Him (Him, #1)

by Sarina Bowen

I guess you could call Cassel my best friend. Of all my teammates, I’m closest to him, and yeah, we chill outside hockey, but “best friend” isn’t exactly a term I throw around often. I’ve got friends. I’ve got a shit ton of friends, actually. Can I honestly say any of them really know me? Probably not. But Cassel comes damn close.

Honestly, my sexual orientation is probably the worst-kept secret on this team. The guys know. The coaches know. They just don’t care.

Truth is, I doubt the frat brother I hooked up with last night is gay. Bi-curious, more like it, and I won’t lie—that was the appeal. It’s easier to mess around with the ones who are gonna pretend you don’t exist in the morning. One night of no-strings fun, a BJ, a fuck, whatever their liquid courage allows them to try, and then they disappear. Act like they didn’t spend the hours leading up to it eyeing my tats and picturing my mouth around their dicks. Like they didn’t run their greedy hands all over my body and beg me to touch them.

Hook-ups with gay guys are potentially more complicated. They might want more. Like commitment. Promises I’m unable to make.

Is it possible to make a wedding toast without acknowledging the bride?

How do you apologize to someone for cutting them out of your life without so much as an explanation?

My weakness is him.

But even my punk-ass junior-high self could see that Wes was different. I was a little in awe of him from the first day of my first summer at Elites. Well, at least until I discovered what a cocky bastard he was.

Six summers in a row, the best hockey I played was against the sharp-eyed, steel-wristed Ryan Wesley.

Coach is no longer thinking about Ryan Wesley. But I am.

He used to laugh with me that way. I haven’t forgotten the sound of Jamie’s laughter. Deep and husky, melodic in a carefree kind of way. Nothing ever kept Jamie Canning down. He was the epitome of go-with-the-flow, probably because of his laidback California upbringing.

I hadn’t realized just how much I’ve missed him until this very moment.

I’ve always kept my memories of Canning to myself. Because they’re mine. For six weeks every summer, he was mine.

“What?” yelps Cassel. “I thought this story had a punchline.” “Not so much.” Huh. I didn’t realize until right this second the gift inside wasn’t that important. It was the act of sending

The fact that he’d been the first guy I ever loved and the one who made me face some terrifying things about myself…well, all that will go unsaid. And then my team will kill his in the final. But that’s just the way it is.

The way I see it, one night of drunken stupidity shouldn’t be the defining moment in a six-year friendship.

His tongue is pierced. That’s new, too. Annnd now I’m thinking about his tongue. Jesus fuck. And the last four years of silence between us suddenly make a bit more sense. Maybe there are drunken antics capable of wrecking a friendship.

want Rainier to win. I want to face Canning in the finals. I want to pretend I still don’t have feelings for the guy.

Fuck, he’d looked good. Really good. All golden-boy California hotness, big and blond and sexy as fuck. With those soulful brown eyes—surprising on a blond guy. It’s an understated sexiness, though. Jamie Canning never flaunted his looks in all the time I’d known him. Sometimes I think he’s not even aware of how goddamn attractive he is.

The one sentence I regret? “Let’s watch some porn.”

Canning. I thought about Jamie Canning.

I’d been crushing on my straight best friend for a long time. But I couldn’t tell him that. My only move here was to play along.

Last year I’d enjoyed a couple of drunken make-out sessions and a hand-job exchange with a guy from school. But even then, I hadn’t been one hundred percent sure. Lying in bed next to Canning? I burned with certainty.

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now. I spent six years hoping that maybe the attraction wasn’t one-sided. Maybe one day a switch would suddenly go off and he’d be like, hmmm, I’m totally into Wes. Or maybe he would figure out he swings both ways and decide to take a walk on the dude side. None of those maybes had panned out, though. And they never fucking would.

His throat worked as he swallowed. His eyes flickered with a parade of emotions I couldn’t keep up with. Reluctance. Heat. Confusion. Heat. Irritation. Heat.

“What are you waiting for, Ryan? Suck it already.” Surprise jolted through me. He only called me Ryan when he was taunting me. And right now he was taunting me about sucking his dick. Jesus.

I was blowing my best friend. It was so surreal. It was what I’d dreamed about for so long, and the fantasy was nothing compared to the reality of it.

I could go back to the easy times. Chasing Jamie’s big, blond body around the lake was all I wanted out of life. Okay, that’s a lie. I’d rather tackle him to the ground and strip off his clothing. Seeing him again is killing me right now.

“Ah. Thanks for punishing me for your dishonesty. A four-year sentence. I went off to a strange college where I knew nobody, wondering how I’d been such a shitty friend.”

Jamie didn’t care that I’d blown him. He cared that I’d abandoned him. And knowing I’d hurt my best friend much more deeply than I’d realized twists me up in knots.

Twenty-two seems too old to be giving someone the silent treatment.

Fuck off, conscience! I’m busy being mad here.

“I could never hate you, dumbass.” I consider it. “Well, unless you did something hate-worthy, like run my mom over with a car on purpose or something. But hate you for being gay? Or for giving me a BJ without telling me you were gay?”

Thinking about that night is something I rarely let myself do. It was easily the hottest sexual experience eighteen-year-old Jamie Canning had ever had. But remembering it always confuses me, because I associate it with getting banished from the friendship I valued most.

The thing with Wes is, everything is always on his terms.

This will be so true in the next book

We both snicker, and something hot and familiar clenches in my chest. I’ve missed this. Talking to Wes. Laughing with Wes.

He grins, and my heart melts a little in the usual way.

“By the way—science has proven the correlation between calling someone a faggot and having a really small penis. You do not want to advertise that. Think about it.”

“I’m pure as the driven snow, Coach. Canning was the one who corrupted me.”

Fuck, I’m yet again jealous of his shirt. I want to be the one plastered to his chest, and the ache I feel for him brings a spark of guilt.

Why can’t I look at him without imagining all the dirty, dirty things I want to do to him?

“You know actual character names from Sex and the City? Shit, if you hadn’t told me you were gay, I would’ve figured it out just now.”

It bothers me that I remember every word I said to him. I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty phenomenal blowjobs these past four years, but can I tell you what was said during them? Can I repeat, verbatim, every single word I uttered to those chicks? To Holly? Every dirty command that left my mouth? No, I can’t.

Maybe he decided to throw the guy a bone before he…throws the guy a bone.

Maybe it’s him? Maybe he’s making me hot?

And there it is. Ryan Wesley had given me the best BJ of my life.

He doesn’t get to finish that sentence, because I’m smashing my mouth against his.

Jamie is kissing me. Jamie is kissing me. Jamie is kissing me. Nope, no matter which way I run it through my head, it still doesn’t make sense to me. The pressure of his mouth? Makes no sense. The shocking sweep of his tongue over my bottom lip? No sense. But holy fucking shit, I want it.

I have to grab the front of his shirt and bunch it between my fingers to keep from being swept away by the storm. Not the storm that’s lighting up the sky, but the one that’s roaring inside me.

“Your tongue ring…” His voice is hoarse with excitement. “I want to feel it on my cock.”