3. Chapter 3

Archie Bowman was gorgeous off the ice, but on it, he was utterly enchanting.

With him out there and me here, my shoulder propped against the glass, elbow on the low ridge of the boards beneath it, I almost forgot the complete cocky ass he'd been, both at the bar and in my office the day before. I couldn't let myself forget entirely, because there was a good reason I didn't get involved with hockey players: Drama. Distraction. A reminder of the past.

Archie Bowman was all of those things. And he was clearly used to getting what he wanted. I winced as I recalled our exchange in my office. He was all bold youth and suave and I was … the awkward old guy who couldn't figure out how to avoid a curb-stomping in whatever game he was playing.

But watching him now—it was art. I allowed myself this small indulgence. This reminder of what it was to be young and alive and so full of dreams.

Archie Bowman loved this fucking game, and it showed in every movement of his body. Every shift of weight, flit of eyes or flick of wrists. Every stride, every breath. He loved the game, and he played like hockey was life.

And fuck, I understood that.

The way he wove, fluid and seamless, across the ice. Head up, gaze darting. Canny, aware. The way he read passes and plays, deked smoothly through players and checks aimed his way. Like water, carving through a mountain.

Aaron launched a pass cross-ice, and Bowman cut hard, stick sliding back to cradle the puck. Gaze lifted, he whipped towards Rowan, puck and stick and skates all in sync, all seamlessly a part of him. Hockey, life.

Fucking art.

Rowan went for the body, naturally, but Bowman read him like a book.

Slid the puck out to Rowan's right, cut left, looped around to meet up with it again on the other side. Rowan swore, but Bowman didn't so much as break stride. He sailed forward towards JJ, finesse and prowess intertwined.

I sensed the readiness in JJ's muscles, felt the push of his blades as he dug into the ice, driving himself backwards to stay between Bowman and the goal. Steadying breath. Sizing up his competition. Tracking the net, the goalie, other forwards …

JJ's stick shot out for a poke check—the better play against Bowman's speed and agility—but Bowman read that too. His hands barely twitched to toe-drag the puck into his feet, out of JJ's reach. A quick flick of his left heel nudged it back out onto his blade as he slid past without breaking stride.

JJ spun, his long defenseman's stick reaching—but it was too late. Bowman's weight shifted to his front foot, wrists snapped, and the little black disk sailed neatly into the corner of the net.

Fuck, he was beautiful.

It happened fast enough to leave me breathless. I swear Rainey hadn't seen the shot, and judging by the barrage of swearing out of the goalie's mouth, my guess was accurate.

Aaron half-pummeled in behind the kid, slapping his shoulder in celebration. I couldn't hear their exact words, but the general vibe was, holy fuck.

Even Rowan's normal brand of spitting-mad was tempered by awe.

At some point, my hands had curled into loose fists, like they longed to grasp a stick. My heart beat a little too fast. Like it was me out there, instead of JJ, facing down that whirlwind.

Raw. Fucking. Talent.

I'd played pro hockey for six years before my injury had ended that dream forever. A year of recovery, then three for grad school, and I'd been working in the pro arena ever since. And in all that time, I swear I'd never seen talent like this. Like it came from somewhere … else.

From love. Pure fucking love of the game. Like it was the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs. Hockey, life. Or maybe I was poeticizing it because that's how jaded, washed-up, has-beens regarded the past.

Rainbows and butterflies and silver linings.

Hockey had always been my life, though. For as long as I could remember, I'd been skating or shooting pucks with my dad, my brother, my cousins. It was a part of who I was. Childhood, high school, college, pro. That was my path.

Until, it wasn't.

But even now, as a washed-up has-been forced to bushwhack a new trail, it was my life. I still felt it in my bones and muscles and blood. Would always. When I got my own practice going, escaped from the shadow of my hockey past, it would linger like a ghost.

I fucking loved hockey, as much as I hated it, down to my soul. Always had. But I knew for a fact, I'd never looked like Archie Bowman.

Maybe I'd never loved it like that, either.

I flexed my fingers into tight fists as the boys on the ice crouched for another faux face-off. They'd managed to gather up enough players for two full lines, had even divvied up the talent so Aaron and Zac faced off against each other. JJ left his defensive position to hold a puck over the center circle between them, a stand-in ref.

