Season's Change Read online

  Season’s Change includes depictions of anxiety, depression, panic attacks, homophobia, internalized homophobia and the use of slurs.

  SEASON’S CHANGE

  Cait Nary

  Author’s Note

  The North American Hockey Association (NAHA) is a fictionalized professional hockey league. While it shares similarities with the league you may be familiar with, it is intentionally different in multiple ways.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

  Chapter One

  Puking like an under-conditioned rookie was not an auspicious start to Olly Järvinen’s sixth North American Hockey Association training camp—his first after getting traded to the Washington Eagles.

  But here he was, bent over a black plastic trash can. Acid burned at the back of his throat, worse than the wildfire in his lungs from sprinting on the treadmill. By some undeserved miracle, his maximal oxygen uptake number was only a little lower than last year’s. It was hard to be grateful for that when the inside of the trash can was flickering around the edges: water bottles, wet wipes, half-digested bites of the protein bar he’d choked down that morning.

  “Good run, Olly. You okay there?” a trainer asked, offering a squeeze bottle and a towel.

  “Fine.” He didn’t snap it out, even though he wanted to. Instead, he spat water and the taste of bile, straightened his shoulders, and got in line for the vertical jump test. He didn’t recognize the guy in front of him. Olly kept his eyes down, sucking in air that smelled like old sweat and eighteen-year-old male determination. It felt out of reach at twenty-four.

  Olly’s preparation for camp had always been impeccable. He wasn’t a superstar, so it had to be. But not this year, and he had no one to blame but himself. He’d been a mess: not working out or eating right, hiding up at his cabin so he didn’t run into his trainer in Duluth, or hear about his lack of gym time from his dad. Well, his dad left him voicemails, but he’d deleted them without calling back, for the first time in his life.

  Whatever workouts Olly had or hadn’t done were irrelevant now. He had to get through the tests, get through camp, just get through it. He couldn’t think about the stretch of the season—eighty-two fucking games and probably the playoffs, if he was still hanging around by then—or his stomach would heave again.

  Maybe he wouldn’t make the roster; maybe he’d get sent down to the Eagles’ farm team.

  Maybe he’d walk out and be done with it.

  But Olly wasn’t a quitter. His fuckups had gotten him into this mess. He was going to have to deal with the consequences.

  So he filed out of the weight room and got dressed for his on-ice testing. The locker room was loud, pump-up jams and the Eagles’ captain, Mike Dewitt, making an encouraging circuit of the room.

  “Looking good, Järvinen.” That had to be a lie.

  Olly nodded and kept his eyes on his skate laces. Dewitt stood there for a second, like he was waiting for a response. When he didn’t get one, he moved along.

  Olly had been excited for camp last year. He could remember that. Signing with his hometown team in Minnesota: two hours’ drive away from his mom and his boat and two of his brothers, with his third brother, Sami, twenty minutes away in Minneapolis.

  Look how that had turned out.

  The on-ice testing that followed was a blur. Olly puked again, halfway through. He couldn’t have said whether it was because of his level of fitness, or something else. Maybe they’d cut him; and he didn’t want to want that, he was a professional, he’d never fuck up on purpose. But maybe he wasn’t fucking up on purpose. Maybe he was just...fucking up.

  He heaved over another trash can. A different trainer handed him a different towel and water bottle. He spat a different mouthful of backwash Gatorade.

  Olly put his helmet back on, and somehow—some fucking how, his brain went offline and his body went, the slick of the ice and the cross of his skates, burning in his hamstrings and quads and lungs, leaning into the pain like it was going to fucking fix something—he made it through the endurance test with one of the top times.

  Olly staggered through the gate, managing not to flinch away from the backslaps and the atta boys. Kept his head down while the rest of the guys finished up; didn’t laugh along with everybody else when one of the rookie D-men tripped on a cone and went sprawling across the ice.

  Once the refrigerator-sized rookie had managed to stop laughing and get through his test without losing an edge, Dewitt—Dewey, everybody called him—cornered Olly in the locker room for more captainly outreach. “Good day,” he said, punching him in the shoulder.

  It hadn’t been. Olly knew that. He pulled an Eagles-branded T-shirt over his head, temporarily blocking out Dewey’s square jaw and salt-and-pepper stubble. “Thanks.”

  “I wanted to welcome you to DC. Check in. Make sure you’re settling in okay.”

  There was no point to settling in until Olly saw his name on the final roster. Instead of saying that, he said, “Yeah.”

  “We’ve got an apartment for you,” he continued, “with one of the rookies from the D-League. We like to make sure our new guys have a support system. And Benji’s a good guy, even if his edgework leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Olly swallowed convulsively. He couldn’t stand to wonder what Dewitt might have heard about Olly’s last roommate; what he might be thinking behind the professional Canadian politeness.

