Page 158 of Friendzone Hockey
“Date? Nah. We don’t do dates. That’s not us.”
I admire Casey’s confidence. He rarely cares about what anyone says about him.
“What about you, Jack?”
Jack rubs a hand over his droopy eyes. “Merc tries, he’s romantic like that, but once you have kids, you’re lucky to get sex in. If I have to choose, not gonna lie, I’m choosing sex.”
“What do you think Stacey’s like?”
They exchange a look. “You really don’t know?” Casey says. And by the way Jack’s nodding along, he also knows what I don’t.
“Um, noooo?”
“Stacey does whatever makes Dash happy, dude,” Jack says as if he’s speaking about some other Dash. “It’s been that way like it’s the Gospel since I can remember.”
I can’t help it. It brings back that feeling I fight every day. The one that whispers how much I don’t deserve him. The same voice that tells me how high-maintenance I am, how sensitive, how needy. They’re not things I can stop. I can do as I have been, bury them like bones, but they exist, and they don’t let me forget them. If anyone unearths them, it’s Stacey.
“You look worried, Dashie. If we worried you, Stace is gonna kill us. Please let us fix it?” Casey says. He leans on Jack’s shoulder and Jack tilts his head to rest on Casey’s.
“What can I do to, y’know, be an awesome partner for him?”
“Keep letting him do shit for you—that’s what I do,” Casey says. “Sutter loves it. I’m doing him a favor.”
I laugh. That’s so them. “Jack?”
“I do my best to support Merc emotionally and physically—and I don’t mean just sex. Everyone expects a lot from him, and he’ll wear himself out trying to give it to them. I try to run errands, look after the kids, fend off Maverick Elkington when need be. Things that like.”
Now that I think about it, I have been there for him emotionally, like with his mom and Coach Cannon. Those things got kind of muddled because, as usual, Stace made those times about me. Though, I guess that makes sense…? He needs to look after people, being looked after probably isn’t his comfort zone.
Maybe … maybe giving him someone to look after in those times is actually what helped him.
“There we go, a smile, thank fuck. I thought we were gonna go into witness protection,” Casey says.
“I can run errands,” I say, unwilling to divulge my epiphany.
Jack laughs. “Okay, Dash.”
I know he’s thinking about that time I was sent to get tin foil and barbeque sauce, and came home with three bags of shit, none of them containing tin foil or barbeque sauce. Wish I could say it was just the one time.
“Okay, fine. I’m a good errands companion, though.”
“And that’s just the way Stacey likes it,” Casey says.
The two-way door to the kitchen swings open and there he is, my too-gorgeous-for-this-world husband. He wore his leather jacket tonight, and his hair’s extra springy. Everyone in the bar’s been staring at him with lust in their eyes. But he only has eyes for me.
Butterflies stir up mayhem in my chest, and my skin heats hot enough it might melt off. He sets his gaze on me and makes everything worse. I have no choice but to look away or die of embarrassment.
Stacey gives-no-fucks Alderchuck, makes his way behind the bar, sliding his arms around me from behind and setting off the most intense shivers anyone’s ever known.
“You gettin’ shy on me, sweetheart?” He kisses my cheek.
The smell of leather and his pine-scented soap consumes me. My heart’s trying to escape my chest, I swear. I bite my lip, unable to breathe enough to form words, so I nod instead.
“Fuck, do I ever love you.”
I’m saved from expiring of shyness overload—yes, from my own damn husband and man that I’ve known for a thousand years—by the drinks that pop up on my screen.
“I should, um, get those.”
