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At thirty-five, Kent wins his fourth Stanley Cup.
The Aces win at home against the Pens in game five, and the arena is a sea of black and white, the sound of cheering deafening like thunder in his ears. He’s the first to touch the Cup, but he doesn’t raise it immediately over his head with a grin. Instead, he looks for Nate.
Nate was there for all the Cups Kent won with the Aces. He was there when they won for the first time in the history of the franchise in two thousand twelve, and when Kent became the youngest captain to ever lift the Cup, too overwhelmed to understand what was happening until he was back in the locker room, crying in the showers and weak with relief. He was there when they won in two thousand sixteen, when the Falconers almost went all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, carried by Jack’s determination and skill—that summer when Kent finally got his shit together enough to admit that he wanted Nate to be more than just his friend. The next time, in two thousand twenty-two, Nate almost missed the playoffs, out with an injury, but he came back for the last series, and Kent kissed him on center ice, drowning in the rain of confetti.
Kent knows this one will be his last.
He’s had his fair share of injuries, some more serious than others, a nasty concussion that sidelined him for almost an entire season a while ago, and his body can feel the wear and tear now, much more than it did just a year or two ago.
So this is the last one—one more for the road, before Kent hangs up his skates and goes on to live the rest of his life.
As with all things, he wants Nate right there by his side, so he pushes through a crowd of crying rookies to his left and nudges Nate in the side with his elbow. The pads absorb the impact, but Nate still turns to Kent, scruffy and shaggy, and smiling.
Kent kisses the Cup, and then he kisses Nate.
When they finally lift the Cup, they do it together, clinging to each other. It is still, after all this time, the best fucking feeling in the world.
.
They decide to hold off the announcement of his retirement until August. There are days when Kent thinks maybe he should give it another year, that maybe his body could take it for just a while longer, for just one last season, but the thing is, he doesn’t want to be hobbling off the ice; he doesn’t want to leave the NHL on a stretcher.
It’s bad enough that it happened to Jack. Kent doesn’t want to be the one to tempt fate this time around.
The summer feels like being stuck in a limbo, and Kent remembers that feeling all too well, the thirty-four perfect days between Memorial Cup and the draft, before everything went to shit. A lot has changed since then, though: Kent and Jack grew apart and then grew closer again; they both stopped hiding; they both grew up somewhere along the way. They’re both happy with other people.
If someone asked Kent at seventeen what he thought his life would be like when he retired, he would probably paint a very different picture: Jack would be there, right next to Kent, two kids on top of the world, still invincible and unchanged, despite the passage of time. Growing up is a foreign concept when you’re seventeen—there’s a part of you that thinks you’re always going to stay the way you are, and that the world around you is never going to change, either.
Kent learned the truth about that the hard way—they both did.
But he’s here now, all these years later, and if he’d told the Kent who bit his nails down until they bled in the waiting room at a hospital in Quebec the night before the draft that he wouldn’t want a do-over, despite everything, that Kent would have probably punched him in the face. But it’s the truth, too. He used to wonder—after the first time the thought crossed his mind, back when he realized that him and Nate, that that was it—if maybe that made him a bad person, until he realized that Jack wouldn’t want that either—to turn back time, to do it the way they’d thought it was supposed to happen, back then.
They both know now that the only way forward is through.
.
Kent clears out his locker for the last time the day after the parade.
There’s not much to clear out, really, just a couple of jockstraps, a few pairs of balled-up socks, a jar of muscle rub, some strapping tape. Still, it takes him over half an hour to pack everything up, and once he’s done, he sits down at his stall and tries not to cry.
Back in two thousand nine, when they called up his name and he pulled the black jersey over his head, and smiled at the camera even though he thought he was going to puke his guts out, he never thought he would retire on the same team that drafted him. There was a part of him that thought he would be an Ace for life, because they wouldn’t let him go that easily once they had him, but there was also that other part, the little voice in his head that kept telling him that what they really wanted was Jack, and Kent was just the next best thing. It’s not like he could’ve known for sure.
Now, the thought of never skating on the Vegas home ice again seems almost surreal.
“Hey,” Nate says as he walks into the locker room, and Kent tries to shake off whatever feeling has lodged itself firmly right beneath his sternum, making it hard to breathe. “Ready to go?”
Kent nods, because when it’s all said and done, he’s always been a fan of ripping off the band-aid.
“Yeah,” he says, getting to his feet and pulling the strap of his bag over his shoulder. His body feels heavy, but maybe that’s a different kind of ache, the kind you can’t medicate away.
He looks over at the locker room one last time, adjusts the strap and goes. It’s the hardest thing, not looking back.
The walk to the car is silent, and there’s an air of finality to it, even though Kent will be back when they retire his number at the beginning of the season. But as far as hockey goes, that’s it for him. He’s done.
“Maybe now I should, like, join a beer league or something,” he jokes as Nate unlocks the car, dumping the bag in the backseat.
Nate laughs. There are crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes now when he does that, a touch of silver at his temples, barely there, but Kent has been waking up next to Nate for years, and he knows his body by touch, the lines of it carved into his mind, even when he closes his eyes.
“I’m sure the boys would come to cheer on you,” Nate says, deadpan, as he starts the car and reverses out of the parking space.
“Yeah, I know. It would be a fucking riot.”
Nate has two years left on his contract, and then—who knows. Maybe he’ll want to sign another one, just for a year or two. Maybe he’ll want to retire. Kent knows it’s no use trying to come up with a definitive answer right now, because two years is a lifetime in professional sports. In two years, you might be getting another Cup ring, or you might be getting out of surgery after a career-ending injury.
Kent sure as fuck is not going to try to decide that for him, though.
“You okay?” Nate asks, halfway through the drive back home.
They’re at an intersection, waiting for the light to change, and Nate reaches out to briefly touch Kent’s knee. It’s hot, because summer in Nevada doesn’t fuck around, so Kent is wearing shorts that Nate keeps insisting are an abomination unto god and man, and when his fingers touch the skin of Kent’s bare knee, they trace the white ridge of the scar from three seasons ago, when Kent missed the entire pre-season and three weeks of the regular season after he fucked up his kneecap in the conference finals and rehab took longer than expected.
Kent thumps the back of his head against the headrest.
“Fuck me if I know,” he says, thinking back to that time in his life when—if asked—he would’ve probably just lied, the habit of telling everyone who would listen that he was just fine, thank you very much too hard to shake.
It’s almost like he’s grown up somewhere along the way.
“I would fuck you anyway,” Nate says and Kent groans in his seat, “but that’s not the point. Seriously, though, Kent, no bullshit.”
