Page 7 of Top Shelf
This is what happens when you break your fucking routine.
That was back when the doctors told me there was some chance I might find my way back on the ice.
He was wrong. I could skate now. I still found time whenever there was a public rink anywhere near where I was staying, but it wasn’t the same. Sometimes it was more pain than it was worth, and the only thing that kept me afloat was realizing that I wanted to help someone the way my physical therapists had helped me.
I could have given up.
None of them let me.
So I went back to school, and now, this was my life. I was on the verge of joining a new sports medicine practice, sitting in front of a grungy-looking frat house on the Boston University campus, waiting to pick up a newly signed NHL prospect and give him what? Dating advice?
I could think of a million other ways to spend the evening that involved a lot fewer clothes and a lot more fun, but I was trying to be better. I was trying to avoid mistakes.
I didn’t think picking Ferris up was going to count as one if I kept it in my pants. The worst tonight would lead to was the same raging boner I’d fought all during the photoshoot because he was maybe the most gorgeous man I had ever laid eyes on. And, not to mention, almost two decades younger than me.
I wasn’t as panicked about wanting him when he shyly told me he was twenty-two, not a seventeen-year-old, fresh-faced prospect I thought he could be.
“I started school late,” he’d told me when I’d asked, as though it was something to be ashamed of. “I struggled when Ifirst started, so my parents pulled me out to wait until I could handle it.”
I didn’t tell him that I hadn’t even graduated from high school. That I’d been drafted at seventeen, and the league helped me with some bullshit online school diploma, which turned out was not accepted into the university when I decided to apply after the accident.
I spent the first year of my recovery getting my goddamn GED—which I failed four times. Then the second year earning enough credits at the community college to work my way into the physical therapy program in North Carolina because it was the only place that was willing to take me.
Now, two years shy of a decade later, I had a fresh doctorate in physical therapy, a fresh job, and a chance for a do-over here in Boston. It might have actually helped Ferris if I told him all of this, but for some reason, I just stayed silent—like an asshole—and let him spew verbal diarrhea all over me.
The offer to chat was me trying to make up for being that much of a dick.
I didn’t think he’d take me up on it, especially after I had finger spasms and sent a bunch of texts like a goddamn sixteen-year-old.
Whatever though. It was fine.
I was there—in front of a fucking frat house of all places—watching some guy wearing a Batman cape, fishnets, and high heels walk up and down the street. I had to assume it was hazing or pledging or whatever frat dudes did these days.
Five minutes after I sent my text letting Ferris know I was there, I was wrestling with the urge to leave. But then he appeared looking just as absurdly hot as the last time I’d seen him. He was thin but defined, with the ass of a man who still cared enough to keep up on his squats.
He was taller than me by at least an inch and had thick black hair, brown skin, and mahogany eyes that were always a little wide and made him look like he was perpetually terrified. He also had a couple of unconscious habits that shouldn’t have been endearing, but they were.
He twisted his fingers at his sides and flared his nostrils every couple of minutes.
“Hey,” he said as he came to a stumbling halt by the passenger door.
I grunted a hello and gestured for him to get in.Way to go, Quinn, definitely not an asshole now.I rolled my eyes at myself, grateful he couldn’t see them behind my mirrored shades, and I climbed back into the car.
He was nervously buckling up.
“So. Ferris.”
He turned his face and looked at me with a raised brow.
“Is that like Ferris Beul?—”
“Oh god, please don’t,” he begged.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Right.”
“No, just…” He sighed and flopped back against the headrest. “My parents had a deal—my dad got to name the boys, my mom got to name the girls. Guess who had no girls.”
“Was your dad a big John Hughes fan?”
