Cameron #2
The first half of the day went by uneventfully.
Despite Riley’s half-assed directions, I found the rink without problems. It wasn’t like Santa Barbara, where all the facilities were scattered around the city.
This campus was a city of its own. Or, at the very least, a town.
If I never left it for the rest of the year, I wouldn’t get to explore all of it.
Not that I was Dora the goddamn Explorer looking for adventure.
At most, I might look into bringing a guy or ten over once in a while.
Old habits die hard.
Drills were nothing to write home about that day.
Coach Murray did several rounds of pairing us up to practice standard moves and maneuvers.
We were trying out each other’s positions, which resulted in me playing defense most of the morning.
It wasn’t my preferred position. I didn’t have it in me to wait in the back and protect the ground.
I was an attacker by nature or design. My place was in the thick of it, hard checking and getting myself into danger.
I’d been badly bruised more times than I could count, and still, the warmth of swelling flesh was the most comforting sensation I knew.
So to say that I underperformed today would be the understatement of the century.
On the bright side, I lowered everyone’s expectations so that our first scrimmage next week might bring a few surprises.
I also knew that these drills with swapped positions weren’t all that important.
Not when the true battle of wills and skills began.
The idea was to broaden your understanding and have the basic set of skills for emergencies. And those boxes I checked.
But try proving that to the almighty captain. Despite nods of affirmation from the head coach and both assistant coaches, Riley stormed the locker room after practice and directed his glare at me. It was even worse that the locker I got was right next to his.
Sweat was covering his face and tousling his blond hair when he removed his helmet. I was already stripping down to my waist by the time he growled, as if he expected some kind of an apology for something.
“What?” I barked at him.
Riley’s eyes narrowed until there were just slits of glowing blue coolness. “What the hell was that?”
Other guys were filing into the showers while I sat on the bench to take my skates off, but because Riley towered over me, I decided to keep the skates on instead.
Slowly but surely, I rose and gained a couple of inches on him.
Who’s towering now? “Those were drills. Can I help you with anything else?”
“Is that why you transferred?” he asked. “Or was it the attitude that nobody wanted to put up with anymore?”
I scoffed and cocked my head to the side. “Are you giving me crap for shitty defense drills? You do realize we have defenders here, right? Or should I explain team structure to you real quick?”
“I’m not sure you understand team structures,” Riley said. “For one, I am the captain of this team.”
“So you keep saying from the top of your lungs,” I growled back.
Then, after a moment of staring into each other’s eyes, I jerked my chin forward.
“For your information, I transferred because I wanted to be in my home state. And before you ask, it’s not because I missed a special someone. ” That did it.
The hurt expression on his face was impossible to misunderstand. His airy voice was barely more than a whisper. “Like you’re capable of anything special, Cameron.”
And I felt the sting of that because it was true. “Do you really want to do this now, Riley? We were two teenage horn-dogs in a small, crappy town. Then, we grew up. Can you move the fuck on?”
“You’re kidding. Me? There’s nothing to move on from. It meant nothing. It just revealed to me who you are.” But the way his face flushed with heat revealed him as a liar. “And I don’t like that person, Cameron. So excuse me if I’m not bursting with joy that you’re on my team.”
“Mm. But it’s not your call, is it? And here I am.” I spread my arms a little, letting my gaze linger on his face as he scanned my torso and stepped back.
“Yeah,” he said. “Here you are. And I can’t do shit about it. So, please try to be professional out there.”
“Yes, Sir.” He took the mocking as intended, then spun away from me to undress. And I wished to hell I’d taken my skates off earlier because I was stuck watching Riley Brooks peel off his uniform one piece at a time.
Keeping my gaze in the opposite direction was excruciating. He tore off his shoulder pads and knee pads, he pulled his jersey over his head and tossed it into the locker, and it went on and on.
Really, I had no interest in him. None at all.
I’d wronged him plenty, but he had been no angel, either.
And this thing right now, this crazy, primal desire to glance over my shoulder and see his broad back, was nothing other than a symptom of a long, dry spell mixed with deadly curiosity on what my quasi-ex looked like today.
I kept that in mind when I made myself walk into the shower rather than explore the rippling muscles on Riley’s back.
Cold water was exactly what I needed after two hours of drills and one hot minute of Riley all up in my business. I soaped up, rinsed, and dried quickly, then put my clothes on and hurried from the arena to the team house.
I needed to get away from everyone for a minute.
From him, most of all. I needed a breather to remind myself of what I’d signed up for.
Riley was just a bump in the road. I’d known he would be hard to work with after what had happened between us.
This wasn’t news to me. Except, I had blocked him out of my mind so successfully that I had never considered what day to day life would look like with him around.
And now that I was here, I needed to act the way I’d meant to. Like it didn’t fucking matter.
Because, at the end of the day, it didn’t.
Not truly. We had only even gotten together because we had had no options.
I’d needed a place to hide and someone to look after me and he’d needed someone to make him feel like he was worth a damn.
It was pure luck we had only been eighteen.
If things were like that now, we would be the most toxic pairing in the entire galaxy.
And it didn’t help that he was always ridiculously hot.
To the eighteen-year-old me, it had been like winning the lottery.
The only other gay guy in town was my hot friend. How lucky had I been?
But it couldn’t go on forever. And especially not long-distance, had we tried.
I’d always known he would end up hating me, one way or the other. And I’d always known how to make sure that happened on my terms. But seeing that hatred in every look he sent my way irked me to my marrow.
Something about Riley Brooks made me want to bark back.