Chapter 7
Artemis
If I said I’ve settled in with my new team enough to have them over to my house for pizza night, I’d be straight up lying.
There’s a comfort in surrounding yourself with those you love when you feel off beat.
The old gang’s all here. The apartment smells like pepperoni and nostalgia—my whole chaotic hockey family and their significant others crammed into one room. Laughter bounces off the walls, gaming controllers click, and someone’s yelling about blue shells.
Then the doorbell rings, and just like that, the warmth ices over. Everyone looks at me. Their faces are comical. Almost everyone I know and love is here. I’m not a social butterfly, or a party person with a big social circle, and we’re not waiting for food to arrive, so… who is at the door?
“It’s a delivery.” Apollo calls from the hall where my buzzer is. His words are followed by a loud buzzing sound.
I’m not expecting anything, but that doesn’t mean shit.
I have subscriptions to various supplements, and home shit that often arrives before—or indeed after—it’s supposed to.
Not waiting to find out what it is, I head into the kitchen to get everyone another round of drinks, picking up a few discarded, empty pizza boxes and bottles on my way.
When I turn around, my sister’s clutching a box to her chest. “Who’s ‘Goal Daddy’?”
My stomach swoops into free fall, and with it, I imagine every ounce of color from my face because Hen’s lips twitch at the corner. “Wh-what?” I never stutter. I only speak when the words are solid in my mouth, a trait conditioned into all four of us by our father figure.
So, my sister’s knowing smirk grows.
I reach for the box too fast. I’m too desperate. Her brows lift, and without a word passing between us, I know I’ve given something away.
She wiggles the box at me holding it too tightly and just too far out of reach for me to grab it out of her hands. “The label says the sender is Goal Daddy. Sounds…” She purses her lips, not dropping eye contact. “Personal.”
She listens to the box. “It’s not ticking.”
I reach for it, but she again, she steps juuuuust out of reach. “Hen.” My voice is low, a growl almost, as it piggybacks on the quickening beat racing through my veins. What the hell did he send me?
How the hell did he send me anything?
Is he a stalker?
Do I actually care? Do I want a walking red flag sending shit to my home? The flutter of excitement as my stomach flips tells me I wouldn’t give a shit if he was a stalker, and while that should be pathetic, it makes my nostrils flare as I fight a smile.
I hiss out a slow sigh. Hen won’t give up the package unless I give her something. And from the mischievous gleam in her eye, I have thirty seconds before she walks into my living room and tears this box open in front of everyone.
My stomach hardens. I don’t want them to know what’s in here. I might not have expected it, or wanted it, but now it’s here, it feels… like she said, personal. And I want to experience it for myself, by myself.
I can’t lie to my sister. Athena is too astute for ‘No one’ to fly with her. “No one you need to know about. For the moment.” I keep my voice as level as I can, despite the excitement fluttering in my bloodstream.
When was the last time someone sent me something?
I didn’t answer his text, and yet… he’s still pursuing me. Usually pursuit is exhausting, irritating, and makes my stomach curdle. But I suppose people who generally pursue me are much more overt and in my face. They fawn over me and thrust themselves in my space.
In a weird way, this is pursuit from a distance. I suppose it helps that he lives in Wisconsin, but I’m clearly living rent free in his brain enough to send me… something.
Athena pauses, holding the box in my direction, but her knuckles are white; she’s not giving it up that easily. “Yes.” She tips her head to the side. “But he could be?”
I’ve never really come out to my siblings. I’m not sure I ever had to. Sexuality and gender are fluid concepts in a family who mostly believes love is love, and I can fuck whoever I want as long as they don’t hurt me. Or the family.
After Claudia, however, my one-night stands, my dalliances, were all men. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it was as though I’d tried dating a woman, and my soul decided it wasn’t for me.
Of course, my sister was the one to notice. She never came straight out and asked if I was gay, but she stopped trying to set me up with women, and never asks about women in my life, always men.
Her face softens at whatever she sees on my face. “Does anyone else know?” She means Scott, but asks in broad strokes.
I ponder her question for a beat instead of shaking my head right away. “I think Ares is meddling, hence the package.”
She smirks. “That tracks.”
“But it’s not enough of a thing to bring to anyone else.”
A sadness pools in her eyes as she gives me the box. “It’s enough, because you’re enough, Arte.” She leaves me with those words thickening the air in the room. She means it. And for a second, I hate how much I want to believe her.
Instead of kicking everyone out and tearing it open, I sit it out of sight and go back to my siblings and chosen family. The box hums in the corner like it’s alive. I can feel it watching me while I pour drinks, my fingers itching to tear it open.
