Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Guess We’re Roomies
ELI
Savannah, Georgia, was a beautiful city that had a haunted, historical feel to it.
Our bus pulled up to a hotel that appeared to be yanked off the set of a campy vampire show I would watch back in high school.
It had a red-bricked facade with a white-roofed porch and a row of black rocking chairs, colored with bright green swaths of trailing ivy.
The long roadway leading up to the hotel was lined with live oak trees, their thick and twisting branches draped with thick clumps of Spanish moss.
Flickering gas lamps lit the way and added to the time-travel sensation.
It was a cool spot, one I hadn’t been to before but the other Bobcats had frequented quite often.
Savannah was home to the Sharks, our sworn rivals and the next two games we had lined up for this Friday and Saturday.
I was hungry for a win and knew it would taste extra delicious if it were against the Sharks.
We’d gone hard during practice and doubled up on training time, spending a lot of time on the ice.
Which translated to a lot of time with Gabe.
It’d been difficult, keeping a cool head around him.
That moment in the steam room, with his hand between my legs and mine between his, still replayed in my head on a constant loop.
I’d get random hard-ons throughout the day.
Standing in line at the grocery store? Hard.
Stuck driving behind a car covered in a layer of quirky bumper stickers about saving the environment who also had the driving skills of a newborn fawn? Rock hard.
We sat in different rows on our flight here. I had felt a surprisingly intense wave of disappointment when I found out the seating assignments. I had fantasized some mile-high action with him. As risky as that would be, it was also another daydream that instantly had my dick swelling.
The bus ride was a different story altogether.
We had booked a smaller bus than what we needed, so I sat sandwiched between the wall and Gabe, with Soren sitting next to him.
His weight was fully pressed against me, but there was nothing I could do to actually enjoy it.
The vibrations of the engine and the bumps of the bus’s hydraulics weren’t helping the situation at all.
I felt like the universe had come together and devised a plan to edge me for all damn eternity.
Maybe it was a funny joke to the universe, but it wasn’t something I necessarily wanted.
“Alright, boys,” Coach Julian said in a voice that carried over the loud banter through the bus. He was standing between the aisles, one hand on Dylan’s head and the other on a headrest. “Don’t get too wild tonight. We have two games to win. Back-to-back, so no distractions.”
Emmy stood up next to Coach. He wore a Bobcat jersey with his number—eleven—on it. “I’ll keep an eye on everyone.”
Dylan stood up and pulled his navy duffel bag onto his shoulder. “Good thing you’re usually knocked out by eight thirty, then.”
“I had a Celsius on the plane,” Emmy said. His eyes narrowed, softened by a smirk. “I’m staying up until at least ten.”
“Perfect,” Dylan said, inching toward the exit. “I’ll order Ubers for ten fifteen, then.”
We climbed out of the bus and grabbed the rest of our bags, helped by an extremely friendly concierge. Apparently, a few of them were secret fans of the Bobcats but had to keep their excitement on the low when they were in Shark territory.
“Thanks, man,” I said after, tipping them each a hundred dollars. The younger one—Ritchie—almost tried giving it back to me, thinking it was a mistake. “Consider it an early Christmas gift.”
The team filtered into the lobby of the hotel, decked out in holiday decorations from the garland-covered front desk to the twinkling icicles above the elevator bay.
Opulent wreaths decorated with mistletoe and dusted in powdery white “snow” hung on the walls and framed one of the most magical-looking Christmas trees I’d ever seen.
It had to be close to fourteen feet and was wrapped with enough lights to either be a fire hazard or a stand-in for the Rockefeller tree.
Maybe both.
We all had our room numbers already, so we let Emmy and the coach check us in and grab our room keys. I stood to the side, talking to Dylan, my roommate for the weekend.
“I snore pretty bad, sorry, Eli. Sometime it’s one of those snores that’s loud enough to wake me up and scare me, so I kind of yell a little bit too. Are you a light sleeper?”
I smiled, even though on the inside, I was dying a little bit. “I can play some white noise.”
“Oh, shit, that’s actually… Um, so I have this condition where I hear things really well. It’s called, eh, auditory megaphona…ly. Always forget. So white noise sounds like an active war zone to me. Bombs dropping and shit.”
“Gotcha,” I said. “I can use headphones.”
I noticed Gabe had decided to join Emmy and the coach at the front desk.
He appeared to say “thank you” about something before turning around, a room key in his hand.
I yanked my attention back in Dylan’s direction before I was caught ogling the handsome man with his perfect jawline and his bulging biceps in that black Nike shirt he was wearing and— “Here’s your key. ”
A tap on my shoulder made me spin around. I hadn’t expected Gabe to be standing face-to-face with me. God, he moved fast.
