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KAYDEN

Y ou lost control…

Those three words had eaten away at me since the locker room incident. I couldn’t block out those thoughts any more than I could change the past.

First of all, I didn’t plan that kiss. I know, I know, I’ve admitted to having weird feelings.

I definitely haven’t denied checking him out, but I didn’t mean to kiss my teammate or take him into my arms. No matter what Erik tells you, I never wanted to kiss him.

Since I couldn’t stop those crazy thoughts, I told myself not to act on them.

Look but don’t touch. Get what I’m saying?

But I lost control. Something had ignited a fire, and I chucked all reason out the window.

Now that I’d kissed him, he’d kissed me, we’d kissed each other, I couldn’t take it back. How could I? The cinnamon taste from his mouth haunted my lips. I figured he chewed Big Red gum. I still felt his beard scratch my face. The spicy scent of his cologne still filled my nostrils.

I could retake control by telling Erik that it would never happen again, but that meant thinking about it.

And I would have to admit that it’d happened.

Erik would know that it bothered me too.

That would give him the victory I didn’t need.

On the other hand, I would go crazy if I didn’t say something.

I spotted Erik leaving a classroom in Wilson Hall and flagged him down.

The little wimp barely turned to me before continuing down the hall.

I’m telling you that was the worst job of pretending not to notice someone I’d ever seen.

I sprinted up to him, jumping right in his path, but wouldn’t look directly at him. That would spell trouble.

He paused, grunted, and tried to walk past me, but I blocked him. Again, I averted my eyes so I wouldn’t succumb to temptation.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You know damn well what I want.”

He shook his head and kept on walking. I followed this time.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

He turned his head to look at me like I’d claimed the Earth was flat. “If this is about what happened in the locker room, I?—”

“Of course this is about that. Why wouldn’t it be? You kissed me, for fuck’s sake.”

“That’s ridiculous, Kayden. You kissed me .”

My chest tightened up instantly. You wouldn’t believe the nerve of that kid.

I glanced over my shoulder at the sea of students around us. Oh sure, no one was actively paying attention, but someone must’ve overheard something about the kiss.

Shit! I couldn’t get out of my own way lately.

“Keep it down, would you?” I said.

“You’re the one that wanted to talk to me.”

“Of course I did. I want answers. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what’s going on? You planned that whole thing.”

“I didn’t plan anything. It just sort of happened.”

“You’re saying it was meant to happen?”

“I didn’t say that. You did. Don’t go putting words in my mouth.”

For a moment, I thought I’d fucked up by saying anything to Erik, and not because he just had to argue.

Talking about the kiss reminded me of how incredible his moist lips felt pressed against mine.

It whisked me back to having him in my arms with our tongues lapping over one another.

Memories of his spicy cologne filled my mind, taking me back to the moment, making me feel weightless.

I paused, realizing I felt too warm and comfortable reliving that. I wondered what would’ve come next if I hadn’t broken away from the kiss. Would we have…?

I stopped that thought in its tracks. What’d happened couldn’t be undone, but I wouldn’t miss my chance to reclaim control.

Kind of like now.

That meant I needed to snap out of it fast.

“Ever kissed another guy before?” Erik asked.

“No, bro.”

“I’ve never kissed another guy either.”

“Glad to hear that. I want to tell you something. What happened in?—”

“And when we kissed, I?—”

“Shut up about that already, would you?”

I heard the urgency in my voice. For the first time in my life, I felt desperate.

Then I glanced over my shoulder again, certain someone had overheard us this time.

So far, the students nearby seemed to mind their own business, like maybe they heard conversations like this all the time.

But that didn’t mean anything. I’m Kayden Preston, bound for the NHL, and I couldn’t earn myself a reputation for kissing dudes.

You lost control…

Erik wasn’t the only one who wouldn’t shut up. My inner voice had had plenty to say since the kiss.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, why did you stop me in the hall?” he asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I mean, I don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty. I just want to ask you two questions: Why did you kiss me, and how long were you planning to do it?”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious.”

