Pucking the Beckett Brothers

SIENNA'S POV I am the perfect girlfriend. Two years. Every game. Every road trip. Every 4am protein shake I mix because Damon says his hands are too sore after practice. Every credit card statement I hide because I know it'll start a fight and he has a game this week and I refuse to be the reason he plays badly. Two years of all of that. And right now I am standing in the hallway of the Marriott on Fifth, gym bag in my hand, because his coach called me to bring it over since Damon's too exhausted to come get it himself. This is my life. This is what I do. I use the spare key card. I push the door open. The sound hits me first. Skin on skin. Loud. The kind of loud that means nobody in that room thinks anyone is coming. Damon is on the bed. He is not alone. Coach Reid is behind him. Both of them moving. Damon's face buried in the pillow, his back arched, making sounds I have never once heard come out of him in two years of sharing his bed. The gym bag hits the floor. Neither of them hears it. I watch Damon grip the sheets. Watch his knuckles go white. Watch him lift his head and moan like something in him is finally, finally free. "f**k yes. Harder. Don't you dare stop." His voice. I know that voice. I have heard it say I love you and you're everything to me. I have heard it tired and angry and soft. I have never heard it like this. Not once. Not for me. My chest doesn't hurt. My eyes don't burn. I don't cry. I just stand there and understand everything all at once, two years of my life rearranging themselves into a shape that makes perfect, horrible sense. Every time he was too tired. Every time he turned away in bed. Every time he looked at me with something I always mistook for stress but was actually— I pick the bag back up. Then I drop it again. Hard. On purpose. The sound explodes through the room. Damon's head whips around. The color drains from his face so fast it's almost satisfying. "Sienna—" He scrambles for the sheets. "What the — how did you—" "Harlan called me," I say. "Said you needed your bag." Reid doesn't scramble. He just sits back, reaches for his shirt, and starts buttoning it like I'm room service that showed up at a bad time. That bothers me more than any of it. "Sienna—" Damon is on his feet now, sheet around his waist, hands out. "Just let me explain—" "Explain what?" "It's not — this isn't—" "If you say it's not what it looks like I will put you through that window." His mouth closes. "How long?" I ask. "Sienna—" "How long, Damon." He looks at the floor. "It's complicated." "How. Long." Silence. Reid stands, fully buttoned, and says "I'll give you two a moment" like this is a meeting that ran over schedule. "You'll what?" I turn to him. "You called me here. You used me to get me into this room and now you want to give us a moment?" Reid looks at me. "Lower your voice." "Excuse me?" "Sienna, stop—" Damon steps toward me. "Don't touch me." I step back. "Don't you dare." He stops. I look at Damon and I laugh. Not because anything is funny. Because I paid for his physio last March. Four thousand dollars because he said insurance wouldn't cover it. I took extra shifts for two months. I told my mother I couldn't afford to fly home for Christmas because I was saving up, and then I bought him twelve-hundred-dollar skates and watched him unwrap them with a smile I now understand completely differently. "Was any of it real?" I ask. "I cared about you," he says quietly. "I did." "But you're gay." He flinches. "I'm — it's not that simple—" "You are in a hotel room with your male coach. You are gay. That is what is happening. That is what has always been happening. And I have been covering your life for two years because you needed someone to and I was convenient." I look him dead in the eye. "Tell me I'm wrong." He doesn't. That silence is the most honest thing he has ever given me. Reid clears his throat. "I think we should all calm down." I look at him slowly. At his perfectly buttoned shirt and his completely unbothered face. "You're his coach. You're in a position of authority over him. That's against league conduct." Something flickers across Reid's face. Just for a second. "Sienna," Damon says carefully. "Don't." "Don't what?" "Don't do something you can't take back." I pick up the gym bag. I walk to the door and open it. Then I stop and turn around. "Your contract renewal is in three weeks," I say to Damon. Then I look at Reid. "And the Beckett brothers just took majority ownership of this franchise. I wonder what their conduct policy looks like." I walk out. The door clicks behind me and my hands don't start shaking until I reach the elevator but I don't stop walking. Lobby. Parking lot. Car. I get in. I grip the steering wheel. I breathe. Then I pull out my phone and search the Beckett brothers. Three faces look back at me. I stare at them for a long time. Damon calls. I decline it. He calls again. I decline it again. Then a text comes through. Please. Don't do anything stupid. We can talk about this. I set the phone face down. Then I pick it back up and dial the league media office number. The one every girlfriend of every player gets at the start of the season and is told never to use. It rings twice. "League media office, how can I—" "I need to report a conduct violation," I say. "A coach and a player. And I need to do it tonight, before it goes anywhere else." A pause. "Can I get your name?" "Sienna Calvert." I lean my head back against the headrest. "Tell whoever I'm speaking to that it involves the Beckett brothers' new franchise." Across this city, Damon Price is panicking. Good.