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Time Marches On
Rust
Somewhere over middle America, the static hiss of jet engines lulled my tired teammates to sleep. We had five more wins after a grueling tour of the east coast’s big, physical teams—but now we were wiped and ready to be home for a week.
I leaned my seat back and closed my eyes, too, but a second later, my phone vibrated with a text.
“Where are youuu?”Isabelle texted me.
“On the plane for another hour or two,” I wrote back. “We should land around midnight.”
“Boo,”she wrote.“Tell the pilot to hurry up and fly faster.”
I chuckled and wrote, “Doubt he’ll listen to me, but sure, I’ll give it a shot.”
“Maybe he’ll listen if you tell him you’ve got this waiting at home.”She attached a picture of herself in nothing but a tiny thong and a small tee, her hard nipples poking through the thin cotton. The seductively sexy pout on her pretty face made me rock hard in an instant.
“Damn,” I wrote. “You’re making me hard on the plane again, sweetheart.”
“That’s sooooo hot,”she wrote.“I want you so bad. But I’m so sleepy. Not sure I can stay awake until you’re home.”
“Then I’ll have to sneak into bed and wake you up with this.” I aimed the camera at the stiff bulge tenting my trousers and snapped a pic.
“YES. YES PLEASE,”she wrote, adding a string of tongue and flame emojis.“You weren’t kidding. You really ARE hard on the plane! LOL. Perv.”
“Yeah, and whose fault is that?” I teased. “Can’t wait to make you mine again.”
“I never stopped being yours,”she wrote, adding a heart.
I put my phone away with a smile on my face.
Isabelle was perfect, really. It wasn’t any surprise thateverythinghad been perfect since I met her.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, with nothing but happy memories of the past few months to lull me to sleep …
* * *
After I met Isabelle, autumn came to an end. Minka might not be the biggest fan of Nevada’s weather—though her furniture destroying habit came to an abrupt end once Isabelle started watching her—but the Sin boys and I werelovingthe year-round nice weather in Las Vegas. The only time we had to wear a coat or look at snow was when we were on the road, where the rest of the league was frozen in a deep winter.
The Vegas Sin, however, were just starting to heat up.
Brock and Connor turned our first line into one of the league’s most potent scoring threats. The unreal chemistry those two players have with each other gave us the ability to put anyoneon their line as the third forward and look like a stud. If a forward on a lower line fell into a scoring slump, all Killer had to do to get the guy rolling again was throw him out on the ice with those two. With Brock dishing out the puck and Connor’s lethal shot, it was only a matter of time for any guy, even a guy with zero confidence, to start racking up the points and find his game again.
One win after another, we slowly climbed up the standings, as winter thawed into spring. Though time marched on,Ikept turning back the clock. I never even came close to sniffing the club box again. I was playing like I was twenty-five again. I’d won Killer’s confidence and cemented myself as the number one d-man on the team, with the rookie Cale as my number two. I was the defensive anchor of the pairing, letting Cale focus on moving the puck and creating offense. Cale and I helped simplify each other’s game. We just plain worked together.
A big part of me and Cale’s chemistry might have come from the fact that he was the only teammate that knew about me and Isabelle. Despite our age difference, Cale became someone I could confide in. And I know what you’re thinking when I point out the age difference—but trust me, Cale is nowherenearas mature as Isabelle. Love the kid, but he’s still definitely a kid.
I guess I can’t talk about Cale without mentioning his “date” with Isabelle, eh?
Yeah, I’ll admit, I was stressing pretty hard when Isabelle went out to meet him for dinner. I paced the living room for what felt like an eternity, feeling sick to my stomach. Even Minka was all worked up, howling nervously from her dog bed—though, really, I know she was just sensing my bad vibes.
I trusted Isabelle … but I guess I couldn’t shake the part of myself that was still convinced the worst could happen. I knew she wouldn’t cheat on me—she was better than that—but what if she and Cale really clicked?
An hour or two later, though, Isabelle came home from her dinner, and I could breathe a sigh of relief. She reported that Cale was “kind of awkward at first” but a “perfect gentleman” who was really happy to hear that she and I were dating.
“You toldhim about us?” I’d asked, my eyes widened. “Isabelle, the whole team has hung out with your dad. They’re friends. Hell, Cale and Dakota might even text Johnny even more thanIdo these days.”
“Relax, Rust,” she’d said. “I got Cale’s word that he won’t tell anybody until we’re ready. I trust him! You should, too.”