Kent shrugs. “That is the no bullshit answer,” he says. “I’m still, you know, processing or whatever. I’ll let you know if I’m about to have a breakdown.”
.
He’s in the bathroom, washing his hands, when it finally comes—the reality of the fact that he won’t play professional hockey ever again crashing over him. Slowly, he braces his fists against the cold porcelain of the sink until his knuckles go white and breathes through his nose until his breath starts to come in short, heaving gasps. It feels like some unseen force is trying to crush his ribs.
Kent swallows, once, twice, listening to the voices coming through the closed door.
They’re having guests—Nina and her husband are staying over for a few days, while their kids are back in Minnesota with Nate and Nina’s parents, and then Jeff and his girlfriend have invited themselves over for dinner, and Jax tagged along, and then somebody told Cal and Matts, and a few other people, so right now, there are about seven current or former Aces players in the backyard of Kent and Nate’s house, drinking fucking sangria and eating grilled pork chops while Kent is freaking out in his own goddamn bathroom.
A minute passes, and then another, and then there’s a knock on the door.
“Parse, don’t hog the fucking bathroom,” Jax says and then pounds on the door again, because, despite the passage of time, Jax still has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. “Come on, I need to piss, you asshole.”
Kent exhales, splashes his face with cold water and dries it off with a towel, then opens the door.
“Can’t a man take a leak in his own goddamn house anymore?” he asks as he holds the door open for Jax.
“Retirement made you a grumpy fucker, Parse, and you’ve been properly retired for like half a day,” Jax says like the fucking asshole he is, then shuts the door in Kent’s face. Kent leans his back against the wall and closes his eyes.
A moment later, there’s the sound of footsteps approaching from the hallway, and Kent doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that it’s Nate.
“Hey, hotshot, I’ve been looking for you,” Nate says, coming towards Kent.
He’s ridiculously tanned, compared to Kent, who thankfully doesn’t burn but doesn’t tan that easily either, just gets even more freckly on his face and across his shoulders; he’s wearing a tank top that makes his arms look frankly criminal and offensive, and his beard is back to its post-season, neatly trimmed state, a little more grey in it with each passing year.
“Oh, really,” Kent says with a self-satisfied smile, and Nate takes a step closer, and then another. Kent licks his lips and watches the way Nate’s eyes are immediately drawn to his mouth.
“Yeah, really,” Nate says, leaning in. Kent pushes himself away from the wall and drags Nate after him.
“C’mon,” he says, “I don’t wanna make out with Jax taking a piss less than five feet away.”
Nate gets this funny look around his eyes and mouth that means he’s trying really hard not to laugh.
“Who said anything about making out,” he teases, deadpan. “I need someone to help me with the drinks.”
Kent wonders, for a moment, if Nate knows what happened in the bathroom a just few minutes before he came to find him, the way Nate knows a lot of things about Kent, like knowing Kent is as natural to him as breathing, after all that time.
“C’mon, let’s get the booze.” Nate nudges him in the direction of the kitchen. “And Nina says she wants another sangria.”
They bought the house back in two thousand eighteen, right after they got knocked out in the conference finals that Kent played through with five broken bones in his left foot and Nate with bruised ribs and a cracked clavicle.
Both of their names are on the papers, a formality more than anything else.
It was Kent’s idea, in the beginning—he’s always had a thing about houses, like years of living in a cramped apartment with his mother and sister, and the shadow of his useless asshole of a father made him miss something he’d never really had to begin with. But back when he first came to Vegas, hell, back when he won his first Cup there, buying an empty house, impossible to fill with just one person’s life, seemed like too much of a waste.
With Nate—many things have been different with Nate.
Now they have a backyard with a huge patio and a pool, a big stone grill tucked into the corner of the terrace tiled with terracotta, and even some flowers in clay pots by the front entrance that Kent pays other people to look after, because he can’t keep plants alive for shit, and neither can Nate; white picket fences, the whole nine yards.
Who would’ve fucking thought.
Back in the kitchen, Kent leans against the counter and watches Nate rummage around the pantry for a while before he turns around and hands Kent a bowl of fruit, then reaches into the fridge to grab two bottles of wine and a plate of cheese. If that alone doesn’t mean they’re proper grown-ups now, Kent has no idea what does.
Nate laughs when Kent repeats that out loud. “Whatever you say, old man,” he says, and Kent flips him off. Nate just laughs harder. “Yes, that was very mature, totally proving your point.”
They hear footsteps approaching, the clicking of heels on the hardwood floor just before Nina comes into their view, leaning against the wall at the entrance to the kitchen.
“Just so you know, I’m the search party,” she says, amused, “so you might wanna move it before they descend on the house.”
They walk back into the sunlit backyard and Nate pours the wine while Kent snatches a piece of cheese from the platter and pops a few grapes into his mouth, because he’s fucking sophisticated like that.
It’s hot as hell, well into the hundreds; he’s sweating through his Aces tank top and his hair is clinging to his forehead, apart from the one little cowlick that just won’t fucking quit, the sun beating down on him even under the awning, and he stretches in his chair like a cat in the sun until he hears his joints pop.
Their bodies are still battered and bruised—Nate played the last series with two broken fingers and Kent gritted his way through the last couple of games with a groin injury—his body recovering slower than it used to, and if that’s not a sign that he should quit while he’s ahead, he doesn’t know what is.
Nate hands him a bottle of some hipster microbrew Kent doesn’t publicly admit to enjoying and puts his feet down in Kent’s lap as he reclines in the pool chair with a glass of wine in his hand and huge sunglasses covering half of his face. Kent makes a face.
“Aren’t you getting a little too comfortable over there?” he asks and drags his nails against Nate’s shins, because he knows it makes him squirm.
Nate makes a feeble attempt at shaking him off and then turns his obnoxious smile on Kent. “No such thing as too comfortable, Parse. You should know.”
Across the terrace, by the pool, Jeff, Matts and Jax are talking about something that involves a lot of hand gestures and possibly drawing up plays, while Cal seems to be floating aimlessly on his back, chirping them every time he swims closer to where they’re sitting. Further back, on the lawn, Bagley and Smalls are playing a makeshift one-on-one game of field hockey with Kent’s spare sticks and a puck, because apparently their deep playoff run wasn’t enough for them, and they’re also fucking idiots who are probably going to die of heatstroke right in Kent’s own backyard, because they don’t care that it’s approximately a million degrees outside and the sun could actually kill them.
Fuck, but Kent is going to miss all of them.
