Title: Free from Falling
Series: The Breakaway Series, Book Four
Author: E.L. Massey
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 12/03/2024
Heat Level: 2 - Fade to Black Sex
Pairing: Male/Female
Length: 87100
Genre
Contemporary, contemporary, sports/hockey, athletes, rock band, musicians, trans, bisexual, idiots-to-lovers, team dynamics, family dynamics & drama, pining, transphobia
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Justin “Matts” Matthews is good at a lot of things: Rubik’s Cubes, playing guitar, herding cattle, and most importantly for his career in the NHL, hockey. He’s not good at human interactions or social cues, especially when it comes to women. This deficiency is an annoyance rather than a problem, right up until he meets Sydney Warren. If it’s not love at first sight, it’s sure something close.
Sydney Warren, frontwoman for up-and-coming rock band Right Red Hand, is fierce, driven, and she doesn't do relationships. Being an out trans woman in the music industry is more than enough pressure—a romantic entanglement would be added stress she doesn’t need. A romantic entanglement with a professional hockey player who, to all accounts, is only just learning to be an ally is definitely not what she needs. And yet.
After a chance encounter, Matts and Sydney become unlikely friends. However, in the stolen moments of their busy schedules––late-night phone calls between NHL games and concert tour dates—they start to question if maybe “friendship” isn't so apt a description for whatever this is between them.
But can they overcome the outside pressures from family and media that would rather their relationship end before it has a chance to start?
Free from Falling
E.L. Massey © 2024
All Rights Reserved
“Hey, Matty. Are you petting a dog in some back room at a party again?”
He almost hangs up the phone. Because, yes, Justin Edward Matthews—Matts to anyone who matters and Matty to his asshole stepbrother—is hiding in a back room at a party petting a dog. Again.
“I hate you,” Matts says.
“You don’t. What’s the dog’s name?”
“It’s Hawk, Eli’s dog.”
“Give her a kiss for me.”
He does. He’s sitting on a fancy bench thing at the base of an equally fancy bed in one of the dozen bedrooms at the house where the party is taking place. He doesn’t know if Hawk is allowed on the furniture or not, but he figures if she’s mostly in his lap, they’re good either way. He leans into Hawk’s warm bulk and briefly buries his face in her neck.
“So,” his stepbrother says, “the gay kid talked you into going out and socializing, huh?”
“Don’t say it like that,” Matts says, straightening.
“I’m not saying it like anything. I’m stating a fact. He’s a kid. He’s gay.”
“He’s twenty-one, and he’s married to my captain. He’s not a kid. And he’s one of my best fucking friends. Use his name.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Matts is regretting calling Aaron already. They used to do it all the time—calling each other whenever they got drunk. It was the way they bonded as teenagers when their families were recklessly combined. Matts was off at boarding school, so lonely it was hard to breathe sometimes, and Aaron was unceremoniously uprooted from the only town he ever knew, suddenly expected to call a stranger “Dad.” Their relationship was easier then, born out of isolation and a shared resentment for the people they called parents. But in recent years, their conversations have gotten more and more stilted. Exhibit A: this conversation.
“Hey,” Aaron says, like he can hear what Matts is thinking. “I’m trying. You know I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
“Okay,” he says quietly. An extremely awkward pause follows. “Well. Why are you hanging out with Hawk and not a less furry lady?”
Aaron has a point. The only good thing about going to parties is that sometimes girls will recognize him, and he can get laid without having to stumble his way through a conversation first.
“I came upstairs to use the bathroom. And it’s time for Eli to check in anyway. I’ll go back downstairs when he does.”
Hawk is Eli’s service dog. Eli doesn’t go to parties much, but when he does, he brings her with him and keeps her somewhere quiet where he can have her sniff him or whatever she does to predict his seizures every so often. And he always has someone with him as human backup too. Tonight, Matts is the human backup. Because he’s still doing PT for another week and isn’t cleared to travel with the team yet. He made the mistake of having dinner with Eli, and afterward, Eli looked at him with his big stupid sad eyes and asked him to please go with him, and Matts is a pushover.
He doesn’t like parties in general, but he especially doesn’t like them when he keeps having to explain that, no, he’s not Eli’s professional-hockey-playing-husband. He’s Eli’s professional-hockey-playing-husband’s injured alternate captain. Which is weird. Not because people are assuming he’s gay. That’s fine. That’s whatever. But people are assuming he’s married. Twenty-one-year-olds should not be married. Even if it seems to be working for Eli and Alex.
“The drinks are all colorful and sparkly,” Matts says. Making fun of rich people’s alcohol preferences is always a safe topic with his family.
“No,” Aaron gasps with faux outrage. “Sparkly?”
“No beer cans in sight.”
“The horror. Not even a bougie IPA?”
“There’s a tended bar, and the menu is all cocktails.”
“Gross. What color did you go with?”
Matts sighs in the direction of his drink on the nightstand. “Green. And then purple. And the worst thing is that I’m drunk after two of them.”
He regularly goes shot-for-shot with Russian NHL players. A neon drink should not be laying him out. He tries to look at his tongue to see if it’s changed color and is unsuccessful.
“Are you still on meds?”
“No, Mom, I’m off everything as of two days ago. Healing great. Should be playing again in another week. And I can’t even celebrate with a beer.”
“What a brave little soldier you are,” Aaron says. “Hey, speaking of moms. Are you coming home for Christmas or not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Is my dad…” He flips Hawk’s ears inside out. One will stay that way. The other won’t. He boops her nose, and she sneezes.
“You’re gonna need to finish the question if you want me to answer it.”
Matts sighs. “I don’t know. Just…you think he’ll ever apologize?”
“I think those would be hell-freezes-over type odds.”
“Yeah.”
“Come home anyway.”
“I’ll think about it.”
