Chapter 3. Mads #2
Moonlight shifts in thin lines along the ceiling, and I track them with my gaze. The train rocks. The wheels click.
And the longer I lie there turning the whole thing over in my head, the harder it is to pretend this started tonight.
Because wanting a teammate to stop freezing you out is one thing.
Realizing you wanted him to want you back is something else.
And if that’s what this was, the last three months start to make an ugly amount of sense.
Him avoiding me because he wanted me. Me getting angry because I thought he didn’t.
Both of us turning it into hockey because hockey is easier.
Simpler. Something you can yell about without accidentally admitting neither of us knew what we were really fighting over.
Across from me, Rodriguez shifts again.
This time, I turn my head. He’s facing the ceiling now, but in the dim light I can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed.
I should let him sleep.
I should sleep too.
Instead, I lie there staring at him, wide awake, with the worst possible realization settling through me.
I don’t think I want him to be over it.
Over me.
But if he is, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with that.
“How do you lose a crush?”
The question comes out before I can stop it—barely above a whisper, but the compartment is so small it doesn’t need to be loud.
Rodriguez is still. The moonlight catches the side of his face—the profile of his nose, the line of his jaw, the curve of his lips. He looks like a fucking painting, and I hate how much I love looking at him now that I’ve allowed myself to.
He doesn’t answer.
My heart is hammering against my ribs like I’ve just gone from a full sprint to a dead stop.
Shit. What the hell am I doing? He already shut this down. He already told me he was over it—and put as much space between us as he possibly could in this tiny room, because my response to his confession was so fucking inadequate.
And now he’s not even answering.
Silence.
Maybe I’m sitting here talking to myself while Christopher Rodriguez snoozes peacefully three feet away, having successfully unloaded his emotional baggage and moved the fuck on.
If he’s asleep, I can take it back. Pretend I never asked. Go back to trying to sort out my own shit without dragging him through it again.
The thought is almost comforting.
And then he answers.
“I don’t know.” His voice is quiet, flat. “Having the guy glare at you like he hates your guts probably helps.”
Okay. He’s not sleeping.
I see him blink in the faint light, and my pulse jumps. Then I huff out a laugh.
“Right,” I say. “Fair enough.”
We go quiet again, and my brain scrambles for something to say, some way to catch the tail of this conversation before it disappears.
“I’d be much nicer to you,” I say, the words coming out before I can think better of them, “if I’d known you had a crush on me.”
There it is. The stupidest thing I’ve said tonight, and now I definitely can’t take it back.
Rodriguez doesn’t answer right away. I can hear him breathing across the gap, and I fight the urge to sit up so I can see him better.
“Why?” he says after a moment. “Because it tickles your ego or something?”
I full-on laugh at that. The sound comes out rough, suddenly too loud in the small space, surprising both of us.
“Well, yes,” I say. “Hard to argue with that.”
I pause, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t. The dark feels different now, like the air has changed around us, a little easier to breathe through. So I continue, because apparently my mouth has decided tonight is the night to burn every bridge I’ve ever built.
“It’s nice to know the hot new defenseman on your team didn’t think you were bad at the game and actually just wanted to climb you like a tree.”
I brace for silence again, but Rodriguez snorts. Thank god.
I can’t see his face clearly, but I hear it—short, surprised, caught off guard.
Then his head shifts against the pillow, a small, incredulous shake, like I’ve just said the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
Part of me wants to crawl under my bunk and hide, but a bigger part is already grinning in the dark.
“Are you trying to make this more awkward than it already is?” he asks, and there’s something in his voice I haven’t heard before—almost amused, underneath the disbelief.
“A little,” I admit.
He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t shut me down either. I can feel his attention on me in the dark, and somehow that makes me stupidly brave.
“Besides,” I say, my pulse jumping to my throat, “maybe all my angry glaring was something else too.”
There’s a pause.
Then Rodriguez says, his voice careful, “Yeah? Like what?”
I shrug, my whole body tight like a wire.
“I think I’ve been sort of having a bisexual awakening these past three months and just didn’t know it,” I say, my voice quieter now, less sure, like I’m testing the words in my mouth. “So that’s bad timing.” I swallow. “You know. For me.”
Rodriguez goes completely quiet.
The silence stretches for five seconds, then ten, long enough for my stomach to knot and for me to wonder if I’ve finally gone too far. This might be where he tells me he isn’t interested anymore and that I’m being inappropriate.
