“What for?” My voice is gritty, caught in the back of my swollen, still-aching throat from all my wailing.
“I feel like a well of deep rage since my accident, Pitstop. And the only thing that quells the inferno is you.”
My heart threatens to burst, rattling against my ribcage as it grows. “Even though I drive you crazy?”
“Especially because you drive me crazy. The headache you give me distracts me from the throbbing in my face.” He grunts softly like he finds it amusing. “I took a puck to the face, shattered my jaw, had surgery, and your grousing at me still hurts more.” He winks.
“Thanks... I think. Who says romance is dead?”
“Now that you’ve stopped fighting your attraction to me, Pitstop, I’m gonna swoop you off your size ten feet with all the romance I’m about to rain down on you.” The sheets crinkle as he shifts his weight.
There are a lot of thoughts that come to mind, but the first is about the shoes. “How do you know how big my feet are?”
“I know lots about you.”
Oh god.
He laughs at my groan.
“Dare I ask?”
“I thought about pouring itching powder in your shoes.”
I snort, tracing my fingers along his bicep. “What stopped you?”
“You wear pretty shoes.” He shrugs like that’s all the information that’s needed. “And I didn’t want them inserted in my ass.”
“You’re a strange man, Tate Myers.”
“Yeah.” He agrees. “But I’m yours.”
I poke him in his toned, firm man-chest. “True. But just remember that consent can be revoked at any time, hot shot. Wanna do something for me?”
He wiggles his brows. “Again? What my Pitstop wants...”
I laugh and intercept his hand as it approaches the apex of my thighs. “Not yet. I was going to ask you to play your guitar for me.” I shake my head. “I know it’s the middle of the night, and your housemates might get cranky, but I spied your guitar in the corner of the room, still in its case...”
“I could blast rock music next to each of their sleeping heads, and I bet most of them would sleep through it. Hockey players can sleep damn near anywhere.”
Now he says it, I remember Dad and Oliver saying something similar over the years.
I slip out of bed, open the guitar, and hand it to him before settling onto the mattress next to him.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Everything. Anything.” I shrug. “Hearing you strum your guitar in the dorm room next to me while I was trying my best to hate you was all kinds of torture.”
He chuckles. “I won you over with my fingers before I got to finger you, eh?”
“You’re such a pig.” I shove him playfully.
He starts playing the intro to Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide, and the rest of the world melts away.
CHAPTER 23
Tate
Ithought the most painful thing I’d ever experienced was waking up from having metal inserted into my fucking face. But something far more destructive, far more agonizing, is watching my team on the ice, through a screen, from my sickbed.
