I keep my face very, very neutral, which is a real athletic feat, given that I am currently a crime scene from the waist down and getting worse by the second.
“Did you make it official?” he asks.
The instant he’s off the bottom step, I break for the stairs. “Yeah, buddy. It’s all good.”
Blue appears at the top of them, cutting me off, because these guys have it out for me, apparently. “Whoa, whoa — what’s the rush?” He grabs my arm.
I swallow. I can still taste her. This is the best and worst morning of my life, and they are happening at the same time.
“I need to shower,” I say. “Immediately. For reasons.”
“Tell us,” Blue demands, not letting go. “Did we clear out of our own house last night for a good reason or not?”
And here’s where I have to be the guy they know — the annoying one, the one they’d take a bullet for and also cheerfully throw off a bridge — so I put a hand flat on Blue’s chest and look him dead in the eyes and say, with all the dignity a man in my specific condition can summon, “Gentlemen. A Hawthorne House resident does not kiss and tell.” I am sidling. I am visibly sidling toward the bathroom. “He also does not loiter making conversation when he is this close to being late for skate, so if you’ll all excuse me—”
“You’re walking weird,” Rowan calls from the living room. I don’t know when he appeared there, but now I’m in deep shit.
“I’m walking like a champion, Rowan.”
I give him a cocky smirk, and then I bolt, two stairs at a time, their laughter chasing me the entire way.
“Why the hell are you walking like that?” Benson calls out.
Blue watches me down the hallway. “Did you come in your pants?”
“Fuck off,” I mutter, flipping him off as I enter the bathroom. I shut the door behind me roughly nine seconds before the entirehouse rolls with laughter, talking about how they’re pretty sure I came in my pants.
Fuckers.
Skate is a gauntlet.
They know. The whole house knows, which means the whole team knows by the second water break, and I spend the morning getting roasted alive for breaking every unwritten law of Hawthorne House one after another. Blue, of all people, gives me an entire speech about the rules — Blue, who barely strung two words together before Melly and broke every one of those same rules to win her with a puck over the glass. The irony is not lost on me. I tell him so. He does not care even a little.
And Percy, who has said maybe forty words to me all season, glides past during a drill, says, “Was it worth it?” and glides off before I can answer.
It’s after, in the tunnel, that Benson falls into step beside me and drops his voice. “Hey. For real.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “I’m happy for you, man. We all are. You know that.”
“I know.” And I do. Under all the chirping, I know.
“You’re still an idiot,” he adds, conversational, because Benson can’t help himself. “But you’re a happy idiot, and you’re playing the best hockey of your life, so.” He shrugs. “I’ll allow it.”
“Your blessing means everything, cap.”
“It should.” The grin breaks. “Now let’s win us a national championship. We have to win this next game to be qualified.”
“That’s the plan, Reeve.”
I buy the condoms at the drugstore, and the teenager at the register makes the heroic professional decision to pretend I am not standing there at all, which I respect deeply. I walk to Aspen’s with the box zipped into my jacket like I’m transporting drugs.
She texts as I’m coming up the walk.
Aspen:Roommates gone for an hour. Hurry.
I do not need telling twice.
She opens the door before I can even knock, and then she’s pulling me in by the hoodie, her lips on mine. She’s kissing me before we’ve cleared her living room, walking me backward toward her room with both hands already up under my shirt, and I get the box out of my jacket and hold it up between us like a trophy.
“As promised.”
