by E M Lindsey
“Not like a fifties diner serving Greek food?” Jane asked with a snort.
Niko grinned at her. “Something like that.” He moved around the counter to the service station. It was set up like an old soda shoppe where the grill put food up in the window, and regulars could sit at the counter and be served right from there. He didn’t hate the design, but it wasn’t going to work for what he wanted. It would all have to go.
“The capital will be significant,” Holland warned him, putting a hand in the center of his back. “I know you said you didn’t care, but…”
“I meant it,” Niko told her, his jaw going a little tight. The flip side to greed when people found out about his cash was that they became too cautious. If they weren’t trying to screw him, they were trying to control him, prevent him from spending, like somehow his life would be ruined without it.
It used to infuriate him. Once upon a time, he’d have given every damn cent in his account if he could just get back on the ice and prove he belonged there. Now, he wasn’t so sure. The sting of it wasn’t so overwhelming. He’d watched the last few drafts without that ache in his gut, and he wondered if that was actually himself moving on.
“I think—if you like it,” Jane clarified, “you should put in an offer. There’s a ton of people in Denver who will try to snatch this place up. Fairfield is starting to get noticed, and if you don’t do it, it’s going to get turned into some quinoa and kale smoothie joint that everyone pretends they love as they choke it down, and we don’t need another one of those.”
Niko snorted and pointedly did not mention the protein shake he’d had—the only thing he’d had—that day. “Yeah. Okay. Make an offer and let me know. I have to get back to the office and then I’m going for a run, so if I don’t answer, just leave a message.”
He bent low to kiss both Holland and Jane on their cheeks, then hurried out and hit the pavement. The walk back to the office was short, the weather perfect, and he waved to a few people on the street he recognized from either his work or just from being around. It was the nice, small-town feel, but he was always profoundly aware that in spite of having been here so damn long, he wasn’t part of the community the same way other people were. No one invited him over for holidays or the Superbowl, or taco Tuesday. No one he could call at two in the morning when he woke up from his recurring nightmare of a skate blade missing his knee and digging straight into his guts, spilling them on the ice as he lay there and the world faded to black.
It was lonely, and maybe it was the reason he was truly considering Sage’s offer to go on that blind date.
Chapter Five
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Niko gripped the cold pint glass, watching it
fog a little with the heat of his fingers. He had been startled enough by the offer for a beer that he couldn’t turn Sage down, even if his every instinct told him to bail. Instead, he skipped leg day and wandered a few blocks down to the little sports pub that was never crowded.
They found a little table in the corner, far from the blaring TVs, though his eye couldn’t help but wander to the two screens currently showing hockey. Spring was playoffs. Spring was the high-stress, damn-near panic, especially from the people doing well on the farm teams because it might mean being called up. It might mean one of the big namers got their heads knocked in and the team would need backups. Maybe Niko’s career wouldn’t have gone straight into the toilet if he’d ever been called up.
Except he hadn’t been. And it had gone to shit.
“What? How badly I fucked up the date with your brother?” He let out an ungraceful snort. “Nothing to talk about, really.”
He was there because he owed Sage. The guy had set him up and frankly, he hadn’t been wrong at all about how much Niko would like Derek. The guy was a little twitchy, but he was funny, and he had something about him that Niko found himself wanting to get to know better. His eyes were haunted—Niko knew the look, had played with those guys before—but he didn’t press the issue. He just enjoyed their time together, and the decent conversation.
He had even been starting to think that maybe this date would end better than his last few. Like with less clothes and more dick touching. Except, he’d opened his stupid fucking mouth and word-vomited, and it had taken him two full hours to realize what he’d said wrong.
And it wasn’t like he really meant it. He had no problem with deaf people, and he thought sign language was beautiful. In truth, he just hadn’t considered what he was saying. In truth, he’d spent most of his life shaping himself to make the masses happy—his parents, his coaches, his team, his peers— he just assumed that’s how you lived life. Accommodating other people.
