Chapter 19
NINETEEN
The hockey house was quiet when I walked in—just the hum of the fridge and the muffled sound of Sam’s voice drifting from the living room. I’d been hoping for noise. A party, the TV blasting, guys arguing over a video game—something loud enough to drown out the loop playing in my head on repeat.
Ava’s rosy flushed cheeks, blissed-out gaze as she looked at me, and the feeling of coming home…
Nope. I wasn’t thinking about that.
It was just sex. Good sex—incredible sex, actually—but that’s all it was. The location made it exciting. The risk of getting caught made it hot. That’s why my hands were still shaking and my chest felt like it was caving in.
It was just adrenaline.
Nothing more.
I was halfway to the kitchen when I heard Sam more clearly.
She was on the couch, her phone pressed to her ear, and her legs draped over the armrest. From the sound of it, she was mid-conversation, and based on the subject, I guessed it was with Abby or one of her sorority sisters.
“—no, I know, but he keeps texting me these long paragraphs about how he’s never felt this way before.
” She rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “Like, sir, we hooked up twice. Calm down.” A pause while the other person talked.
“No, I’m not responding. He’s nice enough, but I’m not looking for a boyfriend.
I just wanted to get laid, and now he’s acting like I owe him a relationship because of it. ”
She spotted me and waved without missing a beat. I dropped onto the other end of the couch and she didn’t lower her voice or change her tone—this was Sam, and I’d heard far worse from her. She had no filter around us now that she’d lived with us for a while.
“Honestly, it wasn’t even that good,” she continued, picking at a thread on the couch cushion.
“Like, fine. Adequate. But now he’s talking about taking me to dinner and I’m like—we are not there.
We will never be there. Some guys just cannot take a hint, even when you spell it out in big bold letters. ”
She laughed at whatever her friend said, then wrapped up the call. “Okay, I gotta go study. Chat later.”
She tossed her phone onto the coffee table and looked at me. “Men are exhausting.”
“Thanks.”
“Not you. Well, sometimes you. But mostly other men.”
That’s when Gordy appeared in the kitchen doorway, a plate of something that smelled absolutely fucking delicious in one hand with a fork in the other.
He must’ve been in there the whole time.
Sam’s eyes cut to him, and her expression shifted—like she was running back through everything she’d just said and determining how much he’d heard.
“How long have you been standing there?” Her tone was light, but I caught the edge underneath.
“Long enough.” Gordy leaned against the doorframe and took a bite of his food.
They stared at one another while he chewed, and once he swallowed, he said, “Adequate, huh?” His voice was casual and gave away nothing of how he felt about what he’d heard.
Drew and I weren’t entirely sure what was going on with these two, but we were pretty sure there was something.
Right now was only confirming that further.
Sam’s jaw tightened. “That was a private conversation.”
“If you wanted it private, should’ve done it in your room.” He shrugged, chewing. “I’m just wondering why you went back a second time if it was only adequate.”
Sam sat up straighter. “Because sometimes adequate is fine, Harry. Not everything has to be a love story.”
“Sure.” Gordy’s voice was even. The way it always was right before he said something that landed like a punch. “But you could also just say you were bored and lonely at two in the morning, and that’d be more honest.”
Oh, shit.
The room went dead silent.
Sam stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying.” He didn’t look away from her, which was unusual for Gordy—he wasn’t confrontational by nature and while he could be blunt and call it like he saw it, he also knew when to back off before someone blew their lid.
Not now, apparently. “You do this thing where you frame everything as this empowered choice, and sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s a Tuesday night and you’re avoiding whatever’s actually bothering you, and some random guy’s bed is easier than sitting with it. ”
I glanced between them, suddenly feeling like I was witnessing something that had layers I wasn’t equipped to navigate. Sam’s expression had shifted from caught off guard to genuinely pissed off, likely made worse by the fact that she hadn’t chosen to have this conversation in front of him.
“That’s a really bold thing to say to me right now, Harrison. Especially since you were eavesdropping.”
Oh damn, she pulled out the full name. Not Harry like she usually called him even though the rest of us always called him Gordy. That was bad.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was making myself dinner.” He held it up as evidence. “And you weren’t exactly whispering.”
“So that gives you the right to psychoanalyze me?”
The air between them shifted—charged in a way that went beyond their usual banter. This wasn’t friendly teasing.
“I’m not judging you,” he said, quieter now. “I’m just saying I’ve known you long enough to know the difference.”
Sam stared at him for a beat too long. Then she stood up and snatched her phone off the coffee table. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
She headed for the stairs without looking back.
Gordy watched her go, his jaw working. Then he looked down at his plate like it had personally offended him, set it on the coffee table, and dropped into the armchair. The muscle in his cheek twitched.
“That was—” I started.
“Don’t.”
“Okay.”
We sat in silence for a minute. I wanted to ask what the hell had just happened, but Gordy had that locked-down look that meant the conversation was over before it had started.
Besides, I was hardly in a position to analyze someone else’s complicated situation with a woman when I’d just had Ava bent over a bookshelf and was trying to convince myself it didn’t mean anything.
