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Remy huffed out a laugh at that. “Okay, that makes sense, because you’re obviously⁠—”

“Obviously?” Jed held back a smile.

“You’re huge, okay? All over. You know you are.” Remy shoved at him and then immediately scooted in closer.

“I’ve been told.”

“But I like the idea of feeling you everywhere. If you wanted to, sometime.”

And then Remy curled into his shoulder and fell asleep, leaving Jed lying there wide-awake and wondering how Remy could do that when it felt like his own heart was about to beat out of his chest. Wondering how this was his life and whether there was any way he could make this last past the end of the season.

They’d only just started being together this way, and it felt like Remy was fully in it, but Jed had also never been with someone so physically affectionate before. It seemed so easy for Remy. Maybe it didn’t mean to him what it did to Jed.

He shouldn’t get ahead of himself. They had months to go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

REMY

Remy had never had anything like the last few days of the break.

It all happened so fast, going from wanting to having, from wondering to knowing what it felt like to have Jed surround him and overwhelm him and then hold him as he came back to earth. The togetherness was so intense that he didn’t know how he was going to survive being thrust back into the grind of hanging with the team and playing a game or practicing until he almost puked and letting Jed drive him home and then starting all over again.

It hadn’t been completely perfect, of course. He had some questions, like whether Jed was really okay with the fact that Remy seemed to come within five minutes every time they touched. And whether maybe he’d been asking for too much. Jed didn’t come every time, and not because Remy hadn’t offered.

Remy didn’t think his sex drive was necessarily higher than other guys’—like, Petey made it sound as if he routinely came multiple times a night whenever he hooked up—but he didn’t have much of a sample size to compare to. He didn’t want Jed to get tired of him.

But he didn’t know how to bring it up, so he hadn’t said anything.

And he was nervous about how it would be around the team, as they drove in the first morning back. He thought Jed might be, too, though it was hard to tell. Jed was already up doing his normal routine when Remy got out of bed—out of Jed’s bed, which was a lot harder to leave than the bed in Jed’s guest room. Remy made extra-large smoothies, and when he’d handed one to Jed, he thought about kissing him good morning, but Jed just looked at him for a beat and then said, “Thanks,” and went to change.

So. Maybe good morning kisses in the kitchen were a boyfriend thing, too. More evidence that “together” wasn’t boyfriends, which Remy needed to keep reminding himself. He’d gotten ahead of himself with Mike. And while being with Jed felt different, that could all be in his head.

Once they were at the practice facility the first day back, it all started to feel more normal, but old normal, like before Jed was anything other than the veteran player putting up the rookie as a favor.

It was like the last week hadn’t even happened. And that feeling—that head-spinning, lights-are-too-bright, is this real feeling—made him fumble everything he touched. He knocked Petey’s pads off the bench and tripped over Jed’s skates and was getting some strange looks from the rest of the team as he tried to get it under control.

It threw him off, and he wasn’t as sharp as he’d have liked when Coach ran them through some complicated drills. Coach was testing exactly how much they’d let themselves go over the last week, and the answer in Remy’s case was clearly too much.

But then Jed pulled him aside and asked if he was okay, and his brief touch to Remy’s arm and the intensity of his gaze promised that it wasn’t all in his imagination and that Jed would give him whatever reassurance he needed that night when they got home. That gave him the energy to show Coach he had his act together.

He even started to have some fun, taking a puck he normally would’ve passed up to Jake and shooting on Jed himself when he realized he had a clear lane. That must’ve caught Jed by surprise, or maybe Jed wasn’t as focused as always, because the puck went in and Petey hooted, “Fuck yeah, Lads,” and Jed said, “First and last,” and Hal gave both of them a look.

“I think Hal knows,” he whispered to Jed, in the hallway heading back to the locker room after practice ended.

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” Jed’s voice was low but loud enough for others to hear, if they were paying attention. “Does that matter to you? He won’t say anything.”

“I know, I know. And no, I don’t care that he knows. Or that whoever knows. I meant that, when I said it.” Remy couldn’t stop the words, again. “Just. Like. I’m worried that he’s going to be watching me now.”

“Well, he’s not going to want to make you nervous. He’s mostly going to want us to keep winning games.”

“Yeah, but he cares about you, too.”

“He doesn’t need to worry about me. And he’ll find someone else to focus on soon enough, believe me. You don’t need to worry, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

That night, he and Jed were both exhausted. They ate a quick dinner on the couch and then settled in to watch some tape for their upcoming games just like they might have done two weeks earlier. But Jed pulled Remy down next to him and tucked Remy into his side and dropped a kiss in his hair, and that helped Remy settle.