They jabbed at each other's sticks as they waited for the drop, laughing, Aaron trying to fake Zac out with a false twitch. But my eyes drifted past them to Bowman again. He crouched. Steady. Focused. Blades rocking under him as he readied for action, adrenaline driving out any lingering stillness.

His left shoulder lifted, just a hint, in a quick roll that might have been an adjustment of his pad or the tic of a sore muscle. Quick enough, I nearly missed it.

The puck dropped.

Bowman shot forward almost before it escaped JJ's hand. Foreseeing Aaron's face-off win, his quick pass right. No stutter in his step, no awkward angle to his shoulder as he caught that pass.

Another thing, probably, I'd imagined. Like the hunched, uncertain boy at the door.

"You're drooling." Katie nudged up next to me on the glass. "Like, so hard you're not even trying to be subtle."

She was right. I was staring. At least this time I had a reason. "He's really fucking good."

Her face softened, but she didn't comment. No pathetic pity words like, You miss it, don't you? Katie knew better.

"He is." Hell, she knew what it was to remember the good old days. "But that's not why you're slobbering."

I rolled my eyes, nice and clear, so she couldn't miss it. "I'm going back to my office."

Maybe I'd sneak in a couple of hours of studying while the guys scrimmaged. Or fucked around. Whatever they were doing.

As Aaron pinned Zac up against the boards—held him there long after Bowman had snatched the puck away—it was starting to look more like a pond hockey pickup game than a practice.

"Sure thing, big guy." Katie slapped my shoulder, but I lingered a minute anyway. Studying Bowman's left shoulder for that tell-tale roll, the flick of discomfort … all the signs I knew to watch for.

Nothing.

I was being paranoid.

Seeing things that weren't there.

Projecting my own fears and insecurities, my own past, onto someone with so much fucking bright future ahead of him, it was blinding.

Terrifying.

I wrenched my gaze from the ice and headed back for my dull, windowless box of an office. I was being paranoid.

Lesson Seven, my computer screen reminded me as I woke my laptop. Fuck. Same one I'd been on two days ago. How had I gotten nothing done in two days? I was no closer to passing and opening my practice. Moving on to a life where I didn't have to watch other people living my lost dream.

Time to buckle down, Sullivan.

The words swam across the page. Something about overheads and profit margins? You'd think after reading a line eighteen times, I might know what it said.

A soft knock on the door jerked my shoulders straight. It popped open, without the visitor waiting for any kind of verbal confirmation to enter. Which meant I could pretty much bet who was behind that door—

"Hey, Kitty."

Fuck my life. How was it possible to want to grab someone by the scruff of the neck and hurl them bodily from the room—and kiss them at the same time? I should not want the latter.

But those were the two reflexes warring under my skin as Archie Bowman strode into the office and kicked the door closed behind him. The picture of cool suave as he tipped his athletic frame back against the faux wood. I bet that worked wonders on other twenty-somethings.

I hated that it was working on me. Hated how badly my eyes wanted to follow the curve of his shoulders to his lean hips—

"Mr. Bowman. To what do I owe the pleasure?" I closed my laptop lid before he could see Lesson Seven stretched across the screen. At least I still sounded professional.

"Zac says you give a mean massage." His mouth cocked up at the corner, and his eyes drifted lazily down my chest. "Got time for a quickie?"

I nearly choked on my tongue, thanks to his tongue. Which I was not thinking about. The kid was just another cocky little asshole, one who was most likely fucking with me. I was thirty-seven for fuck's sake. Either that, or he was looking for some kind of daddy notch in his bedpost.

I wasn't down to play either game.

Keep it professional, Sullivan. "Is something bothering you? Did you injure something?"

"Nah." He lifted his right shoulder in a careless shrug, one that pulled his white T-shirt taut over his chest. "Just sore from all this fucking around. A little … stiff?"

He was trying to fluster me. And I absolutely didn't notice the hard curve of his pec—or remember the sight of him shirtless.

On my table.

Practically begging me—

Fuck. No. There was no way any of this was real. He probably thought it was funny to see how far he could push me. I was a cranky old man, and he was, well … him. Young, hot, famous.

