CHAPTER FIVE #2
He didn’t have to ask what Connor and Jesse would be doing tonight. The kids were with Connor’s ex-wife, so he could guess.
Luke towel dried his hair, then dressed and headed out. He drove to his house in South Boston and parked in his detached garage, getting out of his car with a groan.
The trudge from his car through his backyard and into his house felt endless tonight and by the time he tossed his keys in the bowl by the door, he was aching everywhere.
Luke was getting too old for this shit. This shit being hockey. He loved it but damn it was starting to take its toll.
His house was just as he’d left it, quiet and peaceful, and he let out a sigh of relief as he walked through it, flipping on a few lights and stripping off his suit jacket and unbuttoning his trousers as he made his way to the bedroom.
He was pretty sure the guys on the team thought he went out after games to hook up or drink or whatever and he did sometimes but honestly? Most nights he came home and iced his aching body and got some fucking peace and quiet.
He’d bought the three-bedroom fixer-upper a few years ago, after he’d started to trust that Gavin was in no hurry to get rid of him.
Luke had plans for after hockey. He was gonna open up a bar somewhere and that would take a pretty good chunk of change to get going.
Especially in a city as expensive as Boston.
For a long time, he’d planned to do it out in Vegas where he’d grown up, but he was less and less impressed with the way the city was going.
It was too commercial now. Too slick and corporate.
Luke liked a bit of grit. A bit of character.
He’d love the shabby, retro glamour of it growing up. Had fallen in love with the romance of old Vegas. The mafia ties, the bright, shiny Hollywood glam when stars visited, the gaudy too muchness of it all.
But it felt less and less like home every time the team traveled there.
And while Boston was about as opposite as a guy could get in every way, he’d carved out a niche for himself here. He’d found the bars he liked to frequent, the hole-in-the-wall places here on the South Side where there was still a bit of the old, working-class Boston peeking through.
Luke might not have any Irish heritage the way the O’Shea family did, but he liked the Irish and Italian communities in Boston. The old immigrant neighborhoods with some real roots.
It had felt good to put down his own roots. He’d spent the off-seasons since he bought the house fixing the place up with his bare hands and most of the rooms were done now. He had it just the way he wanted it.
The sound of a car horn blaring down the street made him blink and abruptly realize he was standing in his bedroom, half-dressed and staring at nothing, so he shook his head and stripped the rest of the way down.
He ran hot, so despite the chilly temperatures outside, he pulled on a pair of shorts and didn’t bother with anything else as he ambled back into the main living area.
He’d eaten at the arena, of course, but he was still a little hungry, so he scrambled three eggs with some chopped ham and cheese and green onion, toasted some bread, and piled it all together on a plate.
After he grabbed a few ice packs from the freezer, he ate in front of the TV, watching one of the West Coast games and pointedly ignoring his phone.
Half of him wanted to check and see if he had a message from Sebastian. The other half didn’t.
Why did he fuckin’ care anyway?
The dude had been nothing but a pain in his ass every time Luke went in the box.
After he finished eating, he set his plate aside and picked up his phone.
The app was still up when he logged onto it, and he found a message from BloomingGoodTime. It read: Want to do this again? and he was still online.
But it was a bad idea, right?
The guy had ammunition against him now.
And Sebastian could say all he wanted about how he would never do that but uhh, Luke trusted that promise about as far as he could throw him.
He’d looked the guy’s shop up online though and at least he hadn’t been lying about having locations in multiple cities.
Luke knew fuck all about flowers, but the ones Sebastian made sure did look fancy and when Luke saw some of the prices listed, he figured the guy had to be doing okay. Plus, there was the whole ‘being able to afford prime location season tickets’ thing and all.
So he wasn’t in it for the money, thank fuck.
While a part of Luke was relieved that nothing had changed after their hookup—Sebastian had at least been true to his word that he wasn’t going to try to out Luke or something during a game—it certainly hadn’t made his chirping die down at all.
Luke was torn between disappointment that it hadn’t shut the guy up and grudging respect because it hadn’t.
Luke still wouldn’t put it past Sebastian to be in it for the opportunity to screw him over though.
Any guy who showed up at games three nights a week and spent that much time coming up with clever chirps had to have some sort of fucking angle, right? So yeah. Repeats couldn’t happen.
Luke wasn’t the biggest fan of them anyway, since they tended to get messy.
Shame, it had been hot.
Luke stared at his phone screen long enough that the little green circle turned to red.
When a yawn caught him by surprise, he set aside his phone, put away his dishes, and went to bed. Fuck it. He was too old and tired and sore for a hookup tonight anyway.