Chapter 5 #2
“Thanks,” he says with a nod as he crosses his ankles and lifts his arms to place them behind his head. The motion lifts his shirt up slightly, showing me a few inches of his stomach along with a treasure trail of dark hair I want to follow to its prize.
He raises an eyebrow at me. “Did you need something, Connor?”
Fuck. My chest and cheeks heat. He totally caught me staring. And now he’s looking at me like he knows I like what I see. Cocky prick.
Thankfully, I’m saved by a knock on the door. I jump off my bed and rush to open it and let the valet bring in the food.
Gavin
It’s cute how easy it is to fluster Connor.
He’s an absolute mess as he rushes to the door.
I wonder if that blush of his is all over or does it only rise to his cheeks?
I bet it’s all over. I bet his smooth chest is flushed and warm.
If he wasn’t my teammate, I’d be tempted to find out how pink and flustered he gets when he’s about to come.
If this was the offseason, and I met him somewhere that had nothing to do with hockey and had no clue who either of us was, I’d do everything I could to find out.
I doubt it would even be that hard. Like I said, he’s always given me a station on my gaydar.
I wonder if it’s his choice or his father’s choice that he hides that.
Probably his father’s. But then again, it could be his choice as well.
I mean, I’m one to talk. I’m not exactly open about being gay, either.
But my approach to the matter is less about hiding it and more about letting people make their own assumptions about me and not correcting them.
That way, I can keep the fact that I’m gay just out of sight.
I don’t want that level of attention anyway.
It’s nobody’s business unless I make it their business.
Which is how I treat everyone else. If Connor wants to make it my business and confirm what I’m pretty sure is true, he can.
But I’m not going to press. Besides, it’s not like entertaining my curiosity about how flushed his skin gets when he’s being fucked into a mattress is going to help get our team ready for the Olympics.
Bringing that level of emotion into my playing is bound to make shit worse once it’s time to return to the regular season.
I get attached to my teammates, even ones I barely tolerate, and take the role of team protector, some say, too seriously as it is anyway.
Adding any sexual feelings to that dynamic is just going to end in disaster.
But damn it if it’s not tempting. The idea of getting a good boy to do bad things—that bad thing being me—is delicious.
Instead, I lazily indulge in watching the good boy in question set the small round table by our windows, overlooking the strip.
He’s in his team-issued USA hoodie and sweatpants, same as me, but he looks more the part than I do.
That golden hair, too dark to be blond but too light to be brown, and those blue eyes are what everyone pictures when they think of an American Olympian.
They most certainly don’t picture me. Tall, broad, dark hair with even darker eyes full of brooding.
Connor looks friendly and approachable. I look like everyone’s least favorite bouncer at the nightclub they desperately want to get into, but never get the nod to enter.
“Food’s up,” Connor says and takes a seat, angling himself to look at the TV where his father’s anger at finding out I was named alternate captain is being shown again.
If we hadn’t had a closed practice, I’d suspect he was the one who broke the story about our brawl.
The man has always had it out for me. A fight breaking between the team is just the thing he’d have loved to blame me for.
“Thanks, dear,” I say and wink at Connor. My teasing is rewarded with another blush rising to his cheeks. Which was a mistake. I kind of want to kiss them now and feel the heat of his flushed skin against my lips.
“Fuck off,” he says, then smirks at me. “You paid for this.”
“Dick.” I laugh as I take a seat and lift the dome off my food. It looks perfect, and the fries served with it are still sizzling. I grab one and pop it into my mouth. Then, I reach for the beer that came with it and twist the top off. I pass it to Connor before opening my root beer.
“Thanks,” he says. “Are you sure this doesn’t bother you?”
I shake my head no and bite into my burger. I can see Connor eyeing me across the table.
“Just ask,” I say as I swallow. We’re stuck in this room together, he’s bound to have questions, and for whatever reason, I don’t necessarily feel like hiding my answers from him. It’s that wholesome and earnest face of his. It does things to me I can’t ignore. “I know you want to.”
He bites his lip. “I don’t want to pry?”
“It’s not prying.” I shrug. “We’re stuck in this hotel room together. We may as well get to know each other a bit.” Besides, that works both ways. Eventually, his wound-up secrets will come tumbling out to my amusement. I nod my head towards the TV. “Plus that shit’s gonna get old really quick.”
