Page 154 of Stick It
Nodding absently, I find myself feeling strangely awkward alone with the two of them. Finn is scrolling on his phone while Griffin moves to the other bed and begins lifting things out of his duffel. I’m an interloper in their usual routine, and I find myself shuffling my feet, unsure of what to do. My skin still tingles from Finn’s flirting in the elevator but now is not the time to fall downthatrabbit hole. I need to be getting myself in the mindset to crush the Krakens tonight.
“So, umm, what are your pre-game rituals?” I ask, already going through my mental to-do list.
“Nap. Chill. Eat.” Finn waves a hand in the air lazily. “I wouldn’t call it a routine per se. Not like the insanity this guy does. Superstitious asshat.”
Cocking a brow, I shift my attention to Griffin.
“It’s not about superstition,” he states simply, like he’s explained this a hundred times before. “It’s calibration. Control. The routine strips it all down—thoughts, nerves, bullshit. I clear the noise, focus the mind, get my body in sync. By the time I hit the ice, I’ve already been in the net for hours.” He taps the side of his head. “Up here.”
“And what exactly is thisinsaneroutine?” I tease curiously.
Griffin shrugs casually. “Thirty-minute steam shower. Then I eat a meal of two hard-boiled eggs, a bowl of plain oatmeal,and half a banana.” He lifts out a stack of Tupperware containers as my eyes go wide. “Plus twelve ounces of room-temperature water.” He shakes his water bottle. “Then forty-five minutes of stretching while listening toThe Rite of Springby Stravinsky.”
“That’s it?” I question. “That’s not so bad.” I’ve heard of players doing far worse—crazy pre-game dances, wearing the same pair of underwear for every game. My dad had a teammate once who shaved his head before every game because the first time he won a championship game, he’d lost a dare and had to shave all his hair off. He literally spent the entire season with a buzz cut, then grew it out in the off-season, only to shave it all off again.
“Except he left out the best bit,” Finn says with a shit-eating grin. Before Griffin can fill me in, Finn blurts, “You can’t speak to him the entire time. He nearly knocked out a freshman last year who shared a room with him and had theaudacityto ask him a question.”
“How dare he,” I tease.
“He had it coming,” Griffin grunts, unrepentant. “He knew the rules.”
Finn throws his head back, laughing.
Shaking my head, I wave my hand toward the attached bathroom. “Well, go get your shower on. I promise not to breathe in your direction until after the game.”
Growling, Griffin stalks over to me, a white towel now thrown over his shoulder. He looks sexy as hell, dressed in a tight black tee and loose matching sweats that enhance the sky blue of his eyes.
When we’re standing toe to toe, he reaches up to trail the tip of a finger along the seam of my lips. The backs of his knuckles glance along my skin, eliciting shivers and making my heart tripover itself. “Hurricane, you’re the only variable I’d rewrite every routine for.”
I stand frozen, stunned by the gravity of his words as he disappears into the bathroom, the door closing with a softclickbehind him. With my pulse a riot, my breathing is caught somewhere between disbelief and something far more dangerous.
The only variable.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that? Other than fall headfirst in love with Griffin Price and never recover.
46
DYLAN
“Come watch something stupid with me,”Finn says, shaking me out of the stupor Griffin left me in. He pats the spot beside him on the bed. I kick my shoes off and pull my hoodie over my head, leaving me in leggings and a crop top as I flop down beside him.
He pulls up YouTube on his phone, scrolling through a mix of hockey highlights, absurd prank videos, and chaotic animal clips until we settle on a compilation of fails. Side by side on the bed, our shoulders brushing, our heads close together, we laugh at the ridiculousness of people launching themselves off trampolines, slipping on ice, and getting tackled by dogs.
At some point, a notification comes through on his phone, someone named Emmy sending him a photo. I tense, acting as though I didn’t notice the alert as I continue to blindly stare at the reel we were watching. Out of all the guys, Finn is the player. He probably has a catalog of girls sending him all sorts of photos, and I hate how that notion irritates me.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, pulling the phone closer. “That’s my sister.”
Hissister.
The relief I feel at that is monumental—and insane.
“Oh.”
“She had a competition today,” he explains as he clicks into the chat. I turn my head away to give him some privacy. “And I’m guessing she won,” he says with a laugh, tilting his phone toward me so I can see the scrawny, younger female version of Finn, dressed in soccer gear and holding a trophy over her head, grinning into the camera.
“She’s the spitting image of you.”
Finn grins. “I know. Much to my mom’s dismay. We both look exactly like our dad. His dominant, red-haired gene, but we also have his eyes, and facial structure. Mom often jokes that if she hadn’t given birth to us both, she’d wonder if we were even hers.”
