Hot Off the Ice Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by A. E. Wasp

  Jansson nodded as if Lipe had imparted the wisdom of the ages. “I can do that. Annette’s way smarter than I am, anyway. She’s got a freakin’ master’s degree. I graduated high school. Barely.”

  Sergei slumped. He had hurt Alex’s feelings. And he couldn’t even attribute it to a vocabulary issues. He had been treating the party as if it were unimportant; humoring Alex more than actively participating and helping ensure things went off the way Alex had planned.

  And the party was more than just a celebration of the twins’ birthday. It was a celebration of all they had come through the last two months, an acknowledgement of the family they had created and the friends that been the only reason they had survived. Friends that had dropped everything to help, even as they were dealing with their own issues.

  Alex was right, and Sergei was so wrong.

  “I see. I was wrong. It was important,” Sergei said slowly, thinking as he spoke. “And I think I have not said thank you enough to you, my friends, for all you have done for me and Alex. I am sorry I have not been a better friend.”

  Lipe and Jansson waved him away. “No problem. You’re a great guy, Sergei. We almost never get a chance to help you out off the ice.”

  “But thanks for having us over,” Jansson said. “I love your house.”

  “Thank you.” For the first time, Sergei did, too. Again, it was all due to Alex. “Alex is important.” Sergei said. “He makes my life better. I see everything new with him around. I have friends, family now, because of him.”

  He gestured to the house full of people, something he’d never expected to have, and hadn’t even realized he’d wanted until Alex had given it to him. “He is my best friend. He loves me even when I am boring. He challenges me, always finding new things to share with me. There is nothing he is not interested in. I cannot keep up. I only know hockey.”

  “First of all,” Lipe said, “that’s not true. You speak three languages and read everything you can get your hands on. Why do you think I’m always on your team for trivia? Second, have you tried telling Alex this?”

  “Of course.” Sergei might be new at relationships, but he had no problem expressing his feelings. Alex had a problem hearing them. “But I do not think Alex believes me. I think that he is very hard on himself, and he feels he must be perfect for me to want him.”

  Jansson shook his head. “That’s tough, man. Have you thought about putting a ring on it?”

  Sergei tilted his head, not getting the reference.

  “Asking him to marry you,” Jansson clarified.

  Of course, Sergei had thought about that since the first night. He wasn’t one for indecision. When he made up his mind about something, he was set. But he knew deep in his heart that asking Alex to marry him wouldn’t solve their problems. “I wish you both speak Russian. It is very hard to find the English words.”

  “Try me,” Lipe suggested. “I’m a good listener.”

  Sergei smiled and held his beer bottle out for a toast. “Yes, you are. And good friend to me. Thank you, my friend.”

  “Anytime, Sergei. So what are you thinking?”

  Sergei finished his beer as he struggled to put into words a worry that had been forming in the back of his mind. “I think that this is a problem I cannot fix for Alex. Only he can make him believe that I love him and that he deserves to be happy.”

  “I think you might be right,” Daniel agreed.

  “I hate worrying that Alex is always thinking I am judging him. And that with one wrong word from me, he will run.”

  Lipe raised his eyebrows and sighed. “I got no answer for that,” he admitted. “It’s tough, man. Good luck.”

  The door opened, and Paul and Robbie came in bearing what looked like fifteen different boxes of cakes and cookies and desserts. Robbie dumped all the boxes on the counter.

  “Hey, guys. Where’s Alex?” Paul asked. “We need his help.”

  34

  Alex

  Alex knelt over the tub in the babies’ bathroom washing Torvill with more vigor than she was used to and cursing everything from the inventor of food coloring, to all children everywhere, to Sergei’s blowjob skills, to his own stupidity in trying to impress people with his party-planning skills instead of just having a fun, relaxing party.

  The SAPS had tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened. They’d tried to talk to him just now, too, but he’d waved away their offers of help and had told them he didn’t want to talk about it. He needed a little time to himself.

