Page 96 of Dangle

It left no room for me to be, well, me. I had all the support I wanted, more than I wanted, really, but that was it. My life, my entire existence, revolved around hockey. Nothing else mattered.

“And I’m not exactly riding the bench. I played twenty-two minutes of our last game. I average twenty-one a game, and I am at the top of the leaderboards in shots on goal, goals, points, and assists. You name it. This is not about how gooda player I am. This is about the Wardens being a bunch of fucking homophobic pricks.”

“Being the best is about making sacrifices, you ungrateful little bastard. Being at the top isn’t the fucking same as being on top. And it still doesn’t change a fucking thing. You are a disgrace.”

“I’m not a fucking disgrace. I’m a fucking Olympic gold medalist!”

“Yeah, so are a lot of people. I have two of my own. If anyone got pulled from The U’s roster this year, it should’ve been you, but no. You had to go and fuck it up by fighting and bullying and being an idiot, leading the league in penalty minutes.”

“The NCAA doesn’t track individual penalty minutes,” I said.

He scoffed, smacking another puck at the goal, the lights and horns sounding as it hit the back of the net. “They may not, but the Wardens do on every player they draft. Any team worth its salt keeps stats on its drafted unsigned players. How many penalty minutes does that Mercer kid have?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that Aiden Mercer’s an amazing player. One of the best. He has more raw natural talent than any player I’ve played with or against. He deserved to be signed,” I said.

“He’s fucking queer,” my dad sneered, hatred turning the features we shared ugly as the words he screamed echoed through the rink.

I’d had it. My filter had reached maximum overload. “So am I!” I screamed back at him, unable to hold my tongue. The words clawed their way up out of my soul.

He knew my preferences. Everyone knew my sexuality. I’d been photographed with men and women, and enby, cis, and trans. Attraction and who I fucked had little to do with labelsand nothing to do with gender. The vibe a person gave off drew me in. Some of the most gorgeous people in the world had hit on me, but if their…spirit…didn’t call to me, then I wasn’t interested.

He thought calling me names would make me hide. “This is why I came out in the first place before I ever entered the draft. I refuse to live as anything other than my authentic self. I don’t give a fuck if people know who I like to fuck or who I am attracted to. I am not fucking ashamed to be queer. I’ve never been ashamed. I am out and proud, and I’ll fuck and love whomever I please. You and the Wardens and the whole fucking league can fuck off or get the fuck over yourselves. I don’t give a damn anymore.”

He barreled toward me, blades cutting deep grooves in the ice. His fist twisted in my practice jersey as he pulled me to him, nose-to-nose, spittle peppering my face as he said, “Then maybe you should consider turning cocksucker for your coach like that fucking faggot reject. It worked for that eyeliner-wearing faggot you let yourself be pictured with while wearing his damn jersey. Sucking cock got him a contract. Maybe it’ll get you one, too.”

And there it was, the man I called father showing his true colors. Dad and his cronies had spouted slurs like that, and worse, as far back as I could remember. I’d heard them all. But they weren’t something I put up with outside this fucking cesspool. I hadn’t allowed that shit on any team I captained since the first time the A got stitched onto my jersey. And I was over allowing it now.

My hands came up, ramming into his shoulders and shoving him away. “You’re the disgrace, motherfucker. You’re the prick who’s trying to relive his glory days through me. Go fuck yourself. I’m over it.”

I skated toward the net, picking up my stick and gloves where I’d dropped them the moment he started in on me.

“Trey!”

I turned toward my mother’s voice coming from the partition between her rink and ours, and everything went black.

TWENTY-FIVE

SLONE

At five a.m. Trey’s alarm went off as it always did. I woke as I had nearly every morning for the whole month before I hopped a plane to New York. Hair tickled my nose. The warm solid body of a hockey player pressed against my front. His ass crack cradled my cock. My thigh pressed forward between his, and I held his junk in my hand.

It was a damn good morning. Or it would have been had either of us gotten more than an hour of sleep at a stretch. I reached toward the nightstand to turn it off.

“Don’t,” he muttered. “I gotta get up.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s the off-season, and it’s a holiday. And we both had a long, mostly sleepless night. We can sleep in.”

He turned over in my arms. The bruise on his face had grown and now sported an array of blues, pinks, yellows, greens, purples, a bit of red, and even some black. “You’re gorgeous, baby, as always, so don’t take this the wrong way, but that cheek looks ten times worse than it did yesterday.”

He closed his eyes and a second later a shiver ran through him—bone-deep, and it went on, and on, it seemed.

“It’s fine. All bruises get worse before they get better. I had bruises all over me in Nashville, and I know you stripped me when you put me to bed.”

“Uh, no. You stripped yourself, came on to me, then puked and then passed the fuck out. And those didn’t look anywhere near this bad.”

He pressed his lips to mine, the free hand not tucked under him cupping my cheek. “I can see out of the eye, the vision is clear, and the head CT showed no fractures, concussion, or cranial bleeding. I’m okay, Daddy. I appreciate you worrying about me.”

“Fuck!” I growled, rolling him under me. “The way you say that and what it does to me should be illegal.”