Chapter 9 - Callum

One week. Our first game is in one week, and we’ve been playing like trash ever since that party at Nate’s.

And it’s all Stone’s fault.

Or mine.

At this point, I’m not really sure.

The natural chemistry Stone and I had on the ice has practically vanished. With nearly every pass, the puck misses our sticks and ricochets off the boards only to get scooped up by someone else. Nate and I work a little better together, but even the solid foundation we have, the way we’ve always meshed, seems to have been shaken.

Coach has ended every practice over the past week pissed.

I don’t blame him.

I’d consider giving up my spot on the first line if this game didn’t mean so damn much to me.

There were a few reasons I started hockey just before high school.

One, I was so angry. At everything. At losing my mom. At being my stepdad’s punching bag. It seemed like a good way to give all that anger some kind of outlet, and it was. Not enough, but it helped.

Two, I realized how often I was starting to flinch. Away from every person, every touch. It was instinct, a response I couldn’t control. I didn’t want to live like that, worried someone would notice and ask me about it.

So I joined the hockey team and let other guys shove me around, trying to condition myself to get used to it. I don’t know if it was through the violent contact of the sport or by some sheer force of will, but I grew out of it.

When I’m off the ice, I still sometimes have to fight that initial impulse. Like at the party when Jesse crashed into my back.

Or when Stone slammed me against the tree.

But with the latter, something different happened.

I didn’t feel the urge to flinch away.

I didn’t want to.

I figured out what else he smells like, the other scent I couldn’t name before. His eyes are a forest in the fog, but he smells like a forest in a storm. Pine and ozone. It’s fitting considering the effect he has on me.

The proximity to Stone stirred something inside me I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. I’ve never felt sexual arousal around another person. Attraction, maybe. But not that.

There was a heat in my lower belly, every inch of my skin full of static electricity. I wanted him to keep touching me. I wanted his skin on mine.

I’ve never wanted like that before.

Despite Jesse’s theory, I don’t think it has anything to do with orientation. I’m pretty sure I’m just broken. Because the fact that Stone of all people could make me feel those things has had me all sorts of fucked up.

It’s not even that he’s a guy. I’ve found both men and women attractive, though it always felt more like appreciation or admiration than attraction. Perhaps if I had lived a different life, if my past wasn’t my own, I’d know myself better.

But all of that has been the least of my concerns this past week.

I can’t forget the way he looked at me before he ran off…

Coach’s whistle blows.

Has it been an hour and a half already?

My concentration is shot to hell.

Nothing helps.

Not hockey. Not art.

My mind is a maze of devastation and turmoil.

“Simmons! Hayes! Wakefield!” Coach Hill shouts from where he’s skating around center ice. “Hang back.”

Awesome .

The rest of the team heads out of the rink, peering back at the three of us over their shoulders, probably gossiping on their way down the tunnel.

Nate, Stone, and I skate up to the red line and await whatever fate Coach has in store for us. He waits to speak until the last of the other players are off the ice, so that can’t be a good sign.

“You three are staying late today. I want another hour from all of you.” There’s an angry vein throbbing in his temple as he glares between us. “I don’t know what the fuck has happened to have you all playing like dogshit this last week, but it ends now.”

“It’s not my fault, Coach,” Nate grumbles.

“You’re their captain, Simmons. Everyone on this team is your responsibility.”

He sighs and nods. “Yes, sir.”

“I mean it,” Coach says. “One hour. Don’t get off this ice a second sooner.”

He skates away, leaving behind a silence that buries a chill deep into my bones colder than the ice my blades are digging into. Even with Nate here, this is the most alone I’ve been with Stone since the party. We haven’t spoken a word to each other when we’re not on the ice. With the tension that’s been growing between us every day, it’s no wonder we can barely complete so much as a simple fucking pass.

Nate spins around, pinning us both with a look that says he’s clearly not happy to have to stay late, knowing full well it’s all mine and Stone’s fault.

“Do you two have some shit you need to fight about first?” He leans on his stick, waiting. “Please, go ahead. There’s no one here to stop you. I’ll let you go at it until the ice is covered in both of your blood if that’s what it takes.”

I glance at Stone, then immediately look away.

He doesn’t say anything, and I refuse to be the one to answer that.

“Fine,” Nate says. “Passing drills then. Goal line to goal line. I’ll be trying to disrupt your passes. We’ll stop when you can get ten past me in a row. Got it?”

I roll my eyes. If that’s the deal, we’ll be here much longer than an hour.

The three of us skate off to the goal line at one end of the rink, Stone and I both picking up a puck and controlling it all the way down. Once we’re at the line, we stare at each other. Waiting. Sweating the other one out until one of us gives up their puck.

