Page 6 of Goaltender Interference

He realized, belatedly, that hewassaying, “Please, please, please—” whenever Matt allowed him to breathe. Begging over and over again for something he couldn’t even bring himself to describe. Not now, not from Matt, not after all of this time.

But Matt gave it to him anyway, his calloused hand too hot, almost feverish against Aiden’s skin. Aiden managed to get his hand down Matt’s pants, too; Matt hissed when Aiden rolled his thumb around the head of his dick and through the moisture beaded there.

Matt was so close there was barely any space for their hands to move, grinding up against Aiden’s body, their knuckles bumping, clothes pushed down and disarrayed. Matt wrapped his hand around both of them, and Aiden’s entire body flinched at the sensation as Matt’s hand sped up.

They had stopped kissing, didn’t have the coordination for it, just panting into each other’s mouths. The air was humid between them, lips barely brushing, and Aiden clutched Matt’s arms like that alone could somehow keep him on his feet. His entire body felt like it had been hit by lightning, an electric current running between all of the places his skin touched Matt’s. He was so keyed up, so sensitive, that he couldn’tpossibly hold out long. Matt’s hand was merciless, on the edge of too much.

Aiden shivered and came, wet against his shirt, sticky between them. His knees buckled with the force of it, but Matt kept going, shoving him back against the door so he couldn’t move, so he had to keep standing. And then itwastoo much, oversensitive and rough, and Aiden’s gasps sounded very loud in the quiet house.

He didn’t saystop.

He didn’t want to stop.

He didn’t want—

Matt buried his face in the crook of Aiden’s neck when he came, and Aiden could almost feel the thud of his heart trapped between them.

They didn’t stay that way long. Matt pulled away and swallowed hard, looked down at the mess of his shirt and Aiden’s clothes, at Aiden’s softening dick hanging sadly out in the open. He pulled his pants up and tried to adjust his shirt while Aiden stared, dumb and unable to move, even to try to preserve his dignity.

Their eyes met and Matt’s face softened almost imperceptibly before setting in the mask again.

He said, “Let me go.”

Aiden moved to the side, and let him.

For several long moments after he left Aiden’s house, Matt stood on the front stoop, swaying on his feet.

He wasfucked up, and even though he was still kind of drunk, his current state was only about a quarter alcohol. The rest of it was just Aiden Campbell, the same way Aiden had alwaysfucked him up. He put his hand out to grab the doorframe and tried to process what he had just done.

Matt had been the captain of the Montreal Royal, an Original Six team and the oldest and most storied franchise in the league, for years now. It was a position that required steadiness and responsibility and always doing the right thing and being conscious of your public image. It was a commitment as much as it was a job. He’d voluntarily taken the honor and weight of that onto his shoulders.

The captain of the Montreal Royal didn’t get drunk in New York on a family vacation and fuck his ex against a door. Except, apparently, when he did.

It had been more than a decade since things fell apart. Matt had thought he was over it. He had done the work to get over it. It was very clear in that moment, shivering in the dark and still unable to get his feet to walk down the stairs of Aiden Campbell’s front stoop, that he wasn’t over it at all.

His head was still spinning and he knew his hair was sticking up at all kinds of insane angles, his face was red and his mouth swollen, and his shirt was a fuckingmess. There was no way that he was going to be able to make it back to the house the family had rented without Miles asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions.

He’d probably already figured it out; after Aiden and Walker had left the bar, Matt made it a little under fifteen minutes before saying, “I have to go.”

The look Miles had given him said it all.

The stupid, self-destructive part of him, the part that had reached out to Duncs in the first place, said:Ring the bell. He’s still in there. Go talk to him. Actuallytalkto him.

The part of him that had any kind of self-preservation whatsoever said:run.

He made himself consciously put one foot and then the other down those stairs. Forced himself to walk away from Aiden’s beautiful, soulless brownstone. Forced himself to walk away from beautiful, soulless Aiden.

It shouldn’t have been possible that a brief encounter in a crowded bar could have messed him up this badly, thrown him out of the carefully controlled routines of his existence like that.

It wasn’t like he hadneverseen Aiden over the years. Their teams played each other at least three times a season; they both appeared in the All-Star Game every few years. They’d been on the same Olympic team once and won a gold medal together. He’d survived all of those things. None of that was the same as looking up and feeling the immediate gut punch of seeing Aiden’s face, reallyseeinghim, for the first time in over a decade.

Aiden hadn’t even looked the same. His light brown skin had a grayish pallor. His hair had gotten long and shaggy and he had a scruffy beard that did nothing to hide the lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His wide brown eyes looked haunted. There were dark circles under them like he’d been punched repeatedly, and his expressive mouth, which Matt mostly remembered smiling and laughing and teasing, turned down at the corner in a frown. The whole effect was a little like a medieval painting of a saint being martyred. He’d looked so worn down that despite everything Matt had felt the immediate urge to fold him up in his arms before he realized how fucking stupid that thought was.

Aiden’s body had felt the same, though. He’d panted for it the same eager way he always had. The noise he’d made when Matt took what he wanted from him had been the same. The faint, dark brown freckles on his nose were the same. Matt wondered whether the freckles on his shoulders were, too.

God, what the fuck had he been thinking? Hehadn’tbeen thinking. Not with his head, anyway.

He walked briskly down the street back toward the house. When his parents had said they wanted to visit New York, he’d protested, but hadn’t fully been able to explain why. It was a huge city, and he hadn’t even known where Aiden lived anymore. As far as his parents knew, he had moved on when he married Emily. If anything, they were still worried about himafterEmily, two years post-divorce, and that was why they’d dragged him down here. Part of him had dreaded going. And part of him had hoped that even in a city of eight and a half million people, there was a chance—a chance.

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