Harrisburg Railers Box Set 2

by R J Scott

  Me?

  “I wasn’t shouting at Bryan,” Connor said, and he sounded a lot closer than the door, like he was actually right up in front of Stan. “Big Russian idiot, get out of my way,” Connor added and then huffed as he pushed Stan to one side. Stan moved a little, but not all the way, and he looked fierce when I caught his expression. A warmth bloomed inside but vanished when I saw how close Connor was. Abruptly face-to-face with the captain of the Railers, I didn’t know what the hell to say. Seemed I didn’t need to say anything and that Connor had all the words.

  “You don't deserve any kind of evil shit that Aarni had going on. Anyone of us walking in on Aarni causing trouble would have defended you or stood by your side if you needed us. This has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with Ten. What I see here is premeditation from Aarni to hurt Ten, a threat he carried out, so I need to know exactly what he said. To you and to Ten.”

  “Here?” I asked, glancing around at the Railers, who all looked as pissed as Connor did.

  Connor was suddenly embarrassed. “Shit, no, of course not. We can go somewhere quiet.”

  This was the moment. I could go two ways from here, not tell my story, and no one would ever know anything, or I could just get everything off my chest.

  I don’t know how I actually managed to stop talking once I started. I had so much to say, and it poured out until there was nothing left. When I finished, I heard a noise at the door. Gatlin was standing there with an understanding expression. We stared at each other for a long moment, and then Gatlin cleared his throat, causing everyone to look at him.

  “Sorry to interrupt, guys, but Brady is ten minutes away.”

  Boston had been playing Pittsburgh, less than four hours by car, but it hadn’t been that long, had it? Maybe they’d let him use the jet. I mean, how bad was this injury?

  Abruptly the room fell quiet and respectful. Brady would be walking into this group of men who hadn’t managed to stop his little brother being hurt. He’d be devastated and furious.

  We drifted back to the chairs in small clusters around the room, and I ended up sitting with Stan and Erik.

  “What did you say to me on the ice,” I asked after a moment’s silent contemplation of everything. Stan looked up at me with a blank expression. “When I was hitting Aarni,” I explained.

  Stan stiffened at the name, and Erik placed a hand on his knee. I’m not sure that was enough for the big Russian to back down though because there was a flash of anger in his eyes.

  “We make kill later,” he said and then laced his fingers with Erik’s. “Aarni, we make dead him, after this day.”

  I’m sure that Stan was talking rhetorically, but who knew with the big, bad Russian.

  “Stan tried to get into the Raptors’ locker room,” Adler said from behind me.

  “I’m kill,” Stan said, and there was no way he was being dissuaded.

  Was it wrong to admit that the words Stan spoke, low, gruff, and utterly certain, made me think that Aarni would somehow pay for what he’d done to Ten? We hadn’t heard a thing about what had happened to Aarni, not after he’d been removed from the ice.

  “Connor got in his way, a human-captain barrier against Stan’s temper.” Adler knocked elbows with me. “He’s a brave man. I wouldn’t get in between Stan and someone who had hurt a loved one.”

  The door opened, and Coach Benning stepped into our private area. Everyone stood, and he raised a hand to quiet any questions.

  “He’s comfortable,” was all he said.

  Every one of us had to have the same question. What kind of bullshit summary was that? Was Ten badly hurt? Was he dying? Would he play hockey again?

  We didn’t have a chance to say a thing or ask any questions when Gatlin arrived back at the door, along with Brady Rowe. The oldest Rowe brother was the captain of Boston, had seen so much in his time, the same as other players in their thirties. He was calm, but the pain and fear in his eyes made my heart hurt.

  They ushered him through, and we all sat again. Jamie would arrive in a few hours, and then their parents. We would be sitting here waiting and praying. We had a game in two days, at home, Buffalo in town, but all I could think was that Ten’s blood was mixed into the ice in a way that no skater ever wanted to see again.

  We sat there for most of the night. Jamie arrived and hurried past, and a little later, Ten’s parents were there, his mom red-eyed but stoic, his dad pale. Only when they went in did Jared come out.

