Cam studied me so closely I wanted to squirm. What the hell was his sudden interest in the world of man-love?
"Hang out like buddies or hang out like lovers?" Someone walked by talking about the score in one of the other games. We were clinging to our position in the rankings by the skin of our teeth. If all the other teams in the Eastern Division lost tonight, we would stay in third. But if they won, things would shift. We could possibly slip out of third, and that would take us out of Cup contention.
"Why are you asking me these questions?" I inquired after Pat Meehan ambled away. Cam shifted on the bench. An inch closer. The vibe was very conspiratorial. He ran his hand over his face. I waited. He exhaled slowly. Whatever was up was obviously difficult for him to say. I leaned to the left slightly. Being this close I could smell his sweat. The aroma did bizarre things to my body.
"Are you homophobic?" I inquired. He looked at me as if I had stabbed his dog. I was at a loss, so I just started grasping at straws. "Are you thinking of experimenting sexually?" I asked, my voice gruff with desire. I would so sign up to be his test subject.
Cam’s brown eyes went as wide as dinner plates. He threw a terrified look around the subdued locker room. As soon as I saw that deer in the headlights reaction, I felt the pieces fall into place.
"Are you gay, Cam?" I whispered, moving closer to him. He left the bench like someone had shoved a hot poker up his rectum. My eyes followed his ascent then they puzzled over his departure. I was on my feet, determined to follow the man when the press corps came loping in like wolves on the scent of a wounded elk. Seeing the predatory gleam in some of the reporter’s eyes, I sat back down soundly to answer a slew of questions with as much tact as I could. Even when some of the inquiries pissed me off, I replied as if my mother would be listening, because she would be.
I was learning which guys were cool, and which were shit-stirrers. I especially liked a gal from the Pittsburgh Intelligencer, Lydia Bacon. She was sharp, knew the game, and always asked thought-provoking questions. And she never tried to get a player to talk dirt on another player. Lydia also looked like one of Santa’s elves. She was about four foot eight, weighed maybe eighty pounds, had a round face that housed bright blue eyes. Even her dark hair was cut in a pixie cut. The girl was too cute. If I were straight I would ask her out.
"Do you think, given Cam Evans’s performance so far this season, that there will be a changing of the guard?" Some guy with a severe overbite and acne asked.
"No," I replied immediately, the soft-covering of the various microphones coming closer to my face when I spoke. "Cam Evans is the starting goalie for the Pumas. I’m only here to step in when he needs a break."
They weren’t buying my story. Somewhere inside, I really wasn’t either. I would never admit it, but those forty-some minutes playing professional hockey were the fucking best forty-some minutes in all my twenty-two years. Did I want more? Oh, hell yes. Would I be a dick about it? Hell no. One game does not a legend make, as my father always told me. I tried to look around the glut of reporters in my space, but couldn’t see if Cam had returned or not. I assumed not, or the voracious horde would have leaped on him, fangs bared, eyes glistening with feral hunger. Man, that English minor crept up at the most bizarre times. Lydia wiggled through the mob of men. I smiled up at her. She winked at me.
"So, Jacobi Neal, you just appeared in your first pro game. What are you going to do now?" she asked with a squeaky voice that made me chuckle whenever I heard it.
"Call my dad." Brad was right. They gobbled it up. Sad thing was, it wasn’t a put-on. I was going to call Dad, just as soon as I found Cam Evans.
Four
There are moments that really define a person’s life. Your first romance, graduating college, finding your soul mate, getting married, your first child, buying your dream house, and, if you’re a hockey player, skating onto the ice wearing a pro uniform. As I was tugging my jeans over my damp ass after a shower, the call came in that would lead me to the next monumental happening in my life. I had already experienced the first romance, Joey Alterman in my junior year of high school, as well as the college graduation and the virgin skate on league ice.
Standing in the Puma locker room, barefoot with my pants zipped but not snapped, I glanced at the caller ID on my phone. There I saw the path to my future opening up like some Elvin trail though a forest of evil. Time for me to stop rereading The Hobbit, I guess. Of course, I didn’t know that the incoming call from Cam Evans was in any way, shape, or form my trail to a soul mate. At that time I only knew two things. One, that Cam was hiding something massive which was killing him, and two, that he was in desperate need of a friend. Placing the cell to my ear, I felt a rivulet of water from my wet hair skip down my spine. Or maybe that was the finger of destiny.
