Page 8 of Caught Offside

“Nothing,” Asher said. “Great speech, Dad.”

The deflection worked. His dad accepted the compliment with his usual discomfort—a nod, a murmured thanks, a pivot to asking about the drive down from Appleton—and the conversation moved on. Pops caught Asher’s eye once over his dad’s shoulder. The look warned that they weren’t done talking.

Asher spent the rest of the night pretending he wasn’t trying to catch another glimpse of Patrick. It figured that the one time he’d tracked him down, Pops pulled him into a heated discussion about whether the Milwaukee Mavericks or the Chicago Bulldogs were going to have a better record in the upcoming season. At home, he never stood a chance of winning this debate since both Asher and his dad had played for Milwaukee, but tonight is was two-on-one in favor of Chicago. Asher was only half tuned into the conversation as he silently pleaded for Patrick to not disappear on him again.

It didn’t work. By the time he could break free, Patrick was nowhere to be found.

The drive back to his parents’ house was quiet. Pops rode shotgun, scrolling through his phone. His dad sat in the back with his eyes closed, not sleeping, turned inward, filing and sorting everything before he’d talk about it. Asher drove and left the radio off.

He was thinking about the bar. About the fact that Patrick hadn’t laughed at his jokes, and how the almost-laugh had landed harder than the real thing would have.

Asher wished he’d exchanged numbers with Patrick. He was almost certain the attraction hadn’t been one-sided, and the night was still young. Then again, Patrick had a game tomorrow night, so he was probably a dedicated athlete and already home in bed.

He signaled the turn toward the interstate and felt the evening sitting in his chest, unresolved, like a pitch he’d called that hadn’t been thrown yet.

Pops spoke without looking up from his phone. “Fontaine.”

Asher glanced over. “What?”

“The Syndicate defenseman. Patrick Fontaine. I looked up the list of who was supposed to attend.” Pops held the phone screen toward him: team photo, stats, the thumbnail headshot Asher didn’t need to see because he’d spent forty minutes memorizing the original. The information wasn’t the point. Pops had watched Asher walk back from the bar and known, in the same effortless way he knew everything, exactly what had happened. “Good player. Tough. Doesn’t give many interviews.”

“I didn’t ask you to look him up.”

“You didn’t have to.” Pops pocketed his phone and settled back in the seat. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell your father.”

From the back seat, his dad’s voice came without his eyes opening. “I can hear you.”

“We know,” Pops and Asher said together, and the car was quiet again.

Asher drove. The city moved past the windows in streaks of light and cold, and he let the conversation play once more: the flat voice, the dry humor, the moment Patrick had looked at him when the charm dropped and the real thing showed through, as though that were the version of Asher he’d been waiting to see.

He hadn’t expected to want to keep talking to a stranger. He didn’t know what to do with the fact that he did.

CHAPTER FOUR

Patrick Fontaine burrowed into Asher’s brain like the cheesy eighties pop tunes his pops played at full volume in the car. He tried thinking about anything other than the man’s sculpted ass and his eyes that screamed fuck me without even trying. He really did. But by the middle of the following week, he caved. Hard.

Finding his social media profiles wasn’t hard. There were a handful of game-day posts, a repost from the Syndicate’s community outreach, nothing personal. No vacation photos, no food, no dogs. The profile picture was a headshot in team gear, jaw set, the scar across his cheekbone just visible. The account existed because someone in the Syndicate’s media department had told him it should, and Patrick had complied without enthusiasm.

Asher scrolled through it twice. Then he clicked the button to send a DM, hoping like hell he wasn’t about to make an ass of himself. With any luck, Patrick didn’t have someone running the account for him.

He typed, deleted, and typed again.

For the record, the exit was to your LEFT. You were facing the coat check. Figured a defenseman would have better spatial awareness.

The message was stupid, but until he knew who he was talking to, he wasn’t about to open the door to a hookup. He sent it before he could revise it a third time and dropped his phone on his chest. With that done, he flopped back on his mattress and tried to keep from obsessively checking his phone to see if the message had been read.

It hadn’t because it was two in the morning, and Patrick was either sleeping or on a plane to his next game.

Or he doesn’t check his DMs because they’re flooded with fans who think they have a shot with him.

Asher ignored the voice in the back of his head telling him he wasn’t much better than those fans. He was the one who’d slid into Patrick’s DMs, hoping it would lead to finding a time when Asher could drive down to Chicago to burn off a bit of pent-up sexual frustration. Sure, he could go north to Green Bay or south to Milwaukee for the same thing, but random dudes weren’t the same as this guy he’d met one freaking time.

Asher put the phone down, picked it up, put it down again.

He fell asleep with it on his chest and woke to it vibrating next to him.

One message.