“Thanks,” I said. “Where’s Dylan’s?”
“There was a change.”
“There was?”
“Yeah, you’re rooming with me now.”
Keep it cool. Keep it—fuck yessss.
“Ah, okay. Cool.”
Dylan leaned in. “So who am I rooming with?”
“Soren.”
“Seriously?” Soren said. “Shit. I’m never getting any sleep.”
“At least I’m a light snorer and not a biological warfare guerrilla farter like you are.”
Soren looked up at the ceiling, exasperated. “It was a bad tuna melt that I had. Already told you.”
The boys continued bickering about whose bodily functions were worse. I tuned them out almost entirely.
Gabe and I were sharing a room. My pulse quickened, my jaw clenched.
This was a code “holy shit, I’m about to have my guts rearranged all night long and love every second of it.”
Good thing I packed my douche.
“Here are your vodka shots with lime,” the waitress said as she expertly balanced the tray in one hand and placed the five shots down on the round table.
I grabbed a shot and took the slice of lime off the rim.
Emmy lifted his glass to the center of the group. “Cheers, boys. To a great season.”
“Cheers to that,” I said and clinked my glass against Gabe’s.
He sat across from me and looked directly at me as he brought his shot glass up to his lips.
Those icy blue eyes were otherworldly. He had the kind of attractiveness that bordered on intimidating.
Like you couldn’t comfortably look at him too long without feeling like you were coming across as a creep.
It might as well have been witchcraft. And the fucker had me completely under his spell.
I took the shot, the top-shelf vodka tasting smooth, and chased it with a suck of the lime.
The fire from the fire pit crackled between us.
It had been my idea to spend some time out here before we all headed to bed.
Mostly because I started getting irrationally nervous about being in a private room with four walls, two beds, and a possibly half-naked (or fully naked; I didn’t know how he slept) Gabe only a couple of feet away from me.
What if I fucked it up somehow? What if I was reading this all wrong, and Gabe was just going to go straight to bed, leaving me extremely disappointed and desperately horny?
I was most definitely overthinking the entire thing, but still…
my head was all kinds of messed up over Gabriel Sanderson.
So when Chris suggested a shot and Emmy agreed to it, I wholeheartedly jumped in. Anything to take some of the buzzing edge off.
We each sat in a rocking chair, out toward the rear of the property that pushed up against a quiet lake.
There was a chill in the air, but nothing that a hoodie and some sweats couldn’t solve.
“How are you liking Burlington, Eli?” Emmy asked, leaning back in the chair, his bulky figure taking up most of the seat.
“It’s been great to me so far. I was born and raised in Norfolk, so it’s nice. Feels kind of similar. I moved to Jacksonville with my parents when I was fourteen. I loved it there too, but there’s something about the Northeast that, I don’t know, it just can’t be beat.”
“I agree,” Chris said. He had a ghost of a Boston accent that became more pronounced the drunker he got. He had told me earlier that he was born in Massachusetts and had pretty much stayed at home until he graduated from college. “People are nicer.”
“Driving is less of a free-for-all,” Gabe noted.
“This is true,” I admitted. The longer the conversation continued, the more difficult it was for me to maintain focus.
I kept fast-forwarding to what the next couple of hours of my life were going to be like.
Gabe seemed completely nonchalant about it all, spouting off stats from a recent NHL game he’d watched, discussing the bold strategy his favorite team had implemented.
He was saying words, but they just weren’t making much sense to me.
I had to wrap this up. I was too anxious and too turned on to not do something about it. One way or another, I was going to fucking explode.
I stretched my hands over my head and rocked back in the chair. “Alright, guys, I think I’m ready for bed.”
“Same,” Gabe said. He was already on his feet without needing to say another word.
“Alright, guys, try and get some sleep.” Emmy seemed to have said that pointedly, but… why? There was no way we were giving off the vibes that something was going to happen, right?
A bloodcurdling screech from the hotel lobby froze us all in place. A second later, all four of us were running toward the sound. Gabe’s hand latched onto my wrist and tugged me back. “Stay here. Let us.”
I shook my head, making my choice. “I’m not going to run and hide. I want to help.”
Gabe’s pupils flared, and his grip around my wrist loosened, but he didn’t let go. “Stay close to me, then.”
Maybe it was a trick of the firelight or a side effect of the adrenaline, but Gabe’s eyes appeared to flash a liquid gold in color before shifting back to blue. Another yell yanked our attention to the lobby.
“I will,” I assured him, and we both took off running.