Chapter 15
fifteen
ASHER
The sun was peeking above the horizon in my rearview mirror, and I counted on the bright light to help me stay awake for the last leg of the drive from Belleville.
I was tired as shit.
My brain felt like a building ready to collapse, and my body wasn’t far behind. I could get by on five hours of sleep in a night, but a single hour and being jarred awake by panicked knocking at my door? Yeah, I was borderline loopy.
I glanced for the thousandth time at the man asleep in my passenger seat before looking back at the road.
There wasn’t a world in which I allowed Cade to persuade me that he should make this trip on his own. The stress of the situation aside, figuring out how to rent a car or get a bus out of Belleville would have taken him longer than me driving him myself.
I couldn’t resist looking at him, letting my gaze catalog every detail in small snatches of time.
On any given day, Cade was a stunning young man. His lush auburn curls, long enough to hide the flushed tips of his ears when he was embarrassed, lay messily around his face. It was clear he hadn’t had a haircut since before the season started.
Now hidden behind his closed eyelids, the pale green of his eyes was my new favorite color. I loved watching him concentrate intensely as he listened to Zane or one of his teammates.
And his freckles—god, his freckles—they were fainter now with the summer sun long gone, but they dusted his cheekbones and nose in a way that made me want to hold him in my arms just so I could count them.
The constellation of freckles on his neck and collarbones hinted at a hidden cache of them that I would happily spend days mapping with my tongue.
Thank god I wasn’t required to be in the locker room when Zane did his whole pre-game spiel. I volunteered to do all the last-minute prep before games once I realized the depth of my attraction to Cade.
Not that I would ever violate his privacy. Even if players were always in some state of undress before or after games, that didn’t mean anyone’s body was up for consumption. I had enough to contend with while interacting with Cade when he was fully clothed.
And now, with him sleeping deeply in my passenger seat, I unwillingly had another vision of Cade to file into my book of temptation.
Asleep, his face was free of the tightness he carried around his eyes and mouth when he interacted with others.
The frown line in his forehead was softened, leaving behind smooth, unmarred skin so fair that it made each gorgeous freckle stand out like a work of art.
Every inch of his unblemished skin was creamy and smooth, with the exception of the small pink scar on his right eyebrow.
Seeing Cade like this made me ache to have a place in his life where I could make sure he always slept as peacefully as he did now.
The past five hours, with the scent of Cade’s laundry detergent and deodorant or body wash surrounding me, had awoken a deeper need in me to take care of Cade in a way I didn’t fully understand.
It was frustrating to know that I wouldn’t be able to really make anything meaningful easy for him with the situation he was about to deal with.
A message popped up on my dashboard’s screen. I’d sent Zane a text to let him know the situation with Cade and how I’d chosen to handle it, emphasizing that it was my choice to help out and nothing Cade had encouraged.
Zane: What the hell, Ace? I go visit friends for a damn night and my offensive coach goes rogue! There are fucking protocols to follow, man.
My lips turned down at the thought of getting Zane in trouble. He’d gone through a hell of a lot of pain and rehab with his injury. I didn’t want to add to his struggles, but how could I have let Cade go alone?
Keeping my voice as quiet as possible, I had Siri send a reply.
Asher: I’m driving, man. So, I can’t say much right now.
I’m really not trying to cause trouble for you.
But my conscience wouldn’t let me send Cade off into the night on his own without a plan, you know?
I’ll message or give you a call when we get to the hospital in Sudbury and I know more about timing. Just outside the city now.
I stopped short of telling Zane that he would have done the exact same thing in my situation. It wasn’t fair to put that on his conscience. I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure I knew how Zane would have reacted in the moment.
I based my assumptions on the Zane I knew back when we played together, not on the man whose reputation and livelihood now depended on his role as head coach of the Hammerheads.
The nagging sense of guilt I felt about semi-lying to Zane made it harder to defend my actions.
Was I helping Cade because I believed it was the right thing to do? One hundred percent.
But was I also helping Cade because my feelings for him went far beyond my role as an assistant coach, or even a friend? Definitely.
Zane: Shit. Fair enough. Let me know how Caden’s mom and Caden are doing once you get there. Drive safe.
