I was nervous as hell. Part of me didn’t give a single fuck what a bunch of hockey players thought of me. The other wanted this to go well. They had to like me enough to talk or this story would be doomed from the start.
Getting them to talk wouldn’t be a challenge. If I knew anything about Jeremiah Kingsford, it was that he’d put the fear of God in this team. They either cooperated, or they didn’t stay on the team.
Probably not the exact morale booster they needed but it at least would give them incentive to open up a little. The rest was up to me.
“You good, Rox?”
“I’m fine,” I said, lying through my teeth and trying to swallow down the fresh wave of nerves.
“Oh, come on. You’ve heard me complain about my terrible work weeks, and you’re going to keep whatever this is, quiet? At least make me feel a little better about my annoying complaining.”
“There’s a difference between complaining and venting,” I argued.
He just stared at me, waiting. Okay, I guess my new roommate wasn’t the type to let me deflect. Noted.
“I’m just a little nervous about how the players are going to react to me being there. I don’t think they’ll be outright assholes, but at the end of the day, I’m an outsider. They’re putting theirjobs on the line if they fuck up and it kind of sounds like they really can’t afford to.”
Rylan shrugged. “That’s hardly your fault if they do. And if I know anything about hockey players, it’s that they’ll fuck up and never own up to their mistakes. Cocky bastards… every last one of them.”
“Isn’t that the fucking truth,” I said as I dropped the last bag on the pile.
Rylan added his box and turned to me, his fingers playing with the ring on his bottom lip. “You know, we don’t really talk about our shared hockey trauma, but the fact that we both have it kind of proves the point, doesn’t it?”
“My dad was a hockey player,” I admitted, giving him the quick overview. “When Mom found out she was pregnant, he shut down. The asshole left her alone for days before mailing her some hush money and cutting her out of his life.”
“Asshole,” Rylan said, his mouth twisting in disgust on my behalf.
“It doesn’t feel good to know your parent left and never thought twice about it. He just wrote my mom a fat check like that would solve everything.”
“Did she cash it?”
I laughed and shook my head. “She tore it up. We never heard from him again. I don’t even know if he even realized she didn’t cash it. She said she’d rather work three jobs than take his guilt money, and she did.”
“She sounds like a badass,” he said as he sat down on the couch. I curled into the opposite side for a breather. The place was a hot mess but it was homey. I could see myself settling in easily.
“That’s why, when she heard I was taking this job she finally took a job opportunity she was going to pass up. I couldn’tblame her for wanting to finally live her life. Hence why I have everything I own now in our shared space.”
He rolled his eyes playfully. “Remind me to thank your mom for that.”
“Careful. She’ll adopt you as her own before you know it.”
“I might not mind,” he said with a grin.
“So, you know mine, tell me yours,” I demanded.
“Not much to tell,” he said, but I just raised a brow in challenge. He didn’t let me hide and I wasn’t letting him, either.
He sighed. “My ex was my first partner that wasn’t a woman. The man that made me realize I was bisexual. He was a delta. The kind of guy that was passionate and all-in on life. Our relationship was hot as fuck, far too fast, but it worked for us. Then one day, he was just… gone.”
My chest tightened at the pain in his voice.
“The worst part?” he went on before I could offer any kind of reassurance. “I’d been so scared to tell my family, to come out to them, but I did it the night before. I had this huge breakfast planned to tell him and then was going to bring him over to meet them. Then I woke up alone. It was for nothing.”
“Damn. I’m so sorry,” I said, anger flaring on his behalf.
“He left me a note on our bedside table. That’s how I found out that he chose hockey over me.”
“He didn’t even have the courage to tell you in person?” What a fucking asshole. I couldn’t imagine abandoning someone I cared about like that and not having the courage to look them in the eye.
