SEVENTEEN
Max
F riday morning, I get up early, shower, and strut to my kitchen for a light protein breakfast. Gilda packed my bags like she usually does for this road trip. Two more suits, four dress shirts all pressed and wrapped in tissue, four ties, lots of underwear, jeans, casual button downs, T-shirts, sneakers, and slides.
The equipment team packs our gear. I literally just show up at the airport.
Fuck, I’m pampered.
We’re flying to Texas this morning for the Houston game. After Houston, we play Kansas City.
We didn’t win against Aspen last night, but losses are expected. Luckily, Aspen isn’t in our division, and the loss won’t affect our standing.
It still pissed me off.
I passed again when the guys on the team decided to go to a strip club on the outskirts of Stamford to drown their sorrow in booze and pussy. The single guys need release, and strippers love giving hockey players lap dances in the private lounges.
They busted my chops urging me to go. Luca would have to go with me. Watch me get a lap dance and stand outside the door listening to a woman give me head.
I have mixed emotions over that.
The regular season is winding down, and once the playoffs start, all bets are off. Personal lives come to a grinding halt. It’s hard enough to focus on anything other than hockey in the regular season, which is long and grueling. The playoffs turn my life into a black hole.
Hole...
I can’t stop thinking about Luca, all parts of him. I consider my thought last week of using him to get my head straight about what I feel for him. I convinced myself there’s nothing I can do about my feelings for men. I can’t act on the attraction. I’m well-known. I have a career and a brand to protect. I’m haunted with thoughts that my sexuality will get out. Then what?
No one knows.
Carter is dealing with the same dilemma. But he’s living half in and out of two worlds. I can’t risk a group of people knowing my secrets if I don’t want the world to know.
When Carter got called up, he told us all right away. I glanced around, hiding shock, waiting for that look of disgust in my teammates’ eyes, the same one I saw in my father’s. Not one guy did. And I’m so damn proud of this team.
I never catch Carter staring at anyone, he’s cool and professional. He’s been a Crusher for two years, so why hasn’t he figured me out?
Or has he? Does he know I’m living with torturous worry day in and day out?
Damn, that makes him even cooler for not forcing me to open up, but it also pisses me off that he hasn’t tried to help me.
Wearing my usual Tom Ford suit for the plane ride, I catch my reflection in my kitchen’s wall oven. It’s like I’m seeing myself for the first time. My set jaw, flat lips, my girth. Maybe I’m not approachable.
The team chat pings, forcing a frown to build on my mouth, reading the messages about a player on one of the rival teams. He’s a severe trouble maker, coming off an eight-game suspension. He’ll be out for blood tonight .
Mine. Wingers get extra aggressive in my zone.
But not like this Belova guy. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.
“Something wrong?” Luca asks me, striding into the kitchen, cool and collected.
“Guy on the Houston team is trouble.”
Luca scoffs, taking a drink from my refrigerator. “You’re all trouble. Heck, you’re the biggest pain in the ass.” When I look up quickly, he waves a hand. “Bad choice of words.”
I haven’t figured out if he tops or bottoms. Blowjobs go both ways.
Yeah, bad choice of words.
Does he take it up the ass? Was he blowing his wife’s bodyguard to get him off before he fucked him? His confession leaves me questioning.
Everything.
I discreetly adjust my growing hard-on when I think of this man’s mouth around a swollen cock. “Finish,” I say, putting my phone in my suit jacket’s inner pocket.
Another innuendo...
“Hockey is the most violent sport I’ve ever seen. Besides actual hand-to-hand combat sports.” He’s not wrong. “You’re all beasts, with hunger in your eyes and trash talk on your lips.”
“Did you ever play?” I ask him.
“No.”
“But you skate.” I hadn’t addressed his ability on blades.
“I did a little speed skating at university.” He has no accent, but working for the Russian mob fuels my curiosity about him.
“Where?”
“Not important.”
“More unnecessary details. Got it,” I say, and for a second, I relax talking to him.
“And I know all about the Houston guy. We investigated him,” Luca says confidently. “No contact with Belova. Just your average douchebag on ice.”
“Good to know.” My phone buzzes. “Car is here.”
Luca grips his luggage and glances around. “Anything special to do here since we’ll be away for a couple of nights?”
“No. Gilda still comes by. She finds projects to keep her busy.”