  “I’m a fool, Torvill,” he said, scrubbing a particularly stubborn spot of purple on the cat’s paw.

  “I sincerely doubt that,” a voice drawled from the doorway.

  Alex dropped his head against the edge of the tub. Great. The hot young guy with the sexy voice had to see him looking more bedraggled than the cat. It figured. Alex pushed his limp hair away from his face.

  “Hey, Paul. What’s up? Trouble with the cake?” Paul was a young dude-bro kind of guy. He probably wasn’t here to have a heart-to-heart with Alex, and from what Alex knew of him, he wasn’t a mean kid, so he wasn’t going to mock Alex’s failure.

  “If by trouble you mean did Robbie buy every single item marked gluten-free in the bakery and you now have fifteen different types of dessert in your kitchen, then no. No problem. Because that totally isn’t what he did,” Paul said, coming into the bathroom.

  “I like your cat.” He sat on the edge of the tub and scratched her between her ears. “What’s her name?”

  “Torvill.” Alex gave up scrubbing. If the food coloring wasn’t coming off in the tub, it probably wouldn’t stain anything else, right?

  “Is the black one named Dean?”

  “Yeah. Could you hand me that towel?” Alex pointed to the one at Paul’s feet.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry, man.” He spread the towel on his lap. “Can I dry her off?”

  Alex shrugged. “Sure, if you want. You’re going to get all wet.”

  “I don’t mind. Been a while since I got to pet a cat. If Robbie and I weren’t so busy, I’d get one.” He smiled as he wrapped Torvill up in the towel.

  She closed her eyes in contentment as Paul gently rubbed her dry. “She likes it!” His eyes lit up, and he told her how pretty and sweet she was.

  Could he get any more adorable? If Alex hadn’t been madly in love with Sergei, and if Paul had just been a little bit older and bulkier, Alex might have been having some impure thoughts about the kid.

  Alex reached up and bopped Torvill on the nose. “She’s a bad kitty. But I guess it’s not her fault some crazed toddler chased her through a cake.”

  “Is that why you’re hiding upstairs? That smooshed cake?”

  “When you put it that way, it sounds stupid.” Alex almost laughed at himself. “Mainly hiding from myself. Which, as you can imagine, doesn’t work very well. You may be surprised to find out I have unrealistically high expectations of myself.”

  Paul laughed. Alex knew he understood. That was an occupational hazard in their line of work. No one in any field got to the top of their game by expecting less than perfection from themselves.

  “So you had to have the perfect birthday party? I mean, I get the whole skating thing, sure. But you gotta cut yourself a break somewhere, or you’ll always be feeling bad.”

  “You think?” Alex took Torvill off Paul’s lap and grabbed her pajamas off the counter.

  “Oh, my God,” Paul said, covering his mouth. “She has pajamas with mice on them? That is the cutest thing I ever saw. Can I take a picture for my sister? She is gonna die.”

  “You are just the cutest thing,” Alex said before he could stop himself. “That Rhodes is a lucky boy.” He rolled his eyes at himself while he pulled the shirt over Torvill’s head.

  Paul blushed. “Well, thank you, sir. But, not to sound crude, you’re living with Sergei Pergov. Don’t forget, I’ve seen the man naked. More than once.” His eyes were wide with admiration. “I mean, goddamn, the man is built. And…�
�� he trailed off, embarrassed.

  Alex laughed out loud.

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said, face blazing red.

  “Don’t be.” He waited for a few seconds, letting the embarrassed tension build. “You want to ask, don’t you?”

  “No! I mean, ask what?” Paul tried to look innocent, which he could almost pull off with those baby blues, but then he burst into laughter. “Fine.” He crossed his arms when Alex didn’t say anything. “Well?”

  “Huge,” Alex admitted with a grin, holding his hands a nice distance apart.

  “Day-um,” Paul said reverently. “Up top, my friend.” He gave Alex the first fist bump he’d had in ages. “So,” Paul said more seriously. “Want to talk about it?”

