Page 16 of Scoring Position

“Well, it’s not like your mental-skills coach is going to be calling your parents to give updates. You’re twenty-one.”

So maybe it did make sense. Ella had a point. Nico did know that a therapist wouldn’t call up his dad and tell him all Nico’s secrets, and yet… he couldn’t shake the gut-deep fear that his trust would be broken and his words used against him.

“Fuck. You sure I can’t punch your dad?”

Nico snorted. “It definitely would not help.” Though his dad would be pissed at getting coldcocked by a girl. That would almost make it worth it. “But it’s the thought that counts.”

RYAN WASspreading mayo on his sandwich when his sister called. He swiped to answer and propped his phone on the counter. She got a rather unflattering view of him and too good a look at his sandwich, but whatever. Ryan was not going to apologize.

“Tara! What’s up?” He grabbed the jar of pickles and hunted down a fork.

“Oh my God, what are you eating?” She was sitting in her living room, her phone placed at the perfect angle. She had her shit together like that.

“Uh, the best sandwich ever?” He speared a pickle.

Tara snorted and swiped some of her blond hair out of her face. “Bro, you know I love you, but that is not a sandwich deserving of positive superlatives. ‘Worst,’ ‘most disgusting,’ ‘horrific’….”

Just because it was a little lopsided and maybe slightly too tall for his mouth? “You’re just jealous of my sandwich game.” He jabbed his fork, now with pickle on the end, toward the camera.

“Yes. I’m seething with jealousy,” she deadpanned.

“Damn right you are. Now, why did you call me?” He sliced the pickle and began placing it on his sandwich. “I assume it wasn’t to diss my sandwich. I have a Mute button and I’m not afraid to use it.”

“As much as I would love to continue mocking your food choices—seriously, do you ever listen to your nutritionist?—that’s not why I called.”

“Good.” Ryan did not feel up to defending himself right now. It was a day off and he wanted to decompress from the shitshow that was his job. It turned out that Nico—it was hard to think of him as Kirschbaum when he did such a good impression of someone who needed the world’s softest hug—looked progressively sadder with each passing loss, and barely cheered up when they won. Either way, he was laser-focused in practice—first one on the ice, last one off—and the same way in the gym. But nothing he did was good enough for Coach. The look on Nico’s face when he’d been banished to the press box made Ryan want to wrap him in a blanket, feed him hot chocolate, and pet his hair.

None of which was helpful or likely to happen until he did his (secondary) job and got Nico to actually talk to him.

So Ryan needed a break, which meant delicious sandwiches andFast & Furiousmovie marathons. Sometimes a boy just needed to watch cars go fast and then explode.

“Good,” she echoed. “Tell me about your new team. I mean the good stuff, not the, you know, horrible win-loss record. Sorry about that, by the way.”

He snorted and walked her through the highlights—the way Yorkie worked with the call-ups, the animal magnetism that Kitty seemed oblivious to, and Chenner’s first game, which Yorkie had quietly paid for his family to attend.

“They don’t soundsoterrible,” she teased. “But I notice you haven’t mentioned the progress with your protégé.”

In one of his fits of frustration, he’d texted her about his assignment with Nico. Ryan shook his head. “There’s not much to say. I’ve never seen someone work so hard for so little payoff. It’s gotta be in his head, but he won’t talk about whatever’s bugging him, so….” He shrugged.

“So you’re giving up?”

“No!” he protested. Sure, he could’ve written the guy off as impossible, but he didn’t think he was. He just needed to wait for the right moment. “Just… biding my time.”

Now she narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “And there’s nothingelsegoing on?”

Ughhhh. Ryan groaned. “Tara. Not you too.”

She threw up her hands. “Well, he’s good-looking!Andgay. You can’t blame me for wondering. Especially since I found out from Facebook that you broke up with your boyfriend.”

Now Ryan was completely confused. Not about Nico being hot; “tall and milkshake-thick” was basically Ryan’s type, though he’d go to the grave before he admitted it to his team. But—“When I what?”

“Mathieu?” Tara prompted. “The guy you dated in Montreal?”

Ryan stopped mid-sandwich-assembly and stared at the camera. Tara looked righteously indignant. Ryan looked like a gobsmacked fish. “He wasn’t my boyfriend. And I moved to a different city, so….”

“Ryan.”

“We weren’t together!” He did not want to use the phrasecasual sex partnerwith his sister, butfriends with benefitswasn’t accurate since they hadn’t, strictly speaking, been friends. She did not need to know. “It’s not like we were going to do long-distance!”

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