"My dad was—" A pause. "Hockey was everything in our house. That was the whole thing. School, practice, games. No room for anything else. Or anyone." He says it smoothly. Matter of fact. Like he's describing a normal thing. "My mom wasn't really—" He hesitates. "She wasn't really there."
"So I just." He exhales. "Kept everything at a distance. It was easier. Even now. Even out of that house. I don’t really know how else to be. So no. Nobody. Not even close. I've never had a boyfriend.” Like he's admitting something he's never said out loud. "Never wanted one, I thought. Or told myself that." He looks at the screen. "I don't know anymore."
"I went the other direction," I say after a second, when it’s obvious Jamie doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
"What does that mean?"
I shrug. "It means if somebody paid any bit of attention to me, I was basically done for. I thought that was how you got someone to love you. Give them enough of yourself and eventually one of them would care." I look at my lap. "Didn't really work out."
Jamie is still beside me.
"That's how I ended up with Marcus," I continue. "He looked at me like I was something worth seeing. I wasn't prepared for that, so I handed him everything immediately." I breathe out. "We know how that ended."
"I guess we learned opposite things," he says.
"Yeah, that’s exactly right."
He looks at me then. Really looks. And the emotions are so clear on his face, so open and trusting in a way I've only seen a handful of times. I never realized how easy it actually is to read Jamie, if you know him.
"I trust you," he blurts out. Like it surprises him.
"I trust you, too," I say, with a giant smile on my face because it was so unexpected, so very Jamie.
The corner of his mouth moves. My favorite almost smile.
He then reaches over to point something out on the screen and his arm crosses mine, bare skin against bare skin, and neither of us moves away from it. We just — stay there. His arm against mine. Eyes on the screen. “So, their center,” he says. His voice is even, engrossed in the film. “Watch his eyes before the pass. He looks off the primary every time.”
“Yeah,” I say.
I’m not watching the center’s eyes at all.
He turns to look at me and I’m already looking at him and we’re very close in this dark room and his eyes in the low light are — something. Something I don’t have a clean word for.
“You’re not watching the screen,” he complains.
“I’m watching you instead,” I say. We’re both locked in this stare for seconds, minutes, hours, who knows. Slowly — slowly enough that either of us could stop it, slowly enough that it is absolutely a choice — I reach up and catch his chin with one finger. The same way I did before, and tilt his face back toward the screen.
“Watch the center,” I demand.
His whole body has gone still under my finger. I can feel the tension in his jaw. The slight roughness. The muscle working in it.
“I’m watching,” he says, so soft I barely hear it.
I leave my finger there.
One second. Two.
The center on screen looks off the primary and makes the pass exactly where Jamie said he would.
“Every time,” Jamie says. Almost to himself.
"Keep watching," I say.
I slide my hand to his throat, feeling his pulse hammering against my palm. Fast. Desperate. The same way mine's going. I like when he's putty in my hands like this. When he lets me do whatever I want to him. Jamie turns to look at me. I drop my hand to his thigh and squeeze hard enough to leave a handprint.
"I said, watch the fucking game, Captain."
I trace my palm upward, under the edge of his shorts. The muscles tense underneath my touch, breaking a groan out from him. I can feel his hard-on straining against the fabric, hot and thick andmine. I take that as permission. He has my full attention now. Jamie swallows hard, that pulse in his throat firing off a signal.
