My life. So glamorous. A glance at Silas’s bedroom door shows me that he’s already turned in for the night. Lucky guy.
Heidi is completely limp as I carry her to the sofa and pour her onto it. “Ow,” she says, even though I’m careful not to let her hit her head.
“What hurts?”
“My stomach.”
Oh, fuck. She sits up quickly, alarm in her eyes. “I think I’m going to—”
She stands up fast and runs for the rear of my apartment.
“On the left,” I bark as she sprints. The girl is surprisingly agile for someone who was limp as a ragdoll a minute ago. But every hockey player knows that adrenaline has superpowers.
Not even four seconds elapse before I hear the door slam and the sound of retching.
I sit down on my sofa and put my face in my hands. I allow myself a chuckle. At least I didn’t insist on taking her home to Manhattan. She might be puking on me in the back of a car right now.
Things could always be worse.
Heidi appears a few minutes later, looking pale and sheepish. She sits down beside me on the couch and lets out a drunken sigh.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She clears her throat. “Yeah. I don’t usually drink.” There’s a slight slur to her words.
“Because it’s impolite?”
A giggle escapes her. “Don’t tease! It’s embarrassing enough already. There’s no mess, though. I’m a very ladylike puker.”
That makes us both laugh.
“I borrowed your mouthwash,” she confesses. “Sorry.”
“You borrowed Silas’s, because that’s his bathroom. But we can do even better than that. Come on.” A glance at my phone tells me it’s midnight. In six hours I have to be up and on my way to Long Island, where the next part of training camp is scheduled to happen.
I need to sleep, and that can only happen after I make sure my unexpected guest is comfortable. Heidi follows me into the giant master bedroom, and then the huge en suite bathroom. “Wow. Nice place.”
“Thanks.” It is a nice place. Silas and I are paying exorbitant rent, although some of our teammates bought their units. We refer to this building—a hundred-year-old factory that was renovated into luxury condos—as the Million Dollar Dorm. It’s pricey, but its proximity to the practice facility is irresistible. So a significant percentage of the team lives here.
I haven’t tried to buy my unit yet, since I don’t want to jinx myself by assuming the Bruisers will keep me. Especially after the way last season ended.
“Here,” I say, fishing a new toothbrush out of the medicine cabinet. “And let me find you a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.”
Ten minutes later I tuck Heidi into one side of my king-sized bed. And then I climb into bed on the other side. I’m not sleeping on my couch—not if I have to scrimmage tomorrow under the watchful eye of coaches who are still trying to cut players.
Besides, if Heidi is here with me, I can keep an eye on her. And—bonus—the bathroom is nearby.
This will only work if she doesn’t get frisky, like she was in the cab. I shut off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. All is silent for a moment, and she stays on her side of the bed. Then I hear her sigh. “The room is sort of…”
“Turning?” I guess.
“Yessir. How did you know?”
“It’s called having the spins.” She wasn’t kidding that she doesn’t drink very often. Who’s never had the spins? “Should we find you a bucket for beside the bed?”
“No.” She groans. “My stomach isn’t sick anymore. Now it’s only my head. But I hate it. It’s like I’m turning through space.”
“You’re not, I promise.” I reach across the bed and take her hand. “See? I’ve got you.”
She squeezes my hand with her smoother one, and then she wiggles backward. Suddenly my arms are full of warm, curvy girl. Her back is to my chest, and she pulls my arm over her body and hangs on tightly to it, as if I’m the only thing tethering her to Earth. “That’s better,” she whispers.
Her hair smells like flowers. And she’s just as soft and warm as I thought she’d be, damn it.
“We’re not having filthy, dirty sex right now,” she observes.
“No, we’re not,” I say firmly.
“Because I puked.”
“Because you needed to puke,” I correct.
“And that’s off-putting. It’s not ladylike. Maybe Mama was right all along.”
“Nah.” I smile into her hair. “That’s not the reason.”
“No?”
“Nope. The reason is that having filthy, hot sex—”
“Filthy, dirty sex.”
“—is that having filthy, dirty sex with wasted girls isn’t gentlemanly. Turns out I do follow a few rules.”
“Oh. I thought tonight I would finally be a wild child. I guess I lost my shot.”
“Yeah, you did. But I still think you’re pretty wild. It isn’t often I beat Bayer and Silas at darts, three times in a row.”
“I’m handy at skeet-shooting, too.”
“No shit?” There is something deeply appealing about the image of Heidi blasting clay plates out of the sky with a shotgun.
“No lie,” she says, and the way that “lie” is flattened a little to “lah,” makes my body respond. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s stroking my hand with her softer one. Then she sighs and wiggles a bit in my arms.
Goddamn it, now I’m hard. Of course I am. I’m lying in my bed with a beautiful girl who I’ve been staring at since the day she showed up on the team jet last spring. And her perfect lips keep repeating the words, “filthy, dirty sex.”
You’d have to be a dead man not to respond. And I’m very much alive. If I shifted my hips a couple of inches, we could be…
I hold back my impatient groan. So much for a good night’s sleep.
“Good night, Jason Castro,” Heidi whispers. “Thank you for being such a good guy.”
“I’m not,” I argue.
“No, you are. You listened to me. Earlier, when I was upset.”
“Oh.” She really is drunk. “That’s nothing.” She was damned entertaining.
“It’s not nothing. Not at all. You made me laugh and told me to be daring.”
“I was only trying to get you naked,” I admit.
She sighs against my pillow. “But that’s nice, too. Nobody ever does that, either.”
I squeeze her hand in mine, wondering how that’s possible. She’s not the only one who feels a little disoriented, either. I’m not usually a cuddler. I don’t usually snuggle up to my hookups, because I don’t want to send the wrong impression. But it’s unexpectedly pleasant to feel Heidi’s smooth skin against mine.
I’ll never be anyone’s boyfriend again. That’s by choice. But I’d forgotten what this was like—holding someone who needs me. Years ago I used to sneak through my high school girlfriend’s window so I could hold her all night just like this.
And now I’m both horny and wistful. What a strange night. I feel stirred up inside, but I lie still, unwilling to disturb the sleepy princess beside me. My eyes drift closed, and I find myself wondering what it would be like to have someone in my bed every night like this.
It’s not like me to have these thoughts. While my body runs hot, my heart is pretty cold. But something about Heidi warms me all the way to the center. She’s willing to tell me her flaws. And she’s unafraid to say she doesn’t have all the answers.
And I sure as hell don’t, either.
On that happy thought, I fall asleep.
4
Jason
When my alarm goes off the next morning at six, I’m not alone.
Unfortunately, the other person in my room is not the hot blonde woman with long, silky legs that tortured me last night. Instead, my roommate Silas is standing at the foot of the bed, nudging me with his knee.
“Aren’t you getting up?” he asks, drinking deeply from the Delilah Spark Fanclub mug that my teammates bought him for his birthday. It was meant as a gag gift, but Silas drinks from it every morning.
“Yeah, I’m coming. Jesus.” It wasn’t a great night’s sleep, unfortunately. Too much tossing and turning against Heidi’s body. Too many horny dreams.
“The bus leaves in thirty minutes,” Silas reminds me.
“You know what?” I squint up at him. “Let’s just drive out there. Fuck the bus.”