Chapter 29
Jamie
It’s been two weeks.
Two weeks of avoiding him.
Not in a subtle way. Not in a way that could be mistaken for anything else.
I don’t look at him. I don’t talk to him unless I absolutely have to.
I run drills on the opposite side of the ice.
I leave the locker room early or late—doesn’t matter which, as long as it’s not the same time as him. It’s working.
Which is to say—it’s not working at all.
Because avoiding Rhys Callahan doesn’t make him go away. It just makes me more aware of him in a different way. Where he is. When he walks in. The exact second he steps onto the ice even when I’m not looking at him.
I hate it.
I hate that I know it.
I hate that I still haven't figured out how to stop it.
And now we have Westfield.
One of the bigger games of the season. Packed arena. The kind of game people talk about after. The kind of game that matters more than it should. The kind of game where we could change our luck. The kind of game I cannot afford to get wrong.
So I don’t think about him. I don’t think about any of it. The way he felt when I touched him. The soft sounds he made. Or the way he almost—
No.
I tape my stick and focus on the only thing that matters.
The game.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know how to shut everything else out.
I need it to work tonight. Not just for the school.
Not just for Fitch. We need it because this team has been bleeding for months and I can feel it—like a wound that either starts to heal or gets worse—and tonight feels like the moment it decides.
I think about the game. Their goalie. Our coverage. The things that matter.
I’m very good at this. I’ve had to be.
The locker room empties out around me and I don’t register it until the noise drops and it’s just him.
It’s always him.
Fuck.
Two weeks I’ve kept my distance. Two weeks of looking through him at practice, finding somewhere else to be, building the wall back up brick by brick after the shower because that’s what I do — I survive things by not looking directly at them. It was working.
Until right now.
“Two weeks,” Rhys says. He’s kept track of the time just like I have. Two weeks of pure torture. For both of us.
I keep my back to him. Jersey. Helmet. I can do this.
Focus.
Whatever weird game we’ve been playing, I’m done. We’ve both been tormenting the other for no reason. I’ve been losing my mind lately, not acting like myself, and I’m over it.
“Nash.” Something about my name in his mouth makes my hands stop moving. I turn around slowly.
Six-two of sweat-slick muscle packed tight under gear that strains at every seam, jersey clinging to the cut of his chest, forearms corded and gleaming.
His hair is damp, curling at the edges of his helmet cage, and those eyes, black and endless, are locked on me like I'm the only oxygen left in the room.
Looking at me like he can taste every filthy thought I've had about him these last two weeks.
He reaches into his mouth. Unhurried. Intimate. His teeth scrape plastic as he works his mouthguard free, and the wet pop when it clears his lip goes straight to my gut. He holds it there between us, dangling from two fingers, pearled with his spit.
Still warm. Still wet.
Still his.
I stare at it. Look up at him. Back at it.
I don't understand what's happening, but my body does. My pulse hammers in my wrists, my throat, my cock, everywhere stupid. I'm glued to where I'm standing, fully entranced in whatever spell he has me under right now. Mesmerized. Owned before he's even touched me.
He prowls toward me.
I should step back. I know I should step back, but my feet don't receive the message.
He closes the distance until I can feel the heat radiating through all his gear, until I can see the exact dark of his eyes, the way his breath is coming faster than it should be.
Until there is nowhere to look that isn't him.
I literally can't think right now.
I just feel.
Just his fingers at my mouth and his eyes on mine and the crowd screaming somewhere beyond these walls like a different world entirely.
All I can hear is my own heartbeat, pounding in my chest. I'm confused, but I want it anyway. I want it so badly it scares me how quickly I can forget about the hate between us, the history, the everything. I don’t know what this thing between us is anymore.
I just know neither of us can leave it alone.
"Open for me," he says, thumb brushing my lips.
His voice does something to my spine.
He makes me forget all the noise in my head.
Every single disciplined, controlled, careful part of me screams don't.
I open anyway.
His hand comes up. Slow. Careful.
Giving me every opportunity to stop it.
I don't stop it.
He presses it—still warm from his mouth—against my bottom lip. The touch short-circuits everything. Every coherent thought, every carefully constructed reason this is a bad idea, every wall I've spent two weeks rebuilding—gone.
His thumb lingers, tracing the seam of my lips where they close around the plastic, his touch is light, and I can feel the roughness of his calluses. His eyes drop to my mouth. Come back up.
He tastes like peppermint.
Warm and wet and unmistakably his—his saliva, his taste, sitting on my tongue—and something about that undoes me in a way I am unprepared for. I'm tasting him. I'm wearing him. The guard fills my mouth, and I have to swallow around it, and the motion makes his eyes darken.
