Chapter Five

ETHAN FELT horrible.

Horrible.

He should have known better. This wasn’t his first hockey team, for fuck’s sake. Goalies were superstitious, every single one of them. What was he thinking? Riley was his goalie. Riley was his friend, and Riley—

Riley was a good kisser. Ethan kept remembering that, being flipped on his back and do you feel better now?

Ethan was always yelling at everyone to stay the fuck away from his goalie, and what had he done? Fucked up Riley’s pregame ritual.

He’d been on edge during the game, and it translated into him playing like a moron. And after he tried to jumpstart the bench with a fight in the second, it ended with him getting his ass kicked.

“Man, I expected better after yesterday,” Jace Wynn said. “That was barely worth the fucking effort.”

It wasn’t, and Ethan knew it.

Then he got a very serious, well-meaning, and utterly incomprehensible lecture from the Storm’s backup goalie on the way back to Jacksonville. For three hours.

And Riley, by himself in the back of the bus, was quietly listening to headphones with his eyes closed.

“You heading home?” Riley asked him when Ethan packed up his gear and went out into the cool, October evening.

“Do you mind giving me a ride?” Ethan winced, aware he sounded like an idiot. They lived together, and Riley might be mad, but he wasn’t so much of an asshole that he’d leave Ethan stranded in the arena parking lot. “Riley, look—”

“Could you be quiet on the way home, please?” Riley sounded eerily calm, almost too polite. “I would really appreciate it.”

Ethan nodded miserably. He tapped his fingers on the door, he shifted in his seat, and he was glad the ride wasn’t longer than it was because he could tell Riley wasn’t in a good mood.

When they got to the apartment, Ethan put his gear away, had a smoke, and then went inside to shower. Then he pulled on jeans and a shirt and went to find Riley.

As Riley stretched in the living room, Ethan went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and got him a coconut water. He held it out like a peace offering. “Here.”

“No, thank you,” Riley said, politely.

Ethan peered at him. “Uh, Riles? We’re not at the game, you know. Right? I mean. You can yell at me for being a moron.” He leaned down and put the coconut water on the floor.

“I don’t want to yell at you.” Riley sank gracefully down in a stretch.

“What can I do?” Ethan asked, still down on his haunches. “I feel really bad about what happened.”

“You don’t have to.” Riley turned his head. “I let in five goals. Not you.”

“But I messed up your goalie thing.” Ethan watched as Riley smoothly moved through his stretches. He wanted to shake him or punch him. Anything to make him angry… like Ethan deserved.

“All right.”

Ethan stood up. “So that’s it?”

Riley looked up at him. “That’s it, what? You don’t have to do anything, Ethan. You can’t. I should have had my head in the game, and I didn’t.”

“Because I wouldn’t let you get it there to start with,” Ethan muttered, arms crossed. “You can say it.”

“Ethan, yeah. You messed up my goal marks. Maybe that didn’t help. And fine, maybe it did make me let that first goal in. But the other four? Those were all my fault. I need to be able to get my shit together after that happens. And tonight I couldn’t.” Riley rose gracefully from the floor. “This is what it’s like to be a goalie. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“Cool.” Ethan watched him as he started toward his bedroom. “But what about right now?”

“What?” Riley turned around and sighed. “What do you mean, right now? Right now I feel like shit, and I’ll get over it.”

“How?” Ethan kept thinking about that bad game folder and about Riley getting off in his bedroom, alone, in the dark. He didn’t like that idea. It made him restless and agitated. “Because I feel like shit too.”

They stood and stared at each other. “You shouldn’t. I don’t want you to. It wasn’t your fault.”

Ethan just shrugged. He was tense, all wound up, and he felt like he did right before he got in a fight. He took a step closer and he heard Riley suck in a sharp breath. “I just want to make it up to you.”

Riley made a noise that sounded like a cross between a laugh and a growl, and it made Ethan feel a low, warm burn in his stomach. “You really don’t have to do that, Ethan.”

Just like on the ice, Ethan knew Riley wouldn’t give an inch. Ethan stopped when he was right in front of him. “I want to, though,” Ethan said, and then kissed him.

This time neither of them were drunk or half-asleep. They weren’t hidden in darkness or shadow, and there was no way either of them could claim they weren’t aware of what they were doing.

Which was kissing, hotly, like they’d done it a lot more than once. It was also rough, exactly what Ethan wanted. Like fighting, but being turned on too.

They pulled away to catch their breath, and Ethan tried to think of something to say. But everything he came up with sounded lame. “Umm?” Great, that was brilliant. “Does that? Make you feel better?”

Riley’s dark eyes were wide and blurry. He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay. We could keep doing it?”

Riley nodded again. “Maybe not in the hallway.”

Ethan looked around, like he’d forgotten where they were. “Oh. Right. Where…?”

They both looked at Riley’s bedroom door, then back at each other. That seemed a little daunting.

“Living room?” Ethan suggested, just as Riley said, “Sofa?” and they both laughed nervously and went to sit on the couch next to each other.

Now it felt like they were on a date. Maybe the bedroom would’ve been better. Thinking about that made Ethan hot all over and restless again. “I liked it, when you—” He couldn’t say it. Got on top of me. He’d never had a problem being vocal about sex in his life.

