Coast to Coast

by R. J. Scott

  Rowen doesn’t respect me. Rowen is just another asshole for me to fight.

  “I’ll meet you there. I have business to attend to,” I lied and winced internally. I sounded like an idiot, and from his smirk, he didn’t believe me anyway.

  “Okay, then,” he said, then waved and went back into the house. I had never climbed into my car as fast as I did then. I slipped and slid on the leather seat, got tangled in the seat belt, got my jacket hooked on the door, and finally in frustration, I had to take a minute to calm the hell down. I didn’t need know-it-all coaches riding my ass or making me feel I was being laughed at.

  Nope. I needed a beer and my laptop to catch up on work.

  And maybe a shower where I got myself off to images of the infuriating coach on his knees sucking me dry.

  Oh, fuck my life. Now I’m hard, and my cock is trapped in my pants.

  We’d managed to get a nonstop flight to Seattle. Or at least Miriam in the back office had. That meant our flying time was only three hours or so, but that didn’t account for the time at Tucson International or the waiting on the tarmac for takeoff. Luckily Rowen kept himself to himself, thumbing through a thick notebook filled with unintelligible scribble. I know it was indecipherable because I’d tried to read it with sideways glances. Part of me hoped that it would give me an insight into Rowen, something I could hold onto in order to regain equilibrium, but all I could see were Xs and Os and arrows. From the way they were laid out, I finally assumed they were game plans. I bet coaches at better teams than ours would’ve loved to get their hands on his book to see if there was anything in there that was worth a look.

  I doubt it, though, given his coaching level was so far below what most pro teams would consider.

  The flight wasn’t full, and we were lucky enough that there was just the two of us in the final few rows. He took a window seat, put in earbuds, pulled a cap over his eyes, and leaned to one side, his head pillowed by his jacket.

  Then he went to sleep. Just like that, without mentioning that he was going to sleep or even a smile or gesture of apology.

  What if I’d wanted to talk hockey? I don’t want to talk hockey. I don’t even like hockey.

  From my seat across the aisle, I reached over and poked him when they did the safety talk. He grunted, opened his eyes, gave attention to what the flight attendant said, and immediately resumed his sleep position.

  I’ve never been able to sleep on commercial flights, even when I had the room to stretch out. There used to be a time when the Westman-Reid family had a private jet, and I’d loved using that, with the unlimited snacks and the TV screens. But the jet was long gone, an indulgence that hadn’t been used enough to justify it. I’d seen the Raptors with their own jet, but apparently that was one of the first things to go three years ago, and now the team used a charter flight whose cost they shared with various other teams in different seasons.

  Because of the non-sleeping, I buried myself in work instead, answering all the emails I’d had concerning Gilded Treasures, and then passing on what I could to Lucas. He’d already cleared most of the issues, and if I was completely honest with myself, I’d reached a point where I didn’t even need to be in the office full-time. The team I’d built was honest, strong, and everything worked like clockwork. I was the first to admit that I’d been edgy for a while now and had even looked at starting up something new, just to get that buzz of winning. Only I never imagined that my new start would be working with Jason, Cameron, and Leigh.

  I pulled up the contract my dad and Rowen Carmichael had signed. I wasn’t a lawyer or an expert in anything legal at all, but on the surface, I couldn’t see a way of getting out of it. There was no clause talking about an early release payment or anything like that. His salary was fixed, his signature strong, and it looked as if we were stuck with him. I just hoped that my dad’s last act wasn’t going to ruin everything.

  Wait. Something jumped out at me.

  I reread the contract. There was a clause I’d read, something about thirty-five points, and I skimmed until I reached it. The Raptors had to be showing a minimum of thirty-five points by midseason at the end of January; otherwise clause seven would be enacted. I scrolled up to the clause in question, and there it was in black and white. If the Raptors didn’t get the magic thirty-five by January 31st, then the owners of the team, being the three Westman-Reid siblings—poor Leigh—could revoke the contract.

  I worked my way through the process. The season started in October, and if we couldn’t get rid of him until the end of January, then that was a long time to have to put up with someone who might not be a good fit for the job. I researched a bit more and saw that historically, over the past ten years or so, the better NHL teams had fifty points or more at the halfway point.

  Again, all I could think was that we needed an excellent coach, someone who would pull this team up by its bootstraps. I doubted we had that in some college guy who might have once played hockey for a big team. Particularly one who had the perfect opportunity to discuss the future with me and had decided to go to sleep instead.

  With at least another two hours to kill, I pulled up YouTube and searched on the word “hockey.” Then expanded it to “what is hockey.” The first video I found was “How to play hockey—basic hockey rules explained.”

  I followed the video, mumbling as I watched in order to try and recall what I was listening to. Then I clicked on more links and watched actual game footage. “Three periods,” I murmured.

  A hand on my shoulder had me shooting up in my chair and nearly cracking my head on the overhead bins. I turned to face a smirking Rowen staring down at me.

  “That’s not what you want to watch,” he said and held out his hand for my iPad.

  “Sorry?”

