Page 46 of No Line Change

“Hmm,” Everett grunted and kept walking. Novak caught Henri’s eye; they shared a concerned look.

“They going to let you on the ice?” Novak tried again. “Or you gotta go back out there?”

Everett thumped down onto the bench by his gear, eyes closed as he rolled his neck. It wasn’t clear he’d even heard Novak until he opened his eyes and sighed. “Yeah, I think I’m off the hook.” A grimace. “For now, anyway.”

The locker room cleared out before Everett was ready to hit the ice. Henri hesitated, then decided to take advantage of the rare moment of quiet. He pushed to his feet and stood in front of Everett, blocking his eventual path to the rink.

“Any questions left they didn’t ask you yet? Pythagorean theorem, maybe? Or the difference between affect and effect? Oh!” He snapped his fingers, the sound muted in his hockey gloves. “They’ll want to know your recipe for mac and cheese.”

Everett looked up at him and chuckled. Not a real laugh, but a good start. “Those might actually be worse. I barely passed math, haven’t written anything outside of text messages since I stopped college after freshman year, and I just use box mac and cheese.”

Henri hummed. “Yes, all disappointing answers. But they’ll ask soon, so you should be ready.” Joking around wasn’t doing much to lighten Everett’s mood, so he tried another tack. “You can skip interviews, you know. I’m sure the coaches wouldn’t mind.”

“They’d let me,” Everett agreed, but that was it.

Drastic times…

“Ready to beat your old friend?” Henri asked, testing the waters. One last try to shake something loose. Was this the self-assured Dylan Everett who led his team by example? Or was this the one they’d seen a few weeks ago who looked like he’d forgotten which end of the stick to hold?

Everett shrugged. “Yeah, I hope so.”

Henri held his breath, hoping Everett would say more. He didn’t, and Henri was about to give up, but he spotted something in Everett’s normally kind blue eyes.

He saw doubt.

Fuck. “You know,” Henri said as he sat down next to Everett. “You don’t need him.”

“What?” Everett was trying to look confused, and it might’ve worked if not for the vein at his temple.

“You don’t need him,” Henri repeated. “When they talk about Dylan Everett, they say he can make anyone look good. It wasn’t Sokolov making you look like a great scorer. You being a great scorer was making him look good.”

Everett’s lips twitched, and he gave a weak smile; it didn’t reach his eyes. “He seems to do just fine without me.”

“Aren’t you doing fine without him?” he countered. He wished he’d had time to actually do a side-by-side comparison of the two in the last year, if only to have something concrete to show Everett he was better than Sokolov. Though confident Everett’s numbers were good, Henri would feel better knowing specifics before mis-stepping.

“I’m trying, babe.” Everett sounded so sad, like the curtain had slipped to reveal the man beneath the hockey legend. And Henri understood in that moment—whether or not Everett had intended to let him see it—that he really did miss his friend more than he let on.

His friend who’d probably been a whole lot more than a friend or teammate or roommate.

“Well,” Henri said quietly. He put his hand on Everett’s knee. There was no way either of them could feel more than a light pressure through the gear, but Henri imagined the warmth radiating from Everett’s skin. “I personally guarantee that you’ll score tomorrow.”

And finally, that did it: Everett lit up.

“Baps, you throwing my own words back at me?”

Henri nodded solemnly. “I was told that Dylan Everett can score on command, so I’m commanding it.”

Everett’s lips parted as if he were about to say something. Then he closed them, swallowed, licked his lips. Still nothing for a few beats before a gravelly, “I don’t think I ever said that I can score on command.”

“We will see then, won’t we?” Henri forced himself to take his hand away, to stand up. “Let’s go before we get in trouble. No reporters bothered me, so I have no excuse to be the second-to-last one on the ice.”

“Uh, that’s really too bad.” A pause, then Everett jumped up and started running out of the locker room. “Because you’re going to be the last one!”

Henri’s jaw dropped. His feet caught up before the rest of him, sprinting after Everett. They reached the door to the rink at the same time, and the two of them got stuck in the door as they scrambled through the opening while trying to push the other back. Practice hadn’t even started, and his cheeks were flushed and his heart was thundering...

And he was so happy that he got to play with Dylan Everett.

CHAPTER 25