When he realized he was staring, Troy snapped his attention back to Harris’s face. Harris had stopped smiling. He was looking at Troy strangely—suspiciously—as if he’d spotted contempt in Troy’s expression when he’d been examining the pins. Troy wanted to correct him. Explain himself. But years of being rigorously careful made him unable to find the words now.
“Hey, Harris! Stop hogging the puppy!” That was Rozanov, interrupting Troy before he could make a fool of himself. But also before he could convince Harris that he wasn’t a homophobe.
One more disappointed glance from Harris, then the smile returned to his face as he walked off toward Ilya with the dog cradled in his arms. “I keep telling you to just adopt one of your own, Roz.”
“Who will take care of it when I am on the road? You?”
There was laughter on the other side of the room, and Troy was left alone and forgotten.
* * *
After all these years, Troy still got a thrill from stepping onto a pristine, freshly resurfaced sheet of ice. A couple of quick laps later, he began to feel settled. His life might be a mess, but hockey still made sense.
He knocked a couple of pucks that were sitting on the boards in front of the bench onto the ice and headed for the net with one. He fired a quick wrist shot that sailed into the top corner. Always satisfying.
When he turned back to the bench to grab another puck, he was surprised to find one already headed his way. He took the pass, then did a double take when he saw who’d fed it to him.
“Coach.”
“Barrett. First one on the ice. I like that.”
Ottawa’s head coach, Brandon Wiebe, was only in his early forties, barely older than some of his players. He’d had a long—though not exactly distinguished—NHL career himself as a forward, and this was his first season as a head coach.
Troy passed the puck back. “Just needed to clear my head a bit.”
“Best way to do it. You probably have a lot of shit to clear.”
That was the fucking truth. “I won’t be distracted.”
“Didn’t say you would be, though I wouldn’t blame you if you were.” Coach smiled wryly. “I think you’ll like it here, though. I’m a bit different from Bruce Cooper.”
Troy’s throat tightened at the mention of his former coach. Cooper was a hard-ass, but he had liked Troy a lot.
Not as much as he’d liked Dallas Kent, apparently, because he’d insisted on having a final meeting with Troy, minutes after Troy had learned he’d been traded. Cooper had spent several devastating minutes tearing a strip off Troy before he finally let him go home to pack. Troy had left the office with his eyes burning and his stomach twisting with shame. He’d always had a hard time withstanding the furious disappointment of men like Coach Cooper. Men like Troy’s father.
“I’m ready to work hard,” Troy promised. “I want to get us to the playoffs.”
Coach Wiebe smiled in a way that Coach Cooper and Troy’s father never did—warm and patient. “That’s good. I’m going to try you up front with Rozanov and Boodram.”
“Really?” Troy was used to being a starting forward, but it was still a surprise to hear his coach wanted to put him on the top line right away. “I mean, thank you.”
“Thank me on the ice, Barrett. Let’s show Toronto they backed the wrong horse, okay?”
Delight bubbled up inside Troy. He even came close to smiling. “You got it, Coach.”
Coach squinted at the bench, where several players were gathered and laughing animatedly. “Oh Jesus. They’ve got a puppy.”
Rozanov stepped onto the ice with Chiron bundled snugly in his arms. “He wants to try out.”
“Ten minutes with the puppy.” Coach’s voice was stern, but his eyes twinkled with amusement. “Then we’ve got work to do.”
“Twenty,” Rozanov countered.
Troy couldn’t believe his audacity. Was he about to witness Ilya Rozanov getting yelled at by his coach?
But Coach Wiebe only chuckled fondly and said, “Fifteen.”
Definitely a different coaching style than Cooper.
For fifteen minutes, the rest of the members of the Ottawa Centaurs frolicked on the ice with an excited puppy while Troy stood near the bench, watching and waiting for the real practice to start. What the fuck was the deal with this team? Was there going to be cake and lemonade at the end of practice?
“Are you allergic to dogs?”
Troy turned to find Harris standing in front of the bench, leaning casually on the boards. His golden hair was now hidden under a red-and-black Ottawa Centaurs pom-pom toque. In the bright arena lights, his green eyes looked more like sparkling emeralds than moss.
“No.”
“Phew. I should have asked before I brought a dog into the dressing room. I’d checked with everyone else already, but—aw jeez, look at that.” He lifted his phone and snapped a few pictures of the puppy standing with his front paws pressed against one of Wyatt’s goalie pads. “That’s going on Instagram for sure.”
“He’s a popular guy.”
“Who? Wyatt?”
“The puppy.”
Harris beamed. “Of course he is! He’s new and adorable.”
And Troy was new and...not.
It actually made a ton of sense that he would show up at his first practice with a new team and only be the second most interesting thing there. If that.
His grumpy thoughts were broken by an air-horn-level burst of laughter from Harris. “Get him, Chiron! Atta boy!”
Chiron was trying to steal a puck from Zane Boodram. Everyone was laughing and having a great time, and Troy wasn’t sure what to do. He felt like he’d walked into a party he hadn’t been invited to.
“Do dogs like the ice?” Troy asked. Chiron seemed to be sure-footed and happy as he chased pucks, but he asked anyway.
“Not every dog, but Chiron is part Labrador, part mountain dog. He’s built for the cold.”
“And he’s going to be a...therapy dog? Like a Seeing Eye dog?”
“He’s going to be trained to assist people with anxiety or PTSD. If he gets in the program.”
“Does he have to write an exam or something?”
That weak joke earned Troy another horrifyingly loud laugh. “He just needs to be physically able to be a therapy dog. We’ll know in a few months.”
Harris kept talking about dogs, probably, while Troy’s gaze, once again, went to the rainbow pins on Harris’s jacket. The stab of longing and intense jealousy that he always felt when he saw Pride symbols must have shown on his face as apparent contempt again, because when he glanced at Harris’s face, he found another disappointed frown.