Page 21 of Slew Foot (Scoring Chances #3)

The team returned to Boston after losing in Dallas, winning in St. Louis, and losing again in Columbus.

The annoying part was they were playing well. Better, anyway, or that was what Coach Hoyt kept saying.

Rafe felt like he and Mickey were gelling on the ice too.

It didn’t seem possible they could be getting better, playing better, and yet, losing every couple of games.

They weren’t losing by a lot . Just a point here and there and sometimes in overtime.

But it was enough that if they didn’t turn it around soon, they’d start slipping in the standings even more.

The beat reporters were already starting to question the trade and talking about how everyone wanted to see more from him and …

The phone in Rafe’s hands disappeared and he glanced up to see Mickey frowning at him.

“Hey! What’d you do that for?” He reached out to grab his phone back, but Mickey held it out of the way.

“You don’t need to read that shit.”

“I was?—”

“I know what you were doing.” Mickey tucked Rafe’s phone into the pocket of his shorts and crossed his arms.

Rafe frowned. “But?—”

“You’re playing well, and you’ve only been with the team a few weeks. Don’t let them get to you.”

Rafe sighed. Damn it, Mickey was right.

“Fine. Can I have my phone back though?”

“Are you going to use it to read stuff that’s going to make you worry you’re not doing enough for the team?” Mickey narrowed his eyes.

Rafe squirmed a little because Mickey was kind of scary when he looked at him that way. Well, not scary like he was going to do something terrible to him. That wasn’t Mickey at all. But like … intimidating . Yeah, that was the word for it.

Like he could read Rafe’s mind. And Rafe knew he couldn’t. But sometimes he kinda wondered …

“Uhh,” he said aloud because he had a feeling if he told the truth, Mickey would yell at him. In, like, a nice way.

“That’s what I thought.” Mickey turned. “You can have it back after lunch.”

“Hey!” Rafe protested, laughing as he got to his feet. “Not fair!”

He followed Mickey toward the lunch spread set out for the team.

“Are we eating here or at the apartment?” Rafe asked, falling into step behind him.

Mickey turned back. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

Rafe shrugged. Honestly, he didn’t care either way.

He was hungry now, but he could always start eating in Mickey’s car, even if he got a lot of side-eye from him about it.

He liked chilling at the apartment and watching TV though.

They were halfway through season two of the show they’d started on the road trip.

But if he said he wanted to eat here, he’d get his phone back sooner. Hmm .

“Rafe?” Mickey said quietly and Rafe blinked at him.

“I’m fine with either.”

Mickey lowered his voice and stepped forward. “Tell. Me. What. You. Want.”

“I want to eat at the apartment,” he blurted out. “I—I like eating there.”

Especially because today, Tanner was doing something and wouldn’t be back until late. And Rafe liked Tanner, he totally did, but sometimes it was nice when it was just him and Mickey. It was a lot quieter, for one.

“Then we’ll eat at the apartment,” Mickey said firmly.

“Can I have my phone back in the car?” Rafe begged.

“No.”

“C’mon, give it back,” Rafe protested but he was laughing again. He grabbed for Mickey’s shorts, trying to go for his phone, but instead he got a handful of Mickey’s ass.

They both froze for a second.

“Shit, sorry!” Rafe said, pulling back because whoops , that wasn’t what he’d been going for. It’s not like he’d minded. Getting a handful of a nice muscular ass was never bad but Mickey was still staring at him wide-eyed, and Rafe hadn’t meant to make things awkward.

“Boys,” Luke Crawford said, draping his arm around Rafe and Mickey’s shoulders. “Stop flirting or get out of the food line. I’m fuckin’ starving.”

“We’re not flirting ,” Rafe blurted out.

Mickey sputtered out the same thing, looking weirdly pissed. He ducked out from under Crawford’s arm and grabbed a to-go container. He dumped in a pasta ladle full of whole wheat spaghetti, some of it spilling out from the edge because he was moving very fast.

Shit. He must be mad. Mickey was usually very neat and very careful.

“Hey. Sorry I pissed off your boyfriend,” Crawford said with a frown. “Didn’t mean to.”

He ambled over to get in line behind Mickey. Rafe sighed and followed him, not bothering to argue Mickey wasn’t his boyfriend.

He’d be a great boyfriend, but he wasn’t Rafe’s.

“So, uh, I didn’t mean to—um, grab you earlier.” Rafe said later when they were in Mickey’s car and Rafe had a tight hold on their to-go containers.

Mickey turned and blinked at him. Thankfully, they were still in the parking garage, waiting to turn out onto the street so he didn’t crash or anything. Though his foot did slip a little on the brake and the car lurched forward.

“I know you didn’t,” Mickey assured him. “I didn’t think it was intentional.”

“You seemed kinda pissed,” Rafe pointed out. Because he was sure he hadn’t read that part wrong.

Mickey sighed. “I’m not mad at you . Crawford’s just …”

“Yeah,” Rafe agreed. Crawford was definitely something.

“Honestly, I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. I shouldn’t have told you what to do with your phone,” Mickey said. He shifted, dipping his into the pocket of the sweats he’d put on over his shorts, then pulling the phone out. “Here.”

He handed it over to Rafe.

The case was warm from Mickey’s body and Rafe took it, staring down at the screen and thinking about what Mickey had said earlier.

“No,” he said slowly. “You were right. I was letting what they said get to me. I’m glad you said something or I would’ve started feeling shitty about the way I was playing.”

“I—I know how much it sucks ,” Mickey said. His hands tightened on the leather steering wheel. “I was supposed to be so good, so promising , and then I got here and nothing was clicking.”

