Page 19 of Full Body Hit, Part 1 (Alpha Omega Hockey #5)

“Yeah…I wonder why,” Chase drawled.

“Anyway, you gonna meet up with him?”

“ Uhm …I don’t know. I don’t think he wants to.”

“Do you want to?”

“I mean, yes, obviously, but also not really? I just don’t want to disappoint him. Or be disappointed. This is working for now, you know? There’s the whole…” he gestured to his scent gland.

Chase liked how things were now. He didn’t have to worry about his scent. Didn’t have to wonder if the Alpha was secretly turned off by his lack of pheromones. Didn’t have to see his disappointed face when Chase’s flat smell hit him.

This was safe. No faces, no scents. He could even keep hockey out of it—it wasn’t like he thought Aunix would expose all the videos Chase was sending, but better safe than sorry.

More than anything…Aunix thought Chase was good. Perfect , he kept saying. But Chase wasn’t perfect, not even close. He knew Aunix would figure it out eventually, especially if they met…but he wanted to postpone that heartbreak as much as he could.

Sammy nodded in understanding. “I get you. But…don’t forget that you got on Lookr to build a connection so that sharing your scent wouldn’t be as scary. Obviously do what you’re doing, have fun, get closer to this guy, but don’t let fear stop you from meeting him if it eventually comes to that.”

“Yeah,” Chase mumbled.

Frankly, it wasn’t something Chase wanted to think about yet. If the time came that meeting up was a real possibility, he’d figure it out then.

From the kitchen, Noah’s voice floated out.

“Have you guys stopped talking about dicks now?”

“Oh my God,” Sammy said. “Yes, you big baby.”

Chase laughed as Noah trailed back in, pouting at Sammy. The Alpha was probably afraid of hearing Sammy say something complimentary about some other Alpha’s dick, what with how down bad he was for the Omega.

Not that Sammy seemed to notice. For how smart he was, he was ridiculously oblivious.

Chase wasn’t going to get involved in what those two had going on. The tension would break eventually, and Chase wanted to be as far away as possible when it happened.

***

Chase hated short road trips. It was easier to get into a good routine when they were gone for a week and then had a long stint at home. If they left for just two days? It was too little to adjust, what with the travelling and the short practices in strange arenas.

It was especially difficult when the team messed up the hotel room booking on the last night of the trip and it fell on Chase to share…

With Auston.

Chase blinked at the open hotel door from where he’d been rooting through his suitcase, taking in Auston’s surprised face. Chase had been ordered to share, what with being the rookie, but he’d thought they’d choose Sammy as his temporary roommate. Or Noah, maybe.

Auston stepped inside, letting the door shut behind him. “Thought Noah had gotten the short end of the stick,” he muttered.

“I thought you’d be Sammy. I guess we all lose,” Chase snarked back.

Auston blew a gust of air through his nose like a degenerate bull. He stood in place for a while, clearly considering going and getting Sammy anyway, but they both knew how bad it’d look for Auston, the veteran, to do that.

He took a step forward and froze again. “There’s one bed.”

Chase hated the way he immediately blushed. “The receptionist said they’d bring a cot up if we wanted.”

“Right.” He went straight to the phone to do just that.

Chase chewed on his lip, digging through his suitcase for his pyjamas.

They’d gotten to Atlanta late enough to have gone straight to dinner and then the hotel, and he was exhausted from a day of practice and travel.

The game against the Warriors was the next evening, and Chase needed a good night’s sleep.

With Auston sharing his space.

It wasn’t like the room was tiny, but Auston seemed to fill it up, the heat of his presence burning Chase’s skin.

He could feel it on the delicate skin of his nape, the raised hairs there.

He sifted through his clothes blindly, making a mess of everything as he tried to rip his focus away from Auston.

“You gonna use the bathroom?” Auston asked.

“I was gonna shower.”

“All right. I’ll wait for the cot and go after you.”

That prompted Chase to finally grab his sleep clothes and Dopp kit and escape to the bathroom.

He took a deep breath the second the door was closed behind him. His skin was sensitised, prickling all over, cheeks still hot and red.

He was sharing a room with Auston Mazdaki.

Chase thought of the poster he’d had of him throughout his childhood, before his mom had told him to take it down. He’d looked like a superhero to Chase, skates spraying the camera with ice, his hair tussled back with the movement, eyes dark and piercing.

Chase had spent way, way too much time on his bed staring at that image. He’d be able to describe every detail, had a million versions and a million moments of it in his memory.

Now, the real Auston was a door away, annoyed that he had to be alone with Chase for an extended period of time. Something that would have been a dream when he was younger was nothing but an unpleasant experience now.

Chase swallowed the heavy, rough-edged feeling down, like a stone caught in his throat.

He washed up, taking a little longer in the shower than was probably polite, needing to scrub off the unease crawling all over him.

The cot had already been delivered and set up when Chase finished, Auston sitting on the edge and doing something on his phone. He looked up and set it aside as Chase stepped closer, though.

“You done?” There was no inflection there, but Chase still bristled slightly.

“Yeah.”

“Great.” Auston stood up, grabbing some clothes and toiletries he’d set beside him. “I can take the cot, by the way.”

