Page 48 of Jaded

Devereaux still watches me, like he actually cares whether I join the already drunken crowd. Team stuff, man.

Synergy. Family.

If being part of the Dingoes is about welcoming in the demons, I might have to hang out with them in the dark for a bit.

It’s too bad my darkness is so different.

But now that I’ve thought about hockey, I’m thinking how, after a couple of drinks, a few more hours, there’s no way I’ll want to get up in the pitch-black and frigid cold to skate.

I should leave now.

I open my mouth to formulate an excuse—and someone past Dev catches my gaze.

Someone tall and dark, with broad shoulders curving into heavily tattooed arms. Someone wearing a backwards baseball cap and a slight scowl as he pours cheap beer into a red plastic cup.

Someone, I note, surrounded by a court of admirers—women, mostly.

I remind myself that he’s nothing to me, that I’m nothing to him. A kiss and a little bit of banter, an awkward swipe of poetry. Absolutely nothing.

But still. My heart does some stupid little jitterbug thing inside my rib cage.

“Sure.” Big grin in Paul’s direction. “I’ll play.”

Chapter 14

Nat

Everton’sonlybeenwiththe team two seasons, but his parties have become the stuff of legend. Lots of people, lots of booze, a lot of other drugs. Dancing, cards, drinking games, sex. Once, that would have been a typical night for me.

That all changed a long time ago. Now, nights out—aside from the occasional drink at Michelangelo’s or an Ice Out—are few and far between.

But when Charlie begs . . . Syd’s over at Maggie’s for the night, and I haven’t been to one of these parties in ages. Plus, the Dingoes lost, my job’s looking less certain than ever, and a major life decision hovers over my head like a black cloud.

So maybe, just for tonight, I’ll take a leaf out of the old Nat’s book and have a drink.

Or not, because from the moment I arrive I feel . . . out of place. Too old or too quiet or too straitlaced, none of which were ever my style.

The old Nat was a no-forethought, no-regrets, bottoms-up kind of guy.

It’s been so long since I’ve been him, I don’t know if I remember how. So when Dev invites me over to a flip-cup game, I force myself to accept.

Syd’s all right, I remind myself as I fill a red plastic cup with crappy beer. Not that I don’t trust her alone, but what kind of parent would Ibe if I left her to go party—shit. I need to stop trying to justify being here.

It’s like Charlie said.It’s okay to have a night out every once in a while.

I’ve overfilled my cup. Shit, I am out of practice. Probably going to be shitfaced after a couple of rounds; the old Nat would be so ashamed.

I set my cup down on the table, my body strangely tense, almost nervous. Someone slides up to the table across from me, and my gaze lifts like it's magnetically pulled.

I recognize the elegant brown fingers curled around the red plastic cup. Recognize the lean, corded forearms, the way the T-shirt hugs his slender waist and wide athletic shoulders, rounded deltoids.

I catch the soft scent of strawberries.

Olli James—the man who’s come to save the team, and maybe my future. The boy I kissed outside that bar, the one I should walk away from. But instead, I sat down next to him to watch a hockey game, and wound up watching very little of the game.

The boy whose poetry still echoes through my mind.

My delicate ghost, the one I should forget and can’t, won’t, even when my thoughts lead me far too astray.

---