Page 27 of Line Change

“The buffet is twelve feet away. You know we have morning skate.” I push the toast toward him because he’s going to take it anyway.

“I scored the winner. Gunderson can’t kill me.”

“He can make you wish he had.”

That gets one eye open. Bobby considers the buffet again, sighs from somewhere near his soul, and gets to his feet.

When the elevator doors open behind him, my eyes go straight to Pope. One second I’m watching Bobby drag himself toward the food, and the next I’m staring at the broad line of Pope’s shoulders under a gray team quarter-zip. His hair is still damp. He looks rested and composed, which seems impossible after the way he nearly ran out of my room with his belt hanging open. He looks exactly like Saint Pope again.

His gaze moves across the restaurant, passing the coaches’ table and Bobby standing motionless in front of the eggs before landing on Caleb. He walks over and sits with his back angled my way.

Bobby returns with a plate piled high enough to alarm structural engineers. “You ate my toast.”

“You left it unsupervised.”

He mutters something rude and starts eating. I keep my attention on him, my coffee, and the rain streaking the windows instead of the gray shirt three tables over.

At morning skate, our line drills force Pope to look at me.

Hockey doesn’t care if two linemates got each other off against a hotel wall. Pope takes his place beside me for rushes. I hit him with a pass through traffic, and he sends it back without holding the puck long enough for either defenseman to close. We move through the drill cleanly. Efficiently. His eyes track my stick, my skates, the opening over my shoulder. Never my face unless the play demands it.

“Inside next time,” he says after I take a shot from the circle.

“There were two sticks inside.” I skate back toward the line while he follows.

“There’ll be three tonight.”

“Then I guess you’d better keep up.” He skates away before I can see if that gets to him.

Fine. I can do professional. I’ve fucked other hockey players since juniors, although they were guys from camps and summer skates, never anyone on my team.

I do have some survival instincts.

Usually the rink makes everything simple. Today, my head is back in last night’s entryway within thirty seconds.

Every time his hand closes around his stick, I see it around my throat. When he leans into a turn, I remember his hips driving against my ass. He licks his lower lip while Gunderson draws the neutral-zone setup, and my dick tries to remember being level with his mouth. That one is especially unhelpful.

I get through the skate without putting a puck into my own net or shoving him into the boards. That counts as a win. The actual game doesn’t.

We play well enough that the loss doesn’t feel like another piece of the season collapsing on top of us. Our line creates chances. Pope and I connect on a rush late in the second, and for six seconds we move as well as we did the night before, already where the other needs us. The shot catches the post, and we lose by one.

Nobody throws anything in the room afterward. Guys talk through missed chances without blaming each other. Bobby sits with a towel over his head and accepts shit about his shootout-hero hangover. Gunderson tells us there were things worth building on, and for once nobody looks like they want to throw a skate at him.

Pope changes two stalls down from me. He speaks to Caleb, answers one question from Bobby, and leaves for his interview without looking in my direction.

If we’d won, I could have gone over and told him we needed to keep fucking for the streak. He’d know I was fucking with him, but at least he’d have to look at me long enough to tell me to go to hell.

Instead, we lose, and even I can’t make that pitch work. It would be ridiculous anyway. I get dressed and leave before his interview ends.

On the flight home, Pope takes a seat beside Caleb before I’ve even boarded. They spend the first hour watching video together. After that, he puts in headphones and closes his eyes.

I sit across the aisle and one row back. He has to know I’m there, but he doesn’t look. By the time we land in Seattle, I’ve become extremely familiar with the back of his head.

The next trivia night at Marlowe’s has barely started, and I’ve already missed why Micah is objecting to our team name. Tessa has the answer sheet pinned beneath one hand while he leans over her shoulder. I’m staring at a water ring and remembering the perfect circle Pope’s fingers made around my cock.

“I’m writing it,” Tessa tells him. “I choose how it’s spelled.”

“That’s not how words work.”