low opinion of the Firebirds’ management. They clearly didn’t give a fuck about their players.
Anyway, Grady was probably working through some conflicting feelings. Max could give him space for now.
But once he was on the opposite side of the country, how much more space could he need?
GRADY DID not have a restful flight.
He called Jess on his way to the airport. She’d already heard the news and cursed up a storm over how the Firebirds’ front office had handled it. But on the plus side, at least Grady had someone on hand to pack up some of his things and ship them to California, and to arrange for his houseplants to get watered.
Erika called as he checked in for his flight. “I’m sorry to do this to you.” She sounded like she meant it. “Talks only started an hour or so before the game. They were going to wait until it was over to make it official, but then Hedgewood fell on you and they worried that you’d get injured and it would fall through. I knew you wouldn’t want that.”
