Page 1 of Butterfly Effect

Chapter 1

Flailing on the Bed with a Hand Down My Pants

Wade

One nightwith Gabe Finch ruined me.

You’d think my dick would get over it after a year, but you’d be wrong. It wants nothing to do with anyone but her. With the exception of my hand.

What a shame. A waste, really. Someone so good at sex unable to perform.

For as long as I’d been having it, sex was enough. It worked fine to stave off the loneliness of an empty bed, a temporary distraction to fulfill the lack of true intimacy. I mean, how much closer could I be to someone other than physically inside them?

But no one stayed beyond the night, if that. They’d move on, so I’d move on.

Until last summer. Until Gabe Finch.

I’d never met someone so easily able to command a room without overtly demanding attention. Someone so unafraid to put me in my place. Being pursued was normal, but beingchallenged by someone so unbothered and unimpressed? Never happened before. And damn, if I couldn’t stop vying for her approval.

Glass squeaks under my fist as I clear a circle from the shower steam, frowning at the brown curls sprawling across a pillow and over my date’s face. The second pint of dark beer had Vanessa yawning in the taxi to the hotel, and she was more than happy to accept the bed for a quick nap instead of its intended purpose.

She’s pretty. Sweet, easy to talk to. And unlike Gabe, she wants me around, if only for the time being. Our expectations for what this is are set and limited. The mask I’ve spent so much of my life under stays on.

But the mere thought of a certain gorgeous sportscaster with eyes like daggers and a mouth that could only be described as Heaven—despite hurling insult after insult at me for the past twelve months—has the mask melting away. It probably means something that I enjoy being challenged by her, but I have no idea what that is.

God, I’m fucked.

I post a hand onto the tiled wall of the shower while revisiting the beginning of that perfect night, eyes screwed shut and my free hand fixed around my rock-hard dick.

Nothing could’ve held my attention except her. By far the hottest reporter covering the NHL, Gabe stood out from the rest of the wedding guests. She was over six feet in heels, and the navy beaded dress hugging her lean figure would’ve made Daisy Buchanan cry with joy.

A champagne flute rocked in her slender fingers before tightening around its stem. My cock stirred, self-inserting in her grip.

Our alternate captain, Landon Radek, and his new bride, Indi, smiled and swayed in the background, not at all in sync with the upbeat melody. As if nothing and no one existed but them. Sickening.

I straightened from a pillar at the perimeter of the white marquee. The one and only Fletcher Donovan, the reliable Ottawa Regents center but my unreliable wingman, glugged a beer.

Was it his fifth or sixth? I’d lost count.

“Slow down, buddy. You’re gonna piss your pants at this rate.”

“Shut up,” he grumbled.

I shoved him forward to Bea, the short, curvy bridesmaid he’d been fixated on for months. “Ask her to dance already.”

“Easy for you to say. Fucking look at her.”

Bea threw jet-black waves of hair over her shoulder before accepting another offer on the dance floor.

“Lost your chance.” I tsked.

The bashful shit reddened and fled stage left. I refocused on eavesdropping.

“I thought a wedding would make me emotional, but damn…”

A sip of super smooth Scotch rolled over my tongue and down my chest as I neared the not-so-hushed voice, hoping to catch the rest of the sentence.

“…I’m just horny,” Gabe said to no one, taking a sip and hugging those long arms around her torso.

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