He’s never been good at leaving people behind, or at being left behind, which is pretty funny, considering he went into a profession that involves saying goodbye to people all the time. He got lucky, in a way—his best friend almost killed himself and then stopped talking to him for years, but Vegas brought him stability and a place to call home; and many people had come and gone in the meantime, but Kent was allowed to stay, to make something permanent of this life. It’s more than most people who play this sport can dream of.
In the end, Vegas gave him a lot more than it took from him, despite everything. A championship title, a team that felt like a family, a way to move on.
Vegas gave him Nate.
Not bad, all things considered.
.
Jack and Bittle fly down to Vegas for the NHL Awards two days early. Jack is presenting the Calder, and Bittle is coming as his plus one after missing the award show last year because of work.
It’s been a while since they saw each other—the Aces played the Falconers in March, and then the Falcs lost in the conference finals, so between Jack’s work with the organization and Kent’s deep post-season run, they haven’t found much time to catch up.
Kent picks them up at the airport. Their flight is delayed by thirty minutes, so Kent signs some autographs and chats with fans while he waits, his snapback and sunglasses doing nothing to hide his identity. Maybe he should’ve realized it was a shitty disguise years ago, but whatever, that’s just the way he rolls. The arrivals terminal is pretty busy, and most people don’t pay attention to him, apart from the ten or so fans who occupy his attention as he signs various things for them, so when someone claps him on the arm, Kent turns around abruptly, expecting to see Jack.
Instead, Griffin is standing two steps behind Kent, grinning.
“Aw, Parser, I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee,” he says as they hug. “You shouldn’t have.”
Kent punches him in the arm.
“You wish, you fucker. I’m not here for you. I’m picking up Zimms and his better half, whenever their fucking plane finally decides to get here. What are you doing here, though? Are you even nominated for anything, you freeloader?” he says, and Griffin flips him the bird in response.
They both know he’s shortlisted for the Selke, but Kent didn’t expect him to fly down so early. Last time he checked, Griffin was still in Cabo, getting tanned and getting wasted.
“Yeah, well, maybe I just missed your ugly mug,” he says.
The fans are gone by now, and there’s no one who could overhear them, but Griffin still leans in before he asks, “I heard you want to retire in September? That true?”
Kent shrugs with one shoulder. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I pretty much decided already.”
Griffin shakes his head for a moment.
“Shit,” he says. “That’s, like, end of an era.”
Kent laughs under his breath. “That’s the word on the street.”
Griffin claps Kent on the shoulder. “Shit, it’s gonna be so weird, playing the Aces without you. Who’s gonna kick my ass at face-offs now, huh?”
“Last time I checked, Nate still had two years on his contract.”
Griffin laughs. “Shit, Parse, your bias is showing.”
“It’s not a bias if it’s true,” Kent says at the same time as they announce that the plane from Boston has landed. “I guess that’s my cue, then. Gotta get these two back home, get the grill going. See you on Wednesday, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah.” They hug again and Griffin gives him a pat on the back for good measure. “Go get ‘em, cowboy. And Parse? It was good seeing you.”
Jack and Bittle finally emerge from the crowd at the arrivals terminal fifteen minutes later, bags already in tow. Jack looks happy and relaxed, slightly tanned after a week in Hawaii, even though he used to mostly burn back when he spent his summers with Kent, and Bittle’s hair is bleached from the sun. It’s a good look on them.
“Fucking finally,” Kent says when they come close enough to be heard over the hum of the crowd and the airport air conditioning. “Let’s get going, yeah? I’m starving.”
“Good to see you too, Parse,” Jack says, laughing, with his arms wrapped around Kent.
“Yeah, yeah, good to see you, and all that. You too, Bittle.”
Kent pretends to roll his eyes, but he can’t hide the fondness in his voice. Back when he first came to Vegas—when he finally understood that Jack wouldn’t pick up, no matter how many times Kent called—he never thought him and Jack could get back to this place again, where talking to each other didn’t seem like a constant battle.
And yet.
The drive home is mostly quiet, with Bittle napping in the backseat while Jack looks out of the window at the Nevada landscape passing him by. The dry, dusty heat is really getting even to Kent, who’s grown accustomed to the weather over the years, and he can only imagine how exhausting it must be for Jack and Bittle. It’s one of those things that even air conditioning does nothing to help, and Kent doesn’t even notice it anymore most days, but today the heat has been particularly brutal, and even now, close to six p.m., it’s unbearable.
“How’s Bad Bob?” Kent asks as they get closer to Kent’s neighborhood. “He’s coming the day after tomorrow, right? I haven’t seen him in fucking ages, not to mention your mom.”
“He’s good,” Jack says with a fond smile. “He’s in Nova Scotia with mom, but they’re both flying in on Wednesday morning and staying for two days after the awards show, so you should have plenty of time to gossip about me behind my back.”
Kent snorts. “Like I don’t have better things to talk about with your parents.”
The corner of Jack’s mouth twitches. “Sure, Kenny, whatever you say.”
They sit in silence for a moment, and Kent knows Jack is bracing himself for what he’s about to ask.
“So you’re retiring at the end of summer, huh?”
Kent changes lanes, leaving some idiot doing thirty in a fifty-five speed limit zone in his rearview mirror.
“Yeah, you know,” he says, “thought I’d rather go out on a high note than be carried off the ice.”
He immediately cringes, freezing behind the wheel as he watches for Jack’s reaction out of the corner of his eye. There were many things Kent has grown out of, but apparently putting his foot in his mouth was not one of them.
“Shit,” he says quickly, “I didn’t mean—”
Jack just shakes his head. “I know you didn’t,” he says. “And I had a lot of time to come to terms with what happened. It’s fine, honestly.”
The reassurance settles Kent, even though he still wishes he never said anything to begin with, but Jack looks genuinely reconciled with the shitty circumstances of his retirement.
Back at home, Nate is waiting for them on the patio, grilling steaks while the vegetables are slowly roasting in the oven. Out of the two of them, Nate is the better cook, but it’s not like Kent is a disaster in the kitchen, either. Years of being the oldest kid of a single mother would do that to you, so by the time Kent left home to live with his billet family, and then to live alone in Vegas, he could reliably feed himself, unlike some of the other rookies or guys from the juniors, or, hell, even seasoned veterans.
They eat out on the patio, hidden under an awning, comfortable and mellow after a few glasses of wine and lazy from the heat. Eventually, Nate goes inside to deal with the dishes, and Bittle grabs their plates and a couple of glasses and goes right after him, leaving Kent and Jack alone. It takes Jack a moment to say anything, but Kent doesn’t really want to break the silence either.
