Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
BELL
Ethan was still treating me like a stray cat that’d wandered in off the street and refused to leave. He wasn’t rude exactly, just distant. Cordial in that clipped, professional way that made my skin prickle.
At home, we passed each other like ghosts. In the locker room, we exchanged barely more than nods. And on the ice? Things weren’t great.
In camp, I’d been flying—confident, dialed in, unstoppable. I’d even overheard one of the assistant coaches call me “a monster on the rush.” But now, under the lights and pressure of a real game, I felt like I was skating with cinderblocks strapped to my feet.
The puck moved faster. The guys hit harder. The plays didn’t unfold so much as explode.
“Backcheck, Bell!” Ethan’s voice sliced through the air behind me as I scrambled to recover from a flubbed pass.
I cursed under my breath, doubling back too late as Colorado’s line charged toward the net. Oscar scrambled to close the gap, but the puck was already gone—buried past Mantei before I even reached the slot.
Shit .
My lungs burned as I coasted into the boards, gripping the top of my stick and trying to hide how hard I was breathing. When I slid onto the bench, I caught Assistant Coach Russo glaring like he wanted to nail my ass to the pine.
Ethan didn’t say anything as he sat beside me. Just that same stone-faced expression I was starting to associate with him. After a few beats, he leaned forward, his gloves resting on his knees like nothing fazed him.
Me? I felt like I was fucking drowning, and it wasn’t just the altitude.
I tried to keep my eyes on the ice, but I could feel him beside me, calm, cool, and collected in a way I didn’t know how to be.
It pissed me off.
Worse, it turned me on.
I’d watched this man play for years. Growing up, I’d had a poster of him tacked to my wall. Then, at college, I’d taped it to the inside of my closet door so my roommates wouldn’t fuck with me about it. Watching him on TV had been a thrill; in person, it was something else entirely.
He played like a guy who’d done this a thousand times—mostly because he had. He was smooth. Controlled. Locked in. I used to feel like that—hell, even two weeks ago, I’d felt that way. But now? Out here? I couldn’t seem to get out of my own way.
I leaned back, catching my breath, trying not to sulk.
“You’re overextending,” he said out of the side of his mouth, his voice low so that only I could hear.
I blinked. “What?”
“On your entry. You’re forcing the puck instead of reading the support.” He didn’t look at me, just kept watching the play unfold in front of us. “You’re playing like you don’t trust anyone to be where they’re supposed to be.”
I wanted to be pissed. I should’ve been. But the weirdest thing was that his tone wasn’t harsh or rude. He wasn’t talking to me like I was some idiot rookie who didn’t know better. It was just … matter-of-fact. Reasonable.
Still, I couldn’t help needling him. He’d gotten under my skin, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to return the favor.
I dragged my water bottle from the holder and took a long swig. “Thanks for the tip, Dad.”
He didn’t respond.
Figured.
* * *
I trudged down the hotel hallway behind Ethan, my gear bag slung over my shoulder. My thoughts were still chasing each other in circles like a pack of angry squirrels.
Every missed pass. Every blown opportunity. Every shift that I couldn’t settle into. I was replaying them all on a loop I couldn’t seem to turn off. Too slow on the backcheck. Too early on the pinch. That turnover in the second period?
Fucking amateur hour.
The fluorescent lights lining the hall buzzed faintly, a constant drone in my ears that only made everything worse. My suit jacket felt too tight across my shoulders, and the collar of my dress shirt scratched at my neck like sandpaper. I’d already loosened my tie twice, then re-tightened it because, for some reason, that felt like the only thing I could control right now.
I hated being like this. Like my brain was stuck in a spin cycle.
I kept trying to focus on the carpet pattern, on how many doors we passed, but nothing clicked. My free hand kept fidgeting with the key card, flipping it over and tapping it against my leg.
At this point, I wasn’t even sure I was breathing right.
Ahead of me, Ethan moved with steady purpose. He probably hadn’t overanalyzed a single second of that game. Had probably already compartmentalized it, filed it in some mental spreadsheet and moved the fuck on.
I wanted that. That calm. That control. The ability to just let things go.
Instead, I spiraled in silence, chasing his footsteps down a hallway that somehow felt three miles long.
Eventually— finally —he stopped in front of a door and tapped the white card against the lock. The red light flashed. He did it again, and the lock turned green and a clicking sound filled the space. He pushed the door open without speaking a word to me.
“Home sweet home,” I muttered under my breath as I followed him inside.
The room was fine. Generic. Two queen beds, gray carpet, blackout curtains already drawn tight. Everything smelled faintly like bleach and that overly-perfumed soap that places like this bought in bulk.
Without hesitation, he walked straight to the bed farthest from the door and stepped around to its far side. Not even an offer to flip a coin for it. Whatever. He was the vet; I was the rookie. That was just how things worked.
Would have been nice to at least pretend I had a choice in the matter, though , I thought as I watched, mildly horrified, as he hefted his suitcase onto the crisp white duvet right near his pillows.
