The Linemate's Sin

The tape peels away from Declan's shoulder in a single wet strip, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek until he tastes salt. Eighteen minutes until practice. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. He has told the trainer it is a stinger. He has told the coach it is fine. He has told himself the same lie so many times it almost sounds true. Two weeks until somebody with a medical degree looks at the images and says whether it needs surgery or rest. Six weeks until his brother's second heart operation, the one that might actually fix the valve, the one that costs eighty-seven thousand dollars after insurance. Declan's signing bonus was seventy, and fifteen of it has already gone on Cash's last round of tests. So the shoulder cannot be torn. It has to get better on its own. In the meantime the new winger has arrived. Evan Choi, traded in from the Manitoba Moose with thirteen points in twelve games, and the coach has put him on Declan's line. After practice Evan brings back the stick Declan left on the ice, stands in the doorway, and does not leave. *Your grip's weak on your right side. You favor it on the faceoff, but you can't follow through on a pass.* *I've been playing hockey for twenty-two years. I know what a hurt player looks like.* Nobody else on the roster has said it out loud. After that come equipment that fails in ways equipment does not fail by itself, a tape job somebody quietly does properly, an anonymous text from a local area code that reads *You don't belong here*, a booking error that puts two men in one hotel room in Calgary for three days, and a grandmother in a yellow kitchen who kept a secret for thirty years because she was afraid of what the hockey world would do with it. And Reid Callahan, who wants Declan out of the league and holds a recording that could do it. *He couldn't stand that I left. So he's making sure I can't have anyone else.* *Maybe I don't want a career that costs me you.* It finishes with a cycle below the goal line, a faked shot, a puck sliding across the crease into the slot where a man is already skating, and a kiss on the ice in front of eighteen thousand people, while a hand-lettered sign goes up in Section 112. This is an MM hockey romance about what a player hides to keep his job: a winger playing hurt because his brother needs the money, a linemate who reads him inside one practice, a teammate who wants his spot, an ex with leverage, and a season that refuses to end quietly. The romance is closed-door.