“I didn’t plan on anything. It just happened. I would’ve been perfectly happy to have you out of my face and not talk to you any more than I have to, but that’s not how things panned out. And don’t act like I was just dying to kiss you.”

“Well, you were. I could tell.”

“You seemed pretty into it yourself, bub.”

“Fuck off.”

“A little threatened, are we, Kayden? When you think about it, I should be asking you the same questions.”

“I’m not gay!”

I spat the words out. This time, kids around us did hear me, which I saw from their stunned looks and arched eyebrows. I know Erik hadn’t said that, but I had to make sure he knew I was straight as an arrow. But if I didn’t shut up, I would dig a hole too deep to escape.

“I’m not saying you are,” he said, “but you’d never know it by the way you kissed me.”

“You’re asking for it, De Ruiter.”

“Tongues and everything.”

“I’m not fucking around, bro.”

“By the way, I’m not gay either.”

“But you kissed me.”

He paused and furrowed his brow, like I’d made the stupidest comment on earth.

“We kissed each other,” he said. “You can’t change that no matter how hard you try. That means something’s going on. Deny it all you want.”

“It was nothing.”

“Figures.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You run away from the truth the moment it threatens you. Like when we kissed. It happened. You can’t pretend like it didn’t. And don’t kid yourself. You had as much to do with that kiss as I did.”

I clapped my hands over my ears for a split second and then removed them. Such fierce refusal to listen would only worsen things.

Did I really want answers? Hell yeah. But I also wanted to put the whole thing on Erik.

He was obviously pining after me. He was the one who would make life on the Larkin Lions hockey team totally awkward.

Worse, he wouldn’t allow me to write my own narrative.

No, wait, he was the one who wouldn’t allow me to set things straight, pun not intended.

“Look,” I said, “as far as I’m concerned, nothing even happened. I just want to go back to a time when my lips had never touched another guy’s. I’m game if you are.”

“I would be doing the same thing, but I know I can’t change the past. That’s the difference between me and you.”

“No, dude, the difference between me and you, is that you get hung up on stupid shit and I don’t.”

“Or maybe I’m not scared to confront things that make me uncomfortable.”

I paused. That little asshole. I wasn’t scared of anything, and I would prove it to him. I’m not a bad guy, though. I’d kept my cool. Anyone else would’ve gotten a fist for saying that.

You lost control. You were the master of the universe until this kid came along and stared deep into your eyes.

“Look, I’ve got a class to get to,” he said. “If you don’t have anything intelligent to say, then I’m out of here.”

I balled my hands into fists and felt my shoulders tense up.

I’d wanted to clear the air, and he’d turned things around…

and forced me to stare into those eyes again.

Oh my God, you could get lost in them. No wonder I’d lost control.

All at once, I found myself wanting the kiss to happen again.

I wanted to take him in my arms. I dreamed of running my hands down his back and squeezing his ass.

Thoughts of lifting his shirt over his head and baring his muscular chest sneaked into my mind.

I couldn’t stop those desires no matter how hard I tried.

When I snapped out of it, I realized those feelings seemed to grow stronger when I was mad at him. The angrier I grew, the more I wanted to kiss him. I couldn’t afford to lose my cool now.

Erik started walking again and I snatched his wrist, anchoring him before me. He tore himself away from me. I looked into his eyes again and then forced myself to look away.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.

“You’re not leaving until I say you can go.”

Or until I’d rewritten history and we both understood that the kiss had never happened. He eyed me with disgust and headed for class. I didn’t try to catch up with him. I’d already created a ginormous mess for myself because I’d demanded answers from him.

“It’s never going to happen again,” I called out to him. “You got that?”

He didn’t turn back to me.

You lost control…

None of this would’ve happened had I kept my cool.

That meant I couldn’t lose control of myself again.

I had to fight those urges with every fiber of my being.

I watched Erik trek down the hall to class, and my eyes fell shut.

Yeah, I’d made my position clear, even if he hadn’t heard my last remark, but I felt dissatisfied.

At that point, did it even matter who got the last word?