Page 8 of Home Ice Advantage

Ryan wasn’t sure how well the speech had gone. He was used to giving speeches; he’d given a shitload of them in Dallas. They’d come naturally and hadn’t flopped like a lead balloon. But the thing about giving speeches in locker rooms was that everyone was on the same page, everyone wanted the same thing: to win. In the locker room, he was a respected teammate and comrade, not an interloper who’d taken a job that probably both of them wanted.

Well, maybe not McCaskill, a middle-aged veteran with a paunchy belly and sleepy eyes who seemed about as easygoing a guy as Ryan had ever met.

Aronson was a different story.

They had played against each other not infrequently over the years. Aronson was a couple of years younger than Ryan, but they’d both taken a while to crack a major league roster and had come up right around the same time. They had never played in the same division, though, so at most it was three or so times a year.

There had been one contentious playoff series that the Stampede had lost. Ryan had never really looked at Aronson while they were playing. He’d been just another guy on the ice, a pest who lived to get under other players’ skins, who never shut the fuck up, no matter what.

Looking at Aronson now, Ryan was surprised he’d never noticed him before. Whatever the issues with his personality, Aronson was...noticeable. He was tall. Not as tall as Murph, but definitely a lot taller than Ryan, with the kind of body players got sometimes when they still worked out regularly but weren’t working out for a playing season, gangly and muscular but not bulky.

It was his face, though, that was hard to look away from.

Aronson’s nose dominated his face, strong and pronounced, but the rest of his features seemed almost too big, too. Huge dark brown eyes and an equally broad mouth, twisted in a smirk or down in a frown. Your attention went right to those eyes, too, because his glasses magnified them, huge-lensed wire frames. Heavy eyebrows with the same sarcastic tilt as his mouth, just pointed in the opposite direction. He had what seemed like a perpetual five-o’clock shadow on his chin and jaw and a mop of unruly, wavy black hair that was just a little bit too long.

He was wearing the same thing they all wore, Beacons sweats in preparation for practice. He looked, a little bit, like a looming crow.

Ryan realized, too late, that Aronson was staring back at him. He frowned. He was just sizing up the coaching staff he had to work with, there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Ryan had to shake himself a little, weirdly unsettled by the whole thing.

He couldn’t afford to be distracted right now, either. He had the locker room to talk to. This would be establishing the rapport he hoped to have with the players for the rest of the season. Maybe beyond, if it worked out for him and he liked the work and Conroy wanted to remove theinterimtag from Ryan’s title, not that he was going to do anything except ignore the pressure and do his best to focus on the day-to-day. And then after practice, he would have to meet with the media for the first time.

Growing up in a hockey town like Boston, Ryan was used to the kind of scrutiny a head coach received. It probably wasn’t as bad as it was in Toronto or Montreal, but it was definitely way more intense than Dallas. Ryan was pretty much prepared for the skepticism he’d end up facing, but he had to be on top of things to do it. Getting distracted worrying about Aronson wasn’t it.

As Ryan packed up his shit to head down to the locker room with McCaskill and Aronson, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it. The banner saidDad. Ryan sighed: he could ignore it, but that only meant his dad would keep calling, and today was not the opportune time for that shit.

“Dad,” Ryan said, “I don’t really have time to talk right now, I have to go down to the locker room to meet the guys.”

“I won’t keep you. I know how busy you are,” Dad said, and Ryan’s skin crawled when he heard the tone. Oh, Dad was pissed. He wasn’t yelling and his voice wasn’t loud, but he waspissed. “Were you ever gonna tell your father that you’re coaching the Boston fuckin’ Beacons, or was I always gonna have to find out fifth-hand from Christopher down the block?”

“I was going to tell you, it’s just been kind of a crazy couple of days, I’ve barely had a chance to breathe.” He could see Aronson watching him from the corner of his eye, those heavy eyebrows raised. Like he was either skeptical or making fun. Ryan’s skin felt itchy, like he was going to snap, either at his dad, or at Aronson. He didn’t like it one bit: it wasn’t the frame of mind he needed.

Dad hissed out a breath between his teeth, and said, “So you’re back home now, eh?”

“For now.”

“You gonna comehometo see us?”

“I don’t know. Probably sometime soon. Dad, I really can’t talk. I’m headed down to the locker rooms and then I gotta meet the media.”

“You do what you gotta do, Ry. But I gotta say that if you don’t come home, the family’s gonna be real disappointed.I’malready real disappointed. All we ever wanted to do was celebrate your success.”

Ryan exhaled. For a second, he wanted to laugh.

All we ever wanted to do was celebrate your successsounded like a threat when it came out of Dad’s mouth. A lot of things did. Particularly when Ryan knew what was waiting for him if he went back home to hang out with his brothers and their families. Dad wouldn’t know about the impending divorce yet, and that was another thing he’d have to put off as long as humanly possible.

He’d gone for a four-mile run this morning before heading to the practice facility and he still felt as fidgety and defensive as he always did when he got too close to Southie.

Aronson was still watching him, quizzical and judging.

Bizarrely, Ryan felt the need to explain. It wasn’t any of Aronson’s business. Hehatedtalking about this shit, even with Murph, who implicitly understood because his family was the same way. Something about the way Aronson was looking at him just slipped right under his skin. “My family. They’re all, uh, hockey guys, too. But I’m the one who’s gotten the furthest, so...it gets complicated.”

“You don’t have to explain to us,” Aronson said hastily, looking away for the first time to exchange a glance with McCaskill.

“It’s not going to be an issue,” Ryan said firmly. “I’m setting my phone to silent.”

To his surprise, Aronson laughed. He had a nice laugh, like his voice: deep and somehow bigger than his body. “Might as well chuck it in the toilet at that rate.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Ryan said dryly.

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