Page 24 of Rookie Recovery

Katie smirked. “Nope. That’s it. Now, let’s see if you got any matches.”

My stomach churned with something that might be nerves or unease, but I shoved it down. It was time to move on, live for today, or whatever Katie had said. Get a certain blond fuckboy out of my head. Hell, I bet Bowie wasn’t moping around, not getting laid. He was probably picking his lays for the next month.

And shit, there I was, tripping over him again.

Why? I had standards high as the fucking moon, and Bowie didn’t fit any of them. Didn’t check anything off my list of neat little boxes. In fact, he was the opposite of so many of those. So, why couldn’t I stop thinking about him?

I had a problem.

And his name was Archie Bowman.

Chapter 4

Bowie

I’d figured it out. What my problem was. With Dr James Sullivan, PT, DPT. Kitty. Jamie. Whatever name was going to get the biggest rise from him.

It was a two-fold problem.

One: I was horny. Like teenager with a dirty mag horny.

I’d left Cavs in June after playoffs, where the only other out guy was Gus Lövgren. And while we'd bonded on both being the gay, weird Europeans, there was no attraction there. Sure, Gus was cute. When he wasn’t cutting his Swedish blonde curls into mullets or growing moustaches simply to piss off one very specific person. But his sights were firmly set on that one specific person, and if I’d learned anything recently, it was that the feelings were mutual. So there had never been a chance of a drunken hookup between us.

Plus, Gus was … a lot. He was A Lot. Capital letters. More chaotic than me even. We would never have worked. He needed someone dark and brooding that could tame him and anchor him to the ice.

And it wasn’t like I got a lot of action in Carson, either. Small hockey town, mostly hetero. Though the big cities were pretty close if I became desperate for a release.

But after playoffs, I flew straight back to England for six weeks. Six weeks in Bruton Willesbury!

The place had two pubs, a cafe, a post office, a bunch of quaint little shops that sold things like crystals, and novelty mugs, and aprons with dick jokes printed on the front, a playground, a church, a primary school, and that was it.

That was everything. Sure, Bristol was an hour’s drive away, so my brothers and I did a couple of trips there, but I’d not hooked up either time with anyone. London was two and a half hours drive, but once you’d found somewhere to park, paid for the parking, paid the fucking inner city emissions charge, paid for the tube, paid through the arse for dinner, well, was it all worth it for a casual shag?

So I had gone six weeks with only my fist and fingers for comfort, and had arrived in Bringham not knowing anyone. Moving into a big, hollow shell of an apartment, with a landlord-slash-roommate who I never saw.

I did the maths. I hadn’t had sex in over six months.

Six months without a good hard fuck. If I didn’t sate this burning need to bone something soon, I was probably going to lose my mind.

But, I realised there was only one person I wanted this to happen with. I had all the apps. Had sex at my fingertips if I wanted it. Which I did. Like more than I could fathom. But the thought of taking some rando home just wasn’t hitting it right.

Which led me onto the second portion of my two-fold problem.

Two: Jamie Sullivan, my new PT, was criminally, achingly hot. No other way to put it. I had not stopped thinking about him, or what I’d let him do to me, since I met him that first time.

Not the drunken shitshow I was the very first time we met at The Lounge. But the time after, in his office.

He was a great big mountain of grumpiness, with magic fucking hands, that I wanted everywhere all over me, all at once.

I also realised he would never let this happen. He was a consummate professional. Dedicated. Passionate. A little overzealous perhaps. There was no way he would risk everything he’d built up for a quick fumble with the dorky British kid, who, he made perfectly clear, annoyed the living shit out of him.

But I am nothing if not very fucking persistent. And I Googled it. It wasn’t against the rules, or the code of conduct or anything, for a player to be intimately involved with the team’s PT. It wasn’t even against my contract. I read the whole thing twice.

So, technically, he could fuck me. If he so wanted. And it wouldn’t jeopardise his career. Or mine, because I still cared about that.

I needed to get it out of my system, clear my head—pun intended—because if I didn’t do it soon, it was going to start affecting my game. All I thought about was Jamie Jamie Jamie. Those arms, that massive barrel of a chest, that precisely manicured stubble, the curve of his upper lip, his fingers. Those perfect, long, tanned, powerful fingers. I had wasted many an hour imagining exactly how those fingers might unravel me. When really, I should’ve been thinking about training camp in a few weeks, then practice and preseason games.

Which I could do—absolutely would do—as soon as I’d mounted Dr Sullivan. Preferably, on his special doctor’s table.

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