Unrivaled, page 15
Hedgie made a horrified face and put his hands over his ears. “El!”
Max sighed gloomily. “Yeah.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t see it. Good for you, though.”
Apparently Hedgie heard her through his earmuffs. “El!”
“What! I’m the sex confessor friend. You’re the relationship advice friend. This is not my territory. Shouldn’t you be asking if there’s a chance Grady likes him back or something?”
“That guy doesn’t like anything.”
None of this was helping Max sleep.
He needed a plan. Once he figured out what to do, he could stop thinking about it.
So, okay. He could wait until Grady got traded and deal with that when it came. But Max didn’t have that much patience. He could go back on his word about keeping their sex life strictly off-the-ice next time they played each other, and Grady would get pissed off at him and break it off. Except Grady kind of had a point about it being shitty, and Max had been the used party in relationship-adjacent scenarios before, and it had left a bad taste in his mouth. Plus that seemed like a coward’s solution.
Straight-up asking Grady about it was a hard no. With any other guy, Max could put himself out there. But Grady? No. Max couldn’t imagine doing that and then having to play hockey against him, knowing Grady knew about Max’s feelings and didn’t reciprocate them and was too good a person to chirp him about it.
Which left one option.
All he needed now was for his body to cooperate.
Decision made, Max finally succumbed to the painkillers and fell asleep.
GRADY GOT home from the road trip on Wednesday. On Friday he had a date.
David was a handsome guy in his twenties, maybe slightly younger than Grady preferred but with a mature personality. He was artsy but not pretentious, and the graphic tee and skinny jeans he wore fit him well.
On the app, he’d asked Grady, Do you trust me to plan this? Just go with it, you’ll have fun.
If Grady never had to plan another date, he’d die a happy man. Someone else wanted to take the initiative? Sign him up. All right. I guess I’ll see you Friday.
David had gotten them tickets to see the immersive Van Gogh exhibit. It wasn’t something Grady would’ve chosen on his own, but he enjoyed it anyway, and David’s lively, casual-but-not-dumbed-down talk of postimpressionism and the use of color and imagery was actually interesting. Besides, he was funny and engaging and didn’t seem to mind that it took several prompts to get Grady to express an opinion on art beyond “I like it.”
David laughed. “Yeah, I’m getting that. But how does it make you feel? What does it make you think of?”
“Sunflowers?” Grady said. But he owed it to himself and David to dig a little deeper than that. He was supposed to be trying to connect with the guy, after all, and he’d put thought and effort into this date. “Uh, August, maybe? Like, sitting at my mom’s kitchen table the week before school went back in, with the sun streaming in the window. She always had flowers on the table in the summer, but she wasn’t great about pulling out the wilted ones, and they’d sort of flop over after a few days.”
He thought maybe David would laugh again, or point out some way in which Grady’s answer was flawed, but instead he smiled quietly. “There, see? We’ll make an art critic out of you yet.”
But Grady kept his thoughts on Starry Night Over the Rhone to himself, even if it was silly. The two people walking together in the foreground with all of the beauty of the universe behind them—paying no attention—and somehow all he could think of was that little splash of red on the woman’s dress, and how it reminded him of Max’s lobster tattoo.
The second half of their date was eating Philly cheesesteak sandwiches from a food truck, walking down the street toward the parking lot.
“The duality of man,” David said, wiping a smear of sauce from the corner of his mouth. “Fine art and food trucks.”
Grady felt uncharacteristically philosophical. “Man cannot live on cheesesteak alone.”
David laughed. “Don’t let anyone else in this city hear you say that.”
Grady offered to drive David home—he didn’t drive, he said, and used a bike rental program to meet Grady earlier. They made small talk in the car. It felt nice, natural. David was objectively attractive, clever, engaging. He was a little more femme than Grady usually went for, but Grady liked it. It suited him. All Grady’s friends were jock types, but he was pretty sure David would charm them too.
But he didn’t feel the slightest spark. He didn’t want to hold his hand or kiss him or have sex with him, though he wouldn’t mind another guided tour of some art.
That sucked. He felt like a jerk. This was the best actual date he’d gone on maybe ever, and… nothing.
To make matters worse, he had no idea how he was going to explain this to Max. Usually Grady texted to vent about everything that had gone wrong, and Max made fun of him and his date in turn and then sent him dick pics to take his mind off it.
Grady didn’t have anything to complain about tonight. David was great. He’d chosen an interesting activity. Grady enjoyed himself. What was he going to say to Max? “Everything went great, but I don’t want to fuck him”?
Then what? Would Max still sext him after?
When had going on these dates become more about Max than the people he was with? He had no intention of pursuing a relationship with Max. But apparently he didn’t want to have sex with anyone else.
Finally he put the car in Park in the driveway of David’s townhouse, took a deep breath, and turned to David.
Who was smiling at him, unperturbed. “No second date, huh?”
