Bennett mentally brought up the Trailblazers’ schedule for the day. There was a morning skate but it wasn’t for another couple of hours. Had he gone to the arena early?
“Could’ve woken me up before you left, you fucker,” he grumbled to himself.
Of course, maybe Sandro had left because he was done with Bennett. Blowing out a breath, he shook his arms out at the thought. He didn’t like it, but what he liked even less was not knowing if this version of Sandro would do such a thing.
Sandro of version past never would have.
Was this it then? They’d have one night together and nothing else?
A thought niggled at the back of his mind as he went back upstairs, where he grabbed the phone off his nightstand and found a text from Sandro.
Sandro:
Keys are under the mat out front.
Bennett let out a harsh bark of a laugh as he descended the stairs to the ground floor again. At least Sandro had acted like a considerate fucker and locked up when he left.
To go running with Roman and Kas. Right. The niggling thought coalesced into fact—Sandro went jogging with his former teammates on Saturday mornings.
He’d left Bennett’s bed to go running in the cold?
Dumbass.
Chest tightening with irritation, Bennett tossed his phone onto the kitchen counter and padded toward the front door to retrieve his keys, the tile cold on the soles of his feet. But the sound of a key being inserted into the lock froze him in place.
The door swung open, and standing on the other side of it was Sandro, wearing black running clothes, a knit hat, and expensive running shoes. As he walked in, their gazes locked for a quick second before Sandro gave him an up and down glance that had Bennett’s skin erupting in goosebumps.
“Hi,” came Sandro’s hoarse whisper.
“Hi,” Bennett replied.
Sandro closed the door and leaned back against it, giving Bennett another up and down glance. Bennett was no longer a hockey player and he didn’t have the muscle he’d had back then, but he kept himself in shape. He knew what he looked like, and he exploited it by planting his hands on his hips and letting Sandro look his fill.
He was still irritated that Sandro had left, but he’d come back, and that meant something.
Swallowing hard, Sandro straightened off the door. “I’m sorry I left.”
Oh. Well. Okay. That was unexpected.
“Why did you?”
Sandro rolled his shoulders backward, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “Roman, Kas, and I always go jogging on Saturday mornings. I told you that.”
Bennett made a noise of acknowledgment and advanced on him. “So you left my warm bed,” he said, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of Sandro’s running pants, “to go jogging with your friends? A warm bed where there was an equally warm someone willing to give you a morning blow job, I might add.”
Sandro’s eyes flared. “It was a dumb decision.”
“Uh-huh.”
It was on the tip of Bennett’s tongue to ask why he’d made it. Why he hadn’t stayed, or at the very least woken him up to tell him he was leaving.
Maybe he’d panicked, maybe he’d second-guessed last night, maybe he’d needed space, maybe he simply hadn’t wanted to wake Bennett from a sound sleep.
Whatever the reason, Bennett found that it didn’t matter.
Sandro had come back.
Mouth quirking into a smile that made Bennett’s stomach flip, Sandro said, “You could give me that blow job now.”
