Page 11 of Puck Wild (Storm Warning #1)

Chapter eight

Evan

N o singing from the shower. No cabinet doors slamming. No mysterious objects appearing in the butter compartment.

I'd been tracking Jake's infractions for three hours—a mental spreadsheet that updated automatically every time he moved through the apartment.

The current tally sat at zero, either a statistical anomaly or evidence that someone who understood the basic principles of shared living had replaced my roommate.

The laptop on my knees displayed a practice schedule that didn't need updating, but I kept my fingers poised over the keyboard anyway. Productive. Focused. Not acting as a behavioral scientist, monitoring the domestic patterns of Jake Riley.

The muted TV flickered with highlights from a Leafs game, blue and white jerseys blurring across the screen in silent choreography. I'd turned the sound down twenty minutes ago when Jake disappeared into the kitchen, claiming he needed to "make amends with gravity."

What unsettled me wasn't the chaos—I'd learned to navigate that, even budget for it in my mental calculations. It was the absence of disarray that sent warning signals through my nervous system. Jake Riley's quiet reminded me of the drop in barometric pressure ahead of a thunderstorm.

The apartment still smelled slightly of my stress-baking session from yesterday—scents of cinnamon and brown sugar hanging in the air. I'd made three dozen cookies after our kitchen incident, probably two dozen more than necessary, but excess was a logical outcome of emotion clouding judgment.

I'd folded up the napkin poem and tucked it into my wallet.

I hadn't meant to keep it. It was on the counter after breakfast, abandoned like so many of Jake's belongings—four lines of hurried, messy, real handwriting.

Miss the way you move like music Even when you're just making tea Alphabetized your cinnamon Never alphabetized me

I should have thrown it away. Filed it under "Random Jake Nonsense" and moved on with my day. Instead, I'd folded it carefully and slipped it behind my driver's license.

I told myself it was for future reference, but the truth was more straightforward: I didn't want to forget how it made me feel.

A dish clattered in the kitchen. Jake was cleaning. The sound pattern suggested a systematic approach rather than chaotic damage control.

I typed a random sentence into my practice notes and deleted it immediately. I couldn't concentrate.

Footsteps approached the living room. I continued staring at the computer and tracked Jake's movement through peripheral vision. He appeared in the doorway holding a dish towel.

"Apologizing in your language this time." He raised the towel slightly.

I looked up. His eyes were darker than usual, more brown than their typical hazel-green, and focused intently on me.

"I noticed."

Harmony: TBD

The response to my note was still stuck to the refrigerator door—written in Jake's loose scrawl, complete with a heart replacing the 'o' in harmony. It was ridiculous. Childish. And yet, impossible to ignore.

"You spelled harmony with a heart instead of an 'o,'" I said.

He responded with a self-conscious grin. "A personal growth moment."

I stood and stretched my arms overhead. It was time to make some afternoon tea.

The kitchen was pristine. Jake stood at the counter, folding the dish towel with surprising precision—not my level of geometric perfection, but close enough.

Every surface gleamed under the overhead lights.

The sink was empty, and the faucet was polished to eliminate water spots.

Even the coffee maker had been wiped down.

He'd done more than apologize. He'd attempted to speak my language fluently.

The cookie jar sat on the counter beside the stove, with the ceramic lid slightly askew. Thirty-six cookies inside—I'd counted them twice during cooling, ensuring even distribution of chocolate chips and optimal texture consistency.

They were good cookies. Perfect cookies, if I were being honest. They required precise timing and quality ingredients.

Jake noticed me staring at the jar. Without ceremony, I lifted the lid, selected a cookie from the top layer, and held it out toward Jake.

"Here."

He blinked. "Wait. Isn't this... illegal?"

It was a violation of established protocol. The cookie jar had been off-limits to Jake since he moved in. When I offered him cookies, I placed them in a separate Tupperware container.

"Consider it off the record," I said.

Jake stared at the cookie in my palm. He took it carefully, fingers brushing mine for half a second. The contact lasted longer than necessary, or maybe I imagined that.

Instead of his usual performance—an exaggerated bite and theatrical appreciation—Jake raised the cookie to his mouth and took a small bite. His eyes closed briefly, and I watched his jaw work as he chewed, savoring the texture and flavor.