  He waggled his hand a little, and reluctantly I passed him the tablet. He sat in the seat next to me, and abruptly he was up close and personal. This near, I could see how neat his beard was, and wondered idly how long it took him to get himself looking as good as he did. He wasn’t model-perfect, there was a scar by his right eye and laughter lines bracketed his eyes, but his skin seemed soft, and his lips were pouty and kissable. I could appreciate that he was a fine-looking specimen, as men go, and he didn’t really look his age, although what I was expecting a forty-one-year-old to look like, I didn’t know. I guessed I expected him to be more hockey-worn because to me it seemed hockey players were Neanderthals who beat each other up for a living. I’d spent half an hour down the rabbit hole of watching hockey fights, and some of them were brutal. Maybe that was how he got the scar? Not that I would ask him because that meant he’d know I’d been checking him out.

  “This.” With a few taps, he pulled up footage from a game between Chicago and New York, and as the game progressed, he explained one or two things, like the fact that shoving the goalie was a bad thing but slamming someone into the boards was good, unless it was by smacking them in the numbers, which was the term for the big numbers they all wore on their backs right under their names in jock-lettering.

  “I can pull up specific plays. Are you a fan of a team?” he asked as if the answer wasn’t important at all.

  “New York,” I lied immediately. New York had a team, and he’d just shown me them. After all, I’d walked past Madison Square Garden often enough to have seen the huge pictures there of some of the sexiest men I’d ever seen all in red, white, and blue.

  “Their rebuild looks good,” Rowen commented and settled back in the seat next to me, and I thought he was going back to sleep. I didn’t want that. I wanted to get to know him, dig inside his head, and work out if the team and everyone it supported was fucked. But I wanted to do it without him thinking I was remotely interested.

  I’m so messed up.

  “A new arena?” I asked. Anything to get him talking.

  “No, a rebuild is when a team takes a year to work out kinks. This is what the Raptors are doing this year.”

  “I knew that,” I defended.


  All he did was chuckle. “No, you didn’t.”

  Ass.

  By the time we were in the cab leaving SeaTac, I’d watched a lot of YouTube videos. Some of it had sunk in; some of them were incredibly exciting, not that I would tell Rowen that, because then he would’ve gotten smug again.

  “Tell me more about the associate coach we’re meeting.”

  “Hiring,” he corrected.

  I gave him the patented pissed-off-Mark face, which always had my employees back in New York scrambling to agree with me. Only he just sat there waiting for me to correct his correction and call me contrary, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  “Anderson, thirty-four, skating coach with Anaheim, Calgary, became the director of skating development at the Athletes Training Center with Buffalo, and is currently a development manager at the Seattle Thunder AHL team.”

  “So he knows his way around a rink?”

  He glanced at me then, and I swear he was going to say something, but instead he looked back out the window as we passed over the bridge and took a left, following a sign for the SeaTac arena. It was kind of rude, but I’d had worse. My phone vibrated with a message, and I thumbed it open as soon as I saw it was from Cameron. He was the one tasked with looking into the Aarni situation, and I hoped he would have some news for us. My heart sank when I read the message. Aarni’s contract was solid, and unless we could convince him to waive the no-move contract he’d signed, then we were stuck with him. Aarni had definitely not been on Rowen’s list on his fridge. I knew that because I’d memorized all the names. Then I’d pulled them all up and fallen into the mess that was contract negotiations and trade deals. Every article I read about the Raptors said that Aarni was poisonous, but he’d put up an impressive amount of points last year or at least got above the average for defensemen in the NHL. Although why a defenseman would be scoring goals, I couldn’t work out.

  The article that stood out was the one reporting the incident between Aarni and Tennant Rowe, and there was a lot of heated debate about that issue, which had rumbled on for weeks. Tennant, a superstar forward, was on Rowen’s list under a heading of yeah, right, along with a couple of other high-powered names. I did check into Tennant’s contract details as much as I could, but he was staying. On the other hand, rumors were abound that another superstar forward, Tate Collins, was pissed with his team right now, and maybe I should discuss this with Rowen. Maybe make a deal or a trade or whatever it’s called.

  I loved making deals. The rush of it was intoxicating, and the Raptors needed something amazing. We had the new kids, but we needed star power as well.

  The arena we stopped at wasn’t as fancy as the Raptors’, but then this team we were visiting was in something called the AHL, which was the level below NHL and was the development level for the big leagues.

  I guessed it was a step up from college hockey, although I didn’t say that.

  There was a woman in sweats and a Seattle Thunder jacket waiting for us, and she approached us with hand extended, which I shook.

  “Mark Westman-Reid and Rowen Carmichael for Terri Anderson,” I announced.

  She smiled at me. Classically pretty, she had clear blue eyes, and her fine blonde hair was twisted into a messy bun. I wasn’t interested in women at all, but if I‘d have been doing some sort of shoot for a health magazine, I would’ve chosen her.

  “Terri? You’ve found her,” she said with a laugh and released my hand to shake Rowen’s.

  Wait, what? Terri Anderson was a woman? I knew for damn sure that NHL hockey was a man’s game, right? I was all for equality, but this wasn’t what I’d expected at all.