“I like her. She’s been very good to me.”
“Good.” I nod sincerely. “She’s been with me since I moved here, a few years after the Crushers signed me.”
“They got you in the draft, right?”
I stop, wondering if knowing my history was part of his job. Or was it his fascination with me that made him dig into my past? “First round, their first pick.”
In the elevator, we stand on opposite sides.
I tilt my head. “Have any more questions?”
“No.”
“Know all about me?”
“I know everything about you,” he says, low and husky, tightening my balls.
“Is that so?” I smell his cologne, and mouthwash. It’s wrapped in a delicious heat I want to fall asleep in.
What. The. Hell?
Luca looks down and with a tight frown, says, “Sorry. Don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“You don’t make me uncomfortable,” I say quicky. “In fact, you’ve been unbelievably easy to live with.”
The psycho sexual tension aside.
Everything should feel off because now I have a damn bodyguard following me everywhere. Watching me. With eyes that drink me in.
We engage in polite conversation in the apartment. I can’t escape his presence.
“I grew up around people who need bodyguards,” Luca says with no emotion. “Seen many jerks come and go, but the ones who the bosses kept around...” He clears his throat. “Let’s just say, I know how to handle people like you.”
I’m not sure what to make of that. “And this new job you said you’re getting?”
He tightens his fist. “Not a bodyguard.”
“Ah...” He killed people for his last boss. Who then tried to kill him.
We reach the main floor where a Town Car is waiting with the driver standing by the open trunk. He reaches for my bag and I hand it over, but Luca doesn’t take the man’s help.
He makes me feel like a spoiled wuss.
It’s a short ride to the airfield where our team plane sits in a hangar. Every road trip is like a weekend bachelor party in Vegas. The team is all high-fives and fist bumps.
A few guys are married, but most are single. Some of the husbands look miserable because they miss their families. Others are thankful for the break.
What kind of husband would I be?
And... Nothing.
Nothing comes into my head. No picture of a faceless woman with a baby forms in my imagination. My brain has no idea how to put that together. Because it won’t happen for me. Not with a woman. That’s so fucking clear.
Maybe I’ll have a husband...
My eyes stray to Luca with the security team. Those guys are serious. Most are ex-cops who already have firearm licenses.
All the guards dress in suits like him, but they look like funeral directors. Luca looks like a runway model.
I sit with Troy Madison, who I also usually room with. In the minors, my coach changed it up to keep guys on their toes and always out of our comfort zones.
Five hours later, the plane lands, and a wall of warm, muggy Texas air hits me as I descend the airstairs.
Sweat drips down my back on the short walk to the coach bus waiting for us. It takes us right to the stadium while our bags are stored at the hotel for our one-night stay.
IN A WHITE-KNUCKLE nailbiter, we win against Houston clinching our spot in the playoffs. There are eight teams in our Eastern North Conference, but only four teams make it to the postseason.
As we’re celebrating in the locker room, my mind drifts to Richmond, stealing my joy. The only way they can claim their spot is if they beat us this weekend.
I don’t want to beat them. I want to eviscerate them for what they did to me.
We reach the hotel, and I struggle to keep my eyes open. The game against Houston was brutal.
Madison sat next to me again on the bus while Luca sat with a guy whose name I don’t know. No big deal until this dude’s shoulder bumps his and burning jealousy snakes up my spine.
The travel manager goes into the hotel first to collect our keycards. Once he comes back and hands them out, the bus moves to a private entrance, and we file out.
In professional hockey, we’re famous and anonymous at the same time. When you play team sports, you accept this. Sure, I get a little more glory because as the team captain, I’m on the ice first and exit it last.
Exhausted, I follow Madison, not paying attention to Luca. I don’t feel threatened. I’m surrounded by seventeen bruisers, coaches, trainers, and the team’s fully armed security staff.
Lance Reynolds, the goalie, Madison, and I amble down the hall looking for our rooms. We all stop at room 610, where Madison and Reynolds both reach for the keypad.
“Dude, you in 610?” Madison asks Reynolds, who nods. “Ryan, guess you’re bunking with someone else this time.”
Snapping to attention, I look at my card sleeve. 630.
“What the hell?” Down the hall, posted next to a door I assume reads 630, a dark, suited familiar figure with broad shoulders waits.
Luca.
No.
No. No. No...