  We hadn’t seen him in all the hours we’d been at the hospital, and I imagined he’d been by Ten’s side for as long as he could be. Stan and Connor walked up to him immediately, screening him from the rest of us. Then they stepped back. Jared took a long drink from a water bottle, and after a few moments, he began to haltingly explain everything.

  “He’s awake some of the time; that’s a good sign. He has a skull fracture from falling at an angle. He uhmmm…” Jared swallowed and then cleared his throat. “He can’t talk and can’t move his left arm, has a contusion…” Jared tapped at his head, “… blood on the brain, and a skate caught him here.” This time he drew a finger from ear to throat. “That accounts for the blood they think…it was very close…” His voice broke, and for a second, he bent over with his hands on his knees, his breathing ragged.

  “You want to sit down?” Connor asked and pressed a hand to his shoulder.

  “No… I need to get back in. I just wanted… It was important to tell you all.” He took a moment to corral his wild breathing. “It missed his external carotid artery by a millimeter. Just one small breath difference. There’s nothing anyone can do but wait. You can all go home. I promise I’ll call someone to pass on messages.”

  None of us wanted to leave. Stan sat stubbornly on the seat, and he was the only one who wouldn’t do what the coaches and Connor wanted. They said we should go. Stan wasn’t budging, although Erik had to leave for Noah. So I sat with Stan, and no amount of cajoling or ordering was moving the two weird goalies.

  No sir, no way. I was Stan’s backup, and this was where I belonged.

  If that meant that Buffalo scored on us a hundred times in the next game because we were exhausted, then so be it.

  Of course, everyone in management, trying to be responsible, was pissed at us. But, we were there when his parents came out with Jamie and Brady, and we got them coffee and sat with them until they went back in. We were useful.

  Jared didn’t come out once.

  “I hate this,” Brady muttered on his last walk out of the room. He kicked at the nearest table and then the door, and finally, he picked up a chair and threw it at the wall. Only when he'd thrown his third chair did Stan intervene, gripping his arms and letting the oldest Rowe brother cry.

  When they separated, not one of us said a thing. We would take this single moment to the grave with us. Hockey players don’t cry. They get hurt, they stand right back up, there’s blood on the ice, you scrape it away, and you carry the fuck on.

  So we would never tell anyone that Brady Rowe, captain of a hockey team, cried in Stan’s arms or that Stan joined in with the grief for his best friend.

  Nor that I watched them and cried with them.

  We saw Ten at a little after nine a.m. Jared needed to talk to management, and he wanted Stan to get a chance to see Ten. That was all. I never expected to be able to go in as well, but Stan tugged at my arm and wouldn’t leave me alone. He was talking to me in Russian and refused to release me.

  Stepping inside Ten’s room, I didn’t know what to expect. Wires, tubes, his mouth covered with a guard possibly, at least a combination of all the horrors I’d seen on television. But he was actually peaceful and seemed to be merely sleeping.

  Stan hip-checked me closer to the bed, and we were finally next to Ten, and as if he knew we were there, he opened his eyes, and there was recognition in their green depths. There were bandages on his throat, and they’d shaved some of his hair, and fuck, he was white, but the essence of Ten was sti
ll there and still focused.

  Stan patted Ten’s chest. “Is much okay, am kill Lankinen.”

  Ten’s eyes widened, and I shoved at Stan. “We’re not killing anyone.”

  When Stan subsided into silence, I didn’t know what to say next, and a small awkward part of me wanted to fill the quiet. “I’m sorry that he hurt you. It was all my fault.”

  At first, Ten appeared frustrated with his inability to talk. Then he raised his hand and gripped mine, and he held it so tight and frowned up at me. He shook his head a little and winced, and I squeezed his hand and then extricated myself from his firm hockey grip. His other arm lay useless on the bed, and I remembered Jared said that Ten couldn’t move it.

  Jared came back into the room, and we quietly left, but as I glanced back at Jared pressing a soft kiss on Ten’s forehead, that familiar terror hit me. What if this was Ten done? What if the man they dubbed a future Hall of Famer, a champion, was done? How could he live the rest of his life without hockey?

