Page 36 of Rookie Recovery

My knee twinged again as I shifted my ass into a more comfortable position on the rock. “I like sports. Working with athletes. The whole … mindset of it.”

“And the view? The honed backsides?” That grin loomed, taking up my entire field of vision.

I pressed the palm of my hand to his face and shoved him away. “Fuck. No.”

He laughed, and I couldn’t hold back my own grin. Like trying to hold back the tide of a broken dam with my bare hands. “Do you think about anything besides sex?”

“Um. I’m twenty-five.” He donned on an expression of faux sobriety. “So. No? Do you ever think about sex?”

More than I should have lately. “That’s not your business.”

“It is if you think about it with me.” The shit-eating smile reached his ears. “Do you? Picture what it would be like.”

Jesus. “Nope. I don’t mess around with cocky little fuckboys like you.”

Sunshine gilded his blond hair in strands of pure gold. His teeth gleamed white in that crooked, cocksure grin. “Sure, sure. So, what’s your type, then?”

“Again, not your business.”

“So it’s open to my interpretation and imagination. Perfect.” He tapped his chin with an elegant index finger. “Time for a self-insert—”

I bit down on my smile. “You’re self-inserting into my sexual fantasies?”

“So, you do have them!” he crowed, his face alight with joy. “And yes, now I will definitely be in them. Little Jamie likes me.”

Little Jamie had a lot of favorable thoughts about him. I groaned and flopped back onto the rock to stare at the sky. How was he this good at this? It wasn’t fair. “Please don’t call my dick Little Jamie. Or talk about it, for that matter.”

“But I can think about him?”

“For fuck’s sake.” I tried to throw an arm over my face, only to remember I was still wearing sunglasses. Drama, thwarted by practicality. “No.”

“I’m gonna think about him so hard—”

“Quietly. Please. Jesus. And don’t make that face.” I peeked out from under my arm to sneak a glance at the dopey smile stretched across his cheeks. “I hope that’s not your sex face.”

“You want to see my sex face, Kitty?”

“For fuck’s sake.“ Nope. I was not picturing his sex face. Or anything having to do with him and sex. Would not give him, or Little Jamie—dammit, no I was not calling it that!—the satisfaction.

It was time for a change of topic. “So, did you always want to play hockey?”

Way to take things from sexy to ultra-serious, Jamie. Always the life of the party.

“You taking the piss?” Bowie snorted, and his face softened into gentle sobriety as he turned to the lake. “I’m British. It barely exists over there.”

“Oh.” Yeah, oh. Bravo, Sullivan. “So how does a British kid wind up playing pro hockey?”

“Obsession.” The word tumbled out, and the way his brows furrowed tight against it, I thought they’d surprised him as much as me. “And pure dumb fucking luck. You inherit your brother’s mate’s skates, right, dodge rocks and cow shit on a frozen field, fall in love. Hitch lifts to the rink in the next town over. Sometimes you get up at the asscrack of dawn.”

I nodded along. All hours. Morning, night, frigid temperatures, black dawns, frozen hair and frozen gear. Sketchy ponds and pockmarked ice. Any of it. All of it. For the game. To taste another hour of stale frost-cracked air. To feel the cut of blades and the grip of gloves, to hear the smash of puck against boards.

For the minutest chance to be better than the next guy.

“I tried out for the team at uni as a joke.” He huffed an ironic little laugh. “Didn’t think I’d make it, and I did, and I couldn’t get enough …”

His words trailed off, and I realized I was staring. At him. At Bowie—no, at Archie Bowman. The man beneath the mask. The bit of real I’d glimpsed before, laid bare for me to marvel over.

And then the words hit me. I sat up so fast my sunglasses slid down my nose so I stared at him over the tops. “Wait, you’ve only been playing since college?”

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