A flicker of excitement threatens to catch in my chest. Could I be a one-and-done guy? Fuck Xavier, get him out of my system, and move on without it causing issue? I’ve done it before; I could do it again.
Yeah, right. And pigs could win the Stanley Cup. Ha. Not a good comparison, because some years they do.
I don’t reply to the text. But I do make sinful sounds while I demolish the pie. He was right. Ten stars. Best pie I’ve ever had in my mouth.
Ares called it though. After I’m done with dessert, I spend an hour working out, and when my already exhausted-from-the-game muscles can’t take anymore, and I’m dripping with sweat, I flip open my laptop and jerk off to whatever comes up first.
Frustration grinds me to a halt because the guy staring back at me doesn’t have brown eyes and looks nothing like the man I want to fuck.
I know nothing about Xavier other than he’s hot, and I want to bang him out of my system. But something about his playful nature, and the way he has slithered under my skin, sends up warnings.
I click until I find someone who looks more like Xavier. IfI’m not going to fuck him in real life, I can at least fantasize over someone who looks like him, pretend those feral sounds and the slapping of bodies is mine against his, and his against mine.
I come. It’s fine. My breath saws through the dark silence, my sweat cooling against the chilly air. It’s good. But it’s not enough. Not even close.
It feels hollow, like an echo where a roar should be.
I toss and turn in bed for hours before I slap the soft quilt that feels stifling and unlock my phone.
I finally open his message entirely, staring at his words, dismantling them in my brain. My thumb hovers over my phone ready to engage. “Don’t,” I mutter into the darkness.
It takes some kind of Herculean strength to put the phone down and leave him on read, but I can’t afford to take a chance on a wild card right now.
Restraint wins. Barely.
So, I roll over and let my subconscious dredge up more fantasies of the man with the cheeky smirk who won’t get the hell out of my mind.
CHAPTER 6
Xavier
Brewd and Butter usually hums with life—clattering mugs, bad jokes, and caffeine-fuelled miracles. Today it’s all static. The coffee is the same, but I can’t taste it.
Everything’s fine, which somehow makes it worse. Outside the fogged-up windows, the biting Madison wind whips across Lake Mendota, but inside the shop, even the vibrant red-and-white 'Go Wolves' streamers feel drained of all color.
I heave out a sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose as the steam from my oversized bucket of coffee makes my skin prickle. My jaw is tight from clenching.
Sure, I’m surrounded by my teammates. Lachlan, our enforcer has our netminder, Colton in a headlock. Oliver and Nate are looking at something on Nate’s phone. Gus is tucking into a pastry bigger than his face. But something’s just… off.
It’s as though the composition of my world has shifted, and everything’s duller, more boring, just… there.
Is this what depression feels like? A weird ‘meh’ feeling I can’t find an explanation for? Everything’s in shades of grey, a series of noughts and ones, and an absence of color. Even the sharp sounds of ceramic scraping and the clang of silverware feels somehow dulled.
I’m not used to things feeling so muted. I’m nothing if not vivid, bright, ostentatious… loud even… and this strange feeling pulling under my skin is so foreign, I?—
“Martinez?”
I jerk my head up from staring at the still-full mug. All my teammates’ eyes are on me, like they’re waiting for an answer to a question I haven’t heard.
I’m fine.
I quirk a brow, giving away the fact I wasn’t listening.
I’m fine.
Not missing a beat, my line mate and best friend, Oliver Lindstrom leans forward, studying my face like I’m a fine painting hung in The Louvre. “Who is he?” He points a finger at my face, taking a well-aimed shot across my bow.
I pull a lazy shoulder up to my ear, letting it drop in what might seem to be a casual movement, but my insides are molten. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell them, to say I have the hots for, and am entirely distracted by, a player on another team, but that might not go down well in this crowd.
