Page 2 of The Husband Game

Something to stave off the hangover they were both undoubtedly feeling, then maybe a long shower.

Dustin had the room for a few more days and nowhere else he had to be.

Maybe Charlie would be willing to join him …

Smiling, Dustin stretched, lacing his fingers together to crack his knuckles when a flash of bright silver caught his attention.

He blinked, sure he was imagining things.

That wasn’t a ring on his left hand, was it?

A shaky feeling washed over him, like when he’d been triple shifted in the final minutes of a playoff game and his lungs were burning, his mouth coppery, body desperate for oxygen.

Oh Christ, what had he done last night?

He’d done Charlie, that much he could remember. But he was pretty sure that wasn’t all. He’d wanted Charlie’s attention yes, but this was ….

Dustin staggered out of bed, pulling another grumpy mutter from Charlie, who flung the covers over his head, disappearing completely in the nest of white sheets.

Right. So, Charlie wasn’t going to be any help at the moment.

God, if his head would stop pounding, Dustin could maybe make sense of the memories from last night that kept trying to resurface.

Still shaky, he found his underwear hanging off the TV, pulled them on, then finally located his phone buried between the couch cushions along with a pair of pale purple lace men’s underwear he contemplated for a moment, desperately wishing he could remember the way they’d looked on Charlie’s lean, lithe body.

The device was about as dead as Dustin felt so he plugged it in and went in search of painkillers.

That was step one. Nothing was going to make sense until this headache went away.

He’d learned his lesson over the years about trips to Vegas, so he’d packed several kinds of headache remedies, plus electrolyte powder. He dumped some of that in a bottle of water, shook it, then washed down the pills.

With a shake of his head to try to clear it—which he immediately regretted because that only made it throb worse—he turned his attention to step two: what they’d gotten up to last night.

He needed to figure out if any of it had gone public and if it was going to create problems for him.

Dustin was the last person who was supposed to be out boozing it up in Vegas like a lunatic, especially when he was the face of a franchise and neck-deep in negotiations for the new NHLPA code of conduct.

Fuck!

He’d been studiously avoiding thinking too hard about the ring on his finger for the past few minutes, but he suddenly had a sinking feeling this was a whole lot more than the usual tearing it up with the boys and a great hookup after.

Anxiously fiddling with the metal band, Dustin forced himself to walk over to the nearby table and pick up the manila envelope that lay there. It looked innocent enough but he went a little lightheaded at what was inside.

Well, that looked alarmingly official.

He stared at the ring on his finger again, another flash of memory piercing through the haze in his head. Charlie’s smiling lips forming the words, “I do.”

Dustin’s heart pounded as he reached for his phone.

Still almost dead but at least he had enough battery life to navigate to his social media accounts for some answers.

“What the fuck?” he whispered at the sight of his Instagram notifications.

The number was absurd, way more than he ever got on posts. And why had he been tagged by the official NHL and Toronto Fisher Cats accounts this morning?

Probably acknowledging my award last night, he assured himself, but he didn’t really believe it. He’d won numerous times before and those posts had never blown up this way.

Dustin’s pulse pounded in his ears, staring at the picture the league and the team had reposted from his account. He skimmed the caption: Congratulations on your wedding @DFowler27! We wish you and your Kitten all of the happiness in the world!

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