He shifts again, and this time I hear the mattress rustle under him as he turns onto his side. The moonlight catches the line of his jaw, the shadow under his cheekbone, the dark of his eyes.
He’s looking at me.
“I thought you were straight,” he says.
It’s not a question.
“I thought you were too,” I say, then let out a self-conscious laugh. “I thought I was too.”
He doesn’t answer. For a moment, we just lie there, watching each other through the dark. His eyes are on my face, and mine are on his, and neither of us says anything.
Fine. Apparently, this is the part where I go all in.
I sigh.
“I’m not sure what I am, really,” I say. “I’ve never been with a guy.” I pause, because my throat feels too tight around the rest of it. “But I think I have a crush.” Another pause, this one worse. “On you. I think that’s why I was glaring.”
Silence.
Rodriguez is still looking at me. I can feel his stare like something physical, unblinking in the dark.
“Did you get a brain injury from the heatstroke or something?” he asks after a moment.
Well, this is not ideal.
I snort. “Ouch. That hurts.”
He doesn’t laugh. His voice, when it comes, is quieter, stripped of the sarcasm.
“I’m not sure if you’re serious or making fun of me, Holm,” he says.
The honesty in it catches me off guard. Rodriguez doesn’t do vulnerable—not without a fight—and hearing it in his voice makes something in me soften.
“I’m serious,” I say.
I don’t elaborate. I don’t try to explain the last three months, or the way I’ve been watching him without knowing why, or the fantasy that ambushed me earlier and hasn’t left me alone since. I just say it and hope he hears the truth in it.
He watches me for another moment, and I can feel the weight of his attention like he’s waiting for me to change my mind.
“Well,” he says after a pause, his voice careful, barely above a whisper, “I could kiss you. If you’d like to try it out.”
My heart stops. Actually stops, for one stupid second, and then kicks back in at twice the speed, pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it from his bunk.
“Yeah,” I say, too fast. “I’d be okay with that. If it’s not weird for you,” I add quickly.
He doesn’t answer that part. Instead, he says, “Come here.”
Two words, and my pulse goes even wilder.
I watch as he shifts on his bunk, scooting over toward the wall. The narrow mattress barely has room for one hockey player, let alone two, but he presses his back against the wall and leaves a space beside him.
He waits.
I sit up on my bunk and swing my legs over the edge, then stand. My mouth is dry, and my hands feel shaky. The floor is cold under my bare feet as I cross the gap and stop beside his bunk, looking down at him. In the dim light, his face is all shadows and angles.
He pulls the sheet back, and I climb onto the bunk.
It’s even narrower than it looks. My chest and knees press against his immediately, and there’s almost nowhere to put my arm except across his hip or pinned awkwardly to my side. I settle for the latter.
Rodriguez doesn’t move. He’s just watching me, and the tension between us makes it hard to breathe normally.
“Hi,” I say.
It comes out stupidly soft, nothing like my voice usually sounds.
“Hi,” he says back, his voice quiet.
We’re close enough that I can feel his breath against my cheek, warm and a little ragged.
I don’t move. Neither does he.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Mine drop to his.
Then his hand comes to my chest, light, just resting there, his palm warm through the fabric of my sweatshirt. He’s giving me a chance to pull back, a door I can walk through if I want out.
But I don’t want out.
I lean in. His mouth meets mine, and it’s not careful.
It’s not tentative or questioning or any of the things I thought a first kiss with a man might be.
It’s hot from the first second, Rodriguez’s lips moving against mine, his hand sliding from my chest to the back of my neck as he pulls me in, and my body responds like it already knows how to do this.
His mouth is soft, warm, tasting faintly of cigarette smoke and mint gum.
His tongue slides against mine, and I groan into his mouth, the sound low, involuntary, because Jesus Christ, this is not what I expected.
I expected to feel clumsy, wrong, like I was trying something foreign.
Instead, it feels like finding a sixth sense I didn’t know I had.
I press into him, one hand gripping his thigh. He makes a noise—part gasp, part groan—and his fingers tighten in my hair, pulling just enough that the sting of it goes straight to my cock.
Fuck.
I kiss him harder. His mouth opens for me, and his free hand finds my waist under the sweatshirt, palm cold against the skin of my stomach. I hiss at the contact.