Page 59 of Puck Your Feelings

"Hey, can you—"

I look up.

Big mistake.

Kane is standing in the doorway.

Wet.

Wearing only a towel.

A towel that's slung dangerously low on his hips, barely clinging to existence, revealing a V of muscle that disappears beneath the terry cloth.

Water droplets trail down his chest—his very defined, very there chest—following the lines of muscles I didn't knowexisted outside of anatomy textbooks, and there's a droplet making its way down his neck that I watch with the focus I usually reserve for tracking pucks.

My brain makes a sound like a dial-up modem trying to connect to the internet circa 1997.

"—shampoo?" Kane finishes, and I realize he's been talking this whole time while I've been having a full-system shutdown.

"You... what?"

"Shampoo?" He points vaguely toward the desk area. "I forgot to bring it in. It's in my bag."

Right. Shampoo. A normal thing that normal people need for normal showering purposes.

Except there's nothing normal about the way my body is currently responding to the visual stimulus of Kane's abs.

Because holy fuck, those are abs.

Not just abs. Abs with a capital A. Abs that look like they were photoshopped by someone who doesn't understand moderation. There's a six-pack situation happening that's bordering on obscene, and I'm staring at it like it holds the answers to the universe's greatest mysteries.

"Becker?"

"Yeah." My voice comes out weird. Too high. I clear my throat and try again. "Yeah, sure. Shampoo. Getting the shampoo."

I swing down from my bunk with zero grace, nearly face-planting in my haste to look anywhere but at Kane's torso. His bag is right there by the desk, and I rummage through it with hands that are definitely not shaking.

Found it.

I turn back around, shampoo bottle in hand, and immediately regret getting into hockey in the first place, because if I hadn’t gone into hockey, I currently would not be facing Kane, who’s still standing there, still wet, still wearing only that towel that seems to be held up by sheer force of will and maybe a prayer.

"Here." I hold out the bottle, but I have to cross the cabin to give it to him, which means getting closer to all that exposed skin.

He takes it, his fingers brushing mine, and I swear to god there's a spark of static electricity going off. Or else, it’s my body's last-ditch effort to warn me that I'm about to do something monumentally stupid.

"Thanks," he says, when I finally drag my eyes up from his chest (with significant effort).

"No problem." I should step back. I should definitely step back.

We're standing too close now. Close enough that I can see water droplets caught in his eyelashes. Close enough to count the different shades of brown in his eyes. Close enough to make several consecutive terrible decisions if I don't get my shit together.

"You're staring," he says.

"Am I?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry. I just—" What? What's my excuse here?Sorry, I just realized you're hot and now I'm having a crisis?"You have shampoo on your shoulder."