  “Can I have a private word, Rowen?” I asked and inclined my head to indicate the door we’d just come through.

  Terri faced me, but she was talking to Rowen. “You didn’t tell him I was actually Teresa, then?”

  Rowen shrugged as if he didn’t care. “Gender isn’t an issue. If you’re what the team needs, then that is what I will pay for.”

  “Rowen—”

  “We’d like to offer you a contract. One year, no probation, and the figures we agreed are detailed in here.” He passed over an envelope, and she took it. “Can we go somewhere to discuss it?”

  She led us into a room, closed the door, and then waited for us to sit before leaning against a table in the corner. The room was full of Seattle Thunder posters and memorabilia, and I realized we were in the team’s archive area.

  “When could you start?” Rowen asked.

  “I haven’t said I’ll do it yet,” Terri answered and slid a finger under the seal of the envelope, then pulled out a sheaf of papers.

  “You’re wasted here.” Rowen leaned forward in his chair. “You and I together could do great things with the Raptors. I’ve been watching you for years, and your style is no-nonsense but compassionate. I need you to be there as my conscience, to show me when I might be too black and white. I’m headhunting you because you are exactly the right person for the job. Now all you need to do is say yes.”

  “We should talk about this,” I interrupted, feeling as if I should make some kind of protest. After all, I was there to keep Rowen in check.

  “Mr. Westman-Reid, did you read my contract?” Rowen asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then you’ll know that my choice stands.”

  I swear that if I’d been bigger, harder, and had completed more than one lesson in Tae Kwan Do, I’d have been smacking that superior expression right off his face.

  As it was, I had to suck it up and smile at our newest hire. But the minute we were out of there, the shit would be hitting the fan big-time.

  He needed to be made completely aware of how he fitted into this management team, and I would be the one to show him.

  Six

  Rowen

  Mark was chomping at the bit. It was kind of funny to watch him swallow down the tirade he’d been waiting to unleash upon me. Pity he’d not been able to vent his obviously swollen spleen due to Terri walking us to our car, grinning widely, even though she was still playing at being coy. She’d take the offer; I felt it in my bones. To be the first woman associate coach in the NHL would be a huge feather in her cap and would help promote the feminist ideals my mother had raised me with. Also, she was the most qualified person for the job, gender being a nonissue for me in terms of who served as my second. It would be for others, but that wasn’t my problem. That was the problem of the owners and the PR department. Maybe they could hire the guy who handled the madness of the Tennant Rowe “I’m Gay and Dating my Coach!” announcement. Not my circus and not my monkey, as the saying goes.

  Which brought us back to the youngest male heir, who had probably bitten his tongue in half by now. The ride from Terri’s rink back to the airport found me and the Uber driver chatting the entire way. Then the rush at the airport to catch our flight to Nevada barred him from unloading on me. Of course he had to be polite on the airplane and the small puddle jumper I’d arranged to take us from Reno-Tahoe International to the itsy-bitsy airport ten miles from Loveland, Nevada, population one thousand and nine hundred, according to the Internet.

  Mark disembarked and did a complete one-eighty, his carry-on riding on his left shoulder. A hot wind tugged at his dark curls.

  “There are only two runways,” he said and looked at me to verify as his mind seemed to be stuck on that fact.

  “All you need is one, right?” I tossed at him as I stalked past him and into the coolness of the small but nice airport. I could hear him mumbling, but whatever he was saying, he kept to himself. Picking up a rental car was easy, and in no time I was sitting in a lovely blue Pontiac Grand Prix, sipping on a Dr Pepper as Mark finally detonated.

  “… contract may give you final decisions on who this team will employ. It does not give you the right to make up contracts! Furthermore, Terri is a woman. I’m all for breaking glass ceilings and all that, but—”

  I lowered the bottle fro
m my mouth, and our eyes met. “If you have to add ‘but’ to your statement, then you’re really not for whatever it is you’re claiming to be supporting.”

  He did a fine guppy-on-the-carpet imitation. I smiled and turned up the AC, hoping it would start blowing cool air soon.

  “Okay, just fuck you. Fuck you all over the place! As a gay man who has lived his life facing down homophobia from the world and his own family, I am highly insulted by your casual assumption that I’m some sort of sexist pig!”

  “Then stop sounding like one.” I threw the car into reverse and backed out of our slot by the airport.

  “You’re an egotistical ass. You do know that, right?” I nodded and eased the Pontiac into drive, eager to be on the way. We had a long night ahead, trying to woo a player who might not want to be wooed, and this time, I didn’t have a copy of a contract to dangle under anyone’s nose. Player acquisition was fully on the owners and team management. “Just for your information, Coach, there are more women and people of color in upper management at Gilded Treasures than there are white male workers. I take pride in that. If you would have let me finish instead of charging in like a… a…”

  “Bull?” I peeked over after we pulled up to the airport exit. He was in high pique, and it was truly a lovely sight. Cheeks pink and nostrils flared. The man was gorgeous when he was fired up. Imagine what he would look like spread under you in bed, his skin flushed and his cock spewing cum as you plow him like a cornfield.