“Even if I jerked off once or twice while looking at it?”
Shocked laughter from Harrison helped unravel some of the tightness in his chest. God, his life was such a disaster.
“I assumed you did, but I’m trying to ignore the five-year age gap between us.” Harrison drew away from the hug and cupped Jett’s face in his calloused hands. “And we both know it was more than once or twice.”
Jett crinkled his nose because Harrison was absolutely right.
“Wasfantasy meat least good to you?” Harrison asked, and Jett didn’t like where his cheeky suggestion was leading. “Is the real thing better or worse?”
He freed himself from Harrison’s hands and roughly closed the bedroom door. “Thin walls,” Jett reminded him.
“Robert made a very dramatic show of putting earplugs in before he went to bed,” said Harrison. He folded his arms, drawing Jett’s attention to the perfect pecs on display. “And I doubt the floors are as thin as the walls.”
Jett hesitated, and Harrison took a step back to give him much-needed space. The thought of Harrison fucking him in his childhood bedroom was so filthy that he didn’t know if he could go through with it.
“Show me the puck,” Harrison said softly. He shifted his posture into something less threatening, as if he were trying to tame a baby deer. “And the sweater, as long as you don’t mind.”
He didn’t mind at all. Pucks and jerseys were less embarrassing than a poster hanging above the headboard of his bed.
Jett went to his tiny closet and started rummaging through his keepsakes. The Jersey was framed like the poster to keep it safe, but the puck was hidden behind his trophies and action figures.
He passed it to Harrison when he found it, and then returned for the sweater, cheeks flushed as he watched his boyfriend move the piece of rubber around in his hands.
Maybe it was just as surreal for Harrison to be holding it in his hands as it was for Jett. One scratched circle of rubber was proof that their pasts were intertwined, and more impossibly, their futures.
“Do you ever think about how crazy it is that we’re together?” Harrison asked, his blue eyes staring hard at the puck and the space between them.
Jett swallowed to force his voice to work. “I think about it every day.”
Harrison was a giant in his minuscule room. All he had to do was reach his arm out to set the puck down on the dresser, no foot movement required. He was looking at the back of the frame, which held his Jr. A. jersey, his breathing unsteady in the quiet room.
“Show me.”
Jett slowly spun it around, revealing the number 25 in bold white letters, along with the name Killinger.
The emotions on Harrison’s face came and went so fast he didn’t have time to read them. But if Jett had one guess for all of them combined, there was a singular word that stood above the rest.
Heartbreak.
And then more confusingly—happiness.
“If I hadn’t been in that accident, Bracken would have been pushed out of captaincy.”
Jett frowned, unsure of where this was going.
“I would have won us five Stanley Cups by the time you appeared. Jett Fraser, a green boy from my hometown, as pretty as a fallen angel whose wings had caught fire flying too close to the sun.”
His heart was in his throat, the thudding so loud he could barely make out what Harrison was saying.
“I would have been a cocky bastard in my prime, but you would have caught my attention regardless. You’re too enigmatic, just like the goddamn star in the center of our universe. You would have humbled me, and I would have loved you for it because, despite what you believe, youareon my level, Jett.”
All the oxygen in the room had been sucked out. It was the only explanation for how dizzy and breathless he felt.
“Our paths would have crossed whether I chose to get in the car with Taylor and Luca or not. It’s comforting to realize that no matter what road I walked, you would be waiting for me at the end of every one of them.”
Harrison smiled, and it was so serene that Jett understood this was him making peace with something that had been torturing him for a long time.
“I was always meant to orbit you, Sunshine. I was born to be on the ice, just as much as I was born to be yours.”
