Page 54 of Full Body Hit: Part 2
“Urgh, please,” Chase replied, but he didn’t actually have a comeback—he was probably half of the YouTube views on every single Auston Mazdaki video.
Chase hadn’t realised how much he’d been repressing in previous practice sessions as question after question bubbled out of him. He watched his position as he took slapshots, askedhim about why he chose an eighty-seven flex on his stick, why a P10 curve on a twelve-inch blade, which was crazy different from Chase’s P90.
Auston kept trying to be playful, bumping into Chase, smiling down at him, but Chase focused him on the task.
“Auston, come on. Go through the face-off stuff again, I suck at them.”
Auston’s grin dropped. “Damn, okay. I mean, we should really have someone here to drop the puck to practice, but—”
“I’ll call one of the assistant coaches, I know Paula is staying late. Oh, there she is.”
Auston didn’t look ecstatic about the sudden company, but he switched into work mode, beating Chase in every single face-off, but Chase was pretty sure he got a little better.
“I got better, right?” Chase whined as they finally made it to the locker room.
Auston was rubbing his shoulder. “I haven’t done that many face-offs in years. I think you dislocated my arm. Yeah, you’re not bad at face-offs, babe.”
“I literally lost every single one.”
“Okay, but my face-off percentage is—”
“I know what your face-off percentage is.” Chase cut him off moodily. The previous year, it had been 60.3, which was fucking amazing.
Auston smirked. “Of course you do.”
Shut up, Chase wanted to say playfully, but he just shrugged, insecure about his obsession, about the talent gap between them.
“Hey. Your face-offs are fucking great for a rookie, and that’s one of the most experience-based skills, yeah? Don’t get in your head about it. Let’s shower and go get lunch, huh?”
“Sure,” Chase agreed, not wanting to get into what Auston really thought about Chase’s skills.
Auston chose their lunch spot again, another place equipped with booths. This time, Auston slid in on the same side as Chase, squeezing them together so that they were touching from knee to shoulder, the bulk of Auston jostling him every time the Alpha shifted.
Auston let Chase continue to talk about hockey—questions about the years Auston had won the cups, if he had known all year that something was different, if there was an X factor that allowed a team to reach the end.
“Nah,” Auston said. “Well, I mean—there are so many years where youfeel it. I’ve been so fucking convinced that we could go all the way only for us to bounce in the first round. Games I felt we could win until the very last second. You kinda have to have that, you know? Gotta believe in yourself beyond reason or logic or whatever.”
Chase hummed, turning that thought over. Obviously, Chase thought he hadsomeamount of skill—he’d made it to the fucking NHL. He’d been drafted third overall. The coach was happy with him. He was getting good ice time.
But that confidence slept right beside the stringent certainty that he was worthless.
Chase honestly didn’t know how the two things could cohabitate in the same space. It wasn’t even a pendulum that swung from one thing to another—it was two creatures intertwined, opposites and yet still confusing where one started and the other stopped.
From the beginning, Aunix had been a person to bring out the bright in Chase.
Auston was turning out to do the same, smiling down at him, crowding into his space like he belonged there. The attention made Chase warm. The way their bodies were pressed together, out here in public where anyone could see.
And, in the shadows, it was even hotter, Auston’s bear paw landing on Chase’s thigh, high up on his jeans, proprietary.
“I never asked you—how’d you get into hockey?” Auston wondered after the food arrived. Ridiculously, Auston was eating his sandwich with one hand, half of it spilling out, just so he could keep a palm on Chase.
Chase chewed and swallowed his own bite. “My mom. She was a figure skater when she was younger, but she, uhm…she got pregnant with me just before the second time she was supposed to go to the Olympics, so she had to miss out. She tried to catch up on her conditioning after having me but it messed up her knee. So. I dunno. She took me skating pretty early on, and I kind of fell in love with hockey.”
Auston squeezed his thigh as if that particular revelation should be followed by comfort, but it wasn’t like the injury had happened to him. The worst thing Chase had gone through in relation to that was all the times his mom had told him that story—how having Chase had ruined her career. How she had chosen him over herself.
Sometimes it felt as if she thought she’d made the wrong choice.
But Chase’s silly insecurities weren’t comparable to having to go through what his mom had. She and Chase’s dad hadn’t even been married back then—they had barely been dating. It was supposed to be something casual, but it had resulted in little baby Chase and, not long after, the end of his mother’s career.