  “I’ll text you his number. Go tonight.”

  “Okay,” Olly said, a little too late. He didn’t understand why they were pushing him to get into an apartment now, before the final roster had been announced. NAHA players didn’t get housing until they were a sure thing. Olly was anything but that.

  Instead, he felt...tenuous. Exhausted. More than he should be, even after camp and the drive down from Minnesota. He’d done the whole thing in one stretch, since he wouldn’t have sl
ept if he’d stopped halfway. He hadn’t slept last night either, listening to the hum of the A/C unit in the Arlington hotel where they put all the new guys. Except his future roommate, anyway.

  He’d hoped that camp would tire him out enough that maybe, maybe, maybe he could sleep, like he hadn’t all summer.

  Feeling the tension radiating out from his stomach, Olly doubted it.

  * * *

  Benji Bryzinski was just a dumbass from Duncannon, Pennsylvania, but he had arrived.

  That was what he told himself after the first day of training camp, leaning on the railing of his Washington condo’s balcony and looking out at where the river was bracketed by the blue glass towers of office buildings.

  Well, he wasn’t quite in DC. But Rosslyn, Virginia, was more convenient to the practice rink, where he would be spending a lot of fucking time over the next three years of his contract. Jesus Christ. The goddamned NAHA: everything he’d been working for since he was seven years old. He grinned, the excitement bottle-popping through his body.

  Camp was hard, of course it was, but he was honoring all those years of work, all those hours in the gym; that little kid he’d been, suiting up in secondhand gear and taking his first wobbling strides across the ice.

  And he was making the roster, after two years with the Eagles’ Major Developmental League team in Hershey. His housing letter, and his signature on the lease of this nice fucking apartment, said so. It was unusual to get housing before camp, even if the head coach had told him “you’ll be back for good next October,” after his most recent stint covering for a defenseman out on injured reserve.

  His phone buzzed in the pocket of his basketball shorts. He fumbled it out, managed to drop it on the cement with an ominous crack.

  “Fuck.” Even if breaking his phone wouldn’t be so bad, now. He had enough money to buy a new one, without even thinking about the balance in his bank account.

  His older sister Krista’s face lit up his (unbroken) lock screen. “Crate & Barrel has three couches that I think will work. Do you want to try them out or should I just show them to you on FaceTime?”

  “Uh, whatever you think is best.”

  She blew out a breath. “I’ll show you.”

  The three couches looked identical. All he cared about was that it was comfy and sized for his six-five frame. “You pick. You’ll just tell me my opinion’s wrong, anyway.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I assume you don’t have an opinion about your plates or towels, either?” She rolled her eyes at whatever she saw in his expression. “I don’t know how you thought you were going to do this on your own.”

  “I was going to figure it out.” Okay, he hadn’t thought beyond buying a king-size bed. Plus, maybe his roommate was going to have stuff. It didn’t make sense to get too much, although it would probably be good to have something to dry his hands with after he took a piss. Sisters were useful, Benji had to admit.

  Even if Krista’s motivation for driving down to DC was less about buying Benji silverware, and more about having walked in on her husband fucking an Instagram model.

  Again.

  As she disconnected the call, anger bubbled up from Benji’s chest. His stomach muscles clenched; the hand still leaning on the balcony fisted so tightly that the tendons stood out along his forearm.

  At the same time, though, he could hear his therapist at Quinnipiac’s calm, steady voice, asking him to go into his body, to evaluate what he was feeling.

  Consciously, he uncurled his fingers. Took one breath, held it, let it out, took another.

  Benji had known Rob was bad news from the first time he’d seen them together, seen the way he watched the waitress lean over even while he had an arm around Krista’s shoulders.

  He went back inside, put on his shoes, stuck a key in his pocket, and walked out the door. He couldn’t sit still: he knew he needed to, like, interrupt the pattern of his thoughts. Give himself an outlet until he calmed down.

  His apartment was a ten-minute walk away from the Mount Vernon Trail, which paralleled the Potomac River. He’d never lived anywhere as big as DC, and he’d thought it would be nice to be able to get into sort-of nature.

  Sucked that he couldn’t enjoy his first trip. Benji wanted to punch every single one of the engaged-looking husbands smiling at their wives and cute fucking dogs.

  But he was calmer by the time he got home, less likely to climb into his truck and drive to Pittsburgh and dig a big fucking hole for Rob McMeade’s big fucking body.

  Krista was leaning on the breakfast bar. She looked perfect: low-key in a Pittsburgh ball cap and sneakers, wearing jeans that would have paid their rent for a month back in Duncannon. She was unrecognizable from the crying mess who had gotten his shoulder soggy when she arrived the day before, swearing they just needed a break for a few days.

