Page 3 of Puck Wild (Storm Warning #1)

Chapter three

Jake

I wasn’t snooping.

Not really.

I was just… walking past the bathroom door when Evan stepped out in nothing but a towel, hair damp and dark against his forehead, steam curling off him like he’d been boiled to perfection.

The towel sat low on his hips—too low. His chest wasn’t gym-bro shredded, but solid in a way that made you think of oak trees and defensive zone coverage. He moved with that same precision he had on the ice—no wasted motion, no hint that he knew someone was watching.

I told myself to keep moving. Instead, my feet rooted to the spot while my brain took an unscheduled detour into Imaginary Scenarios That Would Definitely Get Me Punched.

Evan turned back to the bathroom and bent over to pick something up. My pulse raced.

“Need something?” His voice was calm.

Busted.

I smirked, default defense mechanism engaged. “Yeah. Directions to the nearest monastery. I need to repent.”

He stood and the corner of his mouth twitched—dangerously close to a smile—but he just walked past me toward his room. The scent of soap and cookies trailed after him, and I decided I was doomed.

And then there was the fridge. The first sock was an accident.

I swear.

I'd been digging for a protein bar in the fridge's bottom drawer, where Evan put them—bottom drawer, mind you, the one that exists solely to trap forgotten things in the shape of mystery greens—and it must've fallen out of my hoodie pocket.

Cotton. Blue. Maybe a little damp from the post-practice locker room steam bath.

But then there was a second one.

And a third.

And by the time Evan found the fourth—lying beside a carton of oat milk like it had laid an egg—he didn't say anything. He held it up between two fingers like a crime scene exhibit and blinked at me over the kitchen island.

I grinned. "Weird. That doesn't look like oats."

His eye twitched.

We had reached DEFCON 2 in the apartment roommate standoff.

I didn't think I was that bad. I showered daily, usually. I kept my gear in the hall closet, mostly. And yeah, I sang in the shower, but only the bangers. If hearing me belt "Puck Life" with conditioner dripping into my eyes didn't improve your day, you're lying to yourself.

Evan disagreed.

His latest spreadsheet was titled, I shit you not, Jake Management Plan – Shared Space Edition . One night, I found it open on his laptop, and I took a peek while my bagel toasted. It had conditional formatting—drop-down menus. There was a heat map of disturbance zones.

At the top:

Socks in Fridge: 4

Late-Night Singing (Includes "Puck Life," Blink-182, and “random falsetto bullshit”): 5

Podcast Volume Violation (2–4 a.m. window): 7

Seven? That seemed generous. I was pretty sure it had been more.

I considered making my own spreadsheet to see how he liked me doing the monitoring. Column A: Times Evan Looked at Me Like I Was a Garbage Fire. Column B: Times I Enjoyed It .

This morning's entry? Both columns full.

He'd been scrambling eggs. No music or talking, only the tiny click of a spatula on the nonstick pan and the kettle gurgling to life.

I walked into the kitchen in low-slung sweats and no shirt because hey, when the thermostat's set to glacial and your abs are finally poking through again, why wouldn't you?

I stretched. Reached up to the top cabinet. Slowly.

Evan didn't speak, but he stared at my reflection in the chrome toaster.

Drops of water from the shower trailed down my chest, a line from collarbone to waistband. When he returned to focusing on his eggs, his jaw was tight, and his ears had turned the faintest shade of pink.

"Morning." My voice was low and husky.

He didn't reply. He adjusted the stove heat by half a notch and scrambled like his life depended on it.

I slid onto a stool at the island, watching him stir. "So, big day for me. Thinking of breaking the world record for shirtless fridge sock placement. Want in?"

Still no answer.

I leaned forward. "Evan, buddy. You can't keep updating my crime sheet without letting me mount a defense."

He paused, giving me a long, unreadable look. "Defense requires a coherent strategy."

"Oh, I have a strategy. It's called havoc."

"Ah, a surrender to entropy."

I held my hands out, palms up. "And yet, somehow, I'm still here. Showering. Singing. Surviving."

He turned back to the stove. "Some of us are trying to eat breakfast."

I leaned my chin on my palm. "You're cute when you're grumpy."

That earned me nothing but the clink of eggs hitting a plate. Still, I didn't miss how his hand hesitated as he reached for the fork.

We sat in silence. He chewed mechanically, and I watched, annoying him on purpose.

I loved how he didn't flinch.

Not yet.

***

The thing about chirping is that it's an art.

You can't merely throw words around and hope they land. You've got to time it—right between a pass and a pivot, or right when the guy's just winded enough to hate you but not enough to murder you. Knowing your audience is fundamental.