Cade stirred beside me in the passenger seat, so I quickly tapped out of my messages so he wouldn’t see the open conversation between Zane and me.
It had literally been a straight shot going northeast on a single highway between Belleville and Sudbury. Now that we were close, I swiped to open Maps, and as quietly as possible, set up the directions for the hospital.
Pulling into the visitor parking lot with Cade still asleep, I found a space and killed the engine.
After hundreds of kilometers on that endless dark highway, I felt closer to sixty than almost thirty. My eyes were scratchy with lack of sleep, and my joints hurt from sitting in one position for nearly six hours straight.
I needed to get my hands on whatever coffee the hospital had available to the public.
I allowed the tension in my back and arms to relax. I’d been hyper-aware of the forest on either side of the road the whole way, watching for any animal that might take its chances on crossing the lanes in front of me.
I’d imagined a deer, or a goddamn moose, making a pit-stop in front of my Jeep and getting stunned still by my headlights. The adrenaline from being focused on getting us up to Sudbury in one piece was now waning.
I wanted so badly to just close my eyes and lean my head against the headrest for twenty minutes, as if a catnap could help me clear my mind enough not to overstep with Cade any more than I already had.
Every cell in my body wanted to hold him close to me so he would know that he wasn’t alone in facing whatever awaited him inside the building, but I wasn’t allowed to.
I looked at him for the final time as he slept beside me, committing to memory the peace and softness of his features as he got the rest he’d so clearly needed.
Holding back a sigh, I reached over the console to delicately take hold of his left knee, remembering the flinch he’d given when I’d tried to give him a casual pat on his shoulder the first day we’d met.
If he reacted that way while awake, I didn’t want to scare him while he was completely out of it.
But you didn’t hesitate to kneel in front of him and hold his face in your hands, did you?
I kicked my inner voice back onto the sidelines.
The heat of Cade’s body emanating from under the sweatpants he wore had my skin tingling with awareness as I pressed my fingertips into the finely honed muscles just above his kneecap.
Cade didn’t wake. Instead, he emitted the tiniest hum from his barely open mouth.
Hating to wake him, but knowing that he had to get in there, I added my palm to the hold I had on his leg. The little divot where his thigh muscles connected to the top of his knee was way too fascinating to me, so I gave another quick shake to his leg before letting go.
Cade’s eyes blinked open. A disproportionate amount of pleasure filled me when he didn’t jolt awake. Instead, he yawned massively and stretched his arms above where his head rested against the car window.
The sliver of stomach that revealed itself when his hoodie pulled away from his waist had my whole body going hot and my dick half hard instantly.
Just below his belly button was a line of strawberry-blond hair leading into the waistband of his pants.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The skin of his lower abdomen was absolutely filled with a galaxy’s worth of pale freckles.
I looked away and had to bite the inside of my cheek to bring myself back to reality.
I was just overtired and crashing from the drive. I had never behaved inappropriately toward anyone I’d been attracted to, and I definitely was not going to do something stupid like kiss all the damn freckles on Cade’s face before devouring his mouth with mine.
He has something going with that girl you saw him with in the coffee shop that afternoon, remember? Get your act together, Landry.
This time, I leaned into the scolding my conscience gave me and concentrated on wrestling my arousal into submission.
“Ash?” Cade’s voice was hushed and hesitant.
Praying to the universe that I could keep my feelings off my face, I turned back to Cade, offering him a half-smile.
“Hey, bud. Have a good rest? Looks like you needed it.” I forced out a chuckle, keeping the riot going on inside me hidden.
“Shit!” His eyes went wide as he looked out the window at our surroundings and then back at me. “You drove the whole way? I slept the whole time! God, just kill me now. This is so humiliating.”
He was so goddamn adorable in his freakout, I couldn’t help but smile for real. I wanted to gobble him up.
“Nah, don’t worry.” I waved away the idea that he had anything to be embarrassed about.
“It was an easy drive. And seriously, you have nothing to feel bad about. With hockey, I barely get to leave Toronto and drive myself anywhere except to Niagara to see my parents. This was the first car I bought for myself when I started out in the NHL, so it’s got the whole nostalgia thing working for it. It’s all good.”