  Alex sighed and sat down on the floor, his back against the wall next to the toilet.

  Paul settled down on the floor as well, his back to the door. He pulled out his phone. “Hold up the kitty and say cheese.”

  Alex did, positioning her to show off her jammies and her cute face.

  “Sissy is gonna love this,” Paul said, sending a text. “So what’s going on?”

  Alex played with Torvill’s feet as he tried to put his feelings into words. “Did you ever feel like you didn’t earn all the good stuff you’ve got? Like you don’t deserve it?”

  “You sound like Robbie.”

  “Really? But he did earn it. He worked so hard his whole life.”

  “And so did you,” Paul pointed out.

  “Yeah. I did. For most of it anyway, this last year, not so much. But what was the point of what I did? I didn’t make any money.”

  Paul picked at a thread on the knee of his faded jeans. “I know it’s easy for me to say right now, and probably doesn’t mean so much coming from me, but money isn’t everything. It helps you live, for sure, but it’s not the measure of a man.”

  “Then what is?” Why was he asking this kid? Paul was still fresh and dewy, still wet behind the ears. He was rich and looked like he could be in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.

  Paul leaned his head against the door. “Did you know I came from a religious background? Like really religious.”

  Alex thought he remembered hearing something about that.

  “I grew up being taught that gays were perverts who went to hell. For real.” Paul’s Alabama accent got stronger as he talked about his childhood. “And not hell as a metaphor, not a story to scare kids into being good. Actual fire and brimstone hell. And I also grew up knowing I was gay from a young age.”

  “Wow. That had to be hard.” Now Alex was even more impressed by Paul’s actions at the press conference.

  “Really hard,” Paul said with a lift of his eyebrows and a wry smile.

  “But you don’t believe that anymore, do you?”

  Paul lifted his head and looked directly at Alex. He shrugged. The pain and honesty in Paul’s eyes took Alex’s breath away. “I still struggle with it. You don’t just get over that kind of thing. Stuff from your childhood sticks in your brain like tar. But the struggle is worth it for me. Admitting I’m gay, being out, is worth it.”

  “Robbie’s worth it?” There must be more to the quiet defenseman than Alex knew. Paul didn’t seem like he’d risk so much for anyone who wasn’t amazing.

  “I’m worth it,” Paul said, poking himself in the chest. “I love Robbie. But I did this for me. I have to live my authentic life, you know what I mean?”

  Alex almost did. He could feel the shape of what Paul was saying combining with some things he’d been mulling over the last few weeks. He was starting to think he was his own worst enemy. “Almost,” he said. “Not really.”

  Paul motioned for Alex to pass him Torvill. The cat was lazily purring, happy for the sustained attention, and didn’t mind being handed to a new subject willing to give her the adoration she felt she deserved.

  “You skated pairs, right?” Alex nodded. “Started really young, trained hard and competed all the way up to Worlds and the Olympics?”

  Alex was surprised Paul knew so much about him. He must know that Alex hadn’t been able to hack it anymore. “Yeah. And then I quit.”

  “Retired. And we all do eventually. Most of us are done by thirty. The average retirement age in the NHL is twenty-eight. So I got six years left, more or less. Could be longer, could be shorter. Don’t matter. The point is, you’ve spent your whole life being judged, right? Your performances being scored. Even in school, you get graded, right?”

  “Yeah.” Alex realized he was so tired of it. When did he just get to live?

  “So, if you won a medal, you knew you deserved it, you’d earned it, right? But real life isn’t like that. We don’t get a clear grade. And love is definitely not like that. Love isn’t something you earn. It’s a grace.”

  “A what?”

  “Are you religious?”

  “Not particularly. I don’t go to church or anything. I mean, I grew up going to church on Sunday when I could, but it was more just something we did. I think I slept through most of it.”

  Paul cradled Torvill in his arms like a baby, rubbing her tummy. “Well, grace is one of my favorite concepts. Basically, it’s the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it."