That's where I made my first mistake.

I thought Evan Carter could take a little chirp. A wink. Maybe a compliment that didn't sound like one.

Spoiler: He couldn't.

We were halfway through a mid-week scrimmage, and I was trying to crawl out from under the glare Rusk had given me before we hit the ice.

"You want to be more than a goddamn mascot? Prove it."

Mascot? Maybe I should try to spice things up.

Evan had just picked off a pass and started gliding backward with stupidly effortless grace. Controlled. Predictable. Perfect posture, even when hunting blood.

I coasted up beside him, dropped into a crouch, and flashed a grin. "Nice poke check, but your glare's stealing the show."

I expected a twitch. Maybe a reluctant smirk. Hell, even a rolled eye.

What I got was a stare that could have frozen Lake Superior in July.

"Skate," he snapped. "Don't talk."

Cold.

Not frosty or mildly annoyed.

Antarctic.

I almost tripped over my own blade.

He peeled off toward the boards. I watched his back for half a second longer than I should've, then turned just in time to catch a puck in the shin.

"Fuck—"

Coach blew his whistle. "Maybe if you stopped flirting and started forechecking, Riley!"

Swear to God, he almost said foreskin.

Laughter rippled across the bench. Pickle erotically stroked his stick. Hog yelled, "Let the boy dream!" and started slow-clapping like this was a romcom, not real life.

I skated back to my zone, breath tight in my chest, vision swimming a little. I hated that Evan's voice in my head— Skate, don't talk —was louder than the whistle.

And yeah, maybe I should've shut up. Maybe the chirp was too much. Perhaps everything I did was too much.

But what the hell else did I have?

I wasn't the guy with the plus-minus stats, silky passes, or the stoic jawline that made the team group chat go feral. I was the guy with a viral song and a reputation for kissing people on ice. If I didn't play the part, what was left?

Nothing.

All I'd have was a half-healed shoulder and a history of spectacularly public self-destruction.

I stole a glance down the line. Evan was sitting on the bench, breathing slowly and steadily, wiping his visor with the corner of his jersey. His hair was damp and flat from his helmet, and he looked like he hadn't smiled in years.

He was watching me, and his eyes were a little less frosty, maybe slightly disappointed. That was worse.

My legs were like rubbery udon noodles when practice ended, and my ego was roadkill.

I sat in the far corner of the locker room, towel around my neck, and gear half-off. The chatter buzzed on without me—Pickle reenacting my failed chirp, someone arguing about sauce passes, and Hog humming the "Puck Life" chorus like a hymn.

I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. A memory came back, baring its teeth.

We filmed the rose steal scene from Love on Ice at some fake chalet in Banff, despite an on-air in-show claim we were still in Toronto. There were candles. Fog machines. A rink carved into the mountain backdrop like some Hallmark fever dream.

I wasn't supposed to do anything big. I'd already told the producers I was done—they'd eliminated the guy I liked two days earlier, and I didn't want to fake anything else.

They smiled and nodded and handed me a script anyway.

"Jake, babe, it's an important visual. A moment. We'll get a confessional from you later to explain the nuance."

They didn't get the nuance.

What they got was me on one knee, sequined jersey glinting, holding a rose while dramatic music swelled. The guy I gave it to looked stunned—because he was.

They hadn't warned him. They made it look like I'd stolen him from someone else. Suddenly, I was the manipulative wildcard screwing over good-hearted contestants for airtime.

The edit went viral before the credits finished rolling.

I was a meme. A joke. A bisexual cliché in glitter and eyeliner who cried on cue and kissed whoever the camera pointed at.

People online called me a fame-hungry narcissist. A "hockey fuckboy with delusions of RuPaul." One guy DM'd me a picture of a dumpster on fire and asked, "Is this your brand?"

I didn't reply.

I watched the trailer drop in real time with my phone vibrating off the table and my mother texting, "Why are you in makeup? Call me."

I never got to explain it to her before the scene hit People's "Notable Coming Out Scenes of the Season" list.

What would anybody do in my situation? I panicked.

And I made "Puck Life."

The beat still haunts me. Four-note synth loop, over-compressed bass, and my voice auto-tuned into digital confetti. "Ice Ice Baby" on steroids.

"Drop the puck, make it quick—hat trick in the mix—skates on fleek, baby, read my lips…"

We filmed the video in my buddy's garage. Smoke machine, flood lights, bedazzled jersey from the back of my closet. I poured a Pbr on my helmet like it was champagne. I lip-synced to the chorus while standing on a milk crate.

I thought I was reclaiming something.