Page 96 of Game Misconduct
He stares back at me with that look.
That same look from the elevator, the look in his eyes when he entered my body.
Raw. Real.
“You always like to stare after?” he murmurs.
I smile, lazy. “Only when the view’s this good.”
He huffs a quiet laugh and closes his eyes, his long lashes brushing the top of his cheekbones.
Damn, I’d kill for lashes like that. It takes a stupid expensive bottle of mascara to make that happen.
Silence stretches between us, but it’s not awkward. It’s heavy with something…softer.
Safer.
I trail a finger across the line of his ribs. “So,” I say, keeping my voice low, “how’d you end up playing hockey?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
For a second, I think maybe I’ve stepped somewhere I shouldn’t, but then his voice comes, rough and quiet.
“My mom used to flood the backyard in the winter. We didn’t have a lot, but she made sure I had skates. I’d stay out there for hours. I think it was the only time I didn’t feel like the walls were closing in.”
I go still.
He doesn’t elaborate, but I don’t need him to. I hear it.
The silence between words.
The kind of childhood that shapes you.
“You were good early?” I ask gently.
He shrugs. “I was fast. Aggressive. Had a mean slapshot.” A pause. “It gave me somewhere to put the anger. Somewhere it made sense.”
My throat tightens.
I know what it’s like to carry a storm inside. To need somewhere to put it.
“Your mom must’ve been proud.”
“She died before I got drafted,” he says quietly. “Cancer. Fast and mean. Like everything else in our life.”
My heart breaks for him, and it’s one more thing that ties us together.
I know what it’s like to lose your mother to cancer.
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen. Which was a good thing so I didn’t have to live at home anymore.”
He doesn’t elaborate on what that means, and I get the sense that I shouldn’t push.
God. I reach out, covering his hand with mine.
He doesn’t pull away.
