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CHAPTER ONE

brENNEN

“Fuck me.”

The buzzer sounded and the screaming fans shook the rafters.

Unfortunately for us, they weren’t cheering on behalf of our Rainier State Lumberjacks.

Tonight’s only saving grace was blocking the last shot of the night at the buzzer.

I hadn’t been so lucky with the other three.

We trooped back to the locker room after the game to pack our stuff and get back on the road home.

“Gentlemen, we did our best. That’s all I want from you, but if you could win a fucking game once in a while, that would be pretty goddamn outstanding too.

” Coach Hampton’s eyes blazed while the vein on his temple came dangerously close to bursting, but he managed to get himself back under control.

He split his clipboard and finished out his tantrum by storming out to rage in the visiting coaches’ area.

“That went well,” I murmured to Jonas, a player on our defensive line.

His only response was a snort and a cuff on my jaw.

After playing for four years, I was ready to be done with this college and get on with the rest of my life.

There were no delusions about going to the show or even semi-pro.

I’d be shocked if anyone on our team even made it adjacent to professional standing, but every league needed a loser. We were ours.

“Fuck! Watch where you’re going.” The shouts across the room caught my attention. It was one of the equipment guys sprawled on the floor with an armload of towels scattered around him. “If you can’t do your fucking job, get another one.”

“Hey, Wojak, lay the fuck off. It was an accident.” The cocky freshman whipped his head around and gave me a death stare. “What? You got shit to say?”

“He needs to watch where he’s going.”

“And you need to learn some fucking manners.” Cooper Ellis, one of the work-study students who worked with our equipment manager, was on his hands and knees gathering the towels.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there. I’ll go get some more towels. Let me just get these up first so they don’t get messed up.” Ellis’s voice was tight.

“How the hell are they gonna get messed up more on the floor?”

Yeah, that was enough. I stood up from the bench and walked to the other side of the room. Ellis crab-walked out of my way as I approached, but the fucking freshman didn’t move a muscle.

“I said you need to learn some manners.”

“You gonna teach me?” The belligerence in Wojak’s voice was obvious, but so was the quiver.

He might be used to pushing people around, but he sure as fuck wasn’t gonna do it with Ellis when I was around.

Ellis was just about the sweetest kid out there.

All he did was try his best and stay out of our way.

He didn’t need some jacked-up freshman who thought he was hot shit around campus making his life harder.

“Whoa, guys, knock your shit off. Wojak, quit being a dick. Tate, put yours away.”

“But I know you like it,” I answered the captain.

“I’m gonna let you save it for someone else. I just need you to put it away so we can get dressed, get the fuck out of here, and catch a bus.”

Ellis was still on the floor, waiting for our dick-measuring contest to be over before he finished his job. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. He just likes to yell.”

“He doesn’t need to yell at you.” Ellis’s shy smile was enough to remind me it had been a solid week since I’d gotten laid. My dick had thoughts, and they all centered around Ellis.

Coach Hampton had thought we had a real chance of winning against this team, and I’d spent every waking minute in the gym and on the ice doing drills and working on strength training.

It hadn’t been enough, and I didn’t want to end my final series with a losing record.

Correction: I didn’t want to end on an embarrassingly low losing record.

The winning record ship had already sailed.

I extended my hand to Ellis, which he grabbed to pull himself up. His much smaller hand fit perfectly in mine. It was smooth and soft, contrasting with my calloused one. No amount of lotion would take away all the stick handling I’d done for the last eighteen years of my life.

“Guys, hurry the fuck up. We need to get back on the bus,” Coach Hampton shouted from the hallway. Ellis gave me a nod and then hurried on with his task of delivering towels to the shower room, giving me a chance to watch his exit. Damn , his ass was tight.

Shit, the minute we got home, I needed to go out and find someone to get some of this excess energy out of me.

The nonstop working out and playing might be fine for those who planned to go pro, but for me, it was just killing my social life at the end of a losing season.

But if tonight’s highlight was watching Ellis’s ass walk away from me, I’d take my wins where I could find them.

“Ellis, come sit with me.” Players got on first and situated themselves while the staff did last-minute luggage and equipment checks. The plus side was that we always got to pick our seats, but that meant the worst ones—the seats closest to the restroom—were usually the only ones left available.