"So there's no injury?" My throat felt dry. My tongue swept out to moisten my lip, and Bowman's green eyes homed in on my mouth like emerald lasers. Fuck. "We have other massage therapists."

And I should tell him to go see one of them.

"No injury." Bowman pried himself off my door with the elegance of a panther. Strode across the room, hopped on the table. And proceeded to swing his legs back and forth like a kid. "So, what do you say, Kitty? Want to give me a rub?"

Fuckin'A. Was it warm in here?

The professional thing would be to send him to another massage therapist for his rub. But … My finger slid behind the collar of my button-down. "Where at? Shoulders? Back?"

"I mean, if you want to be boring." His grin was as filthy as the thoughts almost certainly swirling around in that pretty head. He relaxed his legs, and they opened into a soft V. "Or we could try something a little less PG?"

"For fuck's sake, Bowman." I groaned, levered myself out of my chair. I deserved some kind of award for resisting him through this. "I told you not to make this weird. I'm the team PT. I'm not going to do anything inappropriate."

"Oh?" Bowman's eyes practically glowed. "Is that a challenge?"

Yes.

"No. You really think I'd risk my job like that?"

"Would you?" He tilted those beautiful green eyes up at me, unflinching. "I promise I'd make it worth it. And I can be casual. No strings."

My dick took note of the implication behind those words, and I reminded it—and myself—that none of this was happening. I wasn't going to be some plaything for his teenage fantasies. Or worse, the butt of his joke.

"No." I propped a hip against the table, keeping well away from his slightly splayed knees. "We can do a professional massage and stretch, or you can go take up yoga. Or ask one of our designated masseuses. Up to you."

I crossed my arms. Mimicking his earlier posture of careless cool. Or, at least, my best approximation of it, since absolutely nothing about me was careless or cool. In fact, I was about one more once-over or dirty word away from taking him up on his offer.

"I'd love to get those magic fingers on my shoulders." Bowman gave me a final grin, and whipped his shirt over his head. Again.

And any semblance of my calm and cool vanished in the blink of an eye. Or the flick of white cloth, as it were.

He scrunched the T-shirt up, the thick muscles in his arms bunching with the movement, and tucked it under his head. Leaned back, slowly, so very slowly, and I got a long look at the slow extension of every flexed muscle in his abdomen as he reclined. "You coming, Kitty?"

Fuck, he knew how good he was. He knew how to play this game, almost as well as he knew the one out on the ice. He'd probably fucked his way through half of America with moves like that.

Not that I hadn't played the same game, once upon a time.

"My name is Jamie." I leaned halfway over the table, careful to touch nothing and keep my eyes on his face. "And you have to roll over if you want me to rub your shoulders."

"Oh, we're sticking with that?" He beamed that filthy smirk up at me, then slowly rolled himself over.

Which left me staring at the backside of him. Lord, give me strength. That ass—

All of him, actually. His body was all lean, athletic muscles, carefully crafted into the perfect blend of power and speed, agility and strength. Hard and honed and young.

Perfection. He was perfection.

And I was a goddamn professional. I set my hands down on his shoulders. Dug my thumbs in. And I rubbed.

Bowie groaned.

The sound went right to my dick, but no, no, I did not notice. Didn't notice that or the hardness of his muscles beneath my fingertips, the smooth arch of his spine, the softness of his skin. I wasn't wondering if the faint little moans coming from his perfect lips were anything like the sounds he'd make if I moved my hands down, or pressed my lips to his throat, or—

Fuck. I needed some cold-shower type thoughts. Fast. Before my pants started feeling tight.

I needed to get myself under control. Get the situation under control. Stop letting some cocky kid get a rise out of me by making goo-goo eyes in my direction.

I knew better.

I had to stop letting him get to me. Keep it professional. I could do that. Keep working his lithe shoulders and back until those muscles were putty under my fingers.

And. Keep. It. Professional. "So, Bowman. Where you from?"

He turned his head to flash me that shit-eating grin. "Isn't it obvious? The accent?"

"I mean, specifically, where? UK, but where?"

My hands kneaded. He relaxed down on the table. "Little village. Nobody's heard of it."

"How can they hear about it if you don't tell them?"