  Life was so damn short, so why was I wasting it being so fucking scared of myself and the world around me. I’m a freaking tough hockey player, and my life so far had been a mess of insecurity and stupid situations.

  I am going to channel the fuck out of my inner hero, and I am going to be the best man I can be.

  First of all, though, I really need to find Gatlin. Because I really wanted to be with him when it was my turn to cry.

  Fourteen

  Gatlin

  So many tears…

  The past couple of days had been like walking through a Silent Hill game. Our lives had become gray and foggy, filled with demons that lurked out of sight, dragging massive swords on metal floors, the sound coming closer and closer, death right around every murky corner. I’d come awake from that particular nightmare a few times, usually at Fuck-Me-o’clock, to find Bryan either tossing and turning or gone from my bed. This time, the horrors woke me at five a.m., and my man was at my side, sleeping peacefully.

  I rolled over and touched him, his face, his ear, his eyebrow. Wound in slumber, Bryan wrinkled his nose, so I stopped and just let my hand drift over his chest and stomach. Palm over his navel, the scent of him all over me and the bed, I studied his chest rising and falling.

  “We have a game tonight,” Bryan murmured groggily, pulling my gaze from his chest to his face. His eyelids were heavy and his hair flat to one side of his head. “I can’t even think about hockey right now.”

  I leaned down to drop a kiss to his shoulder, right beside a small birthmark. He moved a bit, a slow ripple of muscle that reminded me of a snake, the movement starting at his neck and rolling downward, moving his body in a sinuous, undulating way.

  “Bryan…” I said, the sensation of him moving against me stirring up desires that had no place in a mood such as the one we’d been trapped in.

  “Nothing is right,” he said, wrapping his fingers around my wrist and leading my hand to his cock, the sheets smooth and cool brushing the back of my hand. “Nothing is good right now. The team is lost, Jared is on an extended leave, the league is investigating Aarni, and that will lead them to me. I’ll have to talk to the league about us…tell them how I let him…” He drew in a shaky breath, his hand wrapping mine around his dick. My cock began to fatten up despite my mind chiding it to stop. “Ten is so bad, and nothing is right. But this? You and me? This is the only right and good thing I have right now. Can you love me just a little? Show me there’s light and good?”

  “Of course,” I whispered, covering his mouth with mine as we stroked him slowly. His hand fell to the bed. I pulled the covers off to expose his body. Then, I touched and kissed, sucking when he asked and stopping when it was too much. His hips punched upward with each brush of my fingers. I worked my way down until I had his erection in my mouth. Bryan groaned, his fingers ripping the bottom sheet off the mattress so quickly the elastic snapped. Pleasuring him, I kind of found myself stepping out of the terrors of the injury to our friend. With his balls on my tongue and my hand working him, we left the darkness behind, if just for a short while. I sucked on his nuts, eyes closed in bliss, then licked a sloppy path back to his cock. He lifted his ass from the bed.

  “Gatlin…suck hard. Get me off. Get me off.”

  That breathy plea nearly ended me. I released my hand from his dick, then sucked him down my throat, my free hand cupping his wet balls, tugging and rolling as he writhed and shouted. He came with a hard thrust that made my eyes water. Hot spunk coated my throat. Swallowing rapidly, moving my hand to my own cock, I sucked him even harder and faster, getting a yelp of pure bliss out of the man that kicked off my own orgasm. I shot all over his thigh, his cock sliding from between my lips, leaving a thin slick of cum over my lower lip. Bucking like a bronco, I fisted myself even harder, each shudder intense.

  “Ah, shit,” I coughed, my palm gliding over the head of my cock, making the tremors start again.

  “Thank you,” I heard him say before he tugged on my head, his grip firm on my jaw, and led me to his mouth. He heaved me onto my back, long legs knotting up with mine, his hip flush to mine, his tongue probing deep. When the kiss ended, he hoisted himself up, both arms locked, his hands on either side of my head. “Thank you for that little bit of right.”

  “No need to thank me.” I reached up to cup his face. “I want to give you all the right a man can give another man. Whenever you need it.”

  “I love you.”

