Page 37 of Rookie Recovery

“Well, I played roller hockey before that. And field hockey at school.” His eyes drifted upwards in thought, and his right hand tangled in his hair. “And open hockey sometimes at Swindon Ice Rink. And a lot of fucking rugby. A lot.”

“Roller hockey,” I repeated like a parrot with an intensely limited vocabulary. “Field hockey. Open hockey. Rugby.”

No little league, no peewees or midgets or prep school. No summer travel leagues, no juniors. “Fuck me, Bowman. Do you have any idea how fucking nuts that is?”

“No?”

“Do you have any idea what you are?”

His mouth curled half upwards. “What was it you said? A cocky little manwhore? Or was it fuckboy?”

“Well, yeah.” I let out a soft laugh, surprised at how natural, how easy, it felt. “I was gonna say prodigy, but manwhore might be more accurate.”

“Manwhore is definitely more accurate.” He gathered his long legs up under him and stood. “Keep walking? I want to get to the beach.”

I followed him back out onto the trail, my mind still reeling with everything I’d learned. All these new little pieces of him for me to puzzle over. Calling him a prodigy had made him … uncomfortable, and no wonder; he hadn’t had a lifetime of coaches and parents and teammates stroking his ego.

There was so much more to Archie Bowman than I’d realized.

He picked up the pace right where I’d left it—fast and focused. For a while, neither of us said anything, the only sounds were the tread of our feet, the shift of the trees as the breeze wound through, the twitter of birds and the distant hum of traffic. Sweat gathered in my hair, slicking my shirt to my arms and torso. My socks probably smelled awful.

“Why Bringham?” Bowie asked, as we rounded the last turn of the path before the hidden beach.

“Hm?” I’d gotten lost again, in the low pulse of nature or my own thoughts, could never be sure out here, when they wove together into one homogenous tapestry.

“You grew up in Boston. So why are you in Bringham?” Sweat slicked his blond hair, beaded his forehead. His cheeks glowed with exertion.

He was fucking radiant.

I nudged out in front of him to take the lead down the narrow, winding side-trail that led down to the hidden beach. “Went to grad school here.”

“You didn’t want to work for the Bears back home?”

My knee buckled, causing my boot to slide against a patch of loose gravel, but I kept my balance. “I wanted to branch out.”

I’d needed to get away from the team I once played for. I hadn’t made it out of the pro circles, but I couldn’t stay in Boston, with the Bears, my past, so close.

I hopped down the last few feet of trail to the rocky shoreline below. It was only once my boots leveled up with the lapping water that I remembered why I was avoiding the beach. “I didn’t bring a suit.”

“Me either.” Bowie was already stripping out of his shirt. I yanked my gaze away before it got caught on any wayward abs or deltoids. Or—fuck. He was sliding off his gym shorts now. Why was he always undressing in front of me?

Maybe I was in the wrong profession. “This is a public park, Bowman.”

“I’ll leave my knickers on.” He kicked his shorts into a pile with his shirt and waded into the shallows. Yelped. “Why is it so cold? I’m freezing my bollocks off.”

“It’s Maine.” I studied his pile of discarded clothing, then risked a glance at him … and burst out laughing. He stood knee-deep in the water, shoulders hunched and one arm wrapped around himself. The other not-so-subtly lowered to shield his—Jesus Jamie. Don’t. “You look a little chilly, Bowman.”

“You can’t talk.” He scowled at me. Then, his face molded into a sharp expression I recognized as a challenge. “Fully dressed on the shore.”

Lord fucking help me. Don’t rise to the bait, Sullivan. Be the professional. The adult—

I dropped my backpack. Kicked my boots off as I lifted my T-shirt off. His gaze burned holes through my skin, but I refused to meet it. Refused to look up as I did the very stupid, very unprofessional, and very unadult thing.

I dropped my shorts onto the sand. Keeping my right side angled towards him, left knee away.

And I waded right the fuck into that heart-stoppingly, breath-snatchingly, ball-shrinkingly cold ice bath. Fuck, fuck, and more fuck—but I was not about to let him see how much the cold water was affecting me. I didn’t pause. My brain was short circuiting, everything in my body clenched against the brutal temperature.

I dove in.

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