"It's called Bruton Willesbury. Heard of it?"

"Well, now I have." I dug into the muscle around his spine, and he let out a satisfied little moan that I tried to ignore. "You miss it?"

Naturally, he flipped the question right back. "You miss your hometown?"

"I'm from Boston. It's like five hours." My thumbs kneaded into that soft skin and hard flesh. "But I'd consider Bringham my home now."

"So, do you miss Boston?" His tone was roughed by the press and pull of my hands, preventing me from determining whether he was earnest. Or he was still deflecting my attempts at normal human interaction—and distraction.

"Sometimes. How about you?"

I didn't expect an actual answer, so the low word that escaped surprised me so much I almost stopped massaging.

"Yeah," he said and the way he softened, voice going light, muscles smoothing under my touch, I knew he was giving me the first glimpse of something real I'd seen off the ice. "Yeah, I miss it."

Fuck. Why did that hit me somewhere in the chest? Made me think there was someone else under that cocky playboy attitude—that maybe it was a facade?

"Bringham's a good city, though." I chewed my lip. A good city, but still probably a shock to a small-town kid. "Once you get used to the traffic. And the people."

He snorted. "And the size of the fucking cars. And the sirens. All the damn time."

"And that. Guess it's kinda loud."

"America is fucking loud." He grunted as my hands swooped lower down his ribs. "And your portions are too big."

That got a reluctant laugh out of me. "Yeah, we hate cooking and love leftovers."

"I've realized."

"But wait til you see Bringham in winter." My hands had reached the hard muscle of his lower back, and I lingered, working through the knots. "Ice everywhere. Hockey everywhere."

The kind of shit a kid from Boston dreamed of. Maybe one from Britain, too. "Sounds nice."

"You get ice in the UK?"

"Eh, sorta? The fields behind my parents' house flood a lot, freeze if it gets cold enough." He groaned again as my fingers worked their way into a knot. I felt him softening under my hands, and his words softened, too. Giving me more bits and pieces of the real Bowie, the man beneath the mask. "I'd have killed for some big ponds, though. Without a million cow shits sticking out."

"The guys'll get you some pond hockey this year. Promise." I'd reached the end of the road—well, his back, anyway. And we both knew it.

His head tilted the slightest bit as my fingers stalled out. "Aren't you going to massage my ass?"

"After you sexually harassed me?" A smile crawled over my face. Yeah, like I'd minded him pretending to come on to me. Like anyone under the age of thirty-five bothered to look at me anymore. "Don't think so, kid."

I worked my hands slowly back up his spine and ribs, searching out any lingering areas of tension, and to my surprise, he didn't press the matter. Even softened a bit more when I reached his broad shoulders.

"You do have magic fingers." His voice was almost a sigh. Yeah, I knew how to give a good massage. "I feel like melted butter."

"It's my specialty." My hands stalled again, done, finished, reluctant to leave. But I was a professional, and leaving your hands on a patient's skin just to wonder at its softness was not, in fact, professional behavior. I lifted them off.

They tingled at the lack of touch.

"Well, they say I have magic hands." He gathered his arms under him, pressed up onto his elbows, and tilted his head towards me. "Want to find out what they can do off the ice?"

The cocky asshole was back. Undressing me with his eyes and grinning that cocky, self-assured grin as he lifted himself from the table.

Of course.

I turned away so I didn't stare as he dragged his shirt back on those lean, beautiful abs. I bet he'd have made a show of it. One I desperately wanted to watch.

And really, really should not.

"In a city this size, Bowman," I said, gathering up every ounce of my willpower to get the words out as I turned back to face him, "I'm sure you can find a more available sugar daddy. Please don't come back unless you have an actual injury."

"Right." His eyes dipped down my shirt as he strode for the door. Paused, fingers on the knob. "Probably a shit-ton. But I'm not looking for a sugar daddy."

And then he was gone. Leaving me alone and breathless and way, way too warm. Tense. Knotted up. I needed a whole lot of things, none of which I could take from him.

Even if he was about the most sexy, gorgeous, and adorable man I'd ever seen. Even if I was starting to think there might be something soft and real lurking under that cold, cocky mask.

Even if I kind of wanted to find that little bit of … real.

