Chapter 32
thirty-two
CADEN
Having won one of the four single hotel rooms for the Laval road trip, there was zero chance I was going to sleep before seeing Ash.
We’d made a point of keeping our relationship confined to the relative safety of his apartment. It was easy enough for me to sneak up the stairwell—no player on the team refused the elevator after one of Coach’s gruelling practices—and slip through Ash’s front door.
Now it was after midnight on a game night. Coach’s strict routine had the added side effect of getting his players to bed rather than heading out to a local bar or club because we were too damn tired to leave the hotel.
Come to think of it, everything Coach did was on purpose.
One slowest turn of a door handle to ever be turned later, and I’d made a nearly soundless exit out of my room.
Quickly glancing both ways down the hall, I found it empty as I’d expected.
I kept my steps light as I made my way to the stairwell I’d clocked right after check-in.
Ash would be surprised to see me sneaking out, but he wouldn’t be mad about it.
A shiver of nervous excitement worked its way up my spine at the thought of doing something out of character so that I could spend a few precious hours more with Ash.
I might have a panic attack about it later, but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Cade. My shoulder muscles loosened with each step closer to the “Exit” sign.
I rounded the corner at the end, eyes on the heavy metal door of the stairwell, my ears alert for any doors opening, hearing nothing but the hum of the nearby ice machine.
“Well, Tiger. The kids just grow up so fast these days, eh?”
The disembodied voice of the Hammerheads’ captain had my shoulder slamming into the wall to my right, the chair-rail digging into my spine as I pressed backward to see where the voice had come from.
I located the captain and his alternate in the nearly hidden alcove diagonally across the hall from where I’d frozen in shock.
My roommates stood there, both with their arms crossed over their chests. Kovac, all six-foot-five of him, filled more than half of the oversized archway with his shoulder span alone. Captain Hawkins completed the wall of disapproving hockey players with his strong build.
“Hmm,” Kovac murmured, neutrally. “Is Caden in big trouble, Cap? He should get fined, yes? Maybe have to carry all our bags to the bus tomorrow?”
Kovac’s straight, white teeth appeared as his grin grew with each suggestion. He cast a glance at Hawkins’ inscrutable expression, raising an eyebrow.
Hawkins turned his head, giving Kovac a slight nod to acknowledge his thoughts.
“Maybe.” Hawkins turned back to me, locking his eyes on mine. “What do you think, Rook? I think the punishment needs to fit the crime, eh? So, let’s figure out what we’re dealing with here first, okay, Tiger?”
He moved his arms so that he could make a sweeping gesture like a Vegas dealer spreading out a brand-new deck of cards on the table.
“Fine. But I will keep thinking of better ideas. You talk.” Kovac waved his hand in my direction, clearly more interested in plotting than whatever Hawkins thought he could drag out of me.
I didn’t know how I felt about the fact that the captain thought I had a table full of mistakes we needed to examine.
I barely spoke in the apartment, for god’s sake! If I didn’t replenish my food in the fridge once a week, Hawkins and Kovac wouldn’t even know they had a third person living with them.
“Yep. You do that.” The captain nodded to his best friend. “Now, you.”
He pointed at me like I was in a lineup at a police station, even though the hallway around us was completely deserted.
“Are you sneaking out to go to a bar like Romero and Klein, whom we caught half an hour ago?”
I shook my head. What was going to happen to the other rookies since they’d already been discovered after a team agreement that we would stay in tonight because we had an early-ass departure time tomorrow?
But I’d be damned if I told them the truth. There was nothing they could say to me, no asinine task that I’d have to complete, that would ever make me say a fucking word about Ash.
Kovac must have run out of menial labor ideas because he scanned me from head to toe in my raggedy sweatpants and ancient hoodie.
“Wait, Hawk. I think I know.”
He brought his right hand up to his chin.
His face was partially obscured by a neat, thick beard that he apparently grew every season and maintained before shaving it off in the summer.
The sound of his fingernails scratching through the coarse hair was the only thing to break the silence in our hallway triangle as Hawkins waited patiently for his next words.
“Okay,” Kovac began, dropping his hand from his face. “This young man is not sneaking out, Hawk. He’s sneaking in somewhere.” This time, both of his eyebrows rose, daring me to disagree with him.
My stomach crashed through every floor of this hotel down to the lobby.