“Bold move, dropping that biohazard right where your face is gonna go,” I said, shucking my tie off over my head.
I watched as he slipped out of his suit jacket and draped it neatly over the back of the desk chair, like my voice was nothing more than a part of the room’s ambient noise.
“So,” I said, trying again. “Any weird bedtime rituals I should know about?”
He didn’t look up from where he was toeing off his shoes. “You snore, I smother you with a pillow.”
I blinked. “Wow. You really know how to make a guy feel welcome.”
He glanced up, the faintest glint of something in his eyes—annoyance, probably, but I was choosing to believe it was the beginning of fondness.
“I don’t snore,” I said. “But I do talk in my sleep. Usually, it’s sexy stuff, so… umm … fair warning, I guess.”
That earned me a sigh. Not quite a groan. Progress?
I grabbed the luggage rack out of the closet and hoisted my bag onto it before leaning against the wall behind me. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to appear casually indifferent. I didn’t know what it was about this guy, but he always made me feel like I had to try harder, be more.
More what, I didn’t know. Just … more .
“Some of the guys are hitting the bar downstairs. Want to join?”
Ethan unzipped his bag and removed what looked like a t-shirt and a pair of gray sweats, tucking them under one arm. He dove back in and pulled out a toiletry kit.
“I don’t drink with the team,” he said, his expression not giving away what he thought about the invitation one way or the other.
“What, like ever?”
“Not really.”
I tilted my head. “You allergic to fun or something?”
He shot me a flat, unreadable look. “They’re my colleagues. Not my friends.”
“Damn,” I said, letting out a low whistle as I moved to the foot of my bed and plopped down onto it. “That’s bleak.”
He shrugged. “It’s how I keep my work life and my private life separate.”
Separate. Right. I’d picked up on that. Before, I’d wondered why that was, but his comment just now made me insanely curious.
But before I could ask a question he probably wouldn’t answer anyway, he set his clothes and toiletry kit in a neat little stack on the vanity just outside the bathroom, and slipped off his tie and unfastened his cufflinks.
“You know,” I said, leaning back on my elbows and crossing my feet at the ankles, “you’re kind of an enigma.”
His eyes flicked up to meet mine in the mirror. “Not really.”
“No, you are. I mean, you don’t really give off that whole ‘give me a reason to fuck you up’ vibe, but you kind of also do, man. At least facially.” I circled my hand in front of my face, adopting the kind of fierce scowl he often wore. I expected him to direct it at me now, but his reflection simply rolled his eyes, his mouth quirking fractionally to the side.
“But you also carry Marjorie’s groceries in for her, and I saw you playing catch with the little boy across the street the other day. You’re simultaneously the grumpiest asshole I’ve ever met, while also somehow being the sweetest. But not to me—never to me. So what gives?”
Ethan shook his head and let a long, slow breath out through his nose. “Go get your drink, kid.”
I grinned. “Nah. I’m good. Figured I’d hang here, annoy the shit out of you instead.”
For a second, I thought I saw something that looked suspiciously like amusement flicker in his eyes, but it was gone before I could call him out on it.
“Suit yourself,” he said, grabbing his clothes and heading toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna go shower.”
“Wait. Didn’t you shower at the arena already?”
I could have sworn I saw him toss a wet towel into the caddy by the showers, though I wouldn’t ever tell him that. The first rule of being a queer person in professional sports was you never let your eyes wander in the locker room. If any of your teammates got even the slightest suspicion that you were checking them out, you were as good as ruined.
He batted the question away and kept moving toward the bathroom. “Just enough to get the stink off. I hate locker room showers, and Colorado’s is especially rank.” The door clicked shut behind him, and the soft rush of running water followed a few seconds later.
Since I knew he was going to be in there for a few minutes, I kicked off my dress shoes, yanked off my slacks, and swapped my dress shirt for a worn Thackeray T-shirt. As I pulled on my sweatpants, I tried not to think about the fact that Ethan was naked just on the other side of the wall, but it was hard.
Ugh.
And now so was I.
Behave, I scolded my unruly, misbehaving dick.
The second rule about being a queer man in professional sports was not to get a chubby thinking about your teammate, though I’d already failed miserably in that regard since I’d been jacking it to thoughts of Ethan Harrison since I was a pimply-faced twelve year old discovering how good it felt to touch myself.
But this was different.
He was my roommate now. And roommates did not rub one out while picturing the other’s slick body covered in soap suds.
Letting out a groan of frustration as I willed my dick to behave itself, I pulled out my phone to find something to distract myself with. Plopping back down on my bed, I opened TikTok, liking a video of a husky going absolutely wild in the snow, double-tapped a thirst trap from a gym bro in California who always left flirty comments on my posts, then paused on a clip of a girl I’d casually dated last year, lip-syncing to Beyoncé like she was having a spiritual awakening.
I continued scrolling. Then scrolled some more.
The longer I sat there, the more fidgety I got.
I tapped my fingers against the phone case. I rested my elbows on my knees and then sat up straight. My knee bounced. I checked the time.
