Page 109 of Breakneck Hockey

“Yeah. Checks out.”

“C’mon.”

He drives me to a sprawling home in the Shaughnessy area of Vancouver. It’s an area known as The Crescent and some of the houses there are old, but they’re also the houses most can only dream of buying because they’re expensive as hell. The barrenweeping willows sway, waving in the slight breeze. Sutter parks and we fall in stride together as we walk toward the house, our knuckles grazing each other, daring one of us to make the first move and grab on. Neither of us does.

“This is my parents’ house,” he announces. “They’re not here,” he quickly explains before I have a heart attack. We are so far from the “meet the parents” stage. “They took Isla to one of her dance things in Kamloops.”

“Isla?”

“My baby sister. She’s ten.”

Huh. The more you know. I know every way Sutter likes his dick sucked. I know what he sounds like when I have my tongue up his ass. I know he sometimes screams in his sleep. But that’s the extent of my knowledge.

“That why you’re so good with kids?”

“One of.”

The more he won’t tell me, the more I need to know. The bastard’s doing it on purpose.

He leads me through a gate toward a large garage-looking structure. The inside’s filled with tools and shit. Something’s in the middle covered with a tarp. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Sutter looks nervous, but that can’t be.

“Fuck it,” he mumbles and rips the tarp off.

Underneath is a motorcycle. It’s one of those old, tall handlebar ones, though. A gleaming copper gas tank. One large headlight in the front. The chrome sparkles head to toe. Someone takes immaculate care of this vintage piece.

I give a low whistle. “Gorgeous. We could start a gang with all the bikes accumulating in the family. Unless you’re already in one?” I run a hand over the leather seat.

He scowls, catching my hand by the wrist. “You’d better not have greasy-ass hands, Alderchuck.”

“I don’t have greasy hands, asshole.”

“You didn’t eat anything before I picked you up?”

“I had asmallsnack, but I washed my hands after. I’m not an animal.”

“Mhm.”

“Don’t mhm me.” I use my free hand to smack him in the face. He catches it before it can make contact.

Sutter traps me against this body so that I can’t touch anything. Even him.

“I’m not good at show and tells, Sutter,” I whine. “Does it work? Take me for a ride.”

“It works, but it’s the wrong time of year for a ride.”

“Then why you showing me this?”

He circles his arms around me and buries his lips into my hair. “It was Dad’s. Ma gave it to me when I turned sixteen. And I just … we don’t have a lot of time together, you and me. When we do we spend it doing other things. I didn’t know when I’d get another chance.”

Now I’m thinking about thoseotherthings. We’re pretty damn good at them. Ah. Oh. No, wait. I was distracted—thinking about Sutter’s dick will always distract me—but I think I follow him now. This is important to him, and he wanted to share it with me.

“Do you want to know?” he finally says. “If you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

Sutter’s like a rock right now. I love that he’s trying to tell me this thing about his dad, but he can’t even say the words. I’ve had to decode Sutter since we got here. I don’t want him putting himself through this for me.

“What do I want to know?”

“How he died.”

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