“I swear to fuck, fuckers! Why don’t you two just take your dicks out while I grab the measuring tape?”

A smirk passes over Stone’s face.

The next thing I know, he slaps his puck in my direction. I’m forced to abandon mine in order to take control of it. As soon as I do, we’re racing off down the ice toward the other goal line. Stone matches my speed.

I pass to him.

Nate slaps the puck away.

“Focus, Hayes!” he shouts at me. “Imagine his tape is his face if that helps.”

It might.

I pick up another puck, and we start again.

It takes nearly the entire hour before we get up to eight passes without Nate blocking them. On the ninth, he steals it at the blue line and takes off on a breakaway toward the goal.

Stone and I don’t even look at each other, but we move together. Simultaneously, we race off after him. As we approach the crease, Stone barrels into him before he can take a shot, his shoulder hitting Nate’s. They battle for the puck, and it bounces across the ice. Stone’s the one who recovers it before sending it right to my stick with a backhand pass.

I take off, and Stone follows after me.

We pass it back and forth.

Ten times.

Then I shoot it right into the back of the net.

Stone’s smiling at me after I make a lap around the goal and join him on the other side. Nate skates up, beaming too.

“That’s more like it,” he says, tapping his stick against mine. He looks over at the clock on the wall. “You boys got fifteen minutes left. I’m gonna hit the showers and head home.”

“Hey,” I call after him as he starts skating toward the bench. “Didn’t Coach say we all have to stay an extra hour?”

He spins around, shrugging as he skates backwards. “I only heard him say you two.”

“Prick,” I mutter.

Stone chuckles, and I cut my eyes at him. Clearly, he’s more at ease about being alone together than I am.

Fortunately, he jumps right into suggesting another passing drill. I don’t have the energy to argue with him, so I agree. We kill another fifteen minutes before we head off the ice. I don’t feel much better about the dynamic we’ve been having this past week, but at least there’s been some progress.

When we get into the locker room, Nate’s already gone. Stone grabs a roll of tape from his station and sits on the bench. We both remove our skates, and as I’m taking off my uniform and pads, he gets to work re-taping his stick.

I know exactly what he’s doing, and I wish it didn’t piss me off as much as it does.

If he’s going to pretend like nothing happened while still refusing to look at me, then fucking fine.

Stomping off to the showers, I try to tell myself it doesn’t bother me. That I can forget it all too. That I don’t want his eyes on me again. That I think I might’ve been wrong about the look in them five years ago.

Last week, there were some of those same things painted on his face. Disgust. Contempt.

But I think I was wrong that they were directed at me.

I think they were… for me.

And I’m still not sure how to feel about it.

The easiest thing, of course, is to hate him more for it. I don’t need his fucking pity.

However, there was something new this time too. Something that was a hell of a lot more frightening, something I probably should have ran away from. But I didn’t. Because I wasn’t scared like I should’ve been.

But I’m supposed to be forgetting about it.

Pretending it never happened.

So as I stand beneath the spray in the showers alone, I decide I’ll just go back to hating him. We played better then anyway. Back when I simply accepted the fact that I hated him but had to find a way to play with him for the sake of the team.

We played a hell of a lot better back then than we do when I think I might want him.

Finishing up in the shower, I dry off and wrap the towel around my waist. When I walk back into the locker room, I stop in my tracks as ice rushes through my veins and the air is punched from my lungs.

Stone stands in the center of the room, holding my sketchbook open in his hands.

The one I drew his eyes in.

The one I’ve drawn about a dozen sketches of him in since.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The question comes through gritted teeth. If my feet weren’t rooted in place, I’d charge at him like a fucking raging bull and snatch my book back. Maybe punch him in the face for good measure. But I’m too horrified to move.

“I was sliding your bag down the bench, and it fell out.” He doesn’t even look up at me as he speaks. No, he turns the fucking page .

My chest is heaving as all the sketches I’ve done flash by in my mind like a montage. I’ve done another couple ones of just his eyes. The others are of him in his hockey uniform, pretty fucking clearly him with the number “13” plastered on his shirt.

Horrified might be an understatement.

“You had no right,” I snarl. “Put it back.”

When he finally peers up, there’s a hint of a smirk playing at the corner of his lips. “Are you obsessed with me, Hayes?”

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

I don’t answer.

How can I?

How can I say no when the evidence is right there in his hands?

But how can I answer with the truth when the truth is yes?

I don’t know exactly when or how it happened. One second I’m staring into his eyes while he’s guiding me through a fucking panic attack, and the next, I can’t get him out of my head.