He was still my patient, and a hockey player.

What the hell was my problem?

It had been days since our little meeting in my office, and I was still thinking about it. The way his muscles and skin felt under my fingertips. The way his body went soft. The way his voice went soft as he let the mask slip. And then he'd looked at me like he was mentally tearing my clothes off. Or maybe we'd already moved past that in Bowie's head-movie.

We certainly had in mine.

Fuck.

I was like a horny high schooler with a crush. Which I was not. Any of those things. Well, a little horny, since it had been a while, but I took care of myself when there wasn't anybody else.

I was thirty-fucking-seven. High school was a long-ass time ago.

And I didn't have a crush.

"Did … did you order fries with your sandwich?" Katie's voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a very lengthy tunnel. Wherever she was, I, clearly, was not. Mentally, anyway.

I dragged myself out of my wayward horny thought-spiral with almost physical effort—goddamn, I was far out there. Katie leaned on her elbows across the sticky plastic table to peer at me from beneath dark brows furrowed tight.

Late-afternoon sunlight slanted down through the trees in the one-block urban park past the patio where we sat. Around our tiny red table, Leonard's Grille bustled with the usual happy hour crowd, that unique mix of excitement, relaxation, and post-work grumpy exhaustion.

"Earth to James." Katie snapped her fingers in front of my face. Aware that I was not present. "You with me?"

"I'm here." I shifted, my knee brushing hers under the tiny table as I straightened up. This place wasn't designed for guys with a six-four frame.

"You didn't sub your fries for a salad."

"Didn't I?" I couldn't remember ordering. I vaguely recalled a cheery, five-foot blonde bundle of golden-retriever-esk enthusiasm bustling over with a big grin and a notepad, but that's about when my mind had traded the sunshine-blonde ponytail for tousled bed-head and her blue eyes for sparking green ones and …

There I went again.

"Where the hell are you, Sullivan?" Katie's voice lost its normal trainer brusqueness. I liked her soft. But it scared me, too. Like she was reading my soul, and honestly, nobody should look that deep.

"Tired. Stressed." I sighed, fished out a little piece of truth to pacify her. "This fucking business class is harder than I thought it'd be. And if I don't pass it …"

I dragged a hand through my hair. Just what I needed. To remind myself of my actual problems. Maybe that's why I was letting myself get all caught up in Bowman. He was a distraction. Something pretty to look at.

"If you don't pass it, so what?" Katie poked her straw in her iced tea, rattling the ice cubes around. "You take it again. Your business waits a year. Or two. What does it matter?"

It mattered because I was tired of lurking in my old life. It was time to get out. Move on. Stop lusting after the past in the form of bright-eyed lithe-framed hockey boys I shouldn't pay attention to, let alone think about days after the fact …

"It matters because I don't want to keep reliving that last game—" I stopped talking very, very suddenly. Where the hell had those words come from? My fingers dragged through my short hair almost hard enough to hurt. "I'm ready to move on, that's all."

Katie crossed her arms on top of the table and leveled me with a very stern, real stare. Truth was coming. "It's not just the job keeping you from moving on, Jamie."

My shoulders stiffened. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean"—Katie didn't blink—"you're stuck in the past not because you don't have a future, but because you don't have a present. You're drifting in the middle, waiting for someday."

Bam. There it was. Jamie: back-down on the mat, blinking away stars from Katie's chokeslam of truth.

I chewed on my lip. Didn't have a response to that one. And Katie barreled on ahead while I was still reeling. Still on my back, listening to the countdown, too stunned to get up and fight.

"You have to find something to anchor you here, now," she said. "Not someday. Not a business or a dream. Today. That's how you stop reliving the past."

I stared out into the park, the trees, the soft grass. The August heat and humidity sat like a weight on my shoulders, turning the skin under my loose grey T-shirt clammy and uncomfortable.

Or maybe Katie's words were doing that, each a heavy blow against my sternum.

"When was the last time you did something fun?" she asked.

I winced. "We come here every Wednesday. And we went hiking last week—"

"How about with someone besides me?" Her dark brow angled up towards her hairline. "Or JJ. Someone not on the team?"

That one was a bit of a reach. "My brother was here two weeks ago."

