Page 124 of Cheap Shot

“Jesus.” Sebastian smoothed suddenly sweaty palms across his apron. “Um, yeah, I’ll be right out then. Just let me, uh, get some of these flowers in water.”

“I could finish the bouquet for you,” she offered. “If you wanted.”

Luke glanced at the bouquet he’d been struggling with. Morgan was working the front of the shop right now as well and Rosaleen couldn’tpossiblydo a worse job than he’d already done so far.

“You know what?” he said gratefully. “That would be helpful. Thank you.”

He took off his apron and smoothed down his shirt, feeling oddly shaky. What the fuck was Luke Crawford doing here in the middle of the day?

When Sebastian made it to the front of the shop, sure enough, Crawford was standing there awkwardly with his hands stuffed in his hoodie pockets, nodding at whatever Morgan was saying about flowers.

He looked massively out of place in his black team sweats, like he’d just come from practice. Since it was mid-afternoon, he probably had.

“Uh, hey,” Sebastian said, clearing his throat when it came out sounding strained.

“Hey.” Crawford glanced up, looking unusually serious.

“Umm,” Sebastian said. “How can I help you?”

Crawford cleared his throat too and stepped a little closer. “So, uh, I know you’re in the middle of work. But I was wondering if we—if we could talk. I’m sorry about last night.” Crawford’s voice was low.

Sebastian’s jaw dropped and it took a moment for him to compose himself. “Uhh, sure. We can talk about Harper’s day with the team, yeah? I almost forgot we were supposed to follow up on that,” he said loudly enough that Morgan would hear.

Sebastian nodded toward the back hall. “Come back here to my office.”

Crawford frowned but gestured for him to lead the way.

“Thanks for the autograph, Mr. Crawford!” Morgan called after them.

“No problem,” Crawford called back.

But when Sebastian reached for the door handle to open his office, Crawford gently grabbed his arm. “Can we take this upstairs?”

“Sure,” Sebastian said quietly, glancing toward the front of the shop. Morgan was in plain sight, even if she wasn’t looking directly at them at the moment. “I just thought … well, it might seem more likebusiness, if we stayed down here.”

“I don’t care about that,” Crawford said with a frown.

“Yeah?” Sebastian said, still very confused. “Okay. Um, let’s go upstairs then.”

When they reached Sebastian’s living room and he’d shut the apartment door behind them, they stared awkwardly at each other for a moment.

Luke glanced over at the Calhoun jersey hanging off a drying rack near the radiator, winced, and blurted out, “Fuck, I’m sorry. Last night was … that didn’t go how I expected it to.”

“I’m sorry too.” Sebastian sighed. “It didn’t go how I expected either. Look, when we first started hooking up, I didn’t like you. I figured it was just … hate sex, you know?”

Luke nodded. It had been the same for him.

“So at first, it was easy to justify the fact that I was screwing the guy who’d hurt Nicky.”

Luke opened his mouth to defend himself, but Sebastian held up a hand. “Can I finish? Please?”

Luke nodded.

“Whatever you think about Nicky, whatever rivalries there are between you two, heismy friend. We grew up together and he was there for me when a lot of other people weren’t. When I decided to quit hockey, he was the one who held me together when I felt like I was losing a huge fucking part of who I was. He was the one who stuck around, when the other guys on the team disappeared.”

“Because they found out you were gay?” Luke asked quietly.

Sebastian nodded, then shrugged. “Some of them, yeah. For others, it was probably just because I wasn’t on the team. Because we had nothing in common anymore. But yeah, some of it was definitely because of homophobia.”