Wait. What the hell was he thinking? This wasn’t sex. This was kissing. Never mind that he hadn’t stopped at kissing since he was seventeen.

Riley was watching him with his usual patience. Ethan gave him a look that clearly said “I don’t know,” and Riley leaned in and kissed him again.

“What did you like?” Riley asked, his voice rough. “When I did what? Tell me.”

“Got on top of me,” Ethan said without hesitating, and his breath caught on a moan when Riley moved with his usual fluid grace and straddled him on the couch.

“Like this?” Riley was still giving him that sharp, intense look. The goalie stare. But there was nothing cold about it. Not now.

Ethan made a noise and kissed him, because that seemed better than responding with an embarrassing squeaky noise.

“I haven’t done this before,” Ethan said when they pulled apart. “I mean, other than the last time.”

“Me neither,” Riley said, and he got up on his knees and bent down to kiss him again.

Ethan’s instincts were to start touching, and his hands went to Riley’s chest like they were programmed to do so. It made him pull away from their increasingly heated kisses when he touched… well, not what he was expecting.

“So, that’s different,” Ethan said, feeling stupid.

Riley looked down at Ethan’s hand on his chest, braced like he was going to shove Riley off him. “Is that seriously how you touch girls? Because wow.”

Ethan was surprised into a laugh. “I’m used to, uh. Something else being there.”

“But do you just put your whole hand there like that? I mean, I’m not saying you don’t have game, because I remember hearing you with the girl who liked computers. Is that a specialty thing?”

“Computers?” It was the weirdest moment of Ethan Kennedy’s entire life.

“No,” Riley said, and he looked amused.

“I don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re saying,” Ethan said bluntly. “Can we just go back to the kissing?”

“Sure.” Riley started kissing him again.

Ethan wondered if Riley was hard. Ethan was, and he didn’t know what to do about it. It seemed obvious, like he should be hard if he was kissing someone and into it. Which he was.

He wanted to pull Riley down on top of him, so he could find out if it was just him. But that seemed like a pretty advanced move. Maybe they weren’t there yet.

“Do you—should we stop?” Ethan hated how uncertain he sounded.

“Do you feel better?” Riley asked, head tilted. “You still look tense.”

“Because I’m making out with my roommate?” Ethan took a deep breath. Maybe kissing your roommate was a thing all guys did at some point or another, and they just didn’t talk about it. Like singing along with power ballads in the car, or getting teary eyed at the end of Disney movies. “I guess I feel better about the game, but it might be because I’m in shock about the making out, so I don’t know how to answer that.”

Riley nodded very seriously. “I can work with that.” He leaned down, but instead of kissing him on the mouth, he kissed Ethan’s neck instead. “Do you like this?”

Ethan’s hips bucked up sharply. “Yeah.” All the words were vacuumed out of him in a sweet, hot rush when Riley’s mouth moved closer to his ear. Ethan tilted his head so he had more room, even though it felt too good to be anything but a really bad idea.

Riley bit gently at his ear. “Don’t think so much.” He kissed Ethan’s neck again. “Just relax.”

“I don’t—okay, yeah.” Ethan rested his head back on the couch. His face was flaming red, but he moved his hands up and down Riley’s back. Ethan started to relax into it. He moved his hands with a little more confidence and curiosity and felt Riley’s muscles twitch in response.

They kept kissing, and it was getting fairly heated when Riley suddenly shifted his weight and settled on top of Ethan. The mystery of whether Riley was hard or not was solved beyond a shadow of a doubt, because Ethan could feel him, pressing against him and…. Oh, fuck.

It felt good—better than kissing. Ethan bucked up hard against him, and that felt better, so he did it again, and that made them both moan.

That’s when they stopped. Because kissing was one thing, moaning was something else. Moaning was a sex thing. No one moaned when they were just making out.

Riley sat next to him on the couch, and they both stared straight ahead. Ethan wanted to go jerk off. He wanted Riley to get on his lap again. He wanted to see what would happen if they kept doing that, grinding on each other. Maybe without their pants on.

Ethan made a sound, and Riley jumped off the couch. “I—why don’t we—five minutes. Come back in five minutes, and we can play Grand Theft Auto.”

“Done,” Ethan said and went to his room. He checked the time on his phone as his other hand fumbled to get his jeans off. It wasn’t going to take him five minutes, but he couldn’t go out there first or he’d look like a loser without any stamina.

Ethan got himself off thinking about Riley on top of him, grinding and kissing his neck, and do you like this, and… yeah. That was all it took.

They each came back in the living room exactly seven minutes after they left it. Riley grabbed two coconut waters out of the fridge, and a Pepsi that he wouldn’t let Ethan have until he finished his water.

They played Grand Theft Auto and then both fell asleep on opposite sides of the couch, watching some movie with explosions and very little plot.

In the morning they went running. And then they went to practice, and Ethan thought maybe that was it and that it wouldn’t happen again. He told himself that was fine. It was okay. He didn’t need it or anything.

He wanted it, though. A lot. And Ethan had no idea what to do about that. He just hoped Riley did.