Page 39 of Two for Roughing

Tom smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I missed her while we were gone. She can’t start thinking the dog sitter is better than we are.”

Jax rolled his eyes. His arm brushed against Tom’s, and Tom hid a smile poorly by wiping his sleeve across his mouth. How had Kilian missed this? They couldn’t be more obvious if they tried, not if you knew what to look for.

He kept his eye on them all through the street hockey game they played with the shelter kids.

In hockey, “chemistry” was a central tenet of a well-functioning line. Team events got planned specifically to build chemistry; different lines got tested in practice to find who might work well together. For Kilian, it emerged slowly. He and Mooney played well together as a consequence of frequent practice. Kilian had a sense for what plays worked, how fast Mooney could move, and where to expect him on the ice. Kilian had thought the same held true for everyone: chemistry actually meant hard work and repetition.

From the first game Tom and Jax had played on the same line, their chemistry had been on the tip of everyone’s tongue when people talked about the Sea Lions. As Kilian watched them in an informal setting, he realized it wasn’t the same as the hockey chemistry he was used to. Undeniable finesse governed the way they both moved, with puck-handling skills they’d practiced for hours. But their chemistry didn’t rely on talent or practice. It emerged in the way their eyes trailed each other, in the way every moment they weren’t on the puck themselves, they found each other as if drawn by magnetism.

In lesser players, it might have killed their focus and worsened their play. In Jax and Tom, it made them unstoppable.

At least when they played on the same team. In a casual game of street hockey with a bunch of teenagers, they captained opposing teams and kept screwing up by passing to each other. Small mercies.

“Come on,” Tom told Kilian when the game ended. “We’re going out for sushi.”

Jax and Mooney had already begun cleaning up the pucks and sticks left on the ground unceremoniously by the teens. The kids were closer in age to Kilian than Tom was, but Kilian couldn’t imagine leaving his gear lying around. Dad would have killed him.

“Don’t you need to wait for Jax?”

“Nah.” Tom smiled as easily as Tom ever did. He held Artemis’s leash wrapped around his hand, and the dog waited patiently by their feet, having tired herself out running back and forth during the game. “He has some stuff to take care of here, and Mara doesn’t want me around for official business. Apparently, I’m distracting.”

“Okay.”

Kilian followed Tom out of the gated fence enclosing the shelter’s outdoor area and past the car Tom and Jax had arrived in. They walked for a while until the graffiti density thinned out and the buildings got taller. Eventually, they stopped at a bus station.

“You know, my first kiss with Jax happened at a bus stop.”

“Romantic.” Kilian regretted the sarcastic tone as soon as it left his mouth. He couldn’t have sounded more like a petulant teenager if he’d tried.

But Tom laughed in response. “Yeah, it was…something.”

The bus came, and they got on, Artemis immediately curling up as small as possible by Tom’s feet.

“She’s good at that.” Kilian reached down to scratch behind her ears. “My dog could never.”

“You have a dog?”

“Well, not my dog. He’s an Australian Shepherd at my parents’ farm. But he’s always on his feet.”

“A working dog, then.”

“Yeah.”

The bus lurched into movement, and Kilian grabbed for the rail. He was preoccupied with finding a way to stand comfortably without getting thrown around for so long that he thought the conversation had ended when Tom spoke up again.

“I’ve been taking her around town on our days off. All the parks, checking out different neighborhoods, exploring the city.”

“Sounds…nice?” It sounded boring to Kilian, but Tom was old. Some switch in the brain must flip at age thirty to make people enjoy going on walks.

“It has been. I never used to get out much, and I didn’t really leave Palo Alto except for team stuff. But having her with me makes it easier to go out and do things.”

“Thought you had Jax for that.”

“Oh, he comes with us a lot. But it’s not his job to make me a functional human.”

Kilian glanced down at the dog. “Sounds like a big project. You sure one dog is enough?”

Tom laughed again.