Page 49 of Two for Charging

“I know.”

“Do you know why…”

Luca shrugged. He had an educated guess, but it was nothing he would share until Breezy talked about it of his own accord.

“I mean, I’m a sociable guy, but I couldn’t have made this happen with everyone attending.” Jax gestured at the party around them.

“In part, that is because you don’t accept when others treat you like shit,” Luca pointed out. “He does.”

“Hm.” Jax didn’t have a response. Soon after, Tom lost his round, and the two of them moseyed off again, claiming old men needed rest.

At twenty-five, Jax was hardly old. Luca wondered how long their excuses would hold.

Dmitriyev followed soon after, leaving Fedorov to negotiate his way through a few more drunken rounds as the other team members trickled out one after the other. By two in the morning, it was down to him, Breezy, Mooney, and Luca.

“Was fun,” Fedorov said in his deep, quiet voice. “We do again?”

“Da.” Breezy gave him a clap on the shoulder so heavy it made him wince. “You should come to our apartment sometime. We’ll order something off the meal plan and play Counter-Strike.”

Fedorov had probably only understood “Counter-Strike,” but the word made him grin as he left.

“Now you’ve done it.” Mooney shook his head. “He’s gonna smoke us next time.”

“Maybe he can teach us how to suck less,” Breezy offered.

“You’re too nice, dude.” Mooney slid off the bed with a groan, stretching. “The flight is gonna be murder tomorrow. You coming, Luca?”

“I’ll help clean up.”

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Luca and Breezy alone in Breezy’s wreck of a hotel room.

It occurred to Luca belatedly that he’d had no reason to stay for the entire party. He could have left at any time and gone to bed the way he’d been wanting to for hours. But he had also been waiting for this exact moment, alone with Breezy, as they piled as many tiny bottles of alcohol as would fit into the trash can and washed the cups out in the sink.

“Man, It’s like I’m back in Juniors on a roadie in the middle of nowhere.” Breezy laughed, showing Luca a bottle he’d found hidden within a lampshade.

“I never did this in Juniors,” Luca found himself confessing.

“No?”

“No. My teammates, ah, they didn’t…like me very much.”

A familiar expression flitted across Breezy’s face. Luca recognized it as similar to how he’d looked at Denisov when he attacked Howie, but before he could ask what had upset Breezy, it was gone again. “What! Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the most likable—”

Luca snorted. “I’m not. I’m aloof and rude, but they mostly hated me because I was a better player and knew how to talk to girls.”

“Idiots.”

“Yes.”

“Well, did you enjoy the evening, at least?”

Luca considered. All told, he hadn’t been missing out on anything world-shattering. The same teammates he saw all day every day had squeezed into a room too small for all of them, talked about the same things they always talked about, drank, and put their gross hockey player feet everywhere. Nothing wild or crazy had happened; nothing awful either.

“I did,” he told Breezy.

Breezy’s smile was luminous.

Luca stepped closer and cupped his face in his hands, the action an impulse he lacked the time to control before the electricity of skin on skin buzzed along his neurons. They would be having sex, he remembered, with the clarity of the somewhat buzzed. They hadn’t decided when or how, but they would be doing it.