Page 62 of Holding Penalty

How am I going to face him without looking embarrassed, knowing that the fantasy of us together drove me to the best orgasm I’ve had in ages?

But then another question pops into my mind that makes my pulse stutter. I wonder if he’s faced that same question with me since I moved in?

29

NASH

Our first loss of the preseason.

It’s not a big deal, really. Coach didn’t play our top guys too hard, since the regular season is just around the corner. Taking it easy and giving up a preseason game is standard operating procedure. Still, it always stings a little to lose.

I hear a burst of laughter from the hotel room next to me as I drop onto the bed. That’s Hayden’s room.

One of our third-line rookies, Kevin Haaland, took the loss hard because he got a lot of ice time today and wasn’t at his best. He got the puck stolen from him a couple of times, and got deked to give up a goal. Hayden made it his mission to cheer the kid up, joking around with him in the locker room and inviting him to his hotel room to play a video game on the system that Hayden brought along.

Hayden’s class clown energy might be exhausting sometimes, but I’ve seen him channel that to cheer up people who are in a bad mood and make them laugh, so it’s hard to hold it against him.

I’ll just have to console myself with that thought when I’m trying to fall asleep and they’re still laughing with the video game turned up way too loud. I could go next door and ask them to turn it down, but I’m trying to be less of a crotchety old man lately.

After Bridgett and I broke up, I’ve felt haggard and worn out well beyond my years. But since I’ve started spending time with Piper, who’s the same age as me but so energetic and full of life, I’m starting to feel sort of … renewed.

I look at my phone. It’s eleven at night.

I wonder if Piper is still up.

My stomach flips when a text message from her pops up on my phone, just as that thought passes through my head.

PIPER

Nash … what is THIS?

When I see the picture she sends, embarrassment swims in my chest, my cheeks turning warm even though we’re hundreds of miles away.

It’s a coffee mug standing on my kitchen counter. The mug she gave me as a welcome present the first week we lived next to each other in college.

I kept it all these years. Every time I moved and went through the process of deciding what to take with me and what to throw out or give away, I never had the heart to part with that damn mug.

ME

Looks like a coffee mug

PIPER

You really kept it? I thought you hated it, lol

Regret tugs inside me. I remember that day, the day after I moved into the off-campus rowhouse I rented the ground-floor one-bedroom apartment of. Piper and her roommates rented the entire house next door, which was the end-unit. It was both of our first times living in our own place, out of the dorms.

She knocked on my door one day, looking so fucking cute and bubbly. She had a tiny, wrapped box in her hand, and she told me it was a moving-in present. She laughed, saying she wanted to do it to commemorate having her first neighbor while living independently.

Caught off guard, without even saying anything and with a blank expression on my face, I opened it to find a coffee mug with the words I Need My Pucking Coffee written on it. She knew I was on the team.

If possible, I was even more of a socially graceless jerk than I am now, and with a flat expression, I just looked at it and grunted to her, “Uh, okay.”

Ugh. I cringe at the memory. I wish I could go back in time and kick my own ass.

She stood there, sunny smile still on her gorgeous face, waiting for me to say something else, to do something to show my appreciation other than pin her with my dull glare and my lips as flat as the horizon of a Texas desert.

Until her bright expression faltered for a moment and she said, “Well, I’m right next door if you ever need something,” trying to be neighborly and polite while I stood there like a stone.