David was too good for Grady anyway. He could hardly believe he was having this conversation. It felt like his mouth was working on autopilot while his brain went around in circles with unproductive thoughts. “Believe me when I say it’s not you. I haven’t had this much fun doing something out of my comfort zone in a long time.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“If something like this ever crops up again and you want someone to explain art to, call me up.” Then Grady’s brain kicked in for a brief moment and he snorted. “Or if you’re ever trying to impress someone with really mediocre taste in hockey teams, let me know. I’ll get you the best seats in the house.”
“Well, I do like jocks.” He dimpled in the glow of the streetlight that filtered through the car window. He reached for the doorhandle. “I hope it works out for the two of you.”
Grady’s mouth dropped open. “For who?”
David lifted a shoulder, easy nonchalance. “You and whoever you were thinking of when you looked at Starry Night Over the Rhone.”
Then he opened the door and got out. “Drive safely, okay?”
Grady watched him until he made it into the house. Then he brought his right hand to his forehead and tried to rub away the tension starting there.
It was just that particular shade of red that caught him. That was all.
And if he told Max later that night that the date had been a bust, no one ever had to know.
AT THE beginning of November, the Monsters had a road trip. Max didn’t go.
It didn’t make sense to travel with them—they’d only be gone a little over a week, and he probably wouldn’t get cleared to skate until they returned, even though all his issues were upper-body.
He could deal with the separation from his team, but the boredom ate at him. He was only supposed to work out his legs.
The lack of structure made him feel like time had no meaning. At least when he trained in the summers, he had a schedule—swimming this day, weights that day, resistance training another. Eat this many calories. Start at this time. Finish at that time. Check in with your trainer. This? Max ate, took his pills, worked out on the stationary bike or leg press for as long as he was allowed, and then… nothing. The whole day stretched in front of him with nothing to fill it. He didn’t even need to finally put in that research to find a replacement dishwasher, since Grady had taken care of that.
Max made it a total of thirty-seven hours. At that point his neck and shoulder hurt, but he could move them enough that he wouldn’t be a danger on the road. He would, however, be a danger to himself if he didn’t get something to do.
He could go to El and Hedgie’s. He knew he was always welcome there. But El had reached a fun new stage of pregnancy where she was either throwing up or sleeping. He’d already arranged for a dog-sitter for Gru because Max didn’t want to impose while she felt like crap. He could cancel that.
Or.
Or, he could take advantage of the fact that the Firebirds were in the middle of a home stand. He could drive to Philly and surprise Grady at home. If he couldn’t work out, he could get worked out. And maybe while he was getting fucked, he could figure out how utterly fucked he was. If Grady sent him home, well, Max would know how he felt and he could get over it.
And if he didn’t, Max could fool himself a little longer.
“This is a terrible idea,” he said out loud to himself.
Then he went next door to ask if he could trade cars with El for a week. Maybe Grady’s neighbors were less nosy than Max’s, but he didn’t want to leave it to chance and end up not getting laid because he accidentally outed their arrangement and Grady was pissed about it.
He had Grady’s address from their failed attempt to meet up in the preseason, so all he had to do was slide behind the wheel of El’s car—“I’d say make good decisions, but too late for that,” she said as she handed him the keys—and follow the directions on his phone.
An hour and ten minutes later, he pulled into Grady’s driveway.
He’d expected a bland modern cookie cutter of a house, with white siding or stucco and grass trimmed within an inch of its life, maybe a boxwood hedge with perfect ninety-degree corners.
He was half right. The house was a modern monstrosity, bland and flat, though the stucco was gray.
But he’d been wrong about the yard. It didn’t have a lawn at all, but row upon row of planter boxes—mostly empty—with neat brick paths in between. The few remaining plants looked like some kind of squash.
For a few seconds Max stared. This had to be the wrong house. The sensible part of his brain refused to accept the possibility that Grady Armstrong grew his own vegetables.
He does get his eggs from a farm, the horrible, inconvenient part of Max’s brain chimed in. It’s not impossible that he gardens.
The rational part responded with an image of Grady as a grumpy old man, chasing rabbits out of his lettuce with a rake.
Fuck it. Every second he spent sitting there, his judgment of himself grew. He needed to act before his common sense reminded him what an idiot he was.
Max took out his phone. R u home?
Only a few seconds passed before the response came. Yeah. Why?
Open the door
This time the reply came quicker. What? No. Then, How did you even get my address?
Max bit his lip. Uh u gave it to me before that preseason game bud. Remember?
Don’t call me bud.
But the front door was opening, so obviously Grady wasn’t as bothered as he pretended.
That restored Max’s confidence, or enough of it that he could fake the rest. He sauntered up the front steps, smirking. “You really want me to use a pet name, eh? Babycakes? Honey bear?”
Grady rolled his eyes as he let Max into the house. His hair was damp at the ends, and he smelled like the stupidly fancy shampoo he’d bought for Max. “I want you to shut up.”
Max closed the door behind himself and grinned. “Well, you know how to make that happen.”
From the look in Grady’s eyes, he had every intention of cashing all the checks Max’s mouth was writing.
Then he frowned like a grumpy thunderstorm and said, “You’re injured.”
Max blinked at him. “Yeah, but I didn’t break my mouth, so….”
