Page 4 of Changes on Ice

He’d never admit it, but Cross was everything Rusty wanted to be. Not just rich, although it turned out his family owned a private plane, but hockey-smart and life-smart, good looking and cool and friendly with everyone. Plus a player so talented that his smaller size didn’t keep him from laying the biggest forwards out flat with his speed and leverage and timing. A Norris best-defenseman trophy winner, and an All-Star three years in a row.

And cool. Cross had apparently been super cool under pressure, driving that fucking SUV when he and Scott and Casey and Dale were hijacked last summer.

Fury rose up in Rusty at the memory of all that happened, bitter acid scalding his throat as hot as the shower on his back. The man who’d tried to use Scott as a hostage with a gun to his head, had tried to force Cross to help him escape justice? That was Coach Dawson,Rusty’shigh school hockey coach. The guy who taught him saucer passes and gap control. Someone Rusty, Dale, and all their teammates had trusted on the ice and in the locker room, and in the end, a man making his money off drugs in the school. A man who’d turned a blind eye to murder that ripped Rusty’s family apart.

A motherfucking, kid-killing bastard that Rusty would have given his keys to, would’ve obeyed, would’vehelped, until the mask was pulled away.

Rusty gritted his teeth against a rough breath. Thank God Casey had stopped Dawson. Had then tracked down and busted Dawson’s accomplice, Mike’s true killer, and brought them both to justice.

Mike.

Tears stung Rusty’s eyes and he turned his face into the spray of the shower.Little brother.Last summer had been a clusterfuck, a fragmentation grenade going off inside Rusty’s life. When it was over, his parents had disowned him, his coach was a drug dealer, his high school teammate Dale was traumatized by that violent car ride, and his brother Mike was dead at sixteen.

Rusty scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to push the memories aside. The locker room was a bad place to get emotional.Cross. Think about Cross.

In the aftermath, Cross had been a steady presence for them all. Dale said when he’d thought they were going to die, Cross’s calm voice and steady gaze had helped him keep his head. And then when Scott, Will, and Casey immediately took off after the killer, Dale said Cross had been at his side through the medical check and the police station and all the crap that followed.

Cross had come back and stayed in Kansas for weeks afterward, too, playing hockey with Scott and Rusty and Dale and the other team guys, encouraging them, reminding them the world had good guys in it. He’d paid for a therapist for Dale when his family’s insurance wouldn’t cover the cost. Cross had been like a rock for all of them. Rusty had gone through some emotional shit, between losing his brother and getting kicked out by his family, and while he’d talked to a therapist, working with Cross on his defense skills had been the best thing for quieting down his ridiculous brain.

Scott, Will, and Casey had done their best for Rusty and his friends, and Scott’s willingness to train with him all summer was probably the reason Rusty had a spot on the Gryphons, but it was Cross who’d made him feel like he could make it.

And in the months since then, sporadic texts from Cross had been bright spots in his weeks of daily hockey grind. He heard from Scott off and on, and Will fairly regularly, but seeing Cross’s name pop up on his message list was…

Snap!

A painful line of fire bit across his ass. Rusty snorted water as he jumped and whirled around.

Morty stood back far enough from the shower to stay dry, swinging a thin piece of cord from one hand. He laughed at Rusty’s glare. “Falling asleep in the shower, Dodo? Wouldn’t want you to drown. You should thank me for waking you up.”

Rusty managed not to put a hand to the whip line across his butt. He debated directing a stream of shower water onto Morty’s shoes. The correct angle of his palm would do the job. Even though it was the beginning of March, driving home with soaked sneakers would be uncomfortable. But the petty-retaliations game had gotten so, so old. Rusty assumed a bland expression. “Yeah, I’m exhausted. Ready to go home.” He kept an eye on Morty’s hand with the cord, ready to dodge, because a lash across the dick would be a hell of a lot harder to ignore.

He saw Morty think about it, his hand moving in a bigger arc, but Bellser stood in the doorway toweling his hair and some of the others still hung around laughing and talking in the locker room. Whacking a guy’s ass was a “prank.” Whacking his junk was something else.

Morty snorted. “Your dick’s so small I can’t tell your front from your back.”

Your girlfriend know you check out the size of men’s dicks?Comebacks were another temptation that Rusty tried to work out of his system. If he let Morty think he’d gotten the last word,the dickhead would get tired of harassing him and walk away. Talking back just set Rusty up for another round of bait-the-queer.

Deliberately, Rusty turned partially away from Morty, getting his hair under the spray for a good rinse. He half-closed his eyes, but watched the big defenseman sidelong from under lowered lashes.

Morty paced a couple of steps, then stuffed the cord in his pocket and headed out of the room.

Rusty shut off the shower and reached toward his towel.Probably lucky Morty didn’t toss it into the water.That had happened often enough, but luckily the arena didn’t skimp on them. There was always another dry one.

“Here.” Bellser grabbed the terrycloth off the wall hook and passed it over.

“Thanks.” Rusty began rubbing his hair. At least with Bellser, he didn’t have to worry the towel was boobytrapped. Because yeah, that’d happened too. Bellser was chill, though.

Right now, he looked uncomfortable. “Morty’s a dick.”

Rusty kept his voice low. “You might say that.”

“You know he’s jealous, right? He’s been bouncing between the ECHL and the AHL for six years, and every time he goes up for a game or two, he ends up right back down here. Drives him crazy. And then you came along, better than him already, took his spot on the second line.”

“Wasn’t his spot. Coach made that clear.” On the first day of training camp, their original coach had told them every position on every line was up for grabs.

“He thought it was. Got comfortable and lazy.”

Rusty shrugged and ran the towel down his back. He figured all of that was excuses. Morty was a homophobic bastard and probably wouldn’t have been any better if the team’s first out gay player had been a center or a goalie.

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