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“Would’ve been simple enough to interrupt that with Oh, by the way, I quit my job and have an interview with your organization. Also, what are we doing in here?”

“Looking for Roman’s water bottles.”

The storage room was minuscule. Shelving along three walls held an assortment of stuff from labeled boxes of swag to unlabeled banker’s boxes to random pieces of old equipment; there was what appeared to be a broken skate-sharpening machine on the floor next to the door; and one of the light panels in the ceiling flickered.

“The water bottles for Sunday?” Eli asked. He stepped up behind Nolan—the room was so small they couldn’t stand side by side—and Nolan felt Eli’s breath on the back of his neck.

He suppressed a shiver at the sensation. “I don’t know. What’s happening on Sunday?”

“We have a short open practice, then spectators are invited onto the ice with us. We usually give away some sort of swag at these things. That must be them there.” Eli pointed up at a box conveniently labeled water bottles that sat on the top shelf on the far wall. “Is there a step stool in here?”

“I got this.” Nolan reached up, managed to get his hands under the box, and slid it several inches out. From there, he pulled it out the rest of the way, but he didn’t account for the messenger bag resting on top that slipped right off, landing on his head. “Ow.”

The bag landed on the floor.

“You okay?” Eli asked.

“Yeah.” Nolan put the box back on the shelf. “Surprised me more than anything. I didn’t see the bag until it was on me.”

Eli picked it up, but since it had landed upside down, everything that was inside fell out in a jumble of school supplies. “Whoops.”

Half a dozen pens, two spiral-bound notebooks, a squished granola bar, a pack of gum, a couple of crumpled receipts, deodorant, headphones, five or six loose sheets of paper, and coincidentally, a Trailblazers water bottle all landed on the floor.

“Wow.” Eli crouched and picked up the water bottle. “This is our old logo. It hasn’t been out in the wild in almost ten years.”

Nolan tried to edge around the debris so he didn’t step on anything, but there was about zero room to maneuver, so in the end, he stooped to put everything back in the bag.

Only to bonk his forehead against Eli’s when he reached forward to do the same. Nolan lost his balance, knocking into shelving and setting it rattling.

“Ow,” he repeated, adding a pout to his voice this time as he rubbed at his aching head.

Eli fell onto his ass and started laughing. “This place definitely isn’t made for two.”

Nolan straightened as Eli rose, and when Eli stumbled with a squeak, Nolan caught him against his chest. He sucked in a sharp breath at the contact, at Eli warm and heavy against him, and his stomach gave an inappropriate lurch of excitement in Eli’s direction.

Or maybe not inappropriate given the way Eli was looking at him. Was that . . . interest in those blue eyes? Surely not. Eli was young and outgoing and friendly. There was no way he’d be interested in a sociologist who treated human connection like a spectator sport in the same way obsessed fans watched a hockey game. But as the silence settled around them like a security blanket, Eli’s gaze dipped to Nolan’s mouth.

Whoa there.

Score one for the sociologist?

Nolan’s stomach reached back in Eli’s direction, and static electricity—real or imagined—made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with awareness. Eli’s waist was taut under his hands, and he had one hand fisted in the front of Nolan’s shirt.

Nolan’s mind was a blank slate and he forgot every word in the English language as he tried to figure out where to go from here.

“Uh, sorry.” Eli let him go and flattened his shirt against his chest, smoothing out the wrinkles. He looked like he was about to back up a step, but there was quite literally nowhere to go. “I think I tripped on a pen.”

“No worries,” Nolan said, his voice holding a hint of huskiness.

Eli noticed if the way his gaze flew to his was any indication.

Nolan let him go. He really had no excuse to keep holding on to him. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No, but I did somehow rip a button off your shirt.”

Glancing down, Nolan chuckled at the gape in his shirt. “If I’d known you wanted to rip my clothes off, I would’ve chosen a better rendezvous site for our tryst than a storage room the size of a shoebox.”

Eli laughed, bright and startled, though there was something soft underneath the laughter and in the way he looked at Nolan. He pinched the edges of Nolan’s shirt together and gave him a smile that was a mix of flirtatious and teasing. “The storage room was your first mistake. Everyone knows the equipment room has more ambiance.”