"Hey," I said into the phone, turning from the rest of the guys as they dressed. I placed my shoulder to the edge of my cubicle, my head lowered, my stance definitely closed off. "You okay?" I asked Cam. My stomach tied itself back into knots.
"Sorry to leave you to field all that shit alone, kid."
"No problem," I said rolling, my shoulder upward to heighten the “Don’t Bother Me” vibe.
"Some mentor I’m turning out to be."
"It’s cool. Sometimes RL turns into a real assgoblin, you know?"
"Are you even speaking English at the moment?" I smiled to myself as I leaned an inch farther into my cubicle.
"Mostly," I replied, inhaling the tang of my sweaty skates hanging a foot away from my face.
"Listen, I think…if you’re willing to talk…about things that we started to talk about in the locker room?"
"Sure, absolutely, man. When and where?" His sigh of relief nearly brought tears to my eyes. I was familiar with the strangulation of being closeted, if only for a few years until I found the fortitude to come out. I could not imagine having spent twenty-five years living such a deadly lie. Maybe I was putting the horse way before the buggy, but I suspected not.
"Can you meet me under the Kaufmann`s clock?" After getting some quick directions, I finished dressing at warp speed. I didn’t even take time to tie my sneakers. Phone containing those all-too-important directions in hand, I ran out the door and into Brad. Not literally but close enough. He was lounging around in the hallway, waiting for me, I have to assume. He was obviously glad to see me, if his warm smile was any indication. I, on the other hand, was already planning the lie I would feed him. Shit.
"Hey," I smiled, cramming my hands into my front pocket so I could cradle my cell phone.
"Hey," he said then fell into step with me. "You really did a great job in net tonight. Want to go grab a pizza and head home?"
"Yeah, I would love that, but I kind of already told a buddy I’d meet him somewhere." It wasn’t a lie, so why did it feel like one? Brad was all sorts of “Hey, no probs” and “Catch you later then” as we hit the parking lot. I felt like a dick as I hurried to crank over my Rover. The heat was slow to thaw the window, giving me plenty of time to think about whatever the fuck it was I was doing.
I confirmed my decision. Going to find Cam was the right thing to do. He needed someone to talk to. It had nothing to do with how hard I got every time I thought about the man. Maybe I should have just gone with Brad. He was a good guy. I could have gotten some pizza followed by another dry-hump session. Fuck, I was seriously confused at the moment. Blowing out a breath heavy enough to balloon my cheeks, I fished out my cell, fed the info into my cold GPS, and headed off to find this clock.
* * * *
Turns out the Kaufmann Clock was this old, gold clock with naked Grecian men on either side of it. It’s a damned impressive clock that is a Pittsburgh landmark, I would learn later. It seems that it is quite the thing to meet someone under this over one-hundred-year-old clock. It was where I found Cam, bundled up in a thick blue parka, sipping a hot beverage. The corner of Fifth Avenue and Smithfield Street was pretty quiet. I pulled up in front of Macy’s, parked, then jogg
ed over to Cameron.
"You could have picked somewhere warmer to meet," I said. Cam began walking. I fell in beside him.
"Like where?" the man asked, his face nearly concealed by the huge hood over his head. "Tell me one damned place in this town that we could meet to talk without someone knowing it was us."
I padded along beside him with no reply for his comment. He was right. Everyone knew his face in “The Burgh.” The longer we walked, the more I accepted that I would freeze to death. We made two complete laps in total silence. Cam stopped to drop his empty coffee cup into a trash can. We stood under a streetlight, our breath twin clouds of steam hovering in front of us.
"You have to understand that this…I don’t know how to go about…shit." He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his parka. Again, we started walking.
"Look, man, if I knew for sure what we were dealing with, maybe I could help a little better," I said. A biracial couple hurried past us. I burrowed into my flimsy coat until all that stuck out of the collar were my eyes.