The door opens, and Eli slips inside, music from downstairs bleeding through before he shuts it again.
“Hey,” Matts says, “I gotta go. I’ll call you Friday, and we’ll talk about Christmas, okay?”
“Sure. Hey, uh, say hi to Eli for me.”
“Yeah,” Matts says, “I will.” The word “thanks” gets a little stuck in his throat, but he mumbles it out and follows it with “bye.”
He slides his phone back into his pocket as Eli slides onto the bench beside him.
“You okay?” Eli asks. He’s a perceptive little shit.
“Fine.” Matts gestures toward the door. “It’s just a lot. Do you always have to be so damn good at social shit? You’re making me look bad.”
“Oh, no,” Eli says, “you do that on your own.” He gives him a second look and gentles his tone. “You do look a little rough though. You want to go outside? Or we can call it early.”
“Outside works.”
They sit with Hawk for a few more minutes, and when she remains calm and sleepy, they bid her goodbye and head downstairs toward the backyard.
But halfway through the living room, Matts stops.
Because there’s a girl in the kitchen.
Well, there are a lot of girls in the kitchen. But this girl is wearing black ripped skinny jeans, and her equally black ripped shirt—advertising some incomprehensible metal band on the front—has no sleeves or collar. The shirt’s sides have been cut from arm to hem and reattached with long lines of glittering safety pins. Her lips are full. Her hair is a wild riot of brown curls.
She looks like the unholy offspring of ’80s hair-metal-era Bon Jovi and ’70s Joan Jett, and her whole vibe is…unexpectedly but thoroughly doing it for him.
“Who,” he asks, “is she?”
“Absolutely not,” Eli answers. “You are not ready for Sydney.”
“Sydney,” he repeats.
“No,” Eli says again, forcefully steering them toward the back porch. For someone so lean, he’s surprisingly strong. Sydney also looks lean and strong. Her glutes and thighs are particularly nice. She could probably squat him. He’d be happy to let her try.
“I thought the whole point of me coming tonight was that I needed to…expand my social realm or whatever.”
“Social repertoire is the phrase I used.” Eli is still pushing him. Matts is still resisting.
“Repertoire. Right.” He cranes his neck to keep Sydney in sight. She’s completely flat-chested, but her ass is something else. He wonders if she plays hockey.
“And, yes, it was,” Eli agrees. “But I know that look, Matthew.”
“Not my name.”
“I know that look, Justin Edward Matthews.”
That is, admittedly, his name.
“You don’t want to meet her,” Eli says. “You want to hook up with her.”
“And that’s…bad?”
“Have you ever even spoken with a trans woman before?”
“Trans…as in transgender?”
“No, as in transformer. Yes, transgender, idiota. And clearly, your taste in music is worse than I thought if you don’t already know who she is.”
“Wait, she’s a boy? Or—used to be a boy?” She doesn’t look like a boy. Though that might explain the boob thing. Is that bad to think? Eli would probably hit him if he said it out loud.
“And this is why you’re not allowed to talk to Sydney,” Eli says. “She would eat you alive.”
Sydney catches him staring, and Matts waves as Eli finally, successfully, shoves him around the corner and through the sliding doors to the porch.
Sydney appears again, moments later, from the opposite side of the open-concept kitchen, and purposefully makes her way toward them.
“Oh, fuck me,” Eli mutters.
“No thanks.”
“Eli,” Sydney says, stepping over the threshold to join them. “Who’s your friend?”
“Hi,” Matts says. “I’m Matts. I play hockey with Eli’s husband. Eli says I’m not allowed to talk to you because you’ll eat me alive.”
She gives him a considering once-over. “Eli is likely correct, but I’m sure we’d both enjoy the experience.”
Eli throws up his hands.
“Don’t let him fool you though,” she says conspiratorially, bowing with a flourish that somehow doesn’t spill her drink. “I am but a humble bard, at your service.”
“Bard, sure,” Eli mutters. “Humble though—”
“You look like you need alcohol, Eli,” Sydney interrupts.
He sighs. “I do. Syd, behave. Matts, good luck.”
“Wait,” Matts says, “aren’t I supposed to be…monitoring you?”
“Monitor me with your eyes while I go acquire a beverage. I promise to swoon obviously if I need your attention.” Eli throws one wrist against his forehead and falls briefly to one side before straightening and making his way back inside.
“So you’re Hawk’s understudy tonight?” Sydney asks.
She has dimples. It takes him a beat longer than it should to respond because of them.
“That’s me. Temporary service human. Not as cute as the A-team upstairs, I know.”
She gives him another leisurely assessment, and he suddenly wishes he was wearing something more edgy than khakis and boat shoes.
“I wouldn’t say that,” she murmurs over the rim of her glass.
He watches her drink; he watches the light from the hanging lanterns on the porch glint off the rings on her hand; he watches her tongue slide over her drink-stained lips. He realizes he’s staring.
“So how do you know Eli?” Matts asks, only a little desperately.
She tips her head, expression suddenly assessing. It’s an oddly predatory look for someone whose curl-augmented height barely comes up to his chin.
“You have no idea who I am, do you?” Sydney says.
“I—no.” He squints at her, remembering Eli’s assertion about his taste in music. “Should I?”
She reaches out to flick the collar of his button-down. “I guess not. Though one of our songs is on syndicated radio currently.”
“You’re a musician?” That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. “What’s your band called?”
“Red Right Hand.” She looks like she’s braced for something as she says it, but the name means nothing to him.
“Is that, like, a Twister reference?”
She coughs on a laugh, then hides her smile with the back of her wrist, her long fingers—guitarist fingers?—splayed over the mouth of her cup.
“It’s a Paradise Lost reference,” she says:
“What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,
Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,
And plunge us in the flames; or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us?”
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