Page 13 of The Waiting Game

“Really?” Felix sounded surprised. “Even the guy who asked you to move in with him a couple of years ago? Right around when I got traded here, I think.”

“Yeah. Even him,” Jonah admitted.

Pretty hard to miss being in love when the guy he was in love with was two feet away.

“I just think about that sometimes,” Felix said. “Lying in bed after sex and just feeling so damn lucky to be with that person.”

“Hey, I feel that every time I get my dick sucked.”

Felix sniggered. “Except for The Nibbler.”

“Except for The Nibbler,” Jonah agreed.

But he was lying.

Or not lying, per se. But not exactly being honest. Because he wasn’t sure he’d ever experienced what Felix was talking about.

Yeah, he’d had great sex that left him in a contented afterglow, body humming with pleasure. But experienced that with someone he truly loved?

No, he was pretty sure he’d never encountered that.

How could he?

Because the only person Jonah had ever loved, the only person he could have that with, was right beside him.

His straight best friend.

The man who would never, could never, love him back.

And wasn’t that just a kick in the dick?

CHAPTER THREE

A few hours later, Felix frowned at his mocktail, tuning out the loud conversations across the table at the club.

The team was in good spirits tonight. They’d squeaked in a win they desperately needed, putting them one step closer to clinching a wild card spot.

But Felix wasn’t feeling particularly celebratory.

He’d taken a beating in the press and with the public lately. The combination of his lackluster play and the hit to his reputation after his drunk driving arrest last fall had really done a number on what had already been a mediocre career.

At eighteen, he’d been drafted by Vancouver, but after six entirely unremarkable years there, they’d sent him to Toronto at the trade deadline for a couple of future draft picks and the metaphorical bag of pucks.

At the time, he hadn’t cared that his value had been so low, he’d been ecstatic about returning home and playing with Jonah again, but his girlfriend, Whitney Perkins, hadn’t been thrilled. She’d been in school for broadcast journalism and had reluctantly agreed to the long-distance relationship.

They’d made it through two years of that, though there had been plenty of arguments along the way. The relationship had finally blown to smithereens late last summer, sending him into a tailspin of self-pity and drinking.

“Hey, you sure you’re okay, man?” Jonah leaned in, slinging an arm across his shoulder. “You seem a little down.”

“Yep. This blackberry ginger ale thing is pretty good,” Felix lied. It tasted perfectly fine—it was just a shitty reminder of his mistakes.

The whole not-drinking thing grated on Felix’s nerves.

Well, not the not-drinking exactly. His sobriety was important to him. It had never really been about the booze.

But the other guys feeling like they had to change what they did for him didn’t sit right.

He was the one who’d fucked up. Not them.

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