He had a feeling Derek knew the deaf couple that had been signing at the gelato shop, and he knew his faux pas probably wasn’t fixable. Hell, the deaf couple were probably good friends with Sage too—everyone at the shop—which would slam yet another door in his face.
“Hey, it’s fine if you…” Sage began.
Niko interrupted him with a sigh. “There was a deaf guy —deaf couple—at the little gelato place when Derek and I went to grab dessert. I made a really thoughtless comment about your boss’ daughter and how she should learn to speak because no one around here was deaf.” Sage’s mouth dropped open, probably to berate him further, and Niko shook his head. “Trust me, I know it was a stupid thing to say. I don’t need you to tell me.”
Sage rubbed the rim of his glass with the edge of his thumb, and Niko noticed the ink stains under his nail. “Yeah, I’m assuming Derek didn’t take that well.”
“He walked out on me,” Niko admitted. “I didn’t go after him. I didn’t know how at the time, but I knew I messed it up, and it took me five minutes on google to figure it out.”
“He’ll give you another chance if he knows that,” Sage told him softly.
Niko shook his head. He looked back at the screen, at the white jerseys flashing across the screen, and the blue ones. He wasn’t invested, and he was fine, but sometimes he missed the feeling of ice beneath his blades so badly he could taste it. He hadn’t skated since he left the ice the night of his retirement, and the thought of trying now sent him to the edge of panic.
He looked back at Sage and felt his shoulders slump. “It’s no big.”
“Do you want to see him again?” Sage asked him.
Niko’s eyes widened in some surprise, because he hadn’t really considered that. He had liked Derek on the date. There hadn’t been much spark, but it gutted him he might have ruined something that could have been good. “I would. I mean, if he was interested, but man, it’s so not my place to ask. What I said wasn’t cool, and I didn’t even mean it, but he doesn’t owe me shit after that.”
Sage chuckled. “Don’t give up hope just yet. Give him a day or two.” He looked hesitant for a second, then shrugged. “We could do this again if you want though. Have a beer. It’s uh…it’s kind of nice, not being around the guys at the shop,” he rubbed the back of his neck and let out a half-sigh, half-laugh. “It feels good, for some weird reason. Having someone apart from all that.”
“I get it,” Niko told him, because he did. Because for years, it was players and their girlfriends, and the trainers, and the PR people, but nothing outside of his hockey bubble. Now, he had spent so many years shutting people out, he didn’t know how to let people back in. “Sometimes you just need a stranger to look at you and tell you your shit isn’t as fucked up as you think it is.”
Sage blinked, then laughed. “Yeah, something like that. I mean, I love my family. I really do, but they can be a lot. You uh…” He absently stroked his fingers over the top of his hand which looked like it had a fresh tattoo. “You got any ink?”
Niko flushed and he unconsciously touched his right foot to his left ankle. “One. But it’s really old and really, really shitty.”
Sage’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah?”
“I got it when I was in,” he stopped himself, not ready
to have the hockey conversation just yet, “when I was younger. Seventeen. I was in Montreal with some people and I was a little drunk. I wasn’t supposed to be out, but one of the guys got a wild hair up his ass about getting matching tattoos. So, we found this little shit-hole place that looked like it had never seen decent days and bribed the guy behind the counter to hook us up. They had all these uh…these like drawings on the wall?”
“Flash,” Sage told him. “They’re like stencils. We don’t really use them anymore, but it was big back in the day.”
Niko’s mouth quirked into a half smile. “They had this one of a lion—it was a local team—and we all got it on our ankle. It looked like shit right after it was done. All faded and smudged. A few years ago, I tried to have it lasered off, but it didn’t work too well.”
“Can I see it?”
Niko felt himself blush in the face of a man who not only displayed gorgeous work all over his body, but also created it. “Aw, dude, it’s so ugly. It’s…you don’t want to see that.”
