Page 62 of The Wingman

“Hayden, I’ve been waiting for you.”

He’s still trying the light switch. “You have some serious issues, Darcy.”

“I’m so hungry, Hayden.”

“You’re going to give me nightmares, and then I’ll have to sleep in your bed every night.” There’s a smile in his voice. “Is that what you want?”

In the dark, behind the couch, I grin. Hayden in my bed, all warm, sleepy, and cuddly, probably only wearing boxers? I’ll take it.

I turn the flashlight on, illuminating Daniel’s rosy, cherub face. I stuck googly eyes on him earlier for extra drama.

“I’m hungry for blood… your blood!” I pull the string I attached to the base of the gnome so Daniel slides toward Hayden.

“Nope.” I hear Hayden’s fast footsteps down the hall to his room as I dissolve into laughter.

“Hayden, he just wants to say hi,” I call, still shaking with laughter.

After I’ve turned the apartment lights on and hidden Daniel away in a closet, Hayden re-enters the kitchen.

“Congrats again on your goal,” I tell him as he makes himself a smoothie. I replay Hayden skating hard toward the net with predatory focus and the look of relief and pride when he scored. “It seems like you’re finding your footing with the new line.”

He makes a noise of acknowledgment, swallowing a third of the smoothie. “Yep. I guess so.”

“It felt good to score, didn’t it?”

Our eyes meet, and for the millionth time, I think about our kiss and how his mouth felt on mine, how hard he got just from making out.

He’s a sexual guy. He’s used to having a lot of sex. It probably doesn’t take much to make him hard, and it had nothing to do with me. Men are easily stimulated.

Fucking them has become a craving you can’t ignore, he said about sex.

“Yeah, Darcy.” His Adam’s apple moves as he swallows, and his gaze drops to my mouth. “It felt really good.”

Heat flares in his eyes, but his usual boyish, friendly smile appears. “Thanks for coming to my game.”

“You don’t have to thank me when you gave me a front row ticket. Besides, I like watching hockey.”

The energy of the arena, the speed at which the game moves, and the brutal competition on the ice—there’s no sport like hockey. The analytical part of my brain loves to find patterns in the way players work together, in events that repeat throughout the game, like a player favoring one side or two players who play especially well together. It’s probably why I keep thinking about the hockey models on my laptop.

Seeing Hayden’s ear-to-ear smile after he sank the puck into the net lit me up like a sparkler, too.

My gaze moves over the broad expanse of his chest, and I can smell his body wash or deodorant. His hair is still damp from his postgame shower, and I think about how he relaxed under my fingers as I touched it. The urge to hug him courses through me, but I don’t want him to think I’m getting the wrong idea. Now that I’m single and we’re spending so much time together, there’s an undercurrent of tension between us that I don’t want to play with too much.

Last night, I swear I heard a low groan from his room. It could have been anything, probably him reacting to something on his phone, but I heard it, and every hair on my body rose as I pictured him stroking his cock.

Was he thinking about us? Was he as turned on from that kiss as I was?

No. He seems totally normal now, like it never happened, so I should be, too.

“I should get to bed,” I say quickly.

“Yeah, me, too.” He gives me a quick smile. “I have practice in the morning, and you have work.”

“Right. Well, good night.”

“Night, Darce.”

I’m crawling into bed twenty minutes later when my phone buzzes with an incoming call. Kit’s photo flashes across the screen, and my heart jumps into my throat. We haven’t spoken since we broke up.

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