Page 80 of Line Change

“You could stop by the facility and meet the team.”

As soon as I say it, I picture Nolan crossing the locker room to join us, calling me Pope and standing close enough to crowd my shoulder while he asks Grayson what he does and how long he’s staying. Grayson pays attention to people. He’d look at my face when Nolan walked over.

I’m about to take the invitation back when Grayson shudders.

“I’d rather poke myself in the eye with the Space Needle. Hockey life is not for me.”

I laugh, and Grayson does too. Then the phone in my pocket vibrates again. I don’t have to look to know it’s Nolan.

Grayson glances toward my pocket. “Are you seeing anyone?”

For a second, I see Nolan sprawled across the hotel bed with my marks darkening on his skin and his legs locked around me while he said nobody else. I remember asking whether he was fucking anyone else and telling him I wanted it to stay that way.

“No,” I say. “I’m way too busy.”

Grayson nods and takes another bite. A moment later, he starts telling me about a coffee place he found near the condo and asks if I want to go before practice.

“Sure.”

He tells me it opens at six. I listen while he talks through the rest of his plans for tomorrow, and my phone stays in my pocket until the check comes.

23

NOLAN

I haven’t been to Pope’s condo in two nights, and I’m more bothered by that than I want to be.

Two nights shouldn’t matter. We see each other at practice, sit across from each other, and spend half the day on the same sheet of ice. Pope answers when I talk to him and passes when I’m open, so nothing is wrong with the line.

Off the ice, he’s being weird.

His texts have gone from actual conversations to one-word answers. He was busy the first night. Last night he said he couldn’t hang out again, then stopped answering before I could ask if he meant he was going to bed or only didn’t want company.

I keep looking for him during the drill anyway.

Pope circles low through the defensive zone while I hold the wall. Bobby retrieves the puck behind the net and sends it up to me. I chip it past the defenseman, and Pope is already moving through the middle for the return pass. We cross the blue line with the spacing exactly right.

On the ice, he’s exactly the same, which gives me no clue what happens when we leave.

Maybe the thing with the bite mark scared him. He dropped a skate when the room started celebrating the evidence he’d left on me, then nearly told everybody he knew where I was ticklish. I covered for him and walked out without giving him the grin he wanted.

Pope doesn’t usually run from anything. A man who spends his working life cutting through the middle of the ice while people try to knock him unconscious should be difficult to scare.

Sexuality might be different.

He’s still figuring out whether he wants men, or only wants me, or whether those are separate problems in his head. I knew that when this started. Getting impatient with him now isn’t fair.

I’m still getting a little tired of it.

I want him to figure himself out so we can stop circling around whatever this is and…

Oh God.

I want Ben to be my boyfriend.

My right skate slides out from under me.

I jam my stick against the ice and catch myself before my knee hits, but the puck keeps going without me. It crosses the slot and taps harmlessly off the far boards. Gunderson’s whistle cuts through the rink.