“You know you can talk to me whenever, right?” Jack asks eventually, leaning in, his head resting against the high back of the chair as he cranes his neck to look Kent in the face. “It can get rough, dealing with this on your own. And it’s gonna get rough. It’s…it’s a big adjustment, I hope you know that.”
Kent puts his glass away. “Shit, you think I don’t know that?”
Jack shrugs.
“I don’t think anyone does, really. There’s nothing that can prepare you for this. I know it was a little different with me, because of the injury, but it’s always harder than you expect it to be. It’s not like when you’re on long-term IR, when you know you’re gonna get back on the ice at some point and be there for your team at puck drop. Sometimes that’s just it, for life.”
“I already had my freak-out about it, don’t worry,” Kent says, aiming for light and missing by half an inch. “No, but seriously, thanks, Zimms. If anything goes pear-shaped more than I thought it would, I’ll call you.”
.
The Awards are the usual glitzy shtick, but at least Kent and Nate look smoking hot on the red carpet.
Kent got edged out of the race for the Art Ross by just two points, thanks to Davies, who’s really come into his own as the new captain of the Falconers, so he’s not about to complain, not really. It was a good fight that Davies won fair and square, and honestly, Kent already got a few of those in the past; he doesn’t want to be a sore loser about this.
He does win the Conn Smythe, though, and the Hart for good measure, and Nate gets awarded the Lady Byng, so it’s a pretty good evening, all things considered.
The Calder goes to Clarkson, which Kent didn’t expect—he’d bet his money on Riley, who not only put up the points, but also played more games in the regular season than Clarkson. But then again, Kent stopped wondering what logic the Calder voting process followed a long time ago, back when Adam Simmons—first overall, straight to the NHL, incredible production throughout the season—was passed over in favor of Ruskin.
It hits him in the car on the way home from the after party, that this is it. The next time he goes up on that stage, he’ll be presenting the award instead of receiving it. And as strange as it was to see Jack presenting the Calder, he imagines it will be even more bizarre to stand in Jack’s place in a few years.
As their car cuts through the streets of Vegas, still busy despite the late hour, Nate starts to slowly undo his own bowtie and then reaches for Kent’s. Once he’s done, his hand rests for a moment on the nape of Kent’s neck as his thumb runs back and forth along the side of it, warm and soothing, and Kent sighs, leaning into the touch.
To his credit, the driver doesn’t even blink.
They stumble inside the house, still slightly buzzed from the champagne and wine they drank at the reception; Jack and Bittle are still out, with their own set of keys and the code to their security system, so it doesn’t really matter if there’s someone there to open the door for them when they finally get back.
Instead, Nate presses up against Kent and kisses him on the side of the neck, right in the middle of the front hall, then gives him a gentle push forward.
“C’mon, hotshot, let’s take this show upstairs and get you out of these clothes,” he says and Kent goes, his laughter echoing loudly throughout the house.
He knows that seeing Kent in black tie always makes Nate all hot and bothered like they’re a couple of horny teenagers again, but he’s definitely not complaining. They undress with ease and efficiency that comes from years of falling asleep and waking up next to each other; they know each other’s bodies as well as their own, and they might have changed a little over the years, because there are scars and marks that hadn’t been there when they first sucked each other off on Kent’s couch at their old apartment, that summer when Kent finally threw caution to the wind and got so much more than he expected in return.
When they finally get their hands on each other, they’re both too tired for anything fancy, so Nate just jerks them off while Kent grinds down against him, beads of sweat slowly running down the column of his spine, their lips red from kissing and slick with spit. It’s fast and hot, and weirdly desperate in a way that Kent doesn’t really understand, but it’s also what they both need right now—the closeness, the heat between them that has little to do with the reality of summer in Nevada.
Kent comes first with a muffled gasp, all over Nate’s hand and his stomach, and then he moves down, wraps his hand around Nate’s cock as his mouth closes over the head, his tongue running along the crown for a moment before he sucks him down.
It doesn’t take long after that, with Nate already close to the edge, one hand buried in Kent’s hair and the other fisted in the sheets, and he comes with Kent’s mouth still closed over him,
“Not bad, huh?” Nate says with a breathy laugh as he pulls himself up on his elbows to look at Kent, who licks his lips, waiting for his heartbeat to even out.
Kent has no idea if he means the awards or the sex, or maybe both, but he laughs, too, and says, “Yeah, not bad. Not bad at all.”
.
Kent spends his Cup day with Nate and his family in upstate New York. It’s a tradition by now, and it’s the last time he’s getting to parade the Cup around, so he sees no reason to mess with it. They have a barbecue and a pool party, and Nate keeps taking pictures of Kent the entire afternoon.
They go to Spain for their vacation, and spend two weeks first in Madrid, then in Barcelona, before they need to get back stateside.
Nate needs to keep up with his off-season conditioning, and Kent doesn’t need to keep up with anything, really, but he still joins Nate every day for a workout, because that’s something he knows, a routine that runs deeper than muscle memory. It’s easy to forget that he’s not going to be dressing for training camp at the end of the summer.
It’s the strangest thing in the world, sending Nate off to camp while Kent stays at home. By then, the news of his retirement has already hit the public, the cat’s out of the bag and all that, but there are moments when he thinks that maybe he could just tag along, lace up his skates, put on his pads and run drills with the rest of the guys, and it would be just like nothing ever changed.
It would also be a lie, and Kent decided to be more honest with himself a long time ago.
The Aces offered him a position at the front office, but Kent is not Jack. He doesn’t think he could do much good there—his strengths have always been on the ice, not off it; Kent knows how to play, how to score goals and how to lead by example, but he doesn’t give a shit about bureaucracy and couldn’t imagine himself dealing with the overblown spectacle of it all.
When Kent comes back from his workout on the second day of camp, Nate is already home, heating up leftover paella from yesterday. Kent stops by the kitchen to grab a bottle of gatorade from the fridge, then leans against the counter, watching as Nate prepares lunch for the two of them.
“Good workout?” he asks, looking over the shoulder at Kent.
“Yeah.” Kent downs the bottle and crushes it in his hands, then throws it into recycling. “How are the rookies?”
“There’s potential. Some of them are just happy to still be here and not back in Henderson, some are too fucking cocky for their own good, some are scared shitless, you know, the usual fare,” Nate says. “Most of them are disappointed they didn’t get to see you. The guys already miss you, too.”
“Yeah, that’s because they’re clingy motherfuckers,” Kent says, but the joke doesn’t exactly land like he hoped it would, ringing a bit hollow.