Drawing death over and over again comes as naturally as breathing, but sketching Stone makes me feel alive.

“Does this mean I’m your muse?” he asks when I haven’t said a word.

“Drop it.”

He closes the book and drops it on the bench. But he still refuses to drop the conversation.

“You like my eyes, Callum? You like me in my sweater? Should I put it back on and pose for you?”

He takes one step forward, then another. He’s still in his base layer, black compression leggings and a long-sleeve shirt. Both are skin-tight, clinging to his muscular thighs and biceps. Meanwhile, I’m standing here with nothing but a towel around my waist. The hot, angry flushing in my face has flooded down my neck to my chest, brushing it red as it continues to heave with each breath.

The closer he gets, the more erratic my breathing becomes.

“Stop it, Stone,” I say, finally forcing my feet to take a step back as he continues to approach. “Just fucking let it go.”

“I will when you answer my question.” He keeps coming, and I keep moving backward. “Are you obsessed with me?”

It’s instinct to run away from him, the primal sense of prey to flee from that look in their predator’s eyes—the one that says they want to eat you alive. However, buried beneath that is a voice that tells me to stop trying to escape, that I want to be caught.

It doesn’t matter that it’s barely loud enough to hear because the choice is taken away from me when my back hits the wall.

“Do you want to know a secret?” Stone completes his advance, standing less than a foot in front of me. He leans forward slowly. His lips are two inches from mine. Then he turns his face, leaning just a bit more until his low, deep words sweep along the shell of my ear. “I’m obsessed with you too.”

It happens again.

Whether it’s because of his words or the proximity of his body to mine, I can’t be sure.

A white heat arcs through my spine, settling low. Intensifying. It’s a million butterflies on fire, blood traveling on wings. Down, down, down.

The moment he pulls back and our gazes lock, I know one thing for sure now.

I like it when his eyes are on me.

Only me.

But this other thing I’m feeling…

This confusing, burning ball of want .

It weighs down my gut, but it’s drowned out by everything else in my head. That prey instinct I’ve carried around with me for most of my life still tells me I don’t want this. Don’t want to want it. Don’t want to feel it. That it’s all a lie. That I’d never want it.

I try to shake my head, but it feels too heavy. “I’m not obsessed with you.”

Stone extends one hand, placing his palm flat against the wall beside me. Then he reaches out with his other one to tease my heated skin just above the towel at my waist.

My breath hitches at the contact.

He dips his finger beneath the fabric. One slight tug, and it would come unraveled.

“Don’t.” The single word comes out as a whimper, and I slam my eyes shut as humiliation washes over me.

“Are you sure?” he asks as his finger continues its light caress over my skin. “I think your dick’s trying to escape that towel.”

When I peer down, I see my erection is turning it into a tent. I nearly shut my eyes again as guilt and shame join every other chaotic, crushing emotion.

But then I see the growing bulge behind Stone’s compression leggings.

My gaze snaps up to his. His eyes are dark and feral.

He rolls his hips forward, just enough so his hard cock presses against mine through the layers between us. The friction of the rough fabric from the towel ignites that heat that’s still swirling around in my belly, turning it into molten lava.

I bite my lip to keep from moaning.

“You feel how hard you make me?” His rough whisper lingers in the thick air as he adds just a little more pressure until I see fucking stars. “It’s all for you, Callum.”

“Stop it.”

Those two words come out quiet and breathless.

I’m not entirely sure they escape me willingly.

Have I somehow purposefully put myself into this situation because I feel like I deserve it? Because it’s all I know?

Will I always say no even when I want to say yes?

“What is it?” Stone’s finger dips a little lower. “Still don’t like my mouth even when it’s saying dirty things to you? Would you like it to be doing something else?”

My chest rises and falls in harsh measures. All the air I’m sucking into my lungs is full of Stone’s words, the electricity of his touch. Not enough oxygen.

He smells even more like a storm right now.

There’s a slight tug of the towel.

I panic.

Shooting my hand out, I grasp his wrist, his skin scorching mine. I let out another whimpering, “Stop.”

Stone’s face falls. Then hardens.

My grip slips from his wrist as he takes a step back. I immediately miss the heat of his body, the promise of his touch.

He actually stopped.

Why am I surprised?

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Stone turns away, walking back over to the bench where he silently pulls on a pair of jeans and slings his bag over his shoulder. I’m left leaning against the wall for support, watching as he heads for the exit.

He stops a few feet from the door. He swallows as his eyes remain facing forward, not looking back at me. “I’m sorry, Callum.”

And then he’s gone.