Page 22 of Breakneck Hockey

He’s too tired and food-deprived to fight me. He makes a feeble effort, but I get the candy in my mouth. Okay, it is kinda good, but something’s missing. I shove my fingers into his hair and bring his lips to mine.

Mmm. That’s better.

His tongue sweeps inside, and he swipes the candy. “We do not share food. We do not share candy.”

I don’t want to fucking share him. How do I do that without giving us a label?

“Guess I’ll have to taste you instead.” I steal one more kiss. That’s the last one. I’m done.

He stretches, sitting up, sensing our time’s come to an end. “I’m leaving before my stomach eats itself. There’s a pizza out there somewhere with my name on it.”

“Pizza over another round on my dick?”

Casey pats my cheek. “If you have to ask, you don’t know shit about me.”

I’d offer to order a pizza, but would that count as coffee and breakfast? Apparently, that was too much for him. Such a fucking child. “Get out, Alderchuck.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

He slips off the bed, and I get a wide shot of his body. I’ve marked him to hell. Hickeys everywhere. Handprints on his left ass cheek. Bite marks down his right arm. His tumble of honey-brown curls sticks out like a lion’s mane.

Just. Fucking. Wrecked.

I watch him from the bed, lying on my stomach, pretending not to watch him, or give a fuck over what he’s doing. Like I can’t wait to fall asleep. But I’m sneaking peeks of him while he extracts his clothing from where ours spent the last thirty minutes tangled together on the floor.

“Well, I’ll show myself out then, but I can’t lock your eighteen thousand locks behind me. Is that a fetish? You gonna get off on that later?”

The pillow’s out of my hand and in his face before he can make another stupid joke. I close my eyes so that I don’t have to look at his face anymore.

“Think fast, Sutter.”

My eyes pop open, I catch a flash and the shiny object before it hits my face.

“Looks like someone’s thinking about’cha. I won’t be. I’ll be knee-deep in cheese for the rest of the night.”

His laughter trails behind him, but I’m too caught up with staring at the thing in my hand. There’s a squeaking hinge—I need to oil that—and then a door closing. Alderchuck’s gone.

I flip the object in my hand between my fingers and hold it up to the light. A penny. ACanadianpenny. 2009.

Goosebumps wash over my arm and down my spine.

“Dad?” I whisper.

And wait.

No one answers.

What the fuck am I waiting for anyway, his ghost? I don’t believe in ghosts.

I close my fist around the little copper disk, squeezing it hard enough to make it disappear. I’m losing my Goddamn mind. It’s just a penny and it doesn’t mean shit.

Chapter 3

Shiver Spot

Casey

It’s not that I didn’t think Jack would make a good dad, because of course I thought he would, raised with the values his dads instilled in him, but I didn’t expect him to be so domestic. He’s always got baby Stanley in that sling across his chest, his fuzzy head of hockey lettuce poking out. He’s always standing proud, too, his smile the biggest I’ve ever seen it.

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