“True.” He laughs, then takes a sip of his beer. He places it down as he swallows and looks at me. His brows are furrowed together. “I know it’s not my business,” he says. “But you know…”
“Drinking is part of the culture of hockey.”
“The rink rats don’t call it ‘beer league’ for nothing.”
I take another bite of my burger and eye him as I chew. “Perhaps they could have become more than rink rats if they’d have laid off the booze.”
“Touché.” He smiles at me. “Is that what you did?”
“No. I’ve always stayed away from the stuff.”
“Have you ever had a drink?”
“I have.” I take a long swig of my root beer and I’m pretty sure I see him watch my Adam’s apple bob up and down as I swallow. “But when you grow up where I did, like I did, the allure of booze quickly loses its appeal.”
“Ah,” he says and gives me the look like he’s sorry he asked.
I decide to let him off the hook. “It’s an Alaska thing. We’re all used to it.”
His lips quirk up. “I’m pretty sure alcoholism isn’t specific to Alaska.”
“No.” I laugh. “It isn’t. But drinking yourself to death because your boyfriend, your son’s father is out on a fishing boat for three-week stretches every month is something highly specific to Alaska.” The words come tumbling out of me. I swallow and give Connor a hard stare.
His eyebrows rise and he pales into a ghostly white.
I sit back in my chair, leaning to rest my elbow on the arm. That sure wiped the grin off his face. I’ve told no one in hockey the entirety of this story, and I don’t know if I want to do it now. But Connor is staring at me, and I can tell it’s going to eat him alive if I don’t say more.
I wipe my mouth with my napkin, then take another sip of my root beer. “It’s not all bad,” I say, deciding to continue. “If my mother hadn’t drunk herself to death I never would have played hockey.”
Connor now officially looks like a corpse.
Goddamn it. This is why I don’t tell people my life story. They always end up looking like they’re the one that died. Or worse, they wear their pity so plainly on their face that I immediately want to punch it off them.
“She… died…” he chokes out.
I give him another hard stare. “That is what I said, isn’t it?”
“Yeah… but… I was hoping you meant it like a metaphor.”
“Anyway,” I say and take a breath. There’s no going back now. “As I was saying, she drank herself to death while my dad was on a stretch on a fishing boat. The details are a little fuzzy as I was five.”
His jaw drops open, and I fight the urge to laugh. He looks ridiculous. But at least he isn’t reaching across the table to tell me how sorry he is.
I point at his beer, encouraging him to take a sip. Lord knows he’s going to need it if we’re going to get through this next part.
Once he’s swallowed, I continue. “My dad returned home and found me alone in the living room of our apartment surrounded by empty cereal boxes and my mother unresponsive in their bedroom. No one knew how long she’d been dead for, but they guessed three days.”
He begins to open his mouth to speak.
I hold my finger up at him. “Don’t,” I say in a warning tone.
“I’m fine and I don’t want your pity. It was a long time ago and things worked out.
My dad moved us out of that apartment and into his great-aunt’s house where she could watch me when he was out on the boat, which was less often and for shorter stretches than when my mother was alive.
It meant less money, but we had each other.
That’s when he started taking me to the local rink and he and his great-aunt taught me how to skate.
They thought it would be good for me, and they were right. The rest is history.”
I slump against the back of my chair and chug the rest of my root beer.
He looks at me like he’s trying to figure out what to say. There’s a lot of options and they’re all shit I don’t want to hear. But he’s obviously settled on something, as his lips quirk up into a playful—but if I’m being honest, slightly still sad—smile.
“So was it multiple different kinds of cereal, or did you just eat seven boxes of Cheerios?”
I choke, then cough through my laughter. That is not what I was expecting, and I’ll never tell this story again as no one will ever have a better response.
He laughs with me, and the way he lights up is quite the sight. It’s like his question lifted some of the residual tension that’s been hanging in this room, maybe throughout all of Las Vegas since we’ve been here.
I pop a fry into my mouth and look at him. “It was Froot Loops,” I say. “And the smell of it makes me want to puke to this day.”
He nods. “Noted.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that,” I say, then go back to eating my food. Between bites, I look at him, raising one eyebrow. “Your turn.”
He wipes his mouth with his napkin. “My turn, what?”
“You know some of my shit. Tell me some of yours.”