Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Quinn
“…so instead of thinking about my problems, I just started crocheting every time I was anxious,” Ferris was saying between huge bites of his burrito.
The guy ate like he’d been living on some Mars colony with only freeze-dried food for the last ten years. At one point, I was terrified he was going to choke, but he seemed to have his chewing-swallowing-speaking down to an art form.
I wondered if it was a college thing. I hadn’t gone until I was nearly thirty, so I was well past the broke-ass student, bottomless pit of a stomach phase of my life. Still, I couldn’t take the stress of potentially needing to save his life if he breathed and swallowed wrong.
“Do me a favor,” I told him. He looked up with raised brows. “Take smaller bites and chew them thoroughly. I don’t remember how to give the Heimlich, and the last thing I need my name in headlines for is a dead NHL player on my hotel room couch.”
His face bloomed bright pink, and his shame was so obvious that I immediately hated myself. He swallowed the bite in his mouth, unable to look at me. “Sorry.”
“No. No, I’m…Christ.” I rubbed an angry hand over my face. “I’m being a judgmental dick. Please ignore me.”
“You invited me over. I can’t ignore you,” he responded, his tone entirely serious.
“I meant my attitude.”
“Oh.” His gaze fixed down on the foil-wrapped burrito sitting in the little dip between his thighs. “I’m not an NHL player yet.”
I frowned. “What?”
“You said dead NHL player. But no one would care yet. I haven’t played one single game with the Bruins yet.”
“Which is even worse,” I told him, allowing my smile to show just a little. “All the headlines will talk about how I ruined hockey by not saving the life of the future Gretzky.”
He blinked up at me. “Ovechkin broke his goal record already.”
It took me way too long to realize he was joking, and by the time I did, he’d glanced away again out of shame for a joke landing wrong.
“I’m really bad at this,” he said through a heavy sigh. “I’m…I’m sorry. I know I’m not normal.”
“I didn’t invite you over here because I wanted some typical frat boy douchebag on my couch,” I said, well aware I was probably insulting all of his friends.
He huffed a laugh through his nose and looked up at me through his long, thick eyelashes. Lord have fucking mercy on me, please. This man had no right to be so beautiful. “I thought the same thing when I first joined. I tried to fuck up so badly that I didn’t get accepted.”
I frowned. “Why do the…what’s it called? Pledging?”
“Mm.”
“Why do the pledging, then?”
Ferris’s lips twitched, and then his face bloomed into a smile, and he laughed. “I pledged because my parents and my brothers were tired of me acting like a…” He trailed off.
I raised my brow, and he huffed a lungful of air out in a single exhale. “Like a what?”
He shrugged and set his burrito on the small coffee table. “Like a weird, gay autistic kid. They wanted me to do at least one normal thing.”
I felt a sort of rage inside me that I was unused to. I didn’t get angry a lot anymore. Not since the accident that had stolen my career. Nothing compared to that, so it was easy not to get pissed off at the little things.
But those words? Knowing the people meant to love Ferris the most had said that shit?
“It sounds like—”
“Please don’t say it sounds like they’re jealous of me,” he muttered quietly. “Everyone says that, but trust me, they’re not. I’m happy with who I am, but it’s hard too, you know?”
I didn’t.
“People see my little crochet hobby and think, oh, how cute. Look at those little birds he makes all the time. And they don’t see me rocking frantically back and forth on my bed, trying not to cry as I use crocheting to keep me from having an actual screaming meltdown.
” He dared a look at me after he word-vomited all of that, his expression terrified like I was about to throw him out on his ass.
“Do your, uh…what are they, frat brothers?” He nodded. “Do they treat you like shit because of that?”
He shrugged. “Some of them aren’t the nicest. They think I’m a freak.
But some of my best friends are also in that house, and, like, they also aren’t the nicest, but they’re nice to me.
” He swallowed heavily. “Do you think I’m a massive cock because I’m glad they’re nice to me, even when they’re horrible to everyone else? ”
I couldn’t help a small laugh. Fuck, the NHL was going to eat this man alive if he wasn’t careful. “No. I don’t think you’re a giant cock. I think people who treat you like shit—including your family—are the giant cocks. Actually, I like giant cocks, so let’s call them…roaches.”
He shuddered, hard. “Or we could not say that word because they scare the shit out of me.”
“Mosquitos, then.”
His entire body relaxed against the cushions, and he looked at me with a grin that made me want to pin him by the throat and kiss him until he was ready to come from my lips and tongue alone. But he hadn’t come here to fuck me. He’d come here for advice.