He sounded unusually frustrated, and Rafe wanted to reach out and like … squeeze him, to tell him it would be okay. But he had a lapful of food and Mickey might actually kill him if he spilled their lunches all over his nice leather interior.

“Do you know how many guys they tried pairing with me?” Mickey asked, glancing over at him.

“How terrible I felt when they brought guy after guy up from Concord in the hopes they’d fit with me?

And none of them worked! I was in weekly meetings with Hoyt about it for a while.

And he was so nice about it. He kept telling me it happened, sometimes it took a while to find the right chemistry.

But after a while all I could think was that I was the problem. ”

Rafe gaped at him. He was so wrong. “Mickey?—”

“No, let me finish. Please.”

Rafe snapped his mouth shut.

“I told myself I was wrong. I told myself I shouldn’t get up in my head about it.

I told myself I had to stop reading the articles and letting them get to me.

And eventually, I believed it. But I wished I’d never let that happen.

Never let them in my head. Not even for a minute.

” He took a deep breath. “And that’s all I was trying to do for you. ”

Behind them, someone honked, and Mickey swore—in German, which honestly kinda sounded like swearing no matter what he was saying—checked for traffic, then turned out of the parking garage onto the street.

When they were stopped at the next light, Rafe spoke, sure he was right. “I know that’s what you were doing. You were looking out for me.”

He might not have known about how hard it had been for Mickey to deal with not having the right D-partner, but he’d known from the first night they met that he only wanted the best for him.

“I was,” Mickey agreed. “And I know you’re okay with me doing that when we’re on the ice. But I still feel like maybe I’ve gone too far with it off the ice. Looking out for you and telling you what to do, I mean.”

“What if I told you I liked it?” Rafe asked.

The light turned green, so Rafe wasn’t surprised when Mickey didn’t answer him right away.

“Okay,” Mickey finally said slowly, like he was still thinking about it. “If you’re sure.”

“I wouldn’t tell you I was okay with it if I wasn’t,” Rafe reminded him.

Because yeah, he knew guys—especially on previous teams—sometimes joked that he was so dumb it was a good thing he was pretty. And if hockey hadn’t worked out, he would’ve had to become a model because he wasn’t smart enough for a real job.

Which, honestly, Rafe thought was both pretty rude to him and to those models or whatever, but that wasn’t the point. He knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t know what he liked and what he didn’t.

And he liked the way Mickey looked out for him.

And maybe that was what it was about Mickey that reminded him of Logan.

Because Logan had worried about him, looked after him too.

But somehow, it felt different when Mickey did it.

Logan had never tried to be a dick to him or anything, except for the whole breakup, but Mickey was so … careful about it.

And maybe … Rafe blinked, a random piece slotting into place and making the whole puzzle in his head suddenly make sense.

When he and Mickey had been talking in the hotel room in Dallas, when he’d asked if their friendship felt like before when he was with Logan, Rafe had automatically said no.

Because he hadn’t meant it that way at all. Because he hadn’t thought about Mickey as anything but a friend.

But now that he thought about it, maybe it was a little bit like that. Rafe glanced over at Mickey and really looked at him.

He liked what he saw.

He liked Mickey’s stern mouth and deep-set blue eyes and the way he looked so serious most of the time. He liked the way Mickey’s face lit up when he did smile. He liked how wide his shoulders were and that under his clothes, he had a little bit of hair on his chest and a great body overall.

And no, right now, none of that lit a fire in Rafe’s belly, but he thought maybe it could . Maybe with more time he’d fall for Mickey and?—

The thought was like a bucket of cold water over Rafe’s head because fuck , he couldn’t do that. Not again.

He thought of the game of cards he’d played on the flight home from Columbus recently and the way he’d cleaned up because the guys at the table had underestimated him.

He’d liked their back-slapping friendly chirping after and the way Tanner had bounced over at practice this morning and told him all about the new security guard at HCI because holy shit had Rafe noticed how blue his eyes were?

And no, Rafe hadn’t, but he liked that Tanner wanted to talk to him about it. And he liked that Gavin Racine had stopped by during his cool-down workout to ask him how he was doing. How he was settling in.

He liked this fucking team. And he didn’t want to lose any of it.

It had been hard enough to find his place with the Acorns, and being with Boston was already so much better. He couldn’t risk it.

But then he thought about all of the quiet ways Mickey looked out for him and wondered what it would be like if that feeling did grow. If, in time, he looked over at Mickey and wanted to kiss him and have sex with him and …

He glanced over at Mickey again and realized they were parked in Mickey’s spot at the ramp under the apartment building. Mickey was looking at him, studying his face with those blue eyes that could almost seem cold to someone who didn’t know him.

But Rafe knew there was nothing cold about Mickey. He was just looking, just studying everything and taking it all in.

“Sorry,” Rafe said, swallowing hard. “I got a little lost in my thoughts.”

“It’s okay.” Mickey looked him in the eye. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Not today,” Rafe said.

Mickey nodded, got out of the car, then came around to open Rafe’s door so he didn’t have to juggle the food they’d brought home for lunch.

“Thanks,” Rafe told him.

“Just looking out for you,” Mickey said, walking toward the elevators.

Rafe nodded and followed him because he might not know what exactly was happening with Mickey or what might happen in the future, but he liked what they were doing now.

He liked that Mickey looked out for him.

And as scary as it was for Rafe to think about messing up what he was starting to build with the team, there was also a little flutter in the pit of his stomach as Mickey touched his hip, guiding him into the apartment lobby as he held the door for him.