Page 6 of Time to Shine

Brooke: Nice math, college boy.

His family liked to roast him for being kind of stupid. It didn’t bother Casey because, well, he was kind of stupid. Not about everything, but about a lot of things. His teammates roasted him for the same thing, as had his friends in college, so Casey owned it.

He and Brooke texted back and forth for a while until she said she was going to bed. The weed had done a decent job settling Casey’s nerves, so he decided to try going to sleep too. He left his food container and empty glass on the coffee table to be dealt with when the kitchen was less dark and creepy, and headed upstairs.

Tomorrow night he’d be in a hotel room in St. Louis, hopefully with someone hot he’d met at a bar. He wouldn’t have to be alone in this house for almost a week.

He turned off the overhead light in his bedroom before he climbed into bed, leaving the lamp on his nightstand on, as always. He watched videos on his phone until he couldn’t hold his eyes open anymore, then fell asleep hoping he didn’t wake until morning.

Chapter Three

“Do you think that we’re the closest thing to knights these days?” Casey wondered aloud. He basically wondered everything aloud.

Lee paused mid-abdominal crunch and stared up at Casey from the floor. “Knights? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“What is he ever talking about,” Clint teased as he picked up a kettle ball.

“Like,” Casey explained, “we wear armor kind of and fight for our cities. Kind of like kingdoms. I know it’s not the same. It’s not like there are dragons to kill anymore.”

“Wait.” Lee sat all the way up. “Did you just say anymore?”

Clint was laughing so hard he had to put the kettle bell down.

“Hey!” snapped West. “Is anyone spotting me right now or what?”

“Sorry,” Casey said, and returned his focus to the man lying on the weight bench in front of him. The gym was busy that morning, even though it was an optional workout before their flight to St. Louis.

“You know that dragons never existed,” Lee said slowly. “Right?”

“I’m spotting Westy right now!”

“Barely,” West grumbled.

“I need to hear you say those words, Hicks.”

“Yeah. Okay. Dragons aren’t real.”

“And were never real.”

“Dinosaurs were real,” Casey argued. “Those were basically the same.”

Clint was howling as he staggered toward the bathroom. “I can’t! Holy fuck.”

“Didn’t you go to college?” West asked.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t learning about that stuff.” Truthfully he hadn’t learned much of anything beyond hockey skills during his two years of college, except that he really liked sex and didn’t like tequila.

“What stuff?” Lee asked. His eyes were wide and almost fearful. “Dragons?”

“No, like...history?”

Lee fell back to the floor with his arms outstretched like he was dead.

“Aw, Casey,” West said sadly, “even for you, this is bleak, dude.”

“I was going to argue that we’re more like gladiators than knights, but my brain just shut down for its own protection,” Lee said.

Ross MacIsaac paused on his journey across the gym to stare down at Lee. “You okay, Captain?”

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