Chapter 6
SIX
Gavin
Waking up the next morning, I allow myself a few minutes to gaze at Connor sleeping.
This feels like an indulgence. Something I shouldn’t make a habit of enjoying, but I can already tell it’s going to be a regular thing while we’re sharing a room together.
If I’m smart, I’ll be the one to request a roommate change in Milan.
Unfortunately, I can already tell you I’m not that smart.
I also worry about him sharing a room with someone else.
This is a strange thing to think about and it wouldn’t have crossed my mind before our talk last night.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it worries me what some of our other teammates might say or do if they found out Connor’s not straight.
I don’t care what they’d say about me. It’s always been the higher ups in the league I’m more worried about.
The ones who can slam the door on my career.
The people like Kennedy Sr who are always looking for an angle to have me removed.
But team bullying? Yeah. Not a problem for me.
It would almost be fun to see them try. They’d get an immediate demonstration of the phrase “fuck around, find out.”
That’s not to say they wouldn’t get the same demonstration if they fucked with Connor. Plus the “find out” portion they’d find themselves on the receiving end of would consist of disproportionate punishment.
This has always been my problem. A damn over-developed sense of vengeance.
A need to right wrongs I can’t control. It boils my blood.
But it’s also what makes me the number one enforcer in the league.
I like sticking up for my team. It brings me pride.
It’s not my title as king of penalty minutes that makes me feel that way.
It’s what those minutes represent. Time spent protecting my teammates, enforcing the code of hockey.
And sure, it helps release some of the rage within me that’s always underneath the surface.
Connor has awakened that instinct in me here. It’s strong, brewing within me and I have yet to feel it towards the rest of the team. They haven’t earned it yet. Except for Bouchard, who’s been grandfathered in, due to being a member of the Blizzards.
“I can feel you staring,” Connor says from across the room with his eyes closed.
I roll onto my back and rub my eyes. “No, you can’t,” I say, my lips pulling up into a smile.
“Are you going to the gym?” His voice is quiet and sleepy.
“I am.”
“Mind if I join you?”
My smile inexplicably grows larger. I turn my head to look at him. Now he’s the one staring, but his eyes are half closed, still heavy from sleep. “I don’t mind. But just so you know, being cute won’t make me go easy on you.”
The darkness of the room can’t hide how red his cheeks get. “Don’t be a dick.”
“I complimented you.” I laugh. “How does that make me a dick?”
“You shouldn’t tease me this early in the morning,” he says, but the lazy smile pulling at his lips tells me otherwise. Tells me that he might like being teased, among other things in the morning.
“I’m not teasing,” I say and sit up, letting the covers fall off my chest and pool into my lap.
“Now you’re definitely teasing.” He doesn’t even try to hide that he’s staring at my chest.
I repeat my words from our first night in this room. “Do you like what you see?”
“You know I do.”
“Do I?” I ask. “We haven’t discussed types. Maybe you’re into bears, or twinks, or ultra femmes. You probably watch Drag Race, don’t you?”
“God, no.” He scoffs and actually looks insulted.
I chuckle at him. Why is teasing him so easy? And, worse, enjoyable.
“Dick,” he says again, laughing.
“Come on,” I say, getting up. I hold out my hand to him. “Let’s go.” He grabs my hand and I yank him out of his bed.
Connor
It’s possible that working out with Gavin this morning is a mistake.
To start, he’s distractingly strong. Each time he sets up a new exercise for us and demonstrates it, I miss what he’s saying in favor of watching his muscles stretch the fabric of his workout shorts and tee shirt.
Which is ridiculous. It’s not as if I need to be taught how to lift weights.
I have my own trainer I work out with back in Chicago.
I’m convinced at this point that he’s doing it to tease me.
To make me look at his thighs as they pull tight with each squat, his chest as it expands and contracts with each lift, his biceps harden into stones of muscle with each curl. And I let him do it. Repeatedly.
“How much do you weigh?” he asks me, pulling me from my stupor as I watch him load a bar up with twenty-pound plates.
“What?”
Pointing at me, he asks, “What are you? About a buck eighty?”
Good guess. I nod at him. “Just about.”
He grins and continues to place plates on the bar. “Lightweight.”
“I’m sorry.” I laugh. “Not all of us are built like trees. Nor do I play my position in a way where that would be useful.”