It’s not really a joke when you miss them, too.
.
In early October, right before their home opener against the Schooners, the Aces retire Kent’s number to the applause of a full house. Kent watches the sweater being lifted up to the rafters, his name and number spread across the back of the it, stark white against the black of the home jersey that Kent had worn hundreds of times as he skated out to the deafening applause to stand on center ice.
His mom and Sam are there, sitting in management box, and Kent joins them once the ceremony is over and they’re getting ready for the puck drop. He sits down, then clears his throat once, twice, three times, trying to get the choked-up feeling to go away. It’s not going great, but when the cameras pan to rest on him for a moment and his face lands on the jumbotron, he manages a smile and a wave.
It feels surreal, watching the team skate out onto the ice from the management box when you know that this time, there’s no coming back from that. And Kent—Kent is a hockey player; he’s had his fair share of serious injuries, so it’s not the first time he was forced to sit out a game or two, or, hell, ten, but back then, it was always with the expectation and understanding that he would eventually rejoin his team on the other side of the glass. So the thing is—he knows he made the right decision, but it doesn’t stop the world from feeling like it’s just tilted on its axis.
The Aces sweep the Schooners 4-0, and after the game, the beats get to Kent before he can fuck off somewhere where he could have his five minutes of freakout in peace.
“How was it, watching the team play from the management box?” Carter asks, and he’s never been one to sugarcoat things, ever since the Aces allowed him into the locker room. “How do you think the Aces are going to fare now that you’re not there to score goals left and right?”
Kent grits his teeth. “I don’t know, Justin, I kinda think they did pretty okay there, wouldn’t you agree?”
Carter gives him an impatient look.
“Okay, I know you’re here after a sound bite, so how about I give you one for the road,” Kent says. “You can’t win Cups with one player. What you do need for that is a team, a team that feels like a team, not a collection of overblown egos, a team that will go out there and dominate, no matter the circumstances, because they’re hungry for winning. The Las Vegas Aces? They are that team, with me or without me. That was a freebie, by the way, and you can all quote me on that.”
Kent can hear footsteps coming towards their group from behind, and then he feels a hand touch the small of his back. When he turns around, Nate is standing a little to his left, his hair still damp from the shower. He shoots Kent a smile, then turns his attention to the reporters.
“Gentlemen,” he says with a nod.
“What about you, Olsen?” one of the other beats asks. “Thinking about retirement?”
Nate flashes him another smile. “I’ll tell you when my two years are up.”
When they finally leave after answering a few more questions, some of the reporters try to go after them for one more quote like they don’t fucking know when to quit, but Kent just waves at them as they walk away, Nate’s hand still resting on the small of his back.
.
His mother ambushes him before they fly back to New York. Kent knew this was coming, because his mother is his mother, and she always worries, even though Kent hasn’t been a little kid for literal years.
“So how are you doing, really?” she asks at breakfast, since neither Sam nor Nate are up yet.
Kent pours himself another cup of coffee and takes a long drink just to give himself some time to figure out how to say this without worrying her or lying. It turns out to be surprisingly tough.
“It’s…I don’t know,” he says in the end. “It’s an adjustment. But it’s not like I’m gonna be cut off from hockey forever. I can still skate, still play. I could start a hockey school here in Vegas, teach kids how to play hockey or…I don’t know. Do something, y’know, anything. We can get the foundation to sponsor another peewee team, and maybe I could, like, coach. Or be an assistant coach, because I never really properly coached in my life, or whatever. I have options. Maybe I should join that beer league.”
His mother gives him a long, considering look before she gets back to her oatmeal.
“We could do that,” she says, still chewing, which is pretty unfair, because she used to always get on Kent’s case when he talked with his mouth full. “The foundation has some additional funds to allocate, and we could possibly get a team organized, buy the kids their equipment, set up a hockey school. But how are you doing?”
“I don’t know, Jesus, would you give it a rest?” Kent gets up abruptly, coffee sloshing over the brim of the cup. “All of you? It’s a big fucking change and a tough fucking decision that I needed to make if I didn’t want to cripple myself for life, so how do you think I feel?”
He regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth. His mother is looking up at him, her face calm and collected, and Kent feels like the biggest fucking asshole on Earth.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry.”
His mom puts her spoon down and walks up to him, then touches her hands to the sides of Kent’s face.
“I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you, baby,” she says, looking Kent straight in the eyes. “I know this sport was your life, I know you gave up so much to get to where you are now, and it must be hard to let go. But you’re gonna be fine. You’ve been through so much already, and you’re gonna get through this, too.”
He pulls her closer into a hug and breathes into the crook of her neck for a moment as he keeps his arms around her, the familiar, comforting smell of home enveloping him when she hugs him back.
Two hours later, Kent drives them to McCarran and when they say goodbye, his mom kisses him on the cheek and gives him a gentle pat and a smile.
“We’ll talk about that hockey school after we land, okay?” she says. “Take care of yourself, sweetheart, and of Nate.”
He hangs back for a few minutes after they go through security, just idly watching people pass him by, thinking about all the thousands upon thousands of miles he’s travelled in the last seventeen years, hauled from airport to airport and from hotel room to hotel room, until they all started to look identical. This is the part he won’t be missing.
.
It gets harder whenever the Aces are playing on the road, the house just a little bit too big, the four walls of it just a little bit too empty.
He knows how little time there is for long conversations when you’re on a roadie, being managed twenty-four seven, between practice and travel, and team lunch, and curfew, so he gets his moments with Nate whenever he can.
After the first week, he calls Bittle.
“How did you do it?” he asks by way of hello.
There’s a moment of surprised silence on the other side of the line, then Bittle says, “And hello to you too, Kent. How did I do what?” A pause. “Wait, did you mean to call Jack?”
“No, I meant to call you,” he says, almost laughing at himself under his breath. Here he is, at thirty-five, making a fool of himself like he’s a lovesick teenager. “Jack wouldn’t know shit about it. How did you deal with Jack being away from home more than he was at home?”
He doesn’t even know why it bothers him so much, because it never did before—even when he was on long-term IR and not flying with the team to their away games, it didn’t eat away at him he way it does now.
“You just…you just need to learn how to miss each other,” Bittle says then. “It’s hard, but it’s a learned skill. Believe me, I would know.”
Kent huffs, amused. “Yeah, that’s why I called you. Anyway, thanks for the advice.”
When Bittle says, “Anytime, Parse,” Kent is mostly sure Bittle is laughing a little, too.
.
