Page 108 of Full Body Hit: Part 2
Hintz scrunched his face up. “That wasonetime.”
“Yeah, that’s not the defence you think it is,” Auston drawled.
As predicted, Auston was inundated with questions before he’d even ordered his first damn drink, and every single fucking one of them was about Chase.
Had the mating been planned? How the fuck had that happened? Since when were they dating? Since when did Auston date, period? He was a bit young, wasn’t he? Hintz joked that he would have given it a shot as a rookie if he’d known he had a chance.
“You didn’t,” Auston deadpanned.
There was a time when Auston didn’t have to give those guys a rundown of his life—they’d been living it with him.
There was a sort of dissonance there as he sat at the table and talked about Chase. His old life and his new one superimposed over the other, misaligned, making both of them blur.
It was late when he made it out of the bar, sober enough to make his own way home in an Uber, but not by much.
He had to concentrate fully to get his key into the lock on the front door, stumbling in. The scent of home hit him at once—warm and deep and quiet.
He tripped out of his shoes and shuffled to the couch, sitting heavily and sinking into the cushions. He let a slow breath out, disinflating, the stillness and silence crawling on him suddenly.
God, his life really was ending. Life as he knew it, anyway. Sure, there were plans ahead, but they were so unknown.
He was a hockey player. It was what shaped him, the sturdy beams he didn’t know what he would do without.
What was going to be left of him after the team was knocked out and the season ended? He had no idea which parts of him would stay standing and which would simply fall apart.
For the rest of his life, he would be an ex-something, defined not by his present but by what he had once done.
“Auston?”
The voice startled him, and his head whipped around. Chase stood in the gloom, backlit faintly by the light coming from their room.
The bubbling panic that had been clawing its way up Auston’s lungs fell away.
There stood Auston’s future, barefoot and swamped by one of Auston’s T-shirts, eyes sleepy and mouth soft.
“Hey,” Auston whispered, sitting up.
Chase padded closer, running a hand through Auston’s hair as soon as he was near enough. Auston tilted his head on the back of the couch, blinking up at his mate.
Chase’s scent filled him, a balm.
“Let’s go to bed, yeah?” Chase murmured.
Auston nodded. He hauled himself up, letting Chase wrap him in his arms as soon as he walked to the other side of the couch. Auston leaned down for a short, sweet kiss.
Maybe the future wouldn’t be so scary.
Not if it was just like this.
***
If being a hockey player had taught Auston one thing, it was that wanting something didn’t mean you would get it.
There were times when, no matter how hard you worked for something, no matter how desperately every aching inch of your body longed for victory, you still might just…lose.
It wasn’t the last game of the season, but it might as well have been. If they lost this match-up, the New Orleans Spirits would be mathematically eliminated from getting to the playoffs—no matter if they won the rest of their games and the next-in-line to the wild-card spot lost them all, they still wouldn’t be able to make up the difference.
Auston sat on the bench in his stall during second intermission. They were playing well against the Denver Leopards, were tied 2-2. Noah and Sammy were chatting. Koa, the goalie, had a towel over his head, tuning everybody out. Jimmy was re-taping his stick. Chase had his eyes shut, but he didn’t smell acrid with anxiety.
