Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Quinn
I didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking when I told that cute, nervous guy from the photoshoot that we could meet up and chat. And I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing sitting in front of his goddamn frat house on a Thursday afternoon waiting for him to get into my car.
But there I was, making yet another bad decision.
Then again, that was kind of the theme of my life.
It started with joining a hockey team at seven because my parents wanted me out of their hair, dropping out of high school when I got drafted to the NHL, agreeing to a secret, two-month marriage ending in a hateful divorce with him threatening to write a tell-all book before I sued him into silence, and ending with breaking routine and choosing a new coffee shop to get my morning caffeine from, which cost me, well, everything.
Though my therapist had done her best to restructure the way I thought about the accident, because choosing a different shop to get coffee at in the morning was not worthy of some cosmic punishment that left me retired from the NHL and unable to bend my knee ever again.
But she also didn’t fully understand what superstitious bastards we all were. When I woke up from my drug-induced haze after my fourth surgery, a couple of my teammates were in the recovery room. No one said it aloud, but we all looked at each other and knew.
This is what happens when you break your fucking routine.
That was back when the doctors told me there was some chance I might find my way back on the ice.
He was wrong. I could skate now. I still found time whenever there was a public rink anywhere near where I was staying, but it wasn’t the same.
Sometimes it was more pain than it was worth, and the only thing that kept me afloat was realizing that I wanted to help someone the way my physical therapists had helped me.
I could have given up.
None of them let me.
So I went back to school, and now, this was my life. I was on the verge of joining a new sports medicine practice, sitting in front of a grungy-looking frat house on the Boston University campus, waiting to pick up a newly signed NHL prospect and give him what? Dating advice?
I could think of a million other ways to spend the evening that involved a lot fewer clothes and a lot more fun, but I was trying to be better. I was trying to avoid mistakes.
I didn’t think picking Ferris up was going to count as one if I kept it in my pants.
The worst tonight would lead to was the same raging boner I’d fought all during the photoshoot because he was maybe the most gorgeous man I had ever laid eyes on.
And, not to mention, almost two decades younger than me.
I wasn’t as panicked about wanting him when he shyly told me he was twenty-two, not a seventeen-year-old, fresh-faced prospect I thought he could be.
“I started school late,” he’d told me when I’d asked, as though it was something to be ashamed of. “I struggled when I first started, so my parents pulled me out to wait until I could handle it.”
I didn’t tell him that I hadn’t even graduated from high school. That I’d been drafted at seventeen, and the league helped me with some bullshit online school diploma, which turned out was not accepted into the university when I decided to apply after the accident.
I spent the first year of my recovery getting my goddamn GED—which I failed four times. Then the second year earning enough credits at the community college to work my way into the physical therapy program in North Carolina because it was the only place that was willing to take me.
Now, two years shy of a decade later, I had a fresh doctorate in physical therapy, a fresh job, and a chance for a do-over here in Boston.
It might have actually helped Ferris if I told him all of this, but for some reason, I just stayed silent—like an asshole—and let him spew verbal diarrhea all over me.
The offer to chat was me trying to make up for being that much of a dick.
I didn’t think he’d take me up on it, especially after I had finger spasms and sent a bunch of texts like a goddamn sixteen-year-old.
Whatever though. It was fine.
I was there—in front of a fucking frat house of all places—watching some guy wearing a Batman cape, fishnets, and high heels walk up and down the street. I had to assume it was hazing or pledging or whatever frat dudes did these days.
Five minutes after I sent my text letting Ferris know I was there, I was wrestling with the urge to leave. But then he appeared looking just as absurdly hot as the last time I’d seen him. He was thin but defined, with the ass of a man who still cared enough to keep up on his squats.
He was taller than me by at least an inch and had thick black hair, brown skin, and mahogany eyes that were always a little wide and made him look like he was perpetually terrified. He also had a couple of unconscious habits that shouldn’t have been endearing, but they were.
He twisted his fingers at his sides and flared his nostrils every couple of minutes.
“Hey,” he said as he came to a stumbling halt by the passenger door.
I grunted a hello and gestured for him to get in. Way to go, Quinn, definitely not an asshole now. I rolled my eyes at myself, grateful he couldn’t see them behind my mirrored shades, and I climbed back into the car.
He was nervously buckling up.
“So. Ferris.”
He turned his face and looked at me with a raised brow.
“Is that like Ferris Beul—”
“Oh god, please don’t,” he begged.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Right.”
“No, just…” He sighed and flopped back against the headrest. “My parents had a deal—my dad got to name the boys, my mom got to name the girls. Guess who had no girls.”
“Was your dad a big John Hughes fan?”
He blinked at me, and it was clear he had no idea who I was talking about. Okay, yeah, I did not need to be lusting after this guy.
“Pretty in Pink, right?” he said.
Crisis averted. “Yeah. That’s him. He also made Ferris Bueller.”
“I’m aware of him. And no. Me and my brothers? Our names are a whole…thing.” When I blinked at him, he sighed again. “Both sides of my parents’ families were not thrilled with them dating.”
“Money thing?”
“Race thing,” he said, and I grimaced. I couldn’t relate. Not really. I was American with recent Welsh and, a bit further back, Greek.
“Ah. So…your dad is white?”
“Yeah. My dad is originally from Iowa, and he moved to Toronto when he got hired on as a professor of religion at the university. My mom’s family is from Pakistan.
They moved to Toronto when she was, like, thirteen.
My granddad took a curator job with the Royal Ontario Museum.
” He heaved a sigh like he was tired of telling this story.
“They met at a street fair a few weeks after my mom graduated. Neither of their parents approved the match, but they got married anyway. My dad suggested Anglican first names and Urdu middle names for their kids to appease both sides. It didn’t work.