  In Benji’s opinion, Krista needed more than a break. She needed a fucking divorce lawyer. Rob liked having a pretty wife to wear his team sweater to his hockey games; didn’t like not fucking other women. But she always went back.

  The more Krista got to optimize Benji’s life, though, the more cheerful she got. She’d already messaged Anna Dewitt about the Eagles’ traditional preseason off-day barbecue.

  She looked up, raising one blond eyebrow. “You really need a new truck. Every time I park next to it... It’s just, you can’t park a 2002 Toyota next to your teammates.”

  “Watch me.” Benji had been driving the same shitty Tacoma forever. He didn’t fuck with seventy-five rituals for putting on his skates, but his truck was his good-luck charm. He’d borrowed it from a buddy’s family to drive himself to Michigan, after he’d scraped his way into the US National Hockey Training Center. Davo’s dad had told him to pay him back when he made it to the NAHA. At the time, Benji couldn’t imagine the amount of money it would take to give away a truck. But Davo’s mom was a doctor and his dad was a principal, so in hindsight maybe a car the same age as their son hadn’t been the biggest sacrifice. (Benji had called Davo’s dad to try to pay him for the truck over the summer. He said he’d take free tickets instead.)

  “You need to think more about your image.”

  “Nobody gives a shit what kind of car I drive.”

  Whatever she was going to say was cut off by the sound of the door buzzer—his new roommate. Järvinen had been in the NAHA for a few years but had gotten traded from Minnesota on kind of weird terms, if Benji remembered correctly. He was a center. Super-fast, defensive-minded, but inconsistent. There had been a lot of healthy scratches toward the end of last season. Under twelve goals. They were in different groups at camp, but Benji had kept an eye out. Unlike Benji’s, his edgework was impeccable.

  Really nice hair, too.

  Benji watched Krista head for the door, throwing him a narrow glance over her shoulder like the conversation about his image—as if he gave a shit, or was ever going to give a shit—wasn’t finished.

  Järvinen better not be the kind of guy who was going to be a dickhead about Benji’s truck or who wanted to talk about Instagram all the time.

  Chapter Two

  Olly wasn’t sure what to expect when he knocked on the door. He hadn’t heard too much about Benji, other than that he was a defenseman coming up from the Hershey Howl. Aside from watching him wipe out during the endurance tests, Olly hadn’t been paying much attention to anyone else at camp, just keeping his head down and gritting through it. He’d done a quick search before heading over: not much social media; a press release from when he’d been drafted; a few articles about a short college career at Quinnipiac that had still included a trip to the Frozen Four; one headline about Former Junior Howler to Play for Eagles.

  Definitely no mention of the pretty blonde who opened the door.

  “Hiiii,” she trilled. “You must be Oliver!”

  “Olly’s fine. And you’re...?”

 
“Benji’s sister. Krista.” She didn’t look anything like Benji’s roster picture from the Howl. “I’m just down for a few days.”

  Krista ushered him inside. The apartment looked fine, even if it was totally empty: a big kitchen, a wall of windows leading out onto a wide balcony.

  “Yo,” said a deep voice from next to the refrigerator.

  And there was the guy from the Google search, who Olly had halfway seen across the ice. His sister was a peanut, but Benji—Bowie, Dewitt had called him—was huge. Olly would probably bounce off him like a six-foot let’s-round-it-to-180 pounder getting smacked by The Mountain from Game of Thrones. Seeing Benji and Krista standing next to each other, there were similarities: they had the same tanned skin, strong jawline, and tilted eyes, even though hers were blue and his were an ambiguous greenish hazel; and they both had curly hair, hers blond and his dark brown. Hers was gorgeous, his looked like baby rats nested in it.

  That was it. Other than the fact that they were both extremely good-looking, Olly noticed with a sense of foreboding.

  Krista continued the tour of the apartment, Benji drifting behind them. Olly didn’t care about the bathrooms or the closet space if he could get along with whoever he was living with. And he would: he didn’t have an alternative. After last year, Olly had to keep his head down and do whatever the Eagles told him. If he could make the roster, he could get a fresh start.

  “Yeah,” he said, when he realized Krista was waiting for him to say something. He’d been looking at Benji, who was peering into the closet of Olly’s future bedroom as if he’d never seen it before in his life. He looked relaxed and easy, and why wouldn’t he. “Sure.”

  Benji mouthed busted when Krista rolled her eyes. “Zone out much? I was asking if you lived in a house or an apartment back in Minneapolis.”

  “Ouch, Kris,” Benji said. “Maybe give him a few days.”

  “I had an apartment with one of the boys.” Which had been a disaster, but Olly wasn’t thinking about that.

  “I’ll show you the balcony,” Benji offered, “since we’ve gotten to the part where Krista starts hazing you.”