Sage chuckled, shaking his head as he sipped his beer. “It’s kind of my job to fix ugly shit, you know. Believe me, my arms didn’t always look like this.” He dragged his right hand down his left arm. “A lot of bad decisions and hours of cover ups.” When Niko continued to hesitate, he put both hands on the table and looked at him. “Come by the shop next week. I’m opening most days. I’ll take a look and see what we can do. I mean, unless you want to keep it?”
Niko bit his bottom lip. “I don’t. I just…I guess part of me wanted it gone instead of covered up.”
Sage gave him a careful look. “Why?”
Niko blew out a puff of air, leaning back in his chair, and rested both hands behind his head as he stretched. His gaze flickered back to the TV screen and he felt a sudden urge to open up to a person who was just a little more than a stranger. Once, he had no problem spilling his guts to strange reporters he’d never met, knowing it would be blasted across the sports channels and websites. After his accident, after they lifted his jersey to the rafters, speaking about it made his throat feel like it would close up.
He absently scratched at the jagged scars on his knee, and finally looked back at Sage. “I used to play hockey.”
Sage’s eyebrows flew up. “Yeah? Like as a kid?”
Niko couldn’t help a small laugh. “Yeah, as a kid. Then as a teenager. I was recruited by the junior league in Quebec. Got drafted right after that.”
Sage, who had just taken another drink of his beer, choked and set his glass down hard. “Wait. Drafted. Like NHL drafted?”
Niko shrugged, feeling his face burn and he rubbed the side of his neck. “Yeah, to Florida. I mean, I was put on the farm team right away—had to work my way up, you know? But uh…it was good. It was real good. I hit a couple of records and it looked like everything was coming up fucking roses.”
“Except now you’re an accountant living in some po-dunk down Colorado, so I’m guessing there were no roses,” Sage said bluntly.
Niko appreciated it, the harsh way he dove right in, and it made the words easier to say. “About two minutes into my first official NHL game, I got knocked off my feet. There was a gap in my shin guard and knee pad—the pads aren’t a guarantee that you won’t get gouged, but the equipment was faulty—manufacturing error. Blade took out my entire knee, severed most of the tendons, and my career was over. Two minutes after it began.” He left out the part where his agent called his lawyer and he sued while he was still hopped up on post-op pain killers and won the amount of money he’d have been reasonably paid if his career had gone on through a standard rookie contract. And a little more for pain and suffering, but Niko was well aware that no amount of zeroes in his bank account helped the crushing feeling of knowing everything he’d worked for was over.
“Shit, man,” Sage said after a beat. “How long ago was that?”
Taking a long drink of his beer, finishing it off, he shrugged and swiped his hand over his mouth. “A while. I was drafted six days before my eighteenth birthday. After the accident, I wallowed for a bit, but I think my mom got tired of looking at my face, so a buddy of mine told me about the university here. He gave me a room to stay in, and I ended up getting my MBA and making it work.”
Sage stared for a long while, then sat back and shook his head. “I need to know you better.”
That startled a laugh from Niko who looked at him with a raised brow. “Seriously?”
“You gotta know you come off like some dipshit gym-rat who don’t give a fuck about much besides your shitty protein shakes and crunching numbers. And your terrible opinions on fruit.”
Niko’s face went flat, and he struggled not to grin when Sage giggled. “It was a rough recovery,” he finally said. “It took a long time before I could talk about it, and I still don’t really feel comfortable with people knowing. It…I had these goals. My dad died before he got to see it, and the day I took NHL ice for the first time I thought I was doing it for him. Getting taken out seconds into the game—it fucked with me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Hell, I still don’t know. I mean, I’m good at accounting, but it’s not like I give a shit about it.”
“But you did about hockey,” Sage said.
