12. 12

12

Ant Decker

If fucking around and finding out were a person, he’d look exactly like me. Identical. Same mouth, same nose. Same body and face. Same pigheaded stupidity that will not learn a lesson to save his fucking life.

I’ve been here before. You needn’t think I haven’t. I know how this ends.

For the avoidance of doubt, it’s badly. Badly is how it ends. Badly is how it always ends. Getting myself tangled up with someone like McGuire is the worst possible scenario for me. Even if you could take the McGuire-ness of him out of the equation, which you obviously can’t, he’s my teammate. He’s one of twenty-odd guys I have to see almost every damn day for months on end. I can’t avoid him no matter what I do. We’re only four weeks into the season. We have months left to go. Practices, away games, home games, team events. It’s endless. A long, nightmarish minefield with no possible chance of escape .

I don’t know what I was thinking, messing with him. I need to have my head examined. That’s what I need. I need help. I need someone to forcibly stop me from being stupid. And while they’re at it, it might be nice if they could stop me from taking a torch to my entire life. Because that’s what I’m doing here. I’m jeopardizing clear lines and neat boundaries I’ve taken years to put into place.

It’s the worst thing that could possibly have happened.

You know what? No.

That’s too strong.

I’m catastrophizing and blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Clearly what happened isn’t ideal, but at the same time, I was fixating on McGuire. I was consumed by him. After I kissed him, I got him stuck on a loop in my mind, and it was going to drive me bat-shit crazy if I didn’t do something to stop it.

So yeah, that’s how I got here.

You know what, maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe in the long run, it’s best that this happened. Sometimes, the only way to get someone out of your system is to shove your dick in their mouth. It sounds crass, but it’s true. It’s true for me, at least, and I’m damn sure it will be true for McGuire .

He’ll probably hate my guts now, and that’s the best possible outcome. He’ll probably be mad as hell about how I talked to him, and he’ll never want to have anything to do with me again as long as he lives, and that’s exactly what I want, so all’s well that ends well.

He’s probably pretty upset about what happened. I was rough and nasty. He has every right to be furious with me. I was the aggressor, so I’m pretty sure what happened was mainly, if not all, my fault.

Dammit.

I'm going to have to check on him when he wakes up. Make sure he’s okay or whatever.

Yeah, to be on the safe side, I think I should apologize to him. I should just spit the words I’m sorry out and move on, and then I think I should leave him alone completely. I think I should try not to talk to him at all anymore, except when I absolutely have to. I don’t think I should chirp him on the ice for a while, and to be on the safe side, I don’t even think I should check his stats anymore. Or read what the press has to say about him. Or see if there are any clips on TV featuring him.

And I definitely don’t think I should watch his TikToks anymore.

It’s a time drain. That’s what that is. A mindless, addictive app .

I use the bathroom before he wakes, making sure I’m fully dressed before I leave the bathroom. It’s not that I don’t trust myself. It’s that I’m trying to be respectful.

His alarm sounds fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to meet downstairs. He groans and keeps his eyes closed as he haphazardly swats his hand all over the bedside table until he finally manages to connect with his phone screen and stop the blaring of his alarm.

He throws the covers off and pulls himself up. Lines dip and dent on his stomach from the motion, but it’s fine. I’m not looking. He staggers to his feet, blinking and rubbing his eyes. He swallows and grimaces as if he has a bad taste in his mouth. Or a sore throat.

I look away quickly.

It’s clear he just got dragged from one hell of a deep sleep and hasn’t woken up well, so I should probably get out of his hair. Yeah, that’s what I should do. I should head down early, grab a coffee, and sit in the foyer by myself for a while to clear my head.

I bundle my pajamas and the clothes I wore yesterday into a tight ball and put them in my bag.

“McGuire,” I say, careful to keep my back mostly turned on him. “About last night. That was…not cool. I, uh…” I admit, it’s a little harder to string a sentence together than I consider ideal. I’m not at my best, and in retrospect, perhaps it would’ve been prudent to tackle a conversation like this on a full stomach. Or at least a caffeinated one. But fuck it, this needs to be said, and I need to be the one to say it. “We shouldn’t have, er, I mean, I shouldn’t have done…that.” I gesture roughly to the spot on the floor where he knelt last night. “I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.”

There. My words bunched up a little at the end, but I said it, and that’s the main thing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him crossing his arms tightly over his chest. It’s an unusual gesture for him, much more uptight than usual, so it draws my attention. I turn to face him. His eyes are narrowed and there’s something exceedingly disconcerting about the way he’s looking at me.

He drops his jaw slightly and runs his tongue along his back teeth as he considers me.

“Is that right?” He draws each word out, and his voice sounds different. Gruff from sleep and infused with a scratchy husk that rolls around the back of his throat before being unfurled in my direction.

It unsettles me, but I quickly respond. “Yes. That’s right. ”

There’s that look again. The same but different. Worse. More jarring. More worrying, especially when it dawns on me what it means.

He doesn’t agree.

McGuire doesn’t fucking agree that we shouldn’t do it again.

He looks me up and down in such a disparaging way that, for a second, I consider tackling him onto the bed, yanking one of his slutty socks off one of his feet, and stuffing it into his mouth to stop him from speaking. It takes so much effort to suppress the urge that my left eye starts twitching.

He leans forward. A dark forest blazes, glimmers of gold flickering as he focuses on me. His face is too close to mine for comfort.

“Wrong!” he spits.

He says it like it’s a challenge. My hackles rise, but it’s not the first time I’ve found myself dealing with an unreasonable man. Far from it. It’s something I have plenty of experience in, so I know how to handle it.

“No, no,” I explain patiently. “I’m right. It was a bad idea, and it’s not happening again. That’s the end of it.”

He blinks twice, lips pressed together, dirty-blond hair falling into his face. “Want to bet? ”

“Sure,” I say lightly. A bet is exactly what the situation calls for. I hate losing anything, but money? Yeah, can’t stand losing that.

“I bet you…” His tongue peeks out between his lips and his head turns microscopically to the side as he tries to come up with a number he thinks will ruffle my feathers. “…a thousand dollars that you’ll stuff your cock in my mouth again the first chance you get.”

I clear my throat with a dry cough that almost turns into a choke and make a mental note to hydrate thoroughly before engaging in this kind of discussion in the future. “I bet you ten thousand dollars I won’t.”

There.

That’ll put an end to the madness.