“Is that the sort of thing you wanted advice about? People thinking you’re weird?”
He frowned, and then his brows flew up. “Advice…? Oh. Haha.” I loved the way he didn’t always laugh. He said “haha” like it was a word. “Right. My panic attack in the chat.” He blushed again and looked down at his hands.
His fingers were dancing in his lap, like he was nervous. Stimming. He was stimming. I’d had a couple of autistic patients in my residency who did the same thing. I fought the urge to cover them with my hands, but I knew that wouldn’t help him. He was self-soothing.
Then he noticed I was staring and clenched his fingers into fists. “Sorry. I know it’s—”
“It’s not weird.” He looked startled that I cut him off. “I’ve had autistic patients. I get it.”
“Patients. You’re…” He frowned like he was trying to remember. “A doctor?”
“Something like that.” I didn’t want to get into it. I was as happy with my life as I would ever be now, but the idea of talking about my new life because I’d had my old one ripped away from me with a fresh NHL prospect made me feel like I was choking on razor blades. And I didn’t want to do that.
Not here.
Not with him.
Then I realized he was quiet and holding his breath.
“Hey, Ferris?”
He smiled at me and exhaled. “I don’t hear my name very often.”
“What do people call you?”
“Mostly dude or bruh.” He sagged his lower lip in exaggeration on the last one. “Or Reddy. Not the most clever nickname, but whatever.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Mine was Rhodie. I got a lot of sex jokes thrown at me whenever we’d go on roadies.”
“I—oh.” His cheeks pinked again. “I get it.”
Rolling my eyes, I leaned back and bent my functional leg, kicking my foot up on the table. “The one thing that might be a comfort is that your team is going to be like one massive frat house. Except you will all live in different places.”
“This one person I talked to told me I was probably going to have a roommate,” he said, twisting his fingers again. “I was hoping to have my own place. Um. You know? Because it’s been four long years of dorms and the frat house—and it’s been okay, but I like it when it’s quiet.”
Before I was even aware of it, I’d reached out and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. Shit. Shit. His eyes widened, and he stiffened a little, but he didn’t pull back.
“Sorry. You had. Uh.” I swallowed. “Hair.”
“I have some of that, yeah.” Instead of leaning back away from me, he leaned forward again until my fingertips grazed his skin. “Felt nice. Sometimes I want to be a cat. I could just be pet all day and purr and knead my claws in stuff and get fed.”
I trailed the touch down the edge of his jaw, and his eyes fluttered closed. This was…this was a mistake. It was going to be a mistake. It had the potential to be fucking gorgeous and lush and balls-emptyingly delicious.
And frankly, I’d probably never see him again.
I’d leave the chat so I didn’t have to see his name pop up, and in all honesty, I wasn’t really interested in conversing with everyone else.
They’d talked me into the photoshoot because I was a retired player, and I was trying to prove to myself that I could do this.
That I could be around pros in any sport and not feel like my guts were slowly being ripped out of a laparoscopic hole in my skin.
It had half worked.
I had no real regrets, but I didn’t want to participate again either. It was still painful.
Which was a fucking wonder I was soothed at all right now, staring at Ferris with his long, long career ahead of him. He would succeed where some asshole behind the wheel ensured I didn’t. And a small, possessive part of me wanted to stick around and make sure that happened for him.
Which was absolutely goddamn ridiculous. I didn’t even know him.
Clearing my throat softly, I pulled my hand back.
“Do you have a cat?”
I blinked, startled by the question. “Uh. No. No pets.”
He tilted his head to the side, then reached out and pressed his hand to the center of my chest. Warmth rushed through me so powerful and so intense I felt dizzy. “I think you’d like having a cat.”
“Not sure it’s for me. I’ve been busy with finishing up my degree and everything else.”
He blinked slowly. “Did you join any frats or clubs?”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to, and I hoped to god he didn’t think I was laughing at him. “No, sweetheart. No. I’m too much of an old man for that.”
His hand lifted away from my chest, then brushed along my temple, where I knew my hair was coarse and grey. I’d gone grey early there. I used to love it. It was unique. Now, I was like every man creeping toward middle age.
“You’re not old. You’re…seasoned.”
I lifted a brow. “Seasoned.”
“You probably know a lot more than I do about…things.” I let the silence simmer, urging him to go on. There was a line, and we were at it, both our toes touching. I wasn’t sure who would cross it first, but I wanted it to be him. I wanted to be sure he wanted me. “Life,” he said.
I nodded.
“Loving?”