  “And I love you. Now go shower and do hockey. Tennant would not want his team to give up simply because he’s been sidelined for a bit.”

  We all knew that Ten was not out for a bit. We all knew that Tennant Rowe had a long and arduous journey ahead. We also knew that Tennant Rowe was a fighter.

  Bryan blinked a few times, stole another kiss, and then left our bed, his body flushed with sex. As he padded off to shower and get ready for the morning skate, my gaze latched onto the tattoo on his lower back. There was no ugly there now, only art, beauty, color, and light. I sprang from the bed, as well as a man my age could spring, and grabbed my sketchpad and my colored pencils from the dresser. Then I called a few people until I was put into contact with Brady Rowe.

  After Bryan took off, I did as well. My first appointment wasn’t until two, perks of owning your own shop, so I drove to the hospital, backpack filled with pencils, pens, and a new sketchpad filled with new ideas. I had no clue if I could even get in to see Tennant, but I had to try. If his family let me in and if he couldn’t talk yet, I’d even brought the bell from the counter. He could ding once for yes and twice for no. If that didn’t work, I’d just write the letters down on paper and recite the alphabet, and he could ding on the right letter until we spelled something out. Hey, it worked on Breaking Bad so it would work for us.

  My plans hit a small snag when I ran into a security guard sitting outside Tennant’s room. This was new. Probably some asshole sports blogger or fan had tried to sneak in to see or talk or take a picture of Ten in his hospital bed. Nothing would surprise me. When I approached the man in the dark suit and even darker shades, I paused a foot away in case he had a taser. I wasn’t exactly the most reputable-looking person with my scruffy face, ripped jeans, shitkickers, and Sons of Anarchy – Redwood Original T-shirt under a hand-painted Led Zeppelin denim jacket. The inkwork sneaking out of my sleeves and the collar of my shirt probably added to my classy look.

  He rose from his folding chair and stared down at me. Then he spoke. Whatever he was saying, it was not in English. I suspected it was Russian. The man was the size of a bull elephant, and his bald head gleamed under the fluorescent lights. I’d heard Stan mention that he “knew people” but never suspected that he really “knew people” who would sooner carve out your spleen with a rusty butter knife than look at you.

  “Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Go away now.”

  I hefted my backpack a little higher on my shoulder, ready to engage in verbal war when someone called my name from behind me. I glanced back and saw
Ryker, Jared’s son, walking toward us with a tray filled with large coffee cups.

  “He’s cool. We know him,” Ryker, who apparently had been run over a few times by Mr. Angry Pachyderm here, told the security person/bodyguard/terrifying human being.

  “Da.” The man sat back down and returned to staring holes into the wall.

  “He’s someone Stan knows. We gave up asking how,” Ryker informed me, using his hip to nudge at the door.

  I hustled around him and pushed the door into the private room open. “Thanks.” Yeah, the kid was exhausted. You could tell by his weary tone and the bags under his eyes.

  “Dad, Ten, look who Igor was intimidating.”

  I slipped in on Ryker’s heels, feeling terribly out of place. Jared was seated beside Tennant in an ugly orange chair, his face thick with whiskers, his eyes as tired as Ryker’s were. Ten was still a mass of tubes and wires, but his eyes, those bright green eyes, were alert.

  “Yo,” Tennant croaked after a full moment had passed. Jared’s smile was brilliant.

  “Hey, you’re talking. That’s awesome. I probably shouldn’t have come, but I kind of had this idea…”

  “Don’t be silly. Sit down here.” Jared stood slowly, groaning as his back popped several times. “I need to walk a bit.” Jared brushed a tender kiss to Tennant’s brow. Then Ryker handed his father a cup of coffee before he left. I stood at the end of the bed; the white walls and bedding glaringly bright.

  “Only two people allowed in here at a time,” Ryker informed me, then flopped into another, equally ugly, chair in the corner. The window was open, the blinds casting strips of bright sunlight on the man lying amid all that technology and white bedding.

  “Shit, I didn’t realize. I should go and let Jared be here.”

  “No, really, it’s cool. He needs to get up and move.” Ryker said, then yawned into his coffee.