"Good," he murmurs, thumb still resting at the edge of my mouth, pressing enough that I can feel the pad of it against my lip. His eyes hold mine with that look, the one that sees everything I'm trying not to show. "Be a good boy and wear that for me tonight."
I don't move.
I don't breathe.
I don't know what my face is doing and I don't have the capacity to care because all I can focus on is peppermint and the weight of him in my mouth and the filthy intimacy of what he's just done.
Fuck, I didn't know peppermint could taste so good.
He searches my eyes for one long, devastating moment. Then he leans in, close enough that I can feel his breath against my cheek, close enough to smell the sweat on his skin, the musk of him.
"Think about me," he whispers, "every time you bite down."
Then he drops his hand. Picks up his helmet. Rolls his shoulders like he didn't just bust through every wall I had, as if he didn't just leave me standing here, a complete mess, hard and aching. And walks toward the tunnel.
I'm a fucking puddle for Rhys and I'd let him walk all over me in this moment.
I stand there in the empty locker room with my heart in my throat and peppermint on my tongue and the weight of something that was just in his mouth sitting against mine.
Every breath I take moves the guard, reminds me it's there, reminds me he put it there.
My cock is pressed against my cup, throbbing with every heartbeat, and I can't do anything about it.
Four seconds.
Five.
I follow him out.
And I can taste him the whole time. The entire game. Every check, every shift, every time I bite down on the plastic and feel him there.
――――――――
First period. We’re down 1–0 off a power play goal that shouldn’t have happened and it’s already sitting wrong in my chest. I pick up the puck and start moving. Kowalski is on my right. Their defenseman is closing in. And on my left—
Callahan.
Open.
It’s obvious. Clean. The right play.
I shoot instead.
It goes wide.
The puck kicks off the boards and they take it the other way. I’m already skating back, jaw tense, not looking at him. Not thinking about it. Just the game.
Second period. Bryce ties it and the bench explodes and for a few minutes it’s just hockey again. Fast. Easy. The way it’s supposed to feel. Then I get the puck along the boards and I’m looking up and—
He’s there. Back door. Open again.
And he knows it.
He’s not smirking. Not pushing. Just there, waiting. Focused in that quiet way he only is on the ice, like everything else about him disappears and it’s just instinct.
I see him.
I turn away.
Drive it into the corner instead. Take a hit I didn’t need. Lose the puck. Fitch is yelling something from the bench. I don’t catch the words. I don’t need to.
I know.
He got in my head again.
All I can think about is what his mouth would taste like, what his tongue would feel like on mine, those hands on me. So I avoid passing to him. I avoid helping him.
He’s not on my team right now.
――――――――
Third period. 1–1. Twelve minutes left.
The crowd is loud now. You can feel the pressure building like a third presence on the ice. We need a goal. Everyone knows it. I know something else too. I’ve known it all game. I just haven’t done anything about it. Because doing something about it means—
I shut that down immediately. I don’t even want to look at him. I can’t handle it right now. I win a battle behind the net and get it out to the point. Shot. Rebound.
It comes straight back to me.
I look up.
The net is there.
And so is he.
Back post. Stick down. Still in that way he gets when he’s locked in. He taps his blade once.
I’m here.
That’s all it means.
Everything in me that’s been holding this shut—every practice, every argument, every second of pretending the other day didn’t happen—it all runs straight into this moment.
And this time—
I don’t fight it.
I pass.
Clean. Easy. Right to him.
He doesn’t hesitate. The puck hits the back of the net and our Harlow section absolutely loses their minds. Everything explodes around me. Hands on my shoulders, guys yelling, helmets knocking into mine. I barely register any of it. Because I’m looking at him.
And he’s looking back.
And neither of us is really celebrating.
Not like everyone else.
He looks away first and I let the moment go with him.
We hold the lead and win.
2–1.
――――――――
The locker room is loud and exactly what a win is supposed to feel like, and I sit at my locker and feel none of it. That pass. I made that pass. The one thing I’ve been avoiding all night—the thing I kept turning away from—is still there.
Waiting.
Not going anywhere.
I made the right play, but I should’ve made it sooner.
That’s the problem.
That’s been the problem.
And I realize—
I am completely, catastrophically in trouble.
And the only person who can do anything about it is the last person I should be anywhere near. I pull off my helmet and set it down carefully.
Figure it the fuck out, Nash.
I can’t let anything get in the way of hockey.
I keep fucking up.