Page 71 of Home Ice Advantage

Eric wasn’t just headed up the stands, he was making a beeline for Ryan’s father. And then he stood there, looming over him. Ryan couldn’t hear what they were saying, or even really see his father’s facial expression, but judging by the agitated hand gestures that flashed around the side of Eric’s body, whatever Eric had told him was not what he wanted to hear.

Disoriented, Ryan blew the whistle again to signal a change. Not everyone had noticed something was wrong, of course, but Williams, who was waiting for his turn, skated up to him. “Is everything okay, Coach?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ryan said. “Sorry, just distracted.”

“What’s Coach Aronson doing?”

Eric’s back was still facing the ice, but he hadn’t moved. Whatever he was saying to Ryan’s father was still ongoing. Mark Sullivan stood, and for a second, Ryan wondered whether he was going to try to hit him. Even in his playing days, Mark had been known as a rat, the kind of guy who wouldn’t wait to ask you if you wanted to go before the gloves were coming off. He was older now, achier and heavier, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still have a temper.

Eric could handle himself, of course, but Ryan still didn’t want him to have to.

“He’s talking to my father.”

“Yourdad?”

Ryan chuckled, although it wasn’t a noise with much amusement behind it. “Yes. You knew I’m a local boy, of course. He was bound to turn up for practices at some point.”

Williams’s dark, thoughtful gaze had turned back up to the bleachers, where Eric was still speaking with Ryan’s father. His father had raised his voice, but his words were still indistinct beneath the noise of the practice. All Ryan could hear was a garbled, furious insistence that he had every right to be here in a public facility. Eric, on the other hand, was still speaking quietly enough that his response was lost in the noise.

His father scowled at Eric and flipped him both middle fingers, said “Fuckyou” loudly enough that the sound carried down to the ice. Everyone froze, watching in silence as he stomped down the line of seats, broad body shaking with fury as he made his way toward the exit. Eric followed behind him, and as they both came into a closer view, Ryan could finally see their faces clearly. Eric and his satisfied smirk, Dad’s face mottled red with fury.

It was awkward. The kind of public scene his father’s wife despised. Chelsea hadn’t come, of course, but Ryan could imagine her face draining of color while Dad ranted at her once he got back. She always nodded and agreed with him, but that didn’t mean anything. Dad was great at steamrolling people into acquiescence.

Eric shot him a brief thumbs-up, then looked at the team and said, “What are you lot looking at? Back to fucking work, boys.”

When Eric had made his way down to the ice, Ryan asked, “What thehelldid you say to him?”

“Just told him that he wasn’t welcome here today, and that if he wanted to make a scene, I was more than happy to provide him with one.” Eric’s smile was a little crooked, and not for the first time, Ryan regretted the fact that he couldn’t kiss him whenever he wanted. “Surprising how far a few polite words can get you after all. Should’ve tried that one during my playing days.”

He had shocked a laugh out of Ryan, a short bark, and Keen’s head whipped around to glare at them. Ryan ignored him. “You didn’t have to do all of that, Eric. Thank you. But I was fine with him here.”

Eric just looked at him, head cocked a little to the side. He did look very much like a crow in that moment, his bright, dark eyes seeing right through Ryan. “Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. But I took care of it for you anyway.” There was an awkward little pause, like he’d swallowed off something else he was going to say. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t know if he’ll be back, but we’ll all be here if he is. He’s a real asshole, huh?”

“You have no idea. One of my first hockey memories is him pounding the glass so hard after I took a penalty, he shattered it.”

“Holy shit, Ryan.”

“Yeah, well. Now you know why I’m so focused on making sure everyone gets along. What’d you call it the first week? My kumbaya shit?”

“We’ve both come a long way since then, I think,” Eric said, and patted him on the shoulder.

“You’re right,” Ryan said. All of a sudden, he knew with certainty something that had been wheeling around in the back of his head. They were up against the cap limit, and some of the veterans were underperforming. There were a few prospects in Providence that he wanted to give a chance, wanted to see how they could do after the trade deadline. He’d been avoiding it, knowing the conflict that would result. But now? He knew. “I want to talk to Conroy about waiving Keen.”

Eric whistled.“Finally.”

“It’s time,” Ryan said, watching the players running through the drills again. While they had been talking, Petey and Heidi had stepped in smoothly to take over, make sure things were still running. “He’s been a real disruption in practice. And his effort on the ice...well, the less said about that, the better.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” Eric said, laughing. “I was on board from the beginning. But I’m just—this is a big step for you, buddy.”

“It’s the right one.” Strangely enough, he knew, as he said it, that it was true, with all of the certainty he always felt when he knew he’d made a good play, something that was going to end up in the back of the net. “All right. I’ll get Conroy on the phone after practice, and I’ll see what he thinks.”

“Are you kidding?” Eric teased. “His homegrown coaching prodigy? The only question he’s gonna have is how fast can he get that guy on a bus to Providence.”

Ryan’s stomach still felt unsettled: the vague sense of shame that he still hadn’t been able to confront his father himself, the flare of heat in his chest when Eric had just done it for him anyway, the tingling nerves up and down his spine of figuring out how that phone call was going to go. He shoved all of it down. He didn’t have time for this. He had a practice to run. Taking a deep breath, Ryan blew the whistle to stop the drill, and said, “All right, now we are going to talk about gap coverage on the penalty kill...”

And he had Eric and Petey and Heidi behind him.

The main takeaway that Eric had had from the Montreal trip—besides the fact that he’d somehow fallen in love with Ryan Sullivan—was that Maman also fuckinglovedRyan. And not only that, she was all too eager to team up with him to find out all kinds of embarrassing stories about Eric’s childhood. He smiled, a little, thinking about the two of them at Maman’s kitchen table, Ryan listening eagerly as she told him a story about how during Eric’s bar mitzvah, he’d corrected the rabbi in front of the entire congregation about a particular point in the Torah portion Eric had been reading.