“Oh,” Chase said, caught off guard. He’d been fully expecting to be relegated to the worst bed—he was the rookie, after all. “Really?”

“Yep.” With that, Auston disappeared into the bathroom.

Chase stood there for a few beats, trying to regain his footing. He hated how Auston oscillated from absolute dick to responsible veteran, like a weird Jekyll and Hyde he couldn’t keep track of.

He put his dirty clothes in a bag in his suitcase and crawled under the sheets with his phone. He didn’t have the energy to even talk to Aunix, but he couldn’t go to sleep without sending him something.

Charlie

Night daddy

Hope I dream about you

He scrolled through Instagram, trying to relax, but he tensed again the second Auston reappeared. He curled into a tighter ball, wishing he had his nest and then immediately feeling stupid for such a childish desire.

Auston shut off the main lights and got into his own bed. The cot made a loud, protesting noise, metal scraping against metal.

“Jesus Christ,” Auston grumbled.

Chase peeked out above the thick sheets draped over him, watching as Auston tried to settle, the bed protesting every move.

That thing was a moment away from collapsing.

Chase sat up further. “We should switch, I think.”

“Nah,” Auston dismissed. The cot squealed as he moved slightly.

Chase frowned. “Don’t be dumb, that thing is gonna break if you sleep on it.”

“It’s fine.”

Chase huffed. God, why was he so stubborn? Chase was smaller and weighed significantly less—that thing was obviously not made with Auston’s bulk in mind.

“Auston—”

“It’s . Fine .”

“Oh my God,” Chase muttered. “Fine. You can sleep in the bathtub when that thing breaks.”

Chase slapped his hand over one of the switches beside the bed. The main light turned on. He clicked it off and tried the next one. That turned on the hallway light. He tried the next one. Finally, the room plunged into darkness.

“Smooth,” Auston’s voice drawled.

Chase bit his lip, annoyance burning away at his gut. He chose, very maturely, not to respond.

Stupid Auston, with his stupid face and eyebrows and broad shoulders.

The shadow of night settled over them. Chase was too wound up to sleep. He kept replaying the last hour, dissecting Auston’s every word, every…

His thoughts fogged over. He slipped under, and—

There was someone attacking him. Attacking the room. He’d been dreaming, maybe—he’d been at a party and was trying to talk to people, but his teeth kept falling out. It was so embarrassing, someone had shouted, something had crashed—

A long groan sounded.

Wait, no, this wasn’t a dream. Chase went for the switch by the bed. The room flooded with light, piercing Chase’s eyes, and he fumbled until it turned off again and he got the right one, a dim glow settling over everything.

He blinked in confusion. What the hell had happened?

“Fuck.”

Chase’s gaze followed the noise to see Auston getting up from the floor, hand on the small of his back. The cot was half-collapsed, the end of the mattress on the ground. Auston, Chase now noticed, was just in his briefs and a shirt.

Chase gaped. Fuck, that bulge was—

“What the fuck,” Auston cursed. “That thing almost killed me.”

“Well,” Chase said, focusing his attention on what it should be on. “I did tell you.”

Auston rolled his eyes. “Really? You’re ‘I told you so-ing’ me?”

“I mean…”

“Forget it. I can just get this thing on the floor completely and sleep like that.”

Chase huffed incredulously. He checked his phone. 2:42. Great . “Fine, do what you want.”

He lay down again, leaving the lights on. The rattling of the cot filled the silence. There was screeching. Rattling. Screeching. Minutes passed. Auston began cursing.

Chase opened his eyes and leaned up on his elbow. “Problem?”

Auston didn’t even look at him. “This fucking thing won’t fold. It’s fucking…stuck.” The last word was punctuated by another little scream from the cot.

Auston let out a loud burst of air, sitting on his heels and glaring at the offending piece of metal.

Chase rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t believe he was about to say this. His heart beat in his ears as he opened his mouth.

“Just get in the bed. It’s big enough. We’re only here for a night, anyway.”

Auston’s gaze flickered to him and then away, eyebrows low and knotted together. “That’s not a good idea.”

Chase gestured wildly with one hand. “Fine. Suit yourself. I’m going to sleep.”

With that, he burrowed back into bed, sliding to the side closest to his charging phone and shutting his eyes.

He kept his breaths even, trying to calm his pulse. It was fine. They could sleep in the same bed. It wasn’t like Chase was doing anything wrong—Aunix would understand if Chase explained.

Not that he would , because that would bring up some questions about his job he couldn’t answer, but there was nothing to tell anyway.

Chase had gone so deep into his freakout that he’d forgotten what he was worrying about, startling out of it when the bed dipped.

Chase cracked an eye open. His back was to the other side of the bed, but he could feel the sheets move, rubbing on his skin, the moment of cold air and then the unmistakable presence of another person in bed with him.

God. Fuck . He was in bed with Auston. The movement of the blankets was sending shivers through him, knowing that it was because of Auston.

“You can turn the light off now,” Auston grumbled.

Chase flinched and did as asked. Everything turned black.

Chase lay there on his side, curved like a broken eggshell cast aside. He was too afraid to move even as his muscles bunched up.

What if he shifted and brushed against Auston? What if Auston could suddenly sense Chase’s crush—his past crush—and was disgusted?

His mind spun until it fell, exhausted, into sleep.