I tuck it in my bedroom, the temptation to lock the door behind me and rip it open making my skin itch.
But I want to take my time with it, and if I’m honest, I know Xavier has received a ‘package delivered,’ notification.
It’s probably driving him insane that I haven’t acknowledged it yet.
I think I enjoy that thought a little too much as well.
I’m quieter than usual for the rest of the evening, distracted by the tug of the cardboard box radiating like a beacon in my closet. Athena’s last to leave, because of course she is, and when she pulls me into a hug, she squeezes tightly. “I’m ready to listen, when you’re ready to talk.”
After her attack last year, part of me worried that all the best bits of her would be gone forever.
That those assholes stripped pieces of her away from us.
She’s more guarded, even more cautious about who she lets into her circle, but her soft bits are still soft, her heart is still pure, and her sense of humor is still razor-sharp.
By contrast, I think the rest of us, Scott, Ares, Apollo and myself, grew an extra inch of iron around our hearts and got a few degrees colder as a result of what she went through.
Only when the door’s locked behind her after, the trash is picked up, my living room resembles ‘normal,’ and the sole sound in my dimly lit bedroom is the sawing of my breaths through the tension do I let myself even look at the box.
I tell myself I’ll open it later, tomorrow even. But I last seven minutes. The box wins.
I tear it open with the painfully slow precision I’m known for on the ice. The gift note says, “Heard kale doesn’t ship well, so I sent you something that’s actually edible. Every time you bite into this, remember: I thought about feeding it to you.”
My dick stirs, and my blood heats. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about feeding Xavier apple pie last weekend after the game. It was deep, delicious, and unexpected. Which seems to be the case with Xavier, too.
My phone vibrates from the bedside table where it’s charging.
Hen: Opened it yet?
A second text comes through.
Hen: What’s in it? I’m dying over here.
I can’t fight the smirk pulling at my lips. Curiosity might kill me sooner than the frustration making my dick press against the seam of my sweats at the memory of Xavier’s perfect mouth as he spoke to his brother in the restaurant.
When a third message pings through, I almost give in and write her back, except the message isn’t from her.
Goal Daddy: Get anything interesting in the mail today?
Let’s find out.
I move the paper shielding the contents of the box from me, and ease onto the edge of the mattress to get a better look.
There’s a book on leadership and sports psychology with a snarky Post-it: “For your next team meltdown.” I roll my eyes, but flick through the book. It’s written by a former NHL player turned sports psychologist, and it’s been on my to be read pile for a while. How did he know?
There’s a pack of gum with another note: “To loosen up your jaw before you talk to me next time.”
My pulse trips. The words shouldn’t sound like a whisper, but I hear them anyway—low, cocky, right against my skin in a Texan accent. I doubt talking to him is what he wants me to do with a loose jaw, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking on my part.
There’s a heat pack, to “Thaw your ice prince heart.” His words needle at a long-standing scab that’s picked at more regularly than I’d like. People assume because I’m quiet, because I watch and think before I speak, that somehow means I don’t have feelings.
A mini bottle of lube, “For your stick, obviously.” That makes me chuckle, because we both know this strawberry flavored lube doesn’t belong on hockey sticks.
Out of place in the box is a small, brown teddy bear—with a nametag hanging from his foot saying Beartemis—which strikes me in the chest more than the rest. It’s thoughtful, soft, and in mythology Artemis is often associated with bears.
Was this deliberate? Did he look this up?
Or was it a knee jerk idea to put a stuffed animal in the box for me?
While I mull over the questions in my mind, I take in the piece de resistance, a six-pack of boutique cinnamon rolls from my favorite bakery in Minnesota.
Ares definitely played a part in the composition of this care package.
A: He knows I’m not putting this kind of crap in my body.
It took all my strength to keep my pizza intake to a two-slice max tonight.
B: He knows where to find my favorite cinnamon rolls.
And C: He knows they’re one of a very select few things that’ll make my self-control waver enough to take a bite.
Whether it’s from the cinnamon roll, or Xavier, is yet to be determined.
The smell of cinnamon and sugar permeates the room as I click on his name and type out a reply.
Artemis: Nothing much to write home about.
I delete it and try again.
Artemis: Thanks for my gift.
Nothing feels right under my fingers, so I say nothing.
I shouldn’t take a bite of the delicious frosting-covered treat. I shouldn’t even want to. But the first taste ruins me. It’s sweet, sinful, and exactly like him. My self-control never stood a chance.