"I have a daughter. She’s a senior in high school."
"Awesome," I mumbled into my coat. My forehead was extremely cold. Like ice cream eaten too fast cold. We kept walking that block.
"She is awesome." I peeked over at him. I wished he would drop that fucking hood so I could see his face. "And not aware of how things were with her mother and me."
"How things were, or how you were pretending they were?" I chanced it. What the hell? He would either slug me, call me a motherfucker, or stalk off. Whatever happened it had to be better than roaming around this fucking city block when the temperature was a balmy four degrees. "I mean, that is what you’re dancing around, right? That you’re so far back in the closet you just discovered Narnia? Why not just admit that much to yourself before we both succumb to fucking hypothermia."
I should have known that Cameron Evans was a man of action. I mean, I followed his career all though my school years. He was fast. My back was against the wall under that old clock before I could register the shove. Cam then got all sorts of in my face. I did not raise my hands. His angry exhalation was flavored with vanilla.
"Are you calling me a queer?" I shrugged one shoulder.
"I call them as I see them. Now, you can either step off or you can kiss me." I threw the challenge out without a second thought. I stared into the shelter of his hood, finding his dark eyes in the shadows. They flickered down to my blue lips. "Whatever you decide to do, do it fast. I’m cold, tired, and hungry."
He did. He captured my mouth with a kiss so aggressive my teeth ground into my lips. Yeah. This was it. This was what I had been pushing him to do…hoping he would do. His hands slapped to the wall on either side of my head. I grabbed his hooded head then ran my tongue over his bottom lip. The tempting taste of his latte lingered on his tongue. Then he lost the fingertip hold he had found on the slippery slope of sexual honesty. Cam stumbled backward. I remained flat to the wall, my lips warmed nicely. He threw horrified looks up then down the street.
"Cam, man, it’s okay. It is okay to kiss a dude on the street. It is totally acceptable."
"No one knows." He pulled his hood even farther over his face.
"Then tell them. Go to your daughter, tell her. Tell your ex-wife, unless she already knows?"
"No, she doesn’t know, but she suspected. I need more time to…think this through."
"Cam, don’t you think you’ve lived a lie long enough, dude?" I asked as he retreated farther into his parka.
"It’s so much easier to hide in the dark," he murmured then left me under the clock, back flat to the wall, lips tender from our kiss.
* * * *
Things did not improve for Cam, or the team, over the next few days. We lost the next game by a one goal margin. The fans were online, screaming for the coach to do something. They rode Cam to the ground. Sports writers questioned if his time was up. There were rumors of an impending trade, that the man was injured, that he and the coach were fighting. No one guessed the real dilemma the man was facing. I had kept a distance from Cam for the entirety of the road trip. I have to think that the team just assumed there was conflict between him and me. There was, but it was not the issue they thought it was.
I was confused about the kiss under the clock, my role in it, the lust that I felt whenever I looked at Cam, the ongoing sort-of relationship that Brad and I had started, and how I combed my hair. In short, my head was a disaster area. I was rewrapping my wrists, deep in concentration, when someone tapped my shoulder. I looked up at Ivan. Cam was seated beside me, lost to the turmoil that had followed us to the Dourman Center in Vancouver.
"Coach says you’ve got the start, Jacobi." Ivan’s eyes roamed to Cam after delivering the news. "Take the night and rest, Cam."
Ivan clapped Cameron on the shoulder. I met the cold look the man who had kissed me a week ago now leveled at me. It was hard to breathe properly with the cocktail of excitement blended with pain bubbling in my gut.
"Torn between belting me or kissing me again?" The fire that erupted in Cam’s sensual brown eyes was impressive. He turned his back to me. I called myself a hundred different names, none of them good. As I finished readying myself for my first pro start, I kept glancing over at Cam on the sly. He was dressing with jerky motions, his aggravation evident in the sharp way he moved. I thought I should say something to him. Apologize for being flip when he was facing the worst crisis of his life. The words were ready to tumble out when Brad plopped down on my left.
"Just heard that you were starting." Brad smiled. I nodded then smiled in return. