The Rivals of Copper County (Copper County #2)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

JASPER

“Co-coaches,” I groaned, tipping my head back into the couch cushion. Late-afternoon sunshine streamed through Tamsen Monroe’s living room window, which was open to catch the chilly breeze. “Me and Watt .”

“Technically, he’s not. He’s a parent-coach liaison. And I don’t see the problem here.” Tam selected another double chocolate cookie from the tin she’d perched on her pregnant belly and stuffed half of it in her mouth. “You know you need help with fundamentals, and Watt knows hockey as well as I do. It’s pretty awesome that he agreed to do it for the sake of the kids. If anyone should be upset about this, it’s us.” She patted her belly sadly. “I don’t know who’s gonna bring us stress-baked treats every day in exchange for our coaching-coaching now, Bean.”

I snorted. “Please. Considering you’re my only friend in this town, it’ll still be me.”

Our new friendship was unexpected, but I was grateful for it. When I’d shown up at the address Principal Schmidt had given me, after delivering my dubious peace offering to Watt’s back porch Sunday evening, I’d been flushed with victory and eager for hockey tutoring… but when Coach Monroe had answered the door, I’d been more than a little intimidated.

I’d been told that the woman knew her hockey—that she’d played “division one” in college, which was apparently very impressive, and that a couple of her brothers had played the sport professionally. But no one had mentioned that the former coach of the Fighting Marmots would be a tall, buff woman with glowing olive skin, a stomach the size of a small planet, and a take-no-shit attitude.

“So you’re the hockey newbie who’s taking my team , ” she’d said coolly. Her dark eyes had lasered right through the confident smile I’d papered on.

“Er. Well. Not taking so much as… borrowing temporarily?” I’d offered, smile faltering. I’d held up one of Mabel’s vintage tins like an offering to a goddess. “Will you please teach me your ways?”

Tamsen had sniffed derisively… then she’d sniffed again, deeper this time. Her eyes had narrowed at the tin. “Is that… chocolate?”

“Banana chocolate chip muffins. I made them this afternoon. I’m a stress-baker. You know, a person whose response to upheaval is to produce more baked goods than any one human should reasonably consume? I wasn’t sure if you were one of those super-health-conscious coaches, but I thought I’d take a chance since?—”

“Shit.” She’d rubbed her bulging stomach, then grabbed my arm and hauled me—and my baked goods—into her cozy house. “Sit your ass down. I told my husband I’d planned to give you hairy eyeballs for at least five minutes, but chocolate is my kryptonite.”

Just like that, a beautiful friendship had been born.

In a week that had seen me make very little progress organizing Mabel’s cluttered house, zero progress finding an attorney back in California who’d help me sue my ex without requiring an enormous retainer, and negative progress making amends to Watt, it was nice that at least one thing was going right.

Tam and I had spent every evening this week on her couch, sometimes alongside her husband or her brother Delaney—her “non-hockey” brother, as she called him—who was staying with them for a while. She’d provided me with lesson plans for taking over her history classes, along with cheat sheets about which kids needed a little extra help and how to provide it. We’d also watched countless YouTube hockey games, with frequent pauses to explain the rules and formations, and quizzes afterward to check my learning.

One of those things was working out incredibly well.

Hint: it was not the one with the ice.

“Be honest,” I asked suddenly. “Am I the most hockey-ignorant person in Copper County?”

Tam’s smile softened as she licked chocolate from her lips. “Of course not. Look at Delaney. He’s purposefully ignorant, and that’s way worse.” She pointed at her brother, who was curled up on a chair in the corner, reading a thick hardcover.

“As the official Un-Sportsy Monroe, I do feel I have a certain standard of ignorance to uphold,” he said mildly, turning his page without glancing up. He added pointedly, “Tamsquatch .”

She narrowed her eyes. “You know I hate that name.”

“Do you?” He batted his eyes innocently behind black-framed glasses. “My bad.”

“Keep it up,” she warned. “I’ll FaceTime Wells and Lawson. We’ll take turns forcibly explaining backchecking to you?—”

“Oh, I know that one,” I said before Delaney could clap back. I recited, “Backchecking is when a player skates back across the ring, from the offensive zone to their own defensive zone, to stop the opposing team’s attack.”

“Very good,” Tam approved. “Except it’s rin k , sweetie. With a k .”

I narrowed my eyes. “But it’s round… or oval-ish, I guess. Like a ring .” I looked to Delaney for support.

He scraped his bottom teeth over his top lip and said, almost apologetically, “It’s… actually a rectangle with rounded corners.”

I pictured the place in my mind and realized he was right. “Shit.” I slumped back in my seat.

“You’ll get it eventually.” Tam patted my knee soothingly… then ruined it by adding, “But for right now, you’re definitely the most hockey-ignorant hockey coach in Copper County. So explain to me why coaching—sorry, liaising —with Watt will be a problem. I’ve known him for a couple years, through Derry, and he’s always seemed like a steady Freddy. A good guy.”

“To you,” I muttered, squirming deeper into the cushion. “Watt and I have history. Liaising is… not a good idea.” Despite the teenage-like libido inside me that wanted nothing more than to liaise the fuck out of him.

She drew her leg up beneath her as though her bones were elastic. It looked uncomfortable but apparently wasn’t. “Like… romantic history? You and Watt? I didn’t know he was queer.” She winced and held up a hand before Delaney or I could object. “I realized that was an incredibly ignorant thing to say the second it was out of my mouth. I don’t know if I expected him to flash the secret gay decoder ring or what.”

I laughed, and so did her brother. One of the things Tam and I had bonded over was my concern about being an out, gay hockey coach in a small town like Copper County, but Tam had put my mind at rest. Her husband, Lucas, had grown up here, and people had been incredibly accepting when he’d come out as trans a couple of years ago. It was one of the reasons they’d moved back before starting their family.

“No, my history with Watt wasn’t a romance. Not for him, anyway. As far as I know, he’s straight. Isn’t he with Kayla?”

She shook her head. “Nah. Watt’s pretty tightly woven into Copper County, and if he was dating anyone seriously, Lucas’s Grandma Charlene would’ve told me more than I wanted to know.”

Delaney twisted on his chair and propped his chin in his hand, abandoning all pretense of reading. “So if not romance with you and Watt, then what?”

“Remember I told you I used to spend summers here with my great-aunt and uncle? For a while, Watt was the beefcakey boy next door who made my pre-coming-out heart go pitty-pat.” I drew my legs up on the sofa, mirroring Tam. “Part of my personal ‘ I knew I was gay when… ’ story.”

“Ah, yes.” Delaney nodded. “I had one of those.”

“So you worshipped Watt from afar?” Tam asked.

“God no.” I laughed. “I worshipped him from up close and personal. We met when we were twelve, I think. The first summer my parents shipped me to Copper County. Watt was larger than life even then—I was a late bloomer and didn’t hit my first growth spurt until I was fourteen, so picture this tall, dark, muscly Adonis and this scrawny, tow-headed, bug-eyed little shrimp?—”

“A lot like now?” Tam teased.

“Pfft. Lies.” I demonstrated by flexing my biceps. While she was distracted by laughter, I reached over and grabbed a cookie from the tin, ignoring her squawk.

“Anyway, Mabel had talked to Watt’s mom about me being bored,” I said around a mouthful of cookie, “so Mrs. Bartlett forced Watt to come next door and call for me. ‘ Do you wanna, like, hang out or whatever? ’” I said, in an impression of sullen preteen-Watt. “And I was like, ‘ Golly gee, heck yeah! Let’s swim in the lake! ’” I said in a high-pitched mockery of young Jasper. “But Watt refused to swim because I was too small. Or to play catch or walk to O’Leary for ice cream. He said my little legs would get tired.”

“Aw. He was protective,” Tam said.

“He was insulting,” Delaney corrected.

“ Exactly . Or… I dunno, maybe he was genuinely trying to be protective at first, like he was with his little sister? But I wasn’t his little sister, so I was pissed . I got right up in his face. ‘ Anything you can do, I can do better, Watt Bartlett. ’ He didn’t believe me, of course.” I grinned. “But I showed him.”

“Love it,” Tam crowed.

“So did I,” I said softly. “I got taller and filled out, but the challenges only got wilder every summer after that. I found myself doing things I genuinely hadn’t known I was capable of until he dared me to do them. We shimmied up flagpoles, walked along train tracks for a mile without losing our balance, swam back and forth across the lake twice while all the other kids in town watched underwater, making sure we never touched bottom. Once, I ate six ice cream cones in a sitting without puking, while Watt had to tap out at five. Oh, God, and one time, we talked to one of the Copper-plates staying at the campground in a made-up language we called Skaldron that sounded like a cross between Swedish and Klingon.” I snort-laughed. “The lady went up to Mabel and said with a straight face that the ‘foreign children’ staying there were absolutely delightful?—”

“No!” Tam and Delaney said at the same time.

“Yup. That one was my idea.” I grinned. “When we were older, there’d be consequences for dares you took but couldn’t complete, too. Like, one Fourth of July, Watt had to wear Mabel’s old flowered sunhat to the O’Leary festival, and he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone why. Another time, I had to roll in the mud and not wash off for hours.” I squirmed in my seat at the remembered itching. “I convinced a bunch of girls it was a spa treatment, and the next day, they rolled in the mud, too. Good times.”

“Holy shit.” Tam’s grin was fierce. “I bet the other kids egged you on.”

“Oh yeah. They’d suggest dares for us. Consequences, too. Highly entertaining for everyone. But…” I hesitated. “It wasn’t just showing off or trying to humiliate each other. We were friends. One time, Watt challenged me to jump in Copper Lake naked.” I turned my head to give her a rueful grin. “I got pretty comfortable being naked once I started modeling, but back then, I was really shy. That didn’t stop me from accepting the dare, obviously?—”

“Obviously,” Delaney agreed.

Tam nodded. “Teenage boy pride.”

“Right. Which is why it really meant something to me that when Watt saw it made me uncomfortable, he called it off. Told everybody he didn’t want to do it and refused to take anyone’s shit. That night, he came over to the campground, and we laid out on the dock and talked. He apologized for accidentally going too far. Said he hoped he hadn’t let me down.”

That had been the first night we’d sat and talked for hours on the dock. It hadn’t been the last. We’d even made up a signal for when I planned to sneak out past Mabel’s strict curfew so Watt would know when to join me.

“We made up the Rules of Engagement According to Watt and Jasper that night,” I told them. “No dares involving nakedness. No kissing or anything sexual. No involving other people unless we were sure they’d laugh about it. No hurting anyone’s feelings. That kind of thing. I think… I think that was when I started falling for him. Before I knew it, I was drowning in the first and most devastating crush of my life.”

“Oh, honey. I’d be more shocked if you didn’t fall for him.” Delaney ran a hand over his dark hair. “Damn.”

“Uh-huh. God, I’m half in love with him myself after hearing that. Fuck .” Tam seemed to have forgotten about the cookies while I talked, but now, she grabbed one and chewed, aggressively eating her feelings. “So what happened?”

Dredging up the past had made me feel too soft and vulnerable to tell them the whole truth, so I hedged. “The simple answer, I guess, is that our lives diverged. My parents got divorced right before senior year of high school. My mom came to Copper County to get me, and we flew to LA that same night… and I didn’t get to apologize to Watt for breaking one of the Rules of Engagement.”

“Oof. Hold up. You broke one of the rules, then left the man hanging on an apology for almost twenty years?”

I flinched but nodded at Tam. “I know. I know , okay? It was shitty. But I … I didn’t know how to take it back or what to say to make it right. I was embarrassed. And scared. And I wasn’t adjusting to the move very well.”

This was a huge understatement. My parents’ divorce had been acrimonious, moving to a new school as a senior had been awful, and the demands of the modeling career my mom encouraged had made friendships impossible.

That time had sucked.

“The longer I waited,” I went on, “the sillier it felt to call him up and apologize for an incident he’d probably forgotten. I figured I’d talk to him when I got back to town.” I was aware of how lame my reasons probably sounded, but I didn’t have better ones.

“Except you didn’t come back… until now.” Delaney sounded sad.

“Nope,” I whispered.

“And… he hadn’t forgotten about it, had he?” he whispered.

I gave a quick headshake. “Based on the few run-ins we’ve had, I’d guess not.”

“And your beautiful friendship is in tatters?” Tam said, her voice rising with emotion.

Reluctantly, I nodded again.

“Dear God, Jasper.” She whacked me with a pink velour throw pillow. “You can’t tell a story like that to a pregnant woman.” She sniffled. “I’m made up of ninety percent hormones and ten percent chocolate right now. I need happy endings only.”

I laughed, though I felt the weight of the story, too. “Sorry. I’ll make you triple chocolate cookies later this week to balance you out. But now you know why Watt and me co-coaching the team is gonna be a thing. Apologizing isn’t as straightforward as I’d hoped it would be. The first time we ran into each other after I got back, he decimated a hundred paper turkeys trying to get away from me. The second time, we, um, fell into our old habits and provoked each other just the teeniest, tiniest bit?—”

“Ugh.” Delaney shook his head.

“—and then the third time, at the parent practice yesterday?—”

“Oh, we’ve heard how that went down,” Tam said with clear disapproval. “Lucas’s grandmother came by to give me the skinny since she knows I’m bored, sitting here on modified bed rest. She said, ‘ The Rivals of Copper County are at it again .’ I told her hell no, she was a hundred percent wrong. ‘ I’ve never seen Watt lose his temper, Charlene ,’ I said, ‘ and Jasper’s awesome. Somebody made that up .’ Guess not, huh?”

I groaned. It had been too much to hope the incident would stay a closely guarded secret between me, Watt, Principal Schmidt, twenty teenagers, and dozens of our heavily invested neighbors.

“So… what do I do?” I demanded. “Our first co-coach practice is the day after tomorrow?—”

Tam’s eyes narrowed. “Well, you’re not gonna lose your shit and argue in front of my team again, that’s for sure.”

I bit my lip. She was right, of course, but the weirdest part was arguing with Watt… didn’t feel like arguing.

Arguments with my ex-husband had felt like stepping onto a tightrope over a viper pit. If I ever expressed dissatisfaction, Martin turned it around on me instantly, either making me feel like an ungrateful idiot for being upset or laughing it off dismissively. It had taken me way too long to realize I’d become scared of my own anger because it never led to anything good.

With Watt, our verbal skirmishes weren’t always productive or pleasant, but it felt like a challenge between equals. Even when I was burning with anger or my feelings were hurt, I never felt dismissed or manipulated.

“I don’t want to argue with Watt. Not like that. But I don’t know how to make him sit still and listen, let alone convince him to… to…” I faltered.

Tam nodded. “I think step one is to figure out what you’re trying to convince him to do. You want him to stand down so you can get through the season as co-coaches? Easy. Tell him you’ll sit on the sidelines and babysit practice, so you’ll fulfill your job requirements and minimize disruptions.”

I frowned. That was one option… but everything in me rejected it. I’d feel too much the guy I’d been during my marriage, avoiding problems instead of dealing with them. It hadn’t worked out terribly well.

“I like coaching,” I said. “I don’t know anything about hockey, but I do know what it was like being pushed to succeed at something from a young age. Maybe I can give the kids a little perspective. Remind them that balance is key, like I’ve been doing this week, and that they can’t get consumed with averages and statistics.”

“Agreed,” Tam said. “When you suggested starting out with mindfulness work and stretching, I…”

I snickered. “Thought I was crazy?”

“Maybe a little? But then I started thinking of all the well-meaning parents and coaches who’ve told these kids they need to prioritize their sport as a way to get to college… when there simply aren’t that many full-ride hockey scholarships out there.” She grimaced. “Don’t get me wrong, I love hockey. It made me physically fit, gave me a strong work ethic, and taught me to be part of a team. It’s the ‘putting all your eggs in one basket’ that’s a problem. I look at our brothers… I mean, Wells is fine, more or less. But Lawson…”

She and Delaney exchanged a look.

I glanced back and forth between them. “What happened?”

“I forget you don’t follow sports. It’s so refreshing,” Delaney said with a happy sigh. “Lawson tore his ACL last April and needed surgery. He was supposed to take this season off to recover?—”

“But the team physicians cleared him to play.” Tam shrugged. “Law doesn’t know how to exist without hockey, so…”

“So,” Delaney agreed sourly. “Like you said, Jasper, it’s good for the kids to gain some perspective.”

Frowning, I nodded. “I think they know it, too, on some level. I was expecting a lot more side-eyeing than I got at the start of this week. I think some of them are low-key relieved that an adult in their lives is telling them it’s okay to step back. Derry, for one. Zach, too.”

“Not surprising. Derry’s not intense by nature. Really sweet kid. A stand-up guy, like his dad. Natural hockey instincts, disciplined, but he didn’t really seem driven to play until recently.” Tam selected a final cookie before replacing the lid and shoving the tin away. “Zach’s a great kid, too. More cerebral, a little dramatic. Not a natural player, but strong on strategy. Strong work ethic, too. Stronger than you’d expect from someone so good-looking.” She grinned. “Or maybe not stronger than you’d expect.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Pretty people work hard, too, Ms. Monroe. As evidenced by the fact that I’m here , learning hockey with you, instead of on some sugar daddy’s yacht, working on my tan.”

“And we’re really glad you are.” She licked a spot of chocolate off her finger. “You do know if you continue to take an active coaching role, that’s gonna make things trickier with Watt, right? According to Charlene, he’s not a fan of your methods.”

I snorted. “I think if I told him the sky was blue, he’d say it was pink rather than agree with me.” I dug my elbow into the sofa and turned to face them. “What if… what if I want more than Watt tolerating me? What if I want us to be friends again like we used to be?”

Delaney made a considering noise. “But it wasn’t just friendship for you, was it? Would you really want to get close to him again, knowing that’s all you could have? Take it from someone who’s done that, it’s not easy.”

I thought of Watt’s smile. His bright hazel eyes. How something in me settled when he was near, even when he was angry. I hadn’t let myself realize how much I missed that—missed him —until I’d seen him again. I wanted it back.

I thought of his lush ass straining against his jeans when he’d bent over his truck. The way his broad shoulders made my throat go dry just as they had years ago. I couldn’t lie, I wanted that, too.

But I thought about Kayla calling him honey . And about that summer day twenty years ago when I’d gotten greedy and everything had gone wrong.

“Yes. Friendship is more than enough,” I said firmly. “In fact, it’s exactly right. If I get horny—” Who was I kidding? I already was. “—I’ll just dust off my apps. I’m only in town for a few months.” The words were meant to remind us both. “Friendship is exactly what I want from Watt.”

But Tam’s gaze darted to my hand, which was rubbing absently at my aching chest, and when her eyes met mine, they called me a liar .

“Hmm. Well, I don’t know what it’ll take to get Watt to be your friend again, babes. I don’t even know if Watt knows.” She wiped a cookie crumb off the corner of her mouth. “But I will say… baked goods are always a good start.”