Nate comes home in the middle of the night. Kent’s always been a light sleeper, so when he hears the sound of the security system being turned off and then on again, and then quiet steps slowly coming up the stairs, he lifts his head off the pillow and rubs the grime out of his eyes with the back of his hand. He didn’t feel like shaving the previous morning, so when he runs a hand along his jaw, he can feel the light scruff catch against his nails.
He pushes his hair back from his forehead just as Nate walks into the bedroom in a slightly creased suit, the top three buttons of his dress shirt already undone. He’s not wearing a tie and his hair looks mussed, like he slept on the plane.
“Hey,” Kent says, his voice rough from sleep.
Between the door and the foot of the bed, Nate loses both the jacket and the shirt, his feet already bare, then leans down to kiss the corner of Kent’s mouth.
“Hey yourself,” he says. “Did I wake you up?”
Kent laughs hoarsely, clears his throat. “Don’t worry about it. Just because I don’t sleep like the dead—”
“I just got back and you go straight to disparaging my character.” Nate shakes his head, smiling. “Rude, Parse. Incredibly rude.”
Kent turns to his side to face Nate. “Oh, really? What are you gonna do about it?”
Nate tries to stifle a yawn. “Right now? Go to sleep, probably. In the morning?” He flashes Kent a smile. “Well, wouldn’t you like to know.”
“That a promise?” Kent asks, grinning, which earns him a smack on the arm.
“Move over,” Nate says, undoing his belt and unbuttoning his pants just to dump them on the floor next to his side of the bed. “And stop fucking hogging the covers.”
Kent shifts on the bed and after a moment, he feels Nate wrap his arm around his waist, burying his face in the nape of his neck.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kent says, closing his fingers over Nate’s palm resting on his abdomen. “I missed you too.”
.
It gets easier eventually, the constant push and pull of missing each other. It’s a tough lesson to learn when the other person has been a constant point in your life for years—it’s tough to learn how to fill the empty places in your bed and in your home, but they manage. It is, like most things in Kent’s life, rough and hard-earned.
Kent has his own things going, setting up the hockey school and working with the foundation, but it’s nothing like playing eighty-two games a season, and he gets now what Jack meant, how you never expect it to be as hard as it is.
But Kent still skates at least three times a week at the practice rink at the arena, plays one-on-one with Nate whenever they both have a free moment, or with one of the boys, even though he likes to pretend it’s just because they won’t stop fucking bugging him, but the fact is, you can’t just opt out of being a family after this many years. Some families come and go, but some are for life.
Sometimes he runs into some of the rookies, who all look like the sight of Kent strikes the fear of god into their hearts—mostly, as Nate likes to say, probably because they never had to share a locker room with Kent—and sometimes that brings him back to his first year in Vegas, back when he was much angrier at himself and the world, carrying the weight of everything that happened and didn’t happen on his shoulders.
There are moments when he thinks he would willingly swap places with them, but the truth is, he doesn’t want and doesn’t need to do this all over again. The first time was enough.
.
He’s been shooting pucks at the net for the better part of an hour when the door to the practice rink opens and Nate walks in, along with Jeff and a few other guys, their pads on and their skates laced up, sticks in hands.
“C’mon, Parson,” Jeff says as Nate throws Kent his pads. “Can’t have you getting all rusty and stuff. Let’s move it, three-on-three, yeah?”
It feels wrong, facing off against Jeff, but it also feels so right when he snatches the puck from the face-off circle and sends it straight to Nate’s tape, then rushes past Cal just as Nate gets the puck right back to him and Kent sinks it in the net, top-shelf, glove-side.
After they score two more goals, Jeff calls for a break.
“What was that about getting rusty?” Kent asks as he skates back to the bench to get his gatorade.
“You motherfuckers,” Jeff says, hands braced against his knees. “We should never have let the two of you stay on one team.”
Kent tosses the empty bottle aside and wipes his face with his towel.
“Tough.”
Jeff looks up at him. “Yeah, no fucking kidding. It’s not like you spent, what, fifteen years on this asshole’s wing?” he says, pointing to Nate. “Let us fucking live, okay?”
Kent slowly skates backwards, laughing.
“Hey, you wanted this,” he says, which he thinks is fair, because that’s exactly what happened. “You literally brought this on yourself. It’s not my fault that I’m still fucking amazing.”
Jeff takes off his glove just to give him the finger. Kent skates back to center ice and laughs all the way there.
“That was fun,” he says later in the car, as they’re driving back home. Nate glances to the side for a moment, then looks back on the road.
“What, kicking Jeff’s ass?” he asks.
“Well, that’s always a plus, but just, you know.” He shrugs. “Almost like the old times, huh?”
It doesn’t sting the way he thought it would. So maybe his mom was right—maybe he’s doing okay, getting through this relatively unscathed. There’s one thing he knows for sure, though: he could never do it without Nate.
.
He flies to New York in early January, after spending Christmas in Vegas with both their families. The Aces are going on the road, playing in New York and Jersey, then flying over to Boston and Providence at the end of the trip, so Kent flies with the team, and he has tickets to the game against the Rangers.
His car is waiting for him in the airport parking lot, so he says goodbye to Nate and to the team in the arrivals hall, before they pile into the bus that will take them to their hotel, and makes the drive along the I-87 to Albany.
He always forgets how bad the traffic can get in New York, so when his two and a half hours stretches into three and a half, he calls his mom.
“Hey, I’ll be late,” he says as soon as she picks up. “I’m stuck in traffic.”
He can hear the sound of something being chopped and the clanging of pot lids in the background, and he can just imagine that—his mom, with her phone tucked between her shoulder and her cheek, making dinner.
“We’ll wait for you with dinner, the chili is not going anywhere,” she says. “How was your flight? Did you get in okay?”
“I fucking hate LaGuardia,” Kent says just as the cars in front of him start to move at a snail’s pace, slower than Jeff after Christmas break, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.
“Wow, I never heard that one before,” she says, and Kent rolls his eyes.
“Look, it’s not my fault that airport is the worst. Anyway, I’m hanging up, see you in an hour.”
He makes it home a little after seven p.m., long after dark, and he parks the rented car at the curb, fishes his suitcase out of the trunk. The stairs leading up to the front entrance are brightly lit, and there are lights on in the kitchen and the living room.
He makes it into the front hall before Grace runs straight into him, hugging his legs with all the might of a six-year-old.
“Hey, munchkin,” he says, then crouches down to give her a high-five and a hug. “Where’s your mom?”
“With grandma, in the kitchen,” she says, her voice serious. “They said I should go watch out the window to see if you were coming.”