She huffed; she'd forgotten about Dave's visit. "When was the last time you went on a date?"

I flinched.

"Low blow." I didn't have the memory bank to dig back that far. It was practically ancient history.

"Do you even remember it?"

No. I did not. "That's a below-the-belt hit—"

"Come on, J." Katie rolled her eyes. "Nobody's touched you below the belt in years."

"For fuck's sake." I opted not to mention a certain starboy's drunken handsiness to disprove her theory. Technically, I suppose, he hadn't gotten to anything … important. "None of this is relevant."

"It is, though!" Katie broke off as the perky blonde waitress returned with our food. Set my sandwich—with fries—in front of me. Katie's burger before her. Beamed a megawatt smile at each of us, then hopped off to throw sunshine on another table.

I dug into my lunch, sending pleading prayers to all the deities out there that the food was sufficient enough distraction from Katie's runaway train of conversation—

"You need to start doing now things." Katie set down her burger to look me dead in the eyes. So much for my prayers. The deities had left me high and dry. Again.

"I do now things," I huffed. "We're here, aren't we? Enjoying the summer sunshine?"

Katie jabbed a french fry at me. "We're here every Wednesday. I mean fun, spontaneous things. Not business things. Not plans. Not dreams. Not pre-planned outings where you eat the same sandwich because it's familiar."

"I do plenty of other stuff." I opted not to elaborate for fear of disproving my hollow argument.

"Eat the fries." Katie's gaze slid across the tiny table to the aforementioned fries on my plate. "Do it."

"What?"

She jabbed a fry at me again. "Eat them. They're not part of your normal plan. An accident. Spontaneous."

Jesus, when had she gotten so … right? I hated it.

"Fine." I picked up a fry. My body fought a mini-war at the smell of that golden grease, and the thought of how many gym hours a single fry equated to. More at thirty-seven than twenty-five. I nibbled the end—oh, fuck. It was good. "You happy?"

My taste buds sure were.

"No." Katie'd vanished her own fry and was looking at me with that serious expression again. "Now, you're gonna go out on a date."

I choked on the half-chewed potato-stick of heavenly hell. "What?"

"C'mon, Sullivan," Katie sighed in genuine frustration. "Let me help you here. When was the last time you got laid?"

I crossed my arms and glared, fries forgotten. "I don't think that's any of your business."

"It is when it's making you act like a complete jackass. Give me your phone."

"No way." My hand slapped down on the pocket of my shorts like she was going to try and jump me for it. "Why?"

"I want to download a dating app. Unless you're hung up on someone already?" Her grin turned sharp and devious. "The kid?"

"What?" Good thing I'd swallowed the fry or I'd be choking. "What?! No! The who? Kid? Who?"

"Real subtle." Cue the Katie eye-roll. "C'mon, Sul. You need to do something spontaneous. Alive. Young. You need to get laid. Either bang the kid, or let me set you up on TopTier."

I heaved the longest and most dramatic sigh I could muster. She didn't flinch. So, against my better judgment, I handed over my phone. Watching her hack away at the screen made stomach roll with nerves.

This was a bad idea, right? Or at least a silly one. Surely, I thought as I dug back into my sandwich, I didn't need an app to get laid. It hadn't been … that long.

"What do you want your name to be?" Katie asked without looking up from my phone. "James? Jamie? Sully? What?"

"Jamie is fine?" I mean, it had been a while since I'd had actual sex, but I'd had hookups in the past months. Not great ones, admittedly. But I'd gotten off. With someone that wasn't my hand. That counted.

"Okay, favorite color?"

"Um." A pair of emerald green eyes swam into my mind, and I blinked them furiously away. "Black?"

There was that guy I met at the Bobcat's bar a couple of months back. We hung out a few times. Made out. Got a little handsy.

"Green," Katie said, like she hadn't heard me. "Cool. Favorite type of music?"

"What! I didn't—um. Right. Rock."

And what about that cute merch guy who flirted incessantly during Bobcats games? He gave a halfway decent blow job. Well, he let me jerk into his mouth, which was basically the same thing.

"Favorite sport?"

I sighed, and her fingers tapped away over my phone. That one was a no-brainer at least.

She kept right on rolling. "Favorite drink?"