My phone rang, and I grabbed it like a lifeline—grateful for the interruption until I saw the name on the screen.
Dad.
My stomach dropped. My dad rarely called. He texted mostly—surface-level check-ins that required nothing from either of us. An actual phone call meant he wanted something or was here in town.
I stood up and walked into the kitchen, leaning against the counter before I answered. “Hey, Dad.”
“Liam! How’s my boy?” Nick Farrell’s voice poured through the speaker like whiskey—warm, smooth, and designed to make you forget it was poison. “How’s school? How’s hockey?”
“Good. Both are good.” There was no point telling him that the season was already over. He wouldn’t remember anyway.
“That’s what I like to hear. You’re what—wrapping up the semester soon?”
“Few more weeks.”
“Good, good.” I could hear ambient noise in the background. A restaurant, maybe. Or a bar. With my dad, it was usually one or the other. “Listen, I wanted to touch base. I’ve got some work coming up in Montana—might be in your neck of the woods at some point. We should grab dinner when I’m around.”
My grip tightened on the phone. Fuck. The last thing I wanted was my dad here. “When?”
“Not sure yet. You know how it goes with my schedule. But I’ll let you know.” He said it like he was doing me a favor. Like his presence was a gift he’d get around to delivering whenever it suited him. “We’ll do something nice. Steakhouse or something. My treat.”
“Sure.” The word tasted like ash.
“So what else is going on? You having fun out there?”
The question sounded casual, but coming from my dad, “fun” only ever meant one thing.
“Yeah,” I said. “Can’t complain.”
“That’s my boy.” I could hear the grin in his voice, and it made my gut curdle.
“Best years of your life, Liam. Enjoy them. Play the field. Trust me, I learned the hard way what happens when you let a woman convince you she’s the only one.
” He laughed, and I had to close my eyes against the sound.
“Your mother was a beautiful woman, but she wanted to clip my wings, and that’s just not in our DNA. ”
Don’t say it. Don’t you dare fucking say it.
“Farrell men aren’t built for that, son. We’ve got too much to offer to limit ourselves to one woman. It’s just not how we’re wired. Your grandpa was the same way.”
My knuckles were white around the phone.
“Actually—” He dropped his voice conspiratorially, like we were buddies, like we were the same.
“I’ve been seeing this woman in Denver. Gorgeous.
Absolutely gorgeous. But she’s getting clingy—you know how it goes.
Starting to leave things at my place, talking about meeting each other’s families.
” He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m gonna have to cut that one loose before she gets any more ideas.
Beautiful girl, but I can’t have her thinking she’s the only one, you know? ”
I didn’t trust myself to speak. Because what I wanted to say was that he was a selfish bastard who’d broken my mother’s heart so thoroughly she’d never let another man close enough to try again.
That he’d left a woman who’d crossed an ocean for him alone in a country that wasn’t hers, with a baby she had to raise by herself.
That every woman he “cut loose” was a person, not an inconvenience.
But I didn’t say any of that. Because some part of me—the part I hated, the part that kept me up at night—heard his voice and recognized it as my own.
Same charm. Same easy smile. Same way of making people feel like the center of the universe, until something shinier came along.
“Yeah,” I managed. “I hear you.”
“Glad to hear it. Anyway, I’ll text you when I’ve got my schedule sorted. We’ll have that dinner. It’ll be good to catch up properly.”
“Sounds good, Dad.”
He hung up without saying goodbye.
I stood in the kitchen for a long time, staring at the dark phone screen. The counter was cool under my hands, and the light buzzed overhead.
Ava’s rosy flushed cheeks, blissed-out gaze as she looked at me, and the feeling of coming home…
The memory slammed back into me, and this time I couldn’t outrun it. The way she’d looked at me after. Her sweet smile. The trust in her eyes. Like I was someone worth trusting. Like I was safe.
But my dad had probably made hundreds of women feel safe too. Before he got bored. Before the restlessness kicked in. Before he proved that charm and loyalty were not the same thing.
Farrell men weren’t built for that.
I pulled up my text thread with Ava. I should end this. Before I hurt her. Before I woke up one day and realized I’d turned into the man whose voice I couldn’t get out of my head.
But ending it meant giving her up. And the thought of that made me feel like I was drowning.
So instead, I’d do what I always did. What I was good at.
I’d pull back. Create distance. Keep things surface level and physical so the feelings didn’t get any deeper than they already were.
We hadn’t established any rules around how often we’d see each other. If I kept things to group settings—public places, study sessions, coffee runs with Drew—I could manage this. I could keep my hands off her long enough for this desperate, terrifying feeling in my chest to fade.
It had to fade.
I shoved my phone in my pocket and went upstairs to bed, passing Gordy’s closed door on the way. No sound from inside. No sound from Sam’s room either, but I could see light under her door.
I wondered if Gordy was right about her. If she was using those hookups the same way I’d been using the library—the thrill, the risk, the physicality—to avoid looking too closely at whatever was really going on underneath.
I wondered if she knew what she was running from.
I wondered if any of us did.