He swallowed and opened his eyes. "These are really good."

"Thank you."

"No, I mean..." He paused, searching for words. "I mean, they're perfect. The cornflakes add something I wasn't expecting. Sweet, but with texture. Complex."

Goosebumps rose on my forearms. He gave my cookies a thoughtful review, treating them like they deserved consideration. It shouldn't have meant anything, but it meant everything.

"I stress-bake." Immediately after I said it, I bit my lip, regretting my words.

"Good stress, or bad stress?"

"Is there a difference?"

Jake took another bite. "Good stress makes better cookies."

He finished his cookie and brushed crumbs from his fingers. "So, what happens now?"

We both migrated to the living room without discussion, settling onto opposite ends of the couch with safe distance between us, or so I thought. It wasn't defensive. It was comfortable.

Jake tucked one leg under himself. I sat with both feet on the floor, laptop closed on the coffee table in front of me, hands resting on my knees like I was attending a formal meeting.

Outside, Thunder Bay settled into its evening rhythm.

Wind off Lake Superior rattled the windows, and the smell of the cold water seeped in around the edges, signaling approaching winter.

A freight train called out from somewhere near the port, its horn echoing across the downtown core in long, mournful notes.

Jake broke the silence first. "What changed?"

I stared at his face, focusing on his hair falling in waves across his forehead. "What do you mean?"

"You hated me. Last week, you updated spreadsheets about my sock infractions and gave me looks that could freeze antifreeze. Now you're offering me unmarked baked goods." He gestured toward the kitchen. "That's not incremental progress. That's a complete system overhaul."

It was a perceptive observation.

"I was wrong." The words came out in a tentative tone. I rarely admitted personal failures.

"About what?"

"I didn't think you could actually play."

Jake shifted restlessly. "You're not the only one."

"I thought you were all performance. I thought the hockey was just another stage for the Jake Riley show."

"And now?"

I considered the question, thinking about how he'd defended me from Murphy's slash.

He'd positioned himself between me and a potential threat without hesitation or calculation.

That hadn't been performance. It was instinct—the same instinct that made him a better player than his reputation suggested.

"I think I missed something important. You don't play like someone who's performing. You play like someone who's trying to prove something."

Jake laughed, a soft, brittle chuckle. "Story of my life. Always trying to prove something."

"What are you trying to prove?"

He was quiet momentarily, drumming his fingers against his leg.

"That I exist, I guess. That I'm more than the space I take up.

" He shifted position, pulling his other leg onto the couch to face me fully.

"I grew up in a house with four kids. Big family, everyone loud and competing for attention.

My parents are good people, but they had this system—squeakiest wheel and all. "

I nodded, encouraging him to continue.

"So I learned to be more… there. Funnier. A lot more drama. Whatever it took to cut through the noise."

I swallowed hard. I understood the mechanics of performance as survival. I'd perfected my version with control instead of chaos.

"That sounds exhausting," I said.

"Yeah, well. At least people remember you when you've exhausted them."

Next, I surprised myself with my own confession.

"I had a foster brother once, Andy. He was maybe thirteen when I got placed there—older than me, bigger. He had this habit of breaking things deliberately. Not out of anger. He did it to get attention."

Jake's fingers stopped drumming. He leaned forward and listened.

"Plates, mostly. He'd wash dishes and then drop them, insisting it was an accident. It wasn't. He'd time it perfectly when the house got too quiet, and the foster parents focused on something else. The crash brought everyone running."

"Did it work?"

"For about ten minutes. Next would be a lecture and maybe the loss of some privilege. Still, every adult in the house paid attention to him for those ten minutes. They asked if he was hurt, cleaned up his mess, and checked that he was okay."

"Wow."

I continued my story. "I hated him for it. I hated the noise, how he turned every quiet moment into a crisis. I thought he was selfish. Destructive."

"But now?"

"Now I wonder if I got it wrong. Maybe he didn't want to break things. Maybe he only wanted to be seen."

Jake's voice was barely louder than a whisper when he spoke. "Sometimes being seen and being heard are close to the same thing."

"Even when they see you for the wrong reasons?"

"Better than not being seen at all."