Only six minutes had passed since he’d gone into the bathroom, but it felt like thirty.
I stood up, then sat back down, rubbing my palms along the tops of my thighs. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth.
My chest felt tight. Not in an I’m-having-a-heart-attack way, just … compressed.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
As if I didn’t already know.
It was him .
More precisely, it was rooming with him. Sleeping ten feet away from the man I had a massive, unshakable crush on.
At home, we could retreat to our individual rooms and pretend the other didn’t exist—or rather, he could pretend I didn’t exist.
But here in this hotel room? There was no space. No buffer.
I was going to hear him breathing tonight. Every rustle of his sheets would remind me he was right there , close enough to reach for.
Not that I ever would.
Fucking hell.
I swiped out of TikTok. Opened Instagram. Closed it. Checked my texts—nothing new. I debated posting something dumb to my stories, but even thinking about trying to be funny or cute for the internet felt exhausting.
I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, blowing out a long breath.
Get it together, Bell.
The bathroom door opened with a quiet click, steam curling around Ethan like he was stepping out of a fog. He looked freshly scrubbed, his dark hair damp and pushed back off his forehead, his T-shirt clinging to his chest, and those damn gray sweatpants slung low on his hips.
I blinked. My mouth parted slightly, my brain going haywire for a moment. I tried not to stare and failed—epically.
Something embarrassingly close to a whimper caught in my throat, and suddenly, he turned to face me.
“You okay over there?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly. Too quickly. I cleared my throat. “Just, you know … scrolling.” I held up my phone and rocked it back and forth like a weirdo. “Just rotting my brain.”
He shook his head and muttered something under his breath before crossing to the armoire and picking up the remote. He flicked the TV on, and a blast of blue light filled the room as SportsCenter lit up the screen.
Yeah, no way was I watching that.
The Aces might have won tonight, but I’d played like shit. I knew it, the coaches knew it, and our fans knew it. I didn’t need some talking heads detailing all the specific ways I’d sucked.
I grabbed my Kindle from the front pocket of my bag and settled back against the headboard, angling the pillows behind me. I was halfway through a slow-burn romance about a grumpy carpenter who had reluctantly rented his spare room to a younger, chaotic mystery writer. The carpenter was trying valiantly to keep his walls up, refusing to let the writer in, but their forced proximity was killing them both in the best, most deliciously agonizing way possible.
It was so good, exactly the type of book that could drown out the noise in my head.
A few pages in, I caught Ethan staring. Actually, I felt it before I saw it, that slight evolutionary prickle at the base of my neck that warned a person when they were being watched. When it didn’t go away, I turned my head and caught him examining me, one elbow propped on his knee and the remote held loose in his hand.
“What?”
He jerked like he’d been caught doing something wrong, his eyes immediately flicking back to the television. “Nothing.”
His tone was carefully neutral, but I saw the faint color creeping into his cheeks.
I shifted on the bed, angling my body toward him. “Sure, man. Nothing at all. Just staring at me like a creeper.”
His cheeks turned even pinker, and he scratched the back of his neck. “Um … uh, what are you reading?”
I tried to bite back my grin but failed. “You want the title or the synopsis?”
He dragged his attention back to the TV. “Neither.”
I laughed. “That’s a shame. It’s about this guy who thinks he’s got life all figured out until his new roommate moves in and makes him question all of his life choices.”
Ethan pressed his lips into a flat line, and his ears turned red.
I shouldn’t have enjoyed this as much as I did, but there was something deeply satisfying about getting under his skin, watching his ears go pink while he pretended not to care. Like poking at a bear just to see if it would growl.
We lapsed into a weird sort of silence after that, both of us pretending we were invested in what we were doing. Me reading, him watching a couple of guys talk about baseball. Ugh, so boring.
After a while, he clicked the remote and the screen went black.
“I’m turning in,” he said. “You need the light?”
I lifted my Kindle, showing off the illuminated words. “I’m good.”
He rolled over and flicked the switch on the lamp sitting on the table between our two beds, pitching the room into darkness.
I attempted to get back into the story. I really did. But after re-reading the same paragraph for the third time without really absorbing any of the words, I gave up. I rolled onto my back, trying to focus on anything other than the fact that Ethan Harrison was in bed less than ten feet away from me. I could hear him shift and exhale. Every breath, every rustle of his sheets was a reminder of how fucking close he was.
And yeah, I got hard, which, you know, definitely not cool.
Note to self: do not read spicy romance when sharing a room with the guy you’ve crushed on your whole life.
I turned onto my side, facing away from him and willing myself to think about anything other than how much I wanted him—hockey drills, my grocery list, the goddamn Pythagorean theorem—but nothing worked.
Not when I could hear him shift, the sheets whispering against his skin. Not when his sigh, quiet, almost hesitant, felt like a hook lodged in my ribs.
I bit the inside of my cheek, squeezed my eyes shut, and forced myself not to think about him.
It didn’t work.
It was gonna be a long fucking night.