"Um. Protein shake?"

Oh, there was that other guy, from the gym. I got on my knees for him. A couple of times. Granted, it was my hand doing the work on me, but I mean, there was another person involved.

"For fuck's sake Jamie." Katie glanced up to half-glare half eye-roll at me. "Favorite drink like your sexy fun I-want-to-go-out-and-get-laid favorite drink."

"Oh. Is that not what I said?"

So, I had high standards. It's not that I didn't hook up. It was just that … none of them were right. Things fizzled before they got started.

"We'll say martini," Katie decided. "Very James Bond. Goes with the button-down look you're so fond of."

I plucked at my T-shirt in protest, but she barreled on like she hadn't noticed. "Favorite place to vacation—oh, wait. You don't."

"Very funny." I rolled my eyes. "Boston."

"For. Fuck's. Sake." Katie glared, frustration mounting. "Going to your hometown is not vacationing."

But that was Bowie's last trip—fuck. How the hell had my brain ended up there? Damn, maybe Katie was right and I needed to meet someone so I'd stop tripping over the same thoughts. The same person. "Fine. Um. Europe?"

Goddamn. I meant, like … Italy. Greece. Or something exotic. Hopefully, that's what she was typing. Not Britain.

"Signature dance move?"

"Do I have one?" Was I supposed to? Did I have to go dancing to get laid? That felt awkward at best, disastrous at worst.

"You do now," said Katie, and I decided it might be better if I didn't know.

Since when was that a criteria for dating—or hooking up—anyhow? I just needed to meet a nice, cute guy my age. Who checked about three hundred or so boxes. Why was that so hard?

"What's your go-to karaoke song, and can you hit the high notes?"

My mountainous standards were starting to get a bad feeling about this app. "Um. What? Why the hell does this matter?"

"It's a hookup app, Jamie," Katie sighed. "You're not trying to find a life partner. It's supposed to be fun and flirty."

"Skip to the next one."

"If you were a vegetable"—her lips twisted up in a grin I didn't like the looks of—"how would you want to be cooked?"

"How would I want to be—what?"

"It's a euphemism." She tilted her head, still smirking. "Do you want me to break it down a little more for your sex-deprived brain?"

"Nope. I got it. You can skip that—wait, are you typing something?" I leaned over to see the screen of my phone, nearly shoving my half-empty plate to the ground, but she slid it out of range.

"I'm skipping to the next one. Okay. Favorite place to bone?"

I choked on my own spit, and my hand thumped down on the table so loud the ice in my water glass jumped. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Stop being such a prude!" Katie practically yelled. "It's a goddamn hookup app! Next question is top or bottom?"

"Jesus fuck." I dropped my head into my hands. Katie was typing something, and I decided I didn't want to know. There was no way I was going to fuck some random guy. I mean, not that I hadn't. When I was younger. Had lower standards and looser requirements and, well if we were being frank, was kind of a manwhore.

Being a pro athlete will get to your head like that.

You're young, you're alive, you're free. You want to fucking taste life. You skate fast and hard, every game, and the adrenaline doesn't wane when the crowds go home. You want to live life the way you live the game—fast and hard.

So I did.

Lived every day, every night, every game. In victory and loss, in sex and booze and bad decisions. I wrote it into my skin, in ink and pain and injuries that never went away. And now …

I was left with a carefully planned routine and high standards and button-down shirts. Maybe Katie was right. Maybe I did need to loosen up a little.

"Top, okay? Top." I sighed as I lifted my head out of my hands. "Any more questions? I don't feel completely disemboweled yet."

Katie smirked. "Nope. That's it. Now, let's see if you got any matches."

My stomach churned with something that might be nerves or unease, but I shoved it down. It was time to move on, live for today, or whatever Katie had said. Get a certain blond fuckboy out of my head. Hell, I bet Bowie wasn't moping around, not getting laid. He was probably picking his lays for the next month.

And shit, there I was, tripping over him again.

Why? I had standards high as the fucking moon, and Bowie didn't fit any of them. Didn't check anything off my list of neat little boxes. In fact, he was the opposite of so many of those. So, why couldn't I stop thinking about him?

I had a problem.

And his name was Archie Bowman.