“Good job,” Kent says, trying to smother a laugh as he gives her another high-five. “You must’ve spotted me right away to get here so quickly, huh?”
She beams at him. “I’m very good at spotting things!” she says and Kent nods seriously. “And you know what else I’m really good at? Hockey. I learned a new move last week, and now I can even skate backwards!”
“That’s awesome.” He puts his hand on his chest and does his best exaggerated impression of amazed. “Skating backwards is really hard, right? So, like, you must be really good at hockey, then, maybe even better than me.”
She smiles, a little smug, and in that moment, she looks so much like Sam.
“Maybe I am,” she says, her chin up.
Kent cracks up. “You’ll have to show me tomorrow, okay?”
Grace nods.
“Uncle Kent?” she says then. “Where’s uncle Nate?”
Kent ruffles her hair a little.
“He’s playing a very important game tomorrow, so he couldn’t come with me,” he explains and watches Grace deflate a little. Nate has always been her favorite. “But we can watch him on tv tomorrow before your bedtime. How about that?”
She seems to consider it for a moment.
“Okay,” she says eventually. “We can do that, I guess.”
“Ah, and we’ve been wondering why you didn’t come in to say hi.”
When Kent turns around, Sam is standing in the doorway, leaning against the wall.
Kent dumps his suitcase by the coat rack and goes to hug her. “She’s very good at spotting people, you know,” he says, grinning, as he points with his thumb back to Grace, and Sam flicks him across the forehead in response.
“How was the drive?” Sam asks as they move into the kitchen, Grace trailing behind them. She probably already knows how it was, but she’s always liked to wind Kent up just a little bit.
“The traffic was a b—” He catches himself at the last moment, looks over his shoulder to where Grace pretends not to be interested in grown-up talk at all. “The traffic was bad. And I hate—”
“Yes, yes, you hate LaGuardia, we know.” Sam sighs and rolls his eyes, and it’s Kent’s turn to flick her in the arm, because deep down, they never stopped being little kids around each other.
Kent’s mom is waiting for them in the kitchen, the table already set for four. There’s a pretty big dining room just across the hall, but they rarely eat there. Back at their old apartment, they mostly ate in the kitchen, out of necessity more than anything else, but the habit stuck.
They talk over dinner, Kent and his mom going over his plans for tomorrow while Grace seems to be mostly preoccupied with arranging her food on the plate in weird shapes.
He has a visit at a children’s hospital scheduled for the morning, followed by a hockey lesson at his old rink, now renovated and maintained by his foundation after the previous owners decided to shut it down a few years earlier and Kent asked his mom to buy it from them instead.
Hospitals are always tough for Kent, who still remembers the way he thought his entire chest would cave in as he waited for news—any news—of Jack, staring at the white, sterile walls and breathing in the unmistakable hospital smell of disinfectant and disease. They don’t make him queasy and sweaty, and shivery, the way they used to, but the ghost of that feeling is still there, and Kent doesn’t think it’s ever going away.
The kids are happy to see him, though, and talking to them, joking with them, signing things and telling them about what it’s like to play in the NHL—that’s the easy stuff, the stuff Kent can do with his eyes closed. He just has to stop thinking about how many of these kids will not only never get to play hockey, but also never leave this hospital as long as they live.
He usually has Nate with him for this part, because Nate knows that hospitals freak Kent out and set his teeth on edge, but now that their schedules don’t align anymore, it’s that much harder to make it work. But Kent has always prided himself on his charity work, and just because it’s hard, it doesn’t mean that he wants to stop.
The rink is easier after that, except for the fact that coach Dan died last spring and Kent couldn’t even attend the funeral because the Aces were travelling around Alberta at the time—first Edmonton, then Calgary.
Kent knows the new head coach, Troy Gardiner, through his mom, who arranged for a replacement, but they have never really met face to face. When they do, it surprises Kent how young he is—even though, intellectually, he knows that, he read his CV—younger than Kent, even. Troy played three seasons in the AHL after going undrafted two years in a row, before deciding to pursue coaching instead.
Kent knows that the guys who never made it to the show have usually two primary reactions to meeting him in person: they either worship the ground he walks on in a way that borders on uncomfortable, or they despise him to the core for being everything they could never be. So all in all, it’s pretty refreshing when they finally meet face to face and Troy turns out to be neither.
Kent thinks that he wouldn’t have minded running drills with him and having him around at camp, if Troy had ever made it to Henderson. It’s not like Kent has a lot of illusions left after years in this dog and pony show, and he was never under the impression that all the guys playing hockey at various levels are never raging assholes, but Troy seems level-headed, impressed with Kent but not worshipful, and good with kids.
The assistant coaches are still the same people coach Dan hired a few years back—Marlene and Jason—and they know Kent as well as you can know someone who spends most of the year across the country, dropping by from time to time to spend some time with the kids and teach a class or two.
“Were you close with coach Dan?” Troy asks as they’re getting their coffee before the start of the skating clinic, then shakes his head. “Sorry, I didn’t really know him, but that’s all anyone ever calls him, so…”
Kent waves his hand. “No, it’s fine. He was always coach Dan to everyone. And yeah, we were pretty close. He was my first skating coach.”
“Must’ve been hard, losing him like that,” Troy says. “He certainly left big shoes to fill.”
Kent laughs quietly under his breath.
“Look,” he says, “I didn’t come here to judge you or anything, okay? I know you’re qualified for this position, and I know you’re good with the kids. It’s not about replacing him, you know? It’s about continuing what he started. So relax.”
He pauses for a moment.
“He came to my first Cup day, you know,” he says then. “And to the next two. It was strange, not having him around this year.”
There are small things around the coaches’ room that still remind Kent of coach Dan, a few knickknacks that belonged to him that his family didn’t take home when they came to empty his office.
It feels strange, coming back here and discovering that another part of what made him into who he is today has disappeared forever.
The kids, though—the kids are still pretty fucking great. Some of those Kent remembers from last year graduated from peewee to bantam and left, but there’s a group of five boys and three girls that Kent doesn’t know. They look to be on the younger side, and some of them are visibly shy.
By the end of the day, though, all the kids are tired and hyper at the same time, getting ready to get their jerseys signed, and Kent talks with them as he signs the merch or their equipment. There’s a lot of kids still waiting, but he’s in no rush, really, so he stays behind after the rink officially closes for the day, until everyone who came leaves happy and satisfied.
“Retirement’s hitting you hard, huh, Parse?” Marlene asks as she drops by the front lobby to help with the clean-up.
“Nah, I’m good,” he says and, maybe for the first time since he hung up his skates, really means it.
.