  “That’s beautiful. I don’t remember hearing about that in church.”

  “That’s love. You don’t earn it; you just get it. Sergei isn’t keeping score. He doesn’t have a tally somewhere of things he did versus things you did and if your score drops too low, you’re cut.”

  Alex banged his head softly against the wall. “I know that. Intellectually, I know that. But I just keep thinking I’m not worth it.”

  “What is ‘it,’ exactly? Sergei? Happiness?”

  “Again, when you put it that way, it sounds stupid. You’re a silver-tongued devil, aren’t you?”

  Paul laughed. “Must be all those sermons I had to sit through. But seriously, if your best friend asked you if they ‘deserved’ love, what would you tell them?”

  “Well, Sergei is my best friend, so obviously I can’t meet that standard.”

  Paul sighed. “Torvill, your daddy is a dumbass. Gorgeous, but a dumbass. What about the babies? They love you.”

  Alex didn’t know where he was going with that line of questioning, but he’d humor Paul. “They’re babies. They love to eat dirt.”

  “But do they love you maybe just a bit more than dirt?”

  “Yeah, they do. But I’m their whole world right now. Without me, or someone doing what I’m doing, doesn’t have to be me, they’ll die.”

  Paul sighed. “Just think about it, man. Grace. Love. You gotta be okay with you before you can be okay with anyone else.”

  “How can you love someone if you don’t love yourself, as Ru Paul says?”

  “Yep. What can I say? The man is a genius.” Paul stood up. He reached down for Alex to pull him up and handed him the cat. “Now, I’m going to sashay away and find my man and drag him away to do things to him that my pastor would definitely not approve of. This whole family, kids, babies thing is too damn wholesome for me. Gives me the hives.”

  “I love it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Alex admitted.

  “And now you got it, dude. Embrace it. It’s so easy to just lose everything; don’t make life harder by not grabbing what Sergei’s offering with both hands.”

  Impulsively, Alex hugged Paul hard. “Thank you. I don’t know how you got to be so smart so young, but I appreciate it.”

  Paul hugged him back. “Let’s hang out one night and I’ll tell you my whole sad story. A’ight?”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “How are you with video games?”

  “Not so good, really.”

  “Excellent. Maybe Robbie will be able to beat someone for once.” Paul hugged him again. “You want me to say anything to anyone on my way out?”

  “Tell Sergei I’ll be down in a minute, and that I’m fine,
would you? I need to pull myself together a little bit. Put the monster back in the room with her brother.”

  “You got it.” He stopped with his hand on the door. “And just to be perfectly clear: Sergei loves you. You love him. You deserve to be happy. Okay?”

  Alex smiled. “Okay. Thank you.”

  Paul nodded and left.

  Alex walked thoughtfully down the hall, carrying Torvill, a possibly insane idea forming in his head.

  35

  Alex

  “You changed,” was the first thing Sergei said when Alex tracked him down near the ice rink. He and the dads were watching the little kids playing something vaguely resembling hockey. There was a net, and foam sticks, and very small children falling over and skating into each other.

  Tatyana and David sat on the ground with the other crawling babies in the center of a circle of adults. They had various toys to play with and hit each other over the head with.

  “I did,” Alex answered Sergei, stretching up to kiss him. He’d put on the Shut Your Five Hole shirt and an old comfy pair of jeans, and pulled his hair back into a ponytail. He felt the purple and teal streaks gave it a certain something extra. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Sergei shook his head. “No, I am sorry. I should not have said the party did not matter. It does. And thank you for doing so much for me and the babies.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry I lost my head.” He kissed Sergei again just because. “But those cute boys of yours bought enough cake to feed the neighborhood. So, why don’t you gather everyone inside? I’ll take things out of boxes, and we’ll do cake and presents, and then kick everyone out and collapse in bed while the twins nap?”

  Sergei smiled widely. “That is the best thing you say all day.”

  Alex grabbed Allie by the hand and dragged her into the house with him. “The kids okay?” he asked.