Page 48 of Two for Charging

“Thank you,” he said, and let the door fall shut as she went on to the next room.

He ignored Mooney’s raised eyebrow.

“What did she talk to you about, bro?”

“Nothing,” Luca snapped. “Come on. Let us see how much alcohol we can pilfer.”

He opened the minibar and stuffed all the little bottles into the pockets of his sweatpants. There weren’t enough to pass any off to Mooney, who took the beer can and mini bottle of champagne instead. Luca felt ridiculous about the whole procedure. It was the kind of thing his teammates in the OHL did, except they couldn’t take anything from the minibar without charging the team’s official credit card so they made do with whatever swill they could get at the nearest gas station.

Luca had spent a lot of nights listening to them laughing from the other side of the wall.

At the time it sounded cruel.

He looked forward to discovering whether it had been.

They waited for Breezy to text the all-clear before slipping out of their room and closing the door quietly behind themselves.

Luca and Mooney arrived first, so they spent some time with Breezy setting up a little refreshments table on the nightstand with all the miniature bottles separated by type of alcohol.

“No way this gets Dmitriyev drunk,” Mooney said. “Better hope he brings a big bottle of vodka.”

“We should have mixers. And snacks.” Breezy looked around the room as if any would emerge if he searched hard enough.

“There’s a vending machine a few floors down,” Mooney said. “You want me to go grab some?”

“Would you?”

He vanished, leaving Luca and Breezy alone. In this big room, with the double bed. The perks of no longer being on an ELC. Luca couldn’t wait, though, as roommates went, Mooney wasn’t bad. Luca wondered if the bigger bed was as soft as his had been a moment ago when he’d lain down. Breezy could lie down with him. They were going to do things in bed at some point soon. Well, they hadn’t specified a bed, but Luca assumed. He licked his lips.

Breezy followed the movement with his eyes. “Um.”

“Do you—” Luca started.

Three loud Russians pounded at the door and entered with an alarmingly large bottle of vodka, interrupting what would have been a very stupid and very horny question.

Luca hadn’t spent much time with them yet, the language barrier being the chief reason. But by the time Mooney returned, Breezy had gotten the gaming console he always packed for general use hooked up to the TV, and they started a round of Mario Kart. Dmitriyev begged off on account of being too old for it, which was a filthy lie; he’d played the previous afternoon on the plane. Luca suspected a ploy to get out of babysitting Fedorov for a few hours. His suspicions were confirmed when Dmitriyev and Abrahamov posted up by the tiny balcony, drinking straight liquor from the glasses the hotel left on the bathroom counter for toothbrushes, and chatting in fast-paced Russian while Fedorov played. He didn’t need much English for the game, nor to understand shitty trash talk.

The rest of the team came by in fits and starts. Hayes stayed for a drink while Vanderbilt stopped in long enough to knock Fedorov on the shoulder in congratulations and then said he needed to catch up on sleep. As a new father, no one doubted it except Luca, who caught him eyeing his phone in a way a married man had no business doing. The Swedes and Finns had a few more drinks, and Luca relinquished his controller to Gustafsson while he downed a tiny bottle of whiskey and followed it with Sprite, a combination he would not be repeating anytime soon.

When the party was in full swing, Tom and Jax deigned to show up.

“Captain,” Luca greeted Tom. “I didn’t think you would be here.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “As if the coaches don’t know this is happening. I bet they did it on purpose.”

Luca frowned. “What for?”

“Illicit hotel room parties with shitty booze we can’t tell anyone about? Much better team bonding than going to a bar. Even I remember that from Juniors.” Tom rolled his eyes a little as he said it and then jerked his head in the direction of Fedorov. “I’m going to go do the captain thing.”

He took an awkward seat on the corner of the bed and clapped Fedorov on the shoulder. Jax watched him go, eyeing the red marks at the back of his neck with no small pleasure.

“Subtle,” Luca told him, and offered him a tiny tequila.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Jax downed the drink, shuddering when he swallowed.

They settled by the wall, the only free place in the room to lean against, and watched as Tom let Breezy talk him into playing a round of Mario Kart, which he was very bad at.

“Breezy should be an A,” Jax said.