Rule #1: Never Accidentally Marry Your Teammate (Hockey Rules #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

F inn

Tension fills me, and every cell of my body aches, even though today was a rest day. I’m supposed to be asleep, but even though I get practice every night on sleeping, I can’t sleep.

And I’m certain Noah isn’t asleep either.

I want to move, but I don’t, on the off chance that Noah is asleep and that I might wake him up.

“Finn?” Noah whispers.

Okay. He’s not asleep too.

“Yeah?”

“Are you still awake?”

I smile. “I was wondering if you were.”

I take advantage of the fact we’re both awake and readjust my position, so that I’m now on my side, facing him, even though it’s dark, even though our whispers carry.

“Things are crazy, huh?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for being such a good host to my parents.”

Oh.

“They’re nice people, Noah.”

“I didn’t think they would come this weekend.”

“Of course, they were going to come.”

“I wasn’t certain.”

Something in his tone makes me hesitate. Maybe this isn’t about money.

“Because of the gay thing?” My heartbeat quickens .

“Yeah.”

The word slices through me, and I frown.

My mother certainly had no issue with that. And even my super jock, successful businessman father didn’t have any issues. But then they live in Boston and go to the Cape with regularity. Provincetown bursts with pride. It would be absurd if they suddenly declared a wariness around non-straight people.

But Noah is from a rural part of New Hampshire, and things are different there. Maybe all the gay men and women go to big cities for college and don’t come back.

“I guess they’re more openminded than you thought. That’s good.”

“Yeah. I wish I knew before that it wouldn’t be a big deal to them.”

I frown.

Because that sounds like Noah wanted to know his parents would have been cool with him being gay.

Even though we’re lying on a bed, the definition of inactivity, my heartbeat quickens.

He didn’t mean to imply that. Surely not. No way.

But there were those amazing kisses between us and those confessions that things with his girlfriend felt less exciting. He said he didn’t miss her after they broke up. Does that mean...something? Or might he be bisexual? Might he be interested in something...more?

When the reporter asked if he’d fallen in love with me at first sight, it felt like his answer was yes.

We roll closer and closer together, conscious of not wanting to wake up his parents, even though the walls are fucking well insulated and with the amount of yawning they did, they’re not going to wake up. We’re almost sharing breaths, and every time I inhale, I take in his scent.

He now smells like my body wash.

I love it.

I want to pull him toward me, feel the warmth of his chest and press him against me. I want to trail my fingers along his body, to not only see how his muscles ripple, but to feel them against my touch.

The longing isn’t sudden, but it startles me all the same. I’ve never felt this way about another man. All those times I roomed with Troy, us in our twin beds, sometimes, when we first started, having sleepovers with women in those twin beds, I never once thought that I wanted to see Troy naked, wanted to touch him, wanted to make my main goal to ensure his happiness.

I blink, the strength of my feelings overwhelming even for me.

I’ve never walked into a locker room of half-naked, and sometimes, mostly naked men, and felt the need to stare at the floor or stare at the ceiling or rush into the bathroom to change so everyone in the room couldn’t tell I liked men.

All those times I went out drinking with my teammates, my body warm and happy and thrumming with alcohol, I never once looked at a man and thought...maybe.

But now... God, now things are different.

Because I am thinking about Noah that way. Not just when we are in a room alone together. Not just when alcohol flows through my body, wiping away instincts to prioritize propriety, not just when I happen to catch him with few clothes on, and I can admire the way the muscular planes of his body formed him.

No, it’s all the time.

All the fucking time.

And our closeness now is killing me.

My breath catches, and maybe his does too. I think, maybe, he would be up for something more. But I don’t want to be the brute who hits on him when he has few clothes on and he has nowhere to sleep but right next to me.

His parents are in the next room. He can’t even crawl under the covers of his own bed if he feels he needs to.

So I swallow back my urge to tell him maybe we could and have you thought about... I don’t bring up that a nice way to fall asleep is self-care and that I’m happy to self-care him any time he wants, hand or mouth, his choice.

Instead, I lie still beside him, as our breaths continue to intermingle, and his body finally relaxes, and until his breaths even and I know without doubt that he is sleeping.

This is also nice, I think. Being here with him is nice.

I close my eyes, confident I’m going to fall asleep.

Then I hear his voice. “Finn.”

My eyes jolt open. Does he need me? Why is he calling for me, when whispers worked perfectly fine before?

But when he says my name again, and it comes out like a moan, I keep quiet.

Because something about the way Noah is squirming, something about how my name comes out low and gravely, makes me think he’s dreaming.

And not a normal dream.

My heart glows, and I close my eyes tightly, even though every instinct I have tells me to wrap Noah in my arms right now and wake him up with a kiss.