Page 66 of Time to Shine

“That would be cool,” Casey said with a grin.

Landon pressed his lips together, and then he gave up and let himself smile instead. He wanted to live in Casey’s head. It seemed fun.

They ate and Casey chatted throughout the meal, marveling at how good the pasta was, clearly proud of himself.

“We’re a good team,” Casey said happily.

The thing was, that against all odds, they were a good team. Casey was the first person Landon had been this comfortable with since...well. Since Erin.

Not that he was comparing Casey to his sister. No one would ever be able to replace Erin in that way, but he didn’t want Casey to either. What Casey did was fill some of the emptiness inside Landon with something...nice. He made Landon feel like someone worth knowing.

He couldn’t say any of that, so instead he said, “You have tomato sauce on your chin.”

“Where?” Casey’s tongue darted out and began sweeping the area below his bottom lip. Ridiculous, because he had a napkin right next to him. Landon had put it there.

“No,” Landon said. “Lower.”

Casey made an inquisitive noise that sounded like “Here?” while he kept searching with his tongue.

“Jesus Christ,” Landon muttered, and reached out to swipe at the spot with his thumb. So now Casey had him doing two things he would normally never do: touch someone else’s face on purpose, and wipe away a gross food blob with his bare flesh.

The smile he got from Casey made it worth it. Landon busied himself with wiping his thumb off on his own napkin, and tried not to think about how he’d almost—almost—licked the sauce off his thumb.

Who even was he anymore?

“Did you talk to your parents today?” Casey asked.

“Yes. This morning.”

“Did they watch the game the other night?”

“Yeah. Not live, but they recorded it. They were pretty pumped.” Landon smiled at the memory of both his parents talking over each other in their excitement during the phone call. He’d never had a phone call with them like that before, and he wanted to keep winning just so he’d get more of them.

“I guess there are probably lots of parents that don’t watch games live, right? I know Sylvia, Lee’s wife, never watches the games. She can’t handle it. She watches highlights later.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I think she’s looking forward to Lee’s retirement, not that I think that’s gonna be soon. Dude’s a machine.” Casey exhaled. “Anyway, I hate thinking about retirement. I want to play hockey forever.”

Landon knew, as a goalie, that he’d be lucky to still be playing at Lee’s age. Hell, he’d be lucky to still be playing by his thirtieth birthday. “Same,” he said.

“It was rough for my dad, when he retired. He kind of shut down for a while. I think he was depressed. Then he got that commentator gig in Tampa, and he liked that.”

“But he stopped doing it?”

“Yeah. He announced to the family a few summers ago that he wanted to step back and see what life was like without being tied to a hockey team’s schedule.”

Landon almost shuddered. Having his life scheduled was possibly his favorite part of being a hockey player. “How does he like it?”

“He loves it. Mom and him have been traveling all over the place, living it up.”

“Do they watch your games?”

“Yeah. All the time. Usually they come to Calgary at least once each season to see some games, and they always go when we play in Tampa.”

“That’s cool. Is it hard for Dougie Hicks to cheer against Tampa?”

Casey laughed. “He doesn’t.”

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