“Maybe we should get married,” Kent says on an unusually cold day in February.
It’s Sunday, Nate’s first day off in god fucking knows how long, and they’re coming home from a morning run, the air brisk and chilly in a way it usually isn’t this far south.
Nate nearly trips, then stops immediately in his tracks. Kent keeps running for another thirty feet, carried by his momentum, before he stops as well and jogs back to Nate.
“So?” he asks expectantly, wiping the sweat off his face with the back of his hand.
Nate looks straight at Kent.
“What, now?”
“Yeah, sure, I mean, we’re in Vegas, might just as well…” he trails off, trying to keep a straight face and failing. “No, of course not, you dumbass,” he says, laughing. “Just, like, in general.”
Nate looks at Kent for a moment, saying nothing. Then he bursts out laughing, head down, his hands propped against his knees.
“Just so you know,” he says a moment later, straightening up, but Kent can still see him cracking up on the inside, “I’m totally telling the story of this proposal at the wedding.”
It’s not like Kent never thought about that, but it was something he never seriously considered, growing up. The way he imagined it, he would spend his entire career in the closet, maybe dating someone on the side, or maybe not, and then he would retire and just go on to live the rest of his life the same way. Jack—Jack changed a lot about the things Kent imagined for himself in the future, but Kent also knew that Jack—the Jack he knew back then—would never come out willingly.
It’s funny, how life turns out sometimes.
But this, here, with Nate—this just feels right.
.
Kent gives an interview for Sports Illustrated seven months into his retirement, just as the Aces make the last push to clinch their playoffs spot.
The journalist he meets with at a Japanese café that recently opened just off the Strip and serves the best matcha ice-cream in town is more or less his age, maybe a few years older, and looks like he’s not very used to the heat.
They order and sit down in a quiet corner, away from the prying eyes of the people.
“So how are you doing, with your former team looking to clinch first place in Pacific either today or tomorrow?” he asks. There’s a recorder placed on the table between the two of them, and Kent leans back in his chair, sprawling a little. “Is it strange, watching them succeed without you with the C on your sweater?”
Kent licks his lips. He’s an old pro at this by now, and he always had a knack for talking to the press.
“Maybe a little,” he says, “but that’s just because, when you spend your entire career playing for one team, even when you retire, you still feel like you’re a part of it on some level, and you expect to skate out there right before puck drop. But I never doubted they would make it. I know there was a lot of speculation concerning whether this team was riding the wave of success on my shoulders, but I hope that this season is proof enough that it takes more than one guy in skates with a stick to win the Cup. The Aces organization built a strong, talented and dedicated team, and the fact that I’m retired? It doesn’t really change that much, when the core of your team is so solid and consistent.”
This is the part that Kent resents a little—the assumptions that the Aces’ success is all because of him. Sure, they were a pretty young, untested expansion team when he got drafted, with not a lot of luck on its side but with a lot of talent and the will to make the best of the frankly shitty situation, and they worked hard for everything they achieved, leaving their blood, sweat and tears out on the ice, practice after practice, year after year, until it finally clicked. This—this is theirs, and nobody will ever be able to take it away from them, because they built this team from the ground up and got their due in the end.
But he knows that the prodigy savior narrative sells better. He never had any illusions in that regard.
“Do you think they will go all the way again?” the guy—Gabe—asks. “It’s been over a decade since a team went back-to-back to win the championship title.”
Kent shrugs and takes a sip of his matcha drink.
“I feel like saying I don’t want to answer the question sort of answers the question, so yeah, why not, let’s have it,” he says. “I certainly think they have a great chance. It’s hockey, and anything can happen at any time, but I definitely think they have it in them, as far as the skill and the drive go. They definitely want to win.”
Gabe makes a note of something in his moleskin, then turns his attention back to Kent.
“So does that mean that you still have close ties to the team?” he asks.
Kent laughs.
“I mean, I am getting married to their captain this summer, so you could say that, yeah,” he says. “But in all seriousness, I do. I never wanted to cut ties and just walk away. The truth is, hockey will always be a part of my life—right now, I do some coaching with kids and I’m still very much involved in my charity projects, which are all hockey-related, so that part is for life. I might not be playing professionally anymore, but hockey is a huge part of me, and it has helped shape me into the person I am today. And I have good friends on that team, and not just, like, people I’m friendly with in a professional setting, but people I want to hang out outside of the rink. The Aces have always felt like a second family to me, and that hasn’t changed. So yeah, we all hang sometimes. I don’t know, it’s fun.”
They talk for a while as they eat, about Kent’s charities, his coaching career, his plans for the next few months, next few years. It’s a good talk, all things considered.
“So, any regrets?” Gabe asks as they wrap it up.
Kent looks at him for a moment.
“No,” he says eventually. “No, I think I’m good.”
.
The Aces clinch first place in the Pacific Division the day after Kent’s interview.
Their last game is at home, and Kent, who sits in the management box, is the first one on his feet as soon as Jeff sinks the puck in the net just three seconds before the end of regulation, and then the entire team is screaming and hugging, and for a moment, Kent wants to be there, too, on the other side of the glass.
But the feeling passes eventually as he realizes that this is their moment, the moment they prove to everyone who ever doubted them as a team that they can and they will win and dominate even without Kent Parson as the face of the franchise.
Once, it would probably make him feel expendable. Now, it only makes him feel proud.
The march through the playoffs is a series of sacrifices—Matts is playing with an injured wrist, Jeff cracks two ribs in the conference finals, and Nate plays the entire last series with a sprained Achilles tendon, stumbling back home after every game with gritted teeth. Kent can’t remember the last time he felt so helpless—besides the obvious—as he can only watch from the sidelines.
But they make it, in the end, and Kent—Kent is with them every step of the way, just in a different capacity.
.
It goes all the way to game seven.
The Aces are battered and bruised, and barely holding on, but they’re still hungry for winning.
It’s a tense game, from the puck drop to the last second of regulation, and then as it goes into double overtime, but when Nate finally gets the puck past the Caps’ defenses and then sends it straight into the net, the roar of the audience is overwhelming.
In the end, they drag Kent out onto the ice, and Nate is right next to him, like a euphoric déjà vu, clutching thirty-four pounds of silver to his chest, and then he kisses Kent, sweaty and tired, right before he raises the Cup above his head.
In the end, just being there with them, with Nate, sharing this moment, is enough.
“You okay?” Nate asks, turning to Kent as soon as he passes the Cup to Jeff, who might be crying a little.
Kent smiles, and pulls him down for a kiss by the front of his sweater.
“Better than okay,” he says. It’s the truth.