“Nor do I,” he says, laughing, with a haughty shake to his head and shoulders that looks ridiculous on him. “Do you always talk like an aristocrat?”
I hit his elbow with mine as I move to take a seat on the bench. “Do you even know what an aristocrat is?”
“Yeah.” He laughs some more and there’s mischief in his eyes. “It’s a fancy term for rich dudes who say things like ‘nor do I’ when they’re trying to prove their point.”
I can’t help but smile and tease him back. “Apologies. Some of us have evolved past the ancient language of grunts and growls to express ourselves.”
His mischievous eyes turn dark and daring. My stomach flips. “Don’t challenge me, Connor. I can get you grunting and growling in no time.”
Heat flares in my cheeks and his smile returns with a lick of his lips. He pokes at my cheek with his finger. “I meant with the bench press, but it’s cute that your mind went somewhere else.”
I narrow my eyes at him. Is he flirting with me? “Don’t act innocent. You knew what you were saying.”
“Yeah.” He points at the bar with a flip of his hand. “That you’re going to grunt and growl as you lift that weight. Let’s go, Kennedy. Time is wasting.”
I lie down on the bench, and he moves to stand beside the top of my head, giving me the perfect view up his body from crotch to chin.
Thank God he’s clothed right now. Not that that’s stopping me from thinking about all the fun we could be having in this position if he wasn’t.
Which are thoughts I shouldn’t be having.
I should be focusing. Focusing on lifting these weights, and more importantly, preparing for the Olympics.
That’s what we’re here for. I’m here to train to win gold, not drool over the team goon while practicing my minimal flirting skills.
He places his hands near the bar to spot me, readying himself for when I lift, then looks down at me and smirks. “Enjoying the view?”
“Fuck off,” I say and grab the bar. How is it that he can see right through me? “Oof,” I grunt as I try to lift it off its supports.
“Nice grunt.” He laughs and helps me lower the bar closer to my chest. “Now all I need is a growl.”
“How much weight did you put on this thing?” I ask through clenched teeth as I lift.
“One sixty.”
“What!” I exclaim, as I lower it back down with the help of his guiding hands. Grunting as I lift it back up, I add, “My trainer has me lift one twenty-five.”
He helps me lower it back towards my chest. “Your trainer is wrong. You should be pressing eighty percent of your body weight.”
I breathe out as I push the bar back up. “I don’t think your math is right. That seems high.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I rounded up.”
“Asshole,” I say as we lower it again. My muscles are screaming, and my blood pressure is rising.
“Gimme one more,” he says.
I take a deep breath in, then begin to push up for one last time. A growl rumbles in my chest and up my throat as I push.
With ease, he places the bar back on the supports, then pats my shoulders. “There it is,” he says. “Told you I could make you growl.”
I laugh at him through labored breaths. “There has to be an easier way to do that.”
“There is,” he says, but then his face turns serious. “But that’s something we probably shouldn’t do.”
I deflate because he’s right. And up until last night, that could have remained unspoken. But now that we both know the other is gay, that exploring that easier way is technically a possibility, it makes it that much more disappointing.
Gavin
All I can think as I look down at Connor while he rests on the bench is that I’m playing with fire.
I’ve been playing hockey my whole life and not once have I gotten close to blowing my cover and exposing to everyone around me all of who I am.
For fuck’s sake, last night was the most I’ve ever even opened up about my childhood back in Alaska.
I’m fine with the image the league and its fans have of me.
Grumpy, brutal enforcer, dirty white boy from no-place-good Alaska.
That’s how they see me, want me, and need me.
Finding out I’m gay would blow that entire image.
Which is ridiculous. Being gay doesn’t change the fact that I am, indeed, grumpy, brutal, and dirty.
But that doesn’t fit the accepted, mainstream version of gay men that is presented to the broader culture.
The people who yell and cheer for gay men all picture the same thing as they promote us as their virtuous cause. Soft, slightly effeminate, male light.
It’s so stupid. Male light, my ass. I can say from experience, there is nothing more male than two men fucking.
It’s the most masculine thing a man can do on either side of it.
And here I am, standing above Connor Kennedy thinking about how much I want to press him over my head before I bend him over a bench and fuck his brains out.
Grunting and growling with him to the finish line.