Page 35 of Scoring Position

“Driving his lazy anti-driving ass to work.” Yorkie had happily driven Ryan around during their short stint as roommates, but he’d enjoyed teasing Ryan for his dislike of the task. “He’s not exactly on your way.”

“No, I took pity on him and offered my spare bedroom.”

Yorkie’s eyebrows flew high. “Oh?” Another man might have inflected that single syllable with judgment or delight, but Yorkie only gave it benign curiosity.

“Yeah. Goldilocks has been complaining. Turns out my guest room is just right.”

Ryan snickered. “Nico, you’re no bear, even with the beard.”

“You, on the other hand, are definitely the annoying entitled little girl who breaks into someone’s home for fun and ruins their stuff.”

“Break in, schmake in, you invited me. And now you are never getting rid of me,” Ryan added as Yorkie led the way into the locker room, “because that room is amazing and I’m sleeping there forever. The end.”

“Do my ears deceive me,” Greenie cut in, “or did I just hear Ryan say he’s sleeping with you forever?” He draped himself over Nico’s shoulders.

Nico sidestepped out of Greenie’s arms. It almost looked like his only motive was to get to his stall. “I lost my head a few days ago and offered my spare bedroom. It was that or watch him zombie skate again.”

“It’s true,” Ryan confirmed. “My former lodgings were not conducive to sleep.”

“So you’re roomies now?” Greenie asked with a shit-eating grin.

“Guess so.” Ryan should have known the boys would get a kick out of it. Maybe he and Nico shouldn’t have made antagonism their friendship’s defining trait.

“Doc, Doc, Doc,” Grange said loudly. “What everyone really wants to know is, what’s it like living with the Grouch?”

Easy. Comfortable. Restful. Boner-inducing.

“I don’t know,” Ryan said earnestly. “Why don’t you ask your wife?”

“Honestly, Doc,” Greenie said, settling next to him on the bench and leaning in. “Just between us.” Like his voice wasn’t carrying. “What’s he like at home?”

Ryan tapped his chin. “Weeeell. It’s only been a couple of days, but I have learned one thing.”That is not obvious proof of my boner.“Nico is a weirdo who will use a day off to—” A quick look around told him that the locker room was leaning in. “—change the oil in his car.”

The guys blinked. Ryan nodded. “Right? Totally weird. I told you, Nico, spending your precious free time doing chores you can pay someone else to do is ludicrous.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “And I told you that BMW maintenance is expensive. Why wouldn’t I do it myself?”

“Right. Because saving two hundred dollars by changing the oil yourself on a seventy-thousand-dollar car makes total sense.”

“He’s not wrong,” Mucker said. “Some dealerships really kill you on the upkeep.”

Nico shot Ryan a triumphant look. Behind him, Yorkie was shaking his head, and when his gaze caught Ryan’s, he raised one eyebrow like he knew what kind of dirty thoughts Nico’s mechanic act had inspired. Ryan raised an eyebrow back and admitted to nothing. He could look. It wasn’t like he was going to act on it.

Something told him not all of his teammates were convinced. Throughout practice, Ryan felt eyes on him, but he couldn’t figure out whose. Chenner was in the zone to avoid Vorhees’s endless nitpicks. Grange and Greenie had let the whole thing drop. Yorkie had made his observance known and was unlikely to get into anything further until something disrupted the status quo.

Ryan tried to shrug it off, but then he sneaked the puck past Greenie in a scrimmage. He skated over to his squadmates to celebrate and was confronted with a large, dour-faced Russian.

Ah.

When he’d first joined the team, Kitty had taken him aside and said that he had no problem with gay people but that he might keep his distance in public because Russian politics—and the way they intersected with anyone high-profile, even professional athletes—made things complicated. Then he’d completely failed to follow through on the keeping-his-distance part.

So Ryan didn’t think he was salty about Ryan’s new living arrangements so much as protective of Nico and about to give Ryan the world’s most terrifying shovel talk.

Yay.

It would have to wait, though, because Vorhees kept them gasping all through practice. They’d dropped the last three games and he was making a point, and the point was apparently that if they could still stand up, they weren’t working hard enough. And Chenner was staring at the wall opposite him in what Ryan recognized as determination not to cry in front of a teammate. He was so terrified of their coach he could barely speak to the man and was teetering on the edge of a breakdown.

Ryan missed the everyday bullshit of the Voyageurs.

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