“It’s okay. I can go look for a seat in the back.” Ellis glanced toward the back of the bus, tilting his head in that general direction. I jumped out of my seat, blocked the aisle, helped myself to his overnight bag, and put it in the overhead compartment.

“You could, or hear me out, you could take the seat I offered because no one else is sitting there and you need a seat. Do you want the aisle or the window?”

Ellis sighed and looked toward the window.

“You really don’t need to share. I can sit in the back.

It’s fine.” My wait continued. Before my parents got married, my mom was a teacher who believed in the power of silent wait time.

She could outwait anyone, and I’d learned from the best. “I like the window, but I don’t want to take it from you if that’s the one you like. ”

“I asked which one you wanted for a reason. Scoot on over because right now, I’m blocking traffic.

” Ellis turned around swiftly at my words and looked horrified.

“I’m joking. No one minds waiting while you get in your seat.

” Over Ellis’s head, one of the trainers gave me a look that said I was full of shit.

My response was a shrug. It wouldn’t kill him to wait.

My patience was partially rewarded when Ellis finally slipped into the seat.

Unfortunately, it was the aisle one. I gave him a pointed look and jerked my head toward where I’d been sitting originally.

“Scoot means scoot.” Ellis pressed himself against the window until only about half the seat was used.

Ellis wasn’t small by conventional standards, medium build and around five-seven, but compared to my six-three overgrown frame, he seemed tiny. I was fascinated by his big eyes and wild riot of curly dark hair. The little freckles that dotted across his nose made me want to play connect the dots.

“Dude, it’s fine. You can use the armrest and the rest of your seat.”

“But if I do, then you won’t have enough room.”

“I’ll take the front position, and you take the back. Legs can touch because we’re adults.”

The exhaustion from tonight’s game hit me hard.

Hockey may have been my life since I first strapped on a pair of skates at four years old, but the aches and pains were a serious fucking downside.

Brynn wasn’t the highest-ranked school in our division, but they’d played hard tonight and given their fans plenty to cheer about.

A dumb joke popped into my head, and my chuckling caused Ellis to give me a sharp look.

“What’s so funny?” His defensiveness pissed me off. I wasn’t the team captain, but if any of the guys were being a dick, I’d want to know about it. And Rafe, our captain, would too.

“I was just thinking that the Ice Dragons burned down the Lumberjacks.”

“Ha.” His chuckle stroked my ego more than it should. “The team wasn’t terrible tonight.”

“We lost by three. Three that I let in the net.”

“The line should’ve blocked those shots before they had a chance to score.

” The fierceness of Ellis’s pronouncement surprised me.

The thought was appreciated even though our loss came down to the team’s lack of focus, which included me.

“Did they,” he paused dramatically before continuing, “smoke you?”

“Oh nice. How about…? Well, shit, I’ve run out of jokes.” My admission earned a soft huff of laughter from Ellis.

“You had a good run.”

“Run of one?”

“Better than zero.”

“Oh yeah, I cooked,” I added with a roll of my eyes.

“No crumbs, no splinters?”

As the bus moved out of the parking lot, the surrounding noise died down. Most of the guys put in their earbuds and listened to music or just went to sleep. I knew I should use the time to catch up on my sleep or read ahead for class, but Ellis was too much of a temptation to ignore.

He wasn’t actively paying attention to me, and why that bothered me wasn’t anything I wanted to think about.

Instead, he spent his time staring out the window into the dark landscape he couldn’t see.

Every once in a while, he’d pluck at his pants, smooth them down, and then repeat it all over again.

Did he vape? He couldn’t keep his fingers away from his mouth.

Despite my encouragement to spread out, Ellis made himself small in the seat next to mine.

Every attempt at small talk caused him to curl up more.

He’d be a pretzel soon. Rather than continue to torture him with attempts to chat, I pulled out my phone to watch a movie.

When I glanced over at him, I caught him looking to see what I was scrolling through.

“Where’s your phone?”

A blush crept up his neck. “So dumb. It’s in my backpack in the luggage compartment so I wouldn’t forget it.”

“And you forgot it.”

“And I forgot it. But in my defense, I thought California would be warmer in December.”