I opened my mouth to deny it, hoping that whatever came out would convince them to let me go back to my room.
Except no words passed my lips. Instead, I closed my eyes and dropped my head back against the wall with a thud.
Let them do with me whatever they wanted. It was probably better to keep my mouth shut at this point, anyway.
A deep guffaw had me peeking through my lashes.
“Shit, Rook,” Hawkins reached across Kovac’s chest as they collapsed against each other, laughing uproariously. “You’re too easy, man. We really didn’t mean to scare you. Have you ever known anyone on the team to have some kind of consequence that didn’t come directly from Coach?”
His words pierced the haze of adrenaline that raced through my system.
“Yes, Caden. We do not care that you are going to see your boyfriend,” Kovac offered calmly.
Did he just say boyfriend?
Before I could wrap my mind around that, he continued.
“Do not worry. We know you are dating Coach Landry, yes? We are very happy for you both. Your door at the apartment is rusty. We heard you every time you left.” He smiled with the pride of someone who’d solved a complex game of Clue.
Cade. In the hotel room with Ash. Fucking. Kovac wins! And they’d known the whole time without saying anything.
Hawkins wore a genuine, if less hyperactive golden retriever version of Kovac’s grin.
“Seriously, we’ve got your back. Once you’re ready to tell people, the team will be cool. We promise.”
“What he said. Go get your man.”
“Ew, Tiger. No. That sounded weird. Let’s go.” To me, he said, “Night, Rook. Be safe and see you in the morning.”
They forced their way out of the alcove with the grace of two overly muscled sardines fighting to get away from a shark, disappearing around the corner while I struggled to figure out what the hell had just happened.
A burst of nerves had me considering returning to my room, but hell, I’d gone through whatever the last five minutes had been, so I made my way to the stairs instead.
Much like the last time I found myself in front of Ash’s hotel room door, I was jittery as hell.
The difference between this time and a couple months back was that I’d been nervous about asking Ash for help then.
Now, a million nerve endings were firing off inside me, needing a fix. And my drug of choice was Ash.
A couple of light knocks had Ash appearing at the door, ushering me inside before peering out of the doorway to make sure we were alone.
After locking the door, Ash pulled me to him, and planting a firm kiss on my lips.
“What’s going on, sweetheart? Everything okay?” His eyes searched my face for anything that might be wrong.
I couldn’t help being overly pleased at his concern. His attention and care were a balm to all the ragged edges inside me. I wanted to drown in the feeling of his eyes on me.
“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be here. But I had to come.
I couldn’t force myself to stay in my room.
I needed to be with you too badly. Plus, I got one of the single rooms, so it’s not like I even had to hide from anyone,” I argued, hoping his happiness at the opportunity to spend the night together would outweigh his reservations about keeping us a secret.
“Except I ran into Hawkins and Kovac on my way up here, and they already know about us,” I whispered.
“What? They know?” Ash asked.
My anxiety over telling Ash overrode my ability to decipher his tone.
“I guess they’ve seen me leaving the apartment a lot? But they aren’t going to say anything. They’re happy for us?” I said it like a question because I couldn’t quite believe it had gone down that way.
“Hey. It’s okay. I’m glad they were good with it. We’ll figure this out. No matter what it takes, okay? Did you want to talk about it now?”
“Definitely not,” I exhaled hotly.
Ash slid a hand up to the back of my head, guiding my face until it was pressed into his neck. The salty scent at the junction of his neck and shoulder had me immediately mouthing kisses there interspersed with licks of my tongue, desperate to pull the taste of him inside me.
“Cade baby, that feels so damn good,” he rumbled against my ear. The combination of his words and the vibrations caused by his voice had my dick hardening in record time. “You’re too irresistible to turn away.”
Thank god. I could have wept with relief.
“Unh.” A pleading sound came from my throat, and I pushed my pelvis against his.
Was he as hard as I was already? My arousal surged at the thought of his swollen length now that I knew how amazing it felt rubbing against mine.
“We’ll set an alarm to get you back to your room early. The risk of anyone seeing you is low since you’re not bunking with anyone this trip. But we need to make sure we’re careful, okay?”
I trailed behind him toward the bed, stripping off my shirt and sweatpants as he spoke. I dropped my clothes in the small foyer of the room.
By the time he reached the bed and turned around to face me, I wore nothing but my gray boxer-briefs and white crew socks.