Him (Him #1)(12)

It’s funny—I’m sure everyone has something they regret saying. An insult they’d hurled someone’s way. A confession they wished they could take back. Maybe, I don’t know, an insensitive joke they wish they hadn’t told.

The one sentence I regret? “Let’s watch some porn.”

There was no turning back once I uttered those four words, and I can’t even fully blame the alcohol, because a few sips from a flask does not a drunken idiot make. I knew what I was doing. What I was coaxing Canning into. I was collecting on the damn bet, which is so f*cking ironic, because he’d won. The prize was his, except it wasn’t. It was mine. Because I’d wanted to touch him more than I’d wanted my next breath.

I still remember the shock on his face when I loaded the porn site on my laptop. I chose a tame scene—tame for me, anyway. I set the laptop on the mattress, then sprawled on the bottom bunk as if I had no care in the world.

For a long moment Canning didn’t move. I waited, tense, while he decided whether or not he was going to sit next to me on my bed, or climb up to the top bunk. Without looking at him, I passed him the flask. I heard him gulp. He swallowed on a sigh, then parked his ass beside me.

I didn’t risk a look at him for several minutes. We lay on our backs, passing the flask back and forth as we watched two dudes double-team a busty blonde on the screen.

“How would you compare your technique to hers?” Canning cracked himself up with this quip, his stomach shaking even as he looked at the laptop.

To him, it was just the latest amusing result of our competitive shenanigans. He was going to lord it over me, the way we always did with each other.

But to me, it was no joke. I’d just spent the last year trying to accept my increasingly obvious attraction to men. The bumbling loss of my virginity to a chick during junior year had been a pretty big red flag. I hadn’t been attracted to her, but I’d needed to try it. To be certain. I’d barely been able to get it up, and even then, I’d managed only because I was thinking about…

Canning. I thought about Jamie Canning.

I’d been crushing on my straight best friend for a long time. But I couldn’t tell him that. My only move here was to play along.

“Well, I’ve always been good at stickhandling.”

Jamie snorted. “Only you could be cocky even about this.”

“I always tell you, Canning. No fear. No matter what.”

God, I was such a jackass. Because fear wasn’t even part of the equation. All I had was a pure, aching desire as I lay there beside Jamie. Last year I’d enjoyed a couple of drunken make-out sessions and a hand-job exchange with a guy from school. But even then, I hadn’t been one hundred percent sure.

Lying in bed next to Canning? I burned with certainty.

On the screen, the blonde was moaning like crazy. Spit-roasted and loving it. Canning went quiet for a while. I lay there, trying to keep my breathing even. But I couldn’t resist sneaking a peek at his crotch a minute later. And then my breath hitched, because holy shit, he was hard, a long, thick erection straining beneath his athletic shorts. I was sporting the same visible boner, and I know he saw it. He probably thought it was the porn. Hell, that was the only reason he was turned on.

Not me, though. My dick throbbed for him.

Beside me, he swallowed roughly. “Interesting pick, Wesley. Considering the stakes. I’m not gonna force you to blow me.” He grinned. “I’d rather bask in the glory of knowing you finally wrote a check you couldn’t cash.” Then he rolled his gorgeous eyes at me, and it only made my skin burn hotter.

“What,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the rasp of lust in my voice, “You think I’m too chicken-shit to blow you?”

He turned his chin to meet my eyes…

“Fuck yeah!”

Our team captain’s shout jerks me out of my trip down memory lane. The whole arena is in an uproar, fans screaming as the scoreboard lights up and the screens mounted all over the place flash the word GOAL! in huge yellow letters.

My stomach drops like a sack of bricks when I realize who scored.

Yale.

Fucking hell. Yale scored, and I’d been too distracted to see it. It’s 2-1 now, with a minute and a half to go.

“I spaced out,” I tell Cassel. “What just happened?”

“One of the Rainier D-men took the stupidest penalty I’ve ever seen.” He shakes his head in amazement. “Idiot just handed Yale the win.”

No, they haven’t won yet. There’s still time for Rainier to regroup. Still time, damn it.

“Your boy didn’t stand a chance on that power play,” Cassel adds.

My gut twists harder. Say what you will about Yale, but they lead the NCAA in capitalizing on power plays. Every time we played them this season, Coach uttered one grim sentence before we left the locker room—“You wind up in the sin bin against Yale, you lose.”

I pray those words aren’t prophetic, that Rainier can come back from this, but my prayers go unanswered.

The final buzzer blares through TD Garden.

And Rainier loses.





6





Jamie





We lost.

We f*cking lost.

I’m still dazed as I trudge down the chute toward the locker rooms. The mood all around me is somber. Suffocating. Nobody is playing the blame game, though.