Grady huffed and stomped farther into the house. Max toed off his shoes and followed. The décor was inoffensive and functional, and that was the nicest thing he could say about it. At least the place had good natural light. “I’m not having sex with you when I don’t know what your injuries are.”
Translation—he didn’t know which ways to be careful to keep from aggravating something.
They were in his kitchen now—industrial white, twelve-foot tray ceilings. An herb-pot wall provided the only splash of color.
Max pursed his lips. He didn’t come here to be treated with kid gloves. He also didn’t want to examine his feelings about the possibility that Grady cared enough not to hurt him. “I’m not telling you my diagnosis.” Teams kept that shit to generic “upper-body injury” for a reason—so other teams couldn’t target their weaknesses.
“Then we’re not having sex.”
Oh, come on. “Seriously? Because I won’t tell you where I’m hurt?”
Grady’s nostrils flared. “If you don’t trust me not to hurt you, why the fuck are you sleeping with me?”
Max flinched. He could afford to be reckless with his heart, but not his body. Only, what was more reckless? Trusting that Grady wouldn’t use his injuries against him, or fucking him without talking about them?
Finally he relented. “I strained my neck so it’s hard to turn my head to the right. And I have a partial muscle tear in my left shoulder.”
Grady’s eyebrows doubled in size and volume. “And you were going to let me fuck your face in the foyer?”
Let, nothing; Max was angling for it. “No pain, no gain. I’m open to alternatives.”
Grady appraised him, gaze lingering on Max’s mouth, his shoulders, his crotch. Max’s skin went hot.
Then Grady said, “Bedroom’s to the left.”
Max didn’t need to be told twice. He reached for the zipper for his hoodie and pulled it down as he went.
Grady’s bedroom looked like he’d purchased everything directly from the display at an expensive furniture store. It all matched too well. But Max only cared about the king-size four-poster bed and how quickly they could ruin the sheets.
By the time he got his hoodie off his left arm, Grady had folded the comforter and put it on the chair in the corner. “How much can you move it before it hurts?”
“Don’t worry about it. I can take it.”
Grady rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say you couldn’t. But if I hurt you, it’s going to be because I did it on purpose, not because you didn’t tell me something. So how far can you move it?”
Max’s mouth went dry and a shiver went down his spine, which actually hurt a little when his neck spasmed. Still, he demonstrated his arm’s range of movement, feeling naked under the weight of Grady’s gaze.
“Now this.”
Suddenly Grady’s hands were on his face, tilting Max’s head up and to the side.
Max’s breath caught in his throat as Grady met his eyes.
Somehow he didn’t expect Grady to kiss him. It was slow and thorough and hot, and the hair on the back of Max’s neck stood up. He curled his hands into the fabric of Grady’s T-shirt and held on as Grady scraped his teeth over Max’s lower lip, but when he bit down, Max jerked instinctively and then cursed into Grady’s mouth as his neck protested.
“Guy did a number on you,” Grady commented. He hadn’t let go of Max’s face. “Guess you’ll have to be a pillow princess today.”
Max squawked in indignation as Grady pushed him back onto the bed—except it was less of a fall and more of a controlled descent, nothing that jarred his strained muscles. “Excuse you,” he protested into the cotton of his own T-shirt as Grady eased it over his head, careful of his left arm. “I’m perfectly capable of participating—”
Grady made a hot, surprised noise and thumbed the right side of Max’s chest. Max hissed and squirmed back into the pillows as Grady toyed with the barbell. “What’s this?”
“It’s a nipple piercing, genius.”
Grady flicked it. Max writhed as pleasure shot through him. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“I don’t—” Grady found the piercing on the other side and put his mouth around it. Max’s central nervous system went on strike. “—ah, fuck—I don’t wear them during games for obvious reasons.” Catching one of them on the inside of his pads during a nasty hit could result in some gnarly nipple trauma.
Grady pulled his mouth away and rolled the wet nub through his fingers. “But you like this.”
“Yeah? That’s why I got them pierced—”
Grady pinched. Max was gonna die of sex. “They’re sensitive.”
They were basically hardwired to Max’s dick. “What tipped you off?”
Now he was twisting. Max groaned and arched into it, then hissed when his neck muscles pulled.
“The piercings aren’t exactly subtle.” Grady’s voice sounded gravel-rough. “Stop moving. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Max opened his eyes and glared at him. “How the fuck—”
Grady skimmed his palms over Max’s chest, brushing the tips of Max’s nipples. God, he was barely touching him and Max’s dick was leaking in his underwear.
“I could just stop touching you if you move.”
Max could just die of a heart attack right now. “Fuck you.”
“Next time,” Grady promised lightly.
Max wasn’t owning up to the skip his heart gave at the words—or the fact that it was the promise of next time, and not sex, that caused it. “Take off your pants, you smug asshole.”
It must be Max’s lucky day, because Grady actually did what he asked. Max squirmed out of his too. By the time he was naked, Grady was kneeling between his legs, looking hungrily at Max’s cock and the mess it had already left on his thighs and stomach.
Max couldn’t muster the focus to feel embarrassed when Grady was reaching for the lube, obviously as eager to get his dick in Max’s ass as Max was to have it.