Outside, the freight train called again, its horn echoing off the lake and the downtown buildings before fading into the Thunder Bay night.

We were both quiet again. Jake shifted closer on the couch, not dramatically but incrementally. Gradual. Inevitable. His knee brushed against mine through the fabric of my sweatpants.

Moving away might have been a good idea. I could have maintained the careful distance that kept us functional as roommates and teammates. Instead, I listened to Jake's shallow breathing and watched his eyes gaze at my mouth before looking back up.

His voice was low. "So, is this the part where we pretend we're still only teammates?"

He was perceptive again, and I didn't dare answer the question truthfully. I considered saying something rational about boundaries and complications, but Jake moved too fast.

His hand cupped the side of my face, thumb brushing against the faded line where the puck had caught me. The touch was gentle, giving me a last opportunity to pull away.

I didn't want to. I wanted to lean into the warmth of his palm and stop thinking about consequences for once in my carefully managed life.

When his lips touched mine, it was tentative at first. Soft. I inhaled sharply through my nose, giving into Jake's gravitational pull.

The kiss deepened, and his right hand gripped the fabric of my hoodie, pulling me closer. I kissed him back, hungrier than I expected, using all the bottled up energy from pretending I wasn't affected by his laugh, his humming in the shower, or his shirtless mornings.

I gripped his shoulders, kneading the lean muscle beneath his t-shirt. He made a slight sound against my mouth—not quite a moan but close enough to send electricity shooting up my spine.

Time froze while our tongues danced together. Jake raked his fingers into my hair.

All of my measured control fell away. His teeth caught my bottom lip.

RING.

The sound cut through the moment. Sharp. Jarring. Destroying the spell we'd woven around ourselves.

"Fuck," Jake cursed against my mouth, the word vibrating between us. His lips were slightly swollen and eyes dark with an expression I'd never seen before. Wrecked in the best possible way.

RING.

"Fucking hell." He fumbled for his phone, which had fallen between the couch cushions. Reality started creeping back in around the edges of our cocoon.

I sat back, immediately missing the warmth of Jake's body while I watched him frantically dig around the cushions. I could still taste him on my lips.

"Got it," Jake said, pulling the phone free and glancing at the screen. His expression shifted from frustrated to resigned. "It's Pickle."

RING.

"This late?"

"Kid has a gift for timing." Jake swiped to answer the call. "This better be life or death, Pickle."

I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but I watched Jake's face cycle through disbelief, amusement, and weary acceptance in thirty seconds.

"Your car door is what? Frozen shut?" Jake ran his free hand through his already disheveled hair. "How are you even—no, don't answer that. Are you hurt?"

A pause. Jake's mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile.

"Okay, but why didn't you call a locksmith? Or AAA? Or literally anyone else?" Another pause. "Right. Because I'm experienced with emergencies. That's not... okay, fine. Where are you?"

The last shreds of the moment dissolved around us. Jake shifted away from me, his attention divided between the phone call and internal calculations about rescue logistics.

"No, do not try to climb out through the sunroof. Just... stay put. I'll be there in twenty minutes." Jake ended the call. "Duty calls. Rookie rescue mission."

"Of course."

He ran both hands through his hair, trying to tame the damage my fingers had done, but only succeeded in making it worse. The result was charmingly disheveled, like he'd been thoroughly kissed on his roommate's couch.

Jake explained the situation to me. "Kid's trapped in his car in the Walmart parking lot. He says the door handle froze, and instead of calling anyone with actual problem-solving skills, he decided I was his best option."

"Sounds about right for Pickle."

"Yeah, well." Jake shoved his hands into his pockets, then immediately pulled them out again. "He's got snacks, so it's not life-threatening, but I can't leave a teammate stranded."

An awkward pause stretched between us. Jake hovered near the coffee table, weight shifting from foot to foot like he was waiting for permission to leave.

I didn't offer it.

He seemed to understand my silence, or at least accept it. He grabbed his jacket from where he'd draped it over the back of the kitchen chair.

"Later, Spreadsheet."

"Later, Vegas."

The apartment was too still after he left. I stared at the closed door for a long time before returning to the couch. After I sat, I didn't reopen my laptop. I didn't move at all.