Rebound (Seattle Steelheads #1)(86)
I was used to Asher being gone, but now that he was gone…
Fuck, I really had screwed up, hadn’t I?
Chapter 26
Asher
There was only so long I could keep Geoff off my brain. As long as I stayed drunk or busy, I didn’t have to think about him. Problem was, I had to sober up well before a game, and whether I liked it or not, downtime happened. Especially when we were traveling.
The long periods on buses and planes were nice sometimes. The league had a grueling schedule, and at least when we were in transit, we could fucking relax.
Usually.
On this flight from Omaha to Seattle, my body was definitely getting some downtime. I was getting that ache in the back of my knee that no one had ever been able to pinpoint as an actual injury. Just fatigue or something, I guess. My shoulder still throbbed from getting checked hard by Omaha’s defenseman last night, and my hand and wrist were sore even though I’d been wearing my glove when I’d thrown that punch during the fight in the third period. Hey, he started it.
So my body was totally good with sinking down into this cushy seat on the Steelheads’ charter jet.
It was my head that wasn’t into it.
All I could think about was my ex. Well, exes. Geoff and Nathan. I was still raw and hurting over Geoff, still reeling over the fact that he’d called time on us. And Nathan… God, I hated everything he’d done to me. To my sense of safety and security. To my ability to trust someone and function like a normal human being in a normal relationship. To have a normal relationship. I was angry that just seeing someone who vaguely resembled him in a crowd could throw off my equilibrium like that.
The more I thought about it, though, the more pissed I was at Geoff. I’d wasted enough energy on Nathan, and I couldn’t bring myself to continue.
Geoff, though?
What the fuck? I’d been hurt—and I was still hurt—by him leaving, but now that I was clear-headed and had the time to dwell on it, I was angry. We’d had something, damn it. Maybe it was just the beginning of something, and maybe we were both still limping away from the wreckages of our previous relationships, and maybe rebounds were usually doomed to fail, but there was something between us. Wasn’t there? What the fuck was the point of giving our exes another win by letting them take out this relationship too? Coming out as gay had been a surefire way to end my professional hockey career before it started, but look at me now. So who the hell was to say being a rebound meant this thing didn’t have a chance?
I closed my eyes and pressed back against the seat, trying to decide if I was being rational. It had only been a few days, and I’d spent most of that time either skating or drinking. So now that it was all crashing in, was I being remotely objective? Or was this going to be something I’d look back on in five years and think, Oh yeah, that sucked, but it was definitely for the better? Would it be like one of those high school breakups that felt like the end of the world in the moment but weren’t so bad with some time and perspective? Sure, they hurt at the time, and that pain was absolutely real, but then life went on and there were new relationships, and maybe breaking off that six-week thing at the end of junior year wasn’t quite the earth-shaking cataclysm it had seemed like back then.
I couldn’t convince myself that was what was happening here. Geoff and I had barely gotten off the ground. We’d been leaning on each other, licking our respective wounds, and…
And really, really clicking.
How could he say we weren’t ready for something that felt that good? Because it was good. It was like the only good thing I had going for me these days. I mean, if I broke both my legs and one arm, it wouldn’t make sense to say, “Well, these broken bones hurt like hell, so let’s amputate the arm that’s not broken because fuck why not?”
No. No, this was fucking bullshit. Minute by minute, anger swelled in my chest. It wasn’t the kind of testosterone-driven fury that could land me in the penalty box for five minutes after losing my temper on another equally testosterone-saturated opponent. It wasn’t something that would have me putting a fist through a wall or something. I wasn’t a violent guy, especially not after living with someone who was. Aggression was part of hockey. Off the ice, that wasn’t me.
What it did was make me restless. Were we in Seattle yet? Were we on the goddamned ground yet? Because I had something I needed to do, and I couldn’t do it until I was off this stupid bird.
Are we fucking there yet?
*
After we’d landed, Kelleher dropped me off at home. I’d been in no frame of mind to drive when we’d left the other day, and my place was more or less on the way to his house out in Bellevue.
I should’ve been going upstairs to get some sleep before tomorrow’s game, but I didn’t. I dropped my bag by the door, grabbed my keys, and went into the garage.
The Ferrari roared as I gunned the engine and flew across the I-90 bridge. In Seattle, I headed north on I-5, mentally replaying the route to Lake City. I’d only been there a handful of times, but I was pretty sure I could still find Geoff’s apartment.
Two wrong turns later, I found the right road, and from there, the apartment. I pulled into a guest spot, locked the car, and tried not to break into a run on the way up to his front door. I knocked without hesitating because I knew damn well if I did, I’d talk myself out of this, and I’d leave, and I’d hate myself. I’d made it this far. I was not chickening out.