Niko snorted. “Dude, you don’t let three hundred pounds of pure Russian muscle throw you around a frozen arena because you have nothing better to do.” He tapped his fingers on his glass, debating about grabbing a second. “It took me a while to feel anything when it was over. I uh…” He licked his lips and glanced around, though he really didn’t care if someone was listening. “I took this cooking class during my sophomore year when I was trying to combat stress, and it turned out I was really good at it. And it was the first time since hockey I felt like I could give a shit about something I was good at.”
Sage looked startled, but not necessarily surprised. “You want to do something with that?”
“I’m thinking about it,” he said, and he was grateful when Sage didn’t press him more on it.
They ordered one more pint, and when they were done, Sage walked out with him to the street. The spring air was still chilly at night, but not nearly as bad as it had been even a handful of weeks ago. He tugged his sweater over his head, then ran his fingers through his hair.
“I meant what I said about doing this more,” Sage told him as they waited for their rides. “And I’m serious about the tattoo. I’m not going to judge you, and I’d like to see if maybe we can come up with something that makes you feel good about it.”
Niko nodded. “Yeah. I don’t see why not.”
“I’m going to talk to Derek about you again too. Maybe there wasn’t anything there, but I think the two of you deserve to give it a shot.”
Niko wanted to say no, but something in his gut told him not to. Maybe it wouldn’t lead him to Derek’s arms, but it could be the start of something—friendship or connections. He was desperate to feel something deeper than just existing, and he thought maybe the brothers were his way to that.
“I’ll be by,” he finally promised.
Sage’s ride got there first, and he tipped a wave to Niko before getting in and disappearing around the corner. He checked his status and saw he had ten minutes, but the time alone didn’t feel so crushing anymore.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t as though Sam didn’t want to spend time with his friends—hell, they were the one thing that kept him from completely falling apart the shittier things got with Maisy’s case—but sometimes he just needed a breather. Sometimes he just needed to not think about what was going on outside the confines of his apartment.
He’d seen the look on Derek’s face when Sam told him what was happening with Maisy’s bio dad, and it was the last thing he wanted right then. Derek was probably one of the people he trusted above anyone, but Derek’s desire to help could sometimes feel a little suffocating.
When he escaped onto his back patio for a little fresh air, he heard the door open and close a few mome
nts after him, and he almost spun to tell whoever it was to fuck off. Only it wasn’t Derek, or James, or Matty. It was Niko, the new guy Derek had brought over who had clearly been flirting with him during dinner. And Sam would’ve been the worst liar in the entire world if he tried to claim that Niko wasn’t appealing. The guy was unbelievably good looking. Bulky arms from his hours at the gym combined with the square-framed glasses he wore, giving him that hot-librarian look which he found impossible to resist.
Sam was finding himself clinging to the bro-code morals by a thread, and that thread was getting strained by the careful and intense way Niko was looking at him.
“You can tell me to fuck off,” Niko said, thumbing behind his shoulder. “I just…you looked like maybe you needed someone to talk to who wasn’t one of those guys.”
Sam snorted, dragging a hand down his face as he leaned back against the firm backing of his chair. “That obvious?”
“I get it. I have those days, believe me. We don’t need to talk about what’s going on if you don’t want to. We can just bullshit.”
Sam considered him for a moment, then shrugged. “You got some bullshit in mind?”
Niko smiled a little, shuffling his feet. “Can I sit?”
“Be my guest. No chairs out here, but you can pop a squat on the cement if you want to.”
Niko didn’t seem deterred, stretching his legs down along the ramp and leaning back on his arms to look up at Sam. “You into sports?”
The corner of Sam’s mouth twitched, and he felt something warm inside him. Most people were terrified to bring up anything physical with him, as though even a reminder that he couldn’t play standard sports might set him off or send him spiraling. So, he couldn’t help but enjoy the way Niko didn’t skirt around the topic.
“Don’t really follow much. You?”
Niko shrugged one shoulder. “Hockey sometimes.”
“You got a team?” Sam asked.
