Page 55 of The Charlie Method

“Oh, come on,” she coaxes. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”

“Maybe. I’ll text you in the morning.”

Once I’m in the privacy of my bedroom again, I open the BioRoots app to check my inbox. Still empty. Although the lack of notification could’ve told me that.

I distract myself by opening the app thatdoeshave a notification, which I ignored when it came in last night because I was working late at the lab.

I will say, I’ve been getting quite a lot of mileage out of this chat. To the tune of at least two orgasms each time I talk to Lars or Bjorn. My Swedish heartthrobs. My online lovers.

But this new message changes the game.

They’re looking to take this offline.

They want to meet up.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WILL

Save it for the ice

“DUDE, IS THIS GOING TO BE ON, LIKE, TSBN? IS YOUR FATHER-IN-LAWgoing to be talking about us onHockey Kings?”

“It’s a political piece,” Ryder says, rolling his eyes at Trager. “Why wouldHockey Kingstalk about it?”

“I don’t get it.” Trager turns to me for guidance. “What do they want to interview us about?”

I don’t even lift my head from my stall. I’ve got my phone in hand, checking the app for the tenth time today.

“College hockey, the culture, how you got into the sport,” I answer absently. “I’m sure there’ll be some bullshit questions about what it means to be a leader and how hockey builds great men.”

“Like Lego?” asks Patrick. He’s not bright, but he’s a great guy.

“Yes, like Lego,” Beckett says solemnly. “They want to interview you about building Lego hockey men.”

I open the message thread and stifle my disappointment. Still no response from Charlie. Last night, Beck and I extended an invitation to meet up for real, and it’s been crickets ever since.

“Guys, it’s just a puff piece, all right?” I set my phone on the top shelf of my locker and turn to face my teammates. “My father wants to show his constituents that his son is an upstanding college boy with upstanding college friends on their upstanding college hockey team. That’s all.”

Coach Jensen enters the locker room with our assistant coaches, Maran and Peretti. I take one look at his face and know he’s pissed off.

The source of that anger saunters in a second later: the producer of the video part of this shit show my dad has inflicted upon us.

Her name is Marjorie Neven, and she’s a tall, skinny blond in her fifties whose face doesn’t move. Literally. I can’t tell if she’s happy, mad, sad, disappointed. Her facial muscles are frozen in place by what must be pounds of filler.

She walks up wearing a powder-blue pantsuit and an excessive amount of gold jewelry that keeps catching the fluorescent lights, hurting my eyes.

“All right, boys,” Marjorie says, either smiling or frowning. “We’re going to shoot some more B-roll tonight of you getting into uniform, so no one take your pants off yet. Shirts are okay.”

“You mean this isn’t going to be full frontal?” Beckett drawls, making a big show of unzipping his jeans.

Nobody’s immune to his charm. Not even a fifty-something producer who clearly hasn’t gotten laid in at least twenty-five of those fifty years.

She titters with delight at his lewd remark. “As appealing as that would be to the female demographic—”

“And the LGBTQ+ demo,” says the cameraman.

“—I’m afraid that this is a family show,” she finishes.

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