It was a whole thing,” he added, looking like that might be part of more trauma.
“I have five brothers, so I think by the time they got to me, they’d given up caring what name to pick.
Ferris Bueller was probably on TV at the hospital the night I was born. ”
“Could be worse. Your name could be Ed. Or Cameron.”
He laughed softly and rolled his eyes. “I guess. Anyway,” Ferris said, wringing his hands in his lap.
Yep. I was being fucking awkward. Again. I decided it was best if I changed the subject.
“I’m going to stop for a burrito on the way to the hotel. Are you hungry?”
He blinked at me, and yeah. I deserved that look. After a second, he smiled softly and shrugged. “I could eat.”
“You’re a growing boy,” I told him, and he flinched. Fuck me. “Man,” I clarified.
Ferris let out a small laugh and shook his head. “No. I get the expression. I’m autistic, but I’m not stupid.”
“If anyone calls you stupid, let me know. My knee might not work, but my fists do, and it’s been a while since I’ve been able to rearrange a face.”
“You sound like Colton,” he told me, then settled in his seat.
Was Colton his boyfriend? The name sounded familiar. Smarmy soccer guy, I was pretty sure. Well, fuck him. Even if that was probably the cockblock I needed for the afternoon.
He was thin. He was a goalie, so he didn’t need the same type of muscle other players did on the ice.
He needed flexibility—legs limber enough to do the splits, which was also not something I wanted to think about because…
yeah, no. I didn’t need any more ideas about this guy.
As it was, I was going to jerk myself half-blind the moment he was away from me.
But the softie in me—a long-atrophied part of my nature that hockey and my injury had taken away—sparked back to life. I wanted to feed him. To wrap him up in a warm blanket. To make sure that no one made him feel less than the amazing man he was.
Which was bold of me to say about someone I barely knew, but something deep in my chest told me I wasn’t wrong about him.
He talked a lot and didn’t seem to have much of a filter, so by the time we got back to my room with two huge bags of food, I knew more about him than I did about my best friend, whom I’d met in third grade.
Ferris hated his first name, loved his parents, took after his mom more than his dad, and was diagnosed autistic when he was a teenager.
He had always been the weird kid growing up, and he was a lot younger than his brothers, which meant he had no one to protect him from dickheads in school that made him feel like shit about himself. Oh, and he crocheted when he was nervous.
I found that out when we walked past the threshold of the hotel room door and he awkwardly shoved a pinkish blobby thing into my chest and said, “Here. I brought this for you.”
I held it in my hand and blinked down at the round, black, beaded eyes. “What is it?” Fucking hell, Quinn. Could you be more of a dick, please?
Ferris shuffled his feet and looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock at my tone. “It’s um. It’s…” He bit his lip, but before I could tell him never mind, that I loved it—even if I didn’t know what the fuck it was—he finished his sentence. “An axolotl.”
That didn’t help make it make more sense.
It was clearly some sort of…lizard? It had weird fringy things on the sides of its face and a round body.
“It’s…great,” I said slowly. What the fuck do you say when some guy you barely know but kind of want to fuck silly hands you something like this? “I hope it wasn’t expensive.”
He flinched. Okay. Not that, apparently.
“I made it,” he said very quietly.
I’d never had a foot fetish before now, but it might have been a good time to start because I was putting mine in my mouth a fucking lot today. “Oh. It’s…”
“Shitty, I know. I’m not, like, the best at amigurumi. The stitches they require are small, and the size hooks I have to use are tiny, and my fingers are so clumsy. Um…so they always come out ugly and weird, and—”
“I love it.”
The words came out a little more fiercely than I’d intended, but the fact that he was shitting over this thing he made was pissing me off. Who was making him feel like his little creations were ugly and weird? I just wanted to have a chat with them. Outside. With my fists.
He blinked up at me, and then his cheeks darkened, and he laughed, glancing away. “You don’t have to say that. I know they’re—”
Catching his chin, I turned his face back toward me.
He didn’t meet my eyes, but he hadn’t really been doing that much since he’d gotten in my car.
His gaze fixed on my lips, and I felt self-conscious all of a sudden.
I had a couple of nasty scars, and one particular hit about fifteen years ago had healed wrong, and now my jaw was crooked.
But he didn’t grimace. He didn’t flinch. He just…smiled. As though my face was nice to look at.
“I’m not just saying that,” I finally got out, dropping my hand when I realized I was touching him. Shit, what was wrong with me? “I love it. I mean, I don’t know what an Axl-ladle is, but—”
He burst into laughter. His smile lit up his whole face, and he half doubled over like I was trying to be funny. “It’s a salamander,” he said between giggles. “Axolotl,” he repeated slowly, then looked up at me. “Do you know what a salamander is?”
“Not all D-men are brainless dipshits who never graduated—”
“What?” he interrupted quickly. “No, I—oh my god, that’s not what I meant, I swear.” He twisted his fingers together, and I took pity on him, throwing an arm around his shoulder.
“Relax. Breathe. I’m teasing you.”
“Oh.” I felt him force his body to unclench, and I tried not to laugh at how literal he took everything I said.
“Let’s go eat. Then you can help me find a place for Axl Rose.”
“Um?”
“Christ, you are young,” I muttered. “He’s the lead singer of—”
“No. I get it. Axl Rose, Guns N’ Roses. It’s a pun on what you called the…” He gestured at the crocheted creature in my hands. “Not all goalies are brainless either.”
I had no idea what to make of him. I just knew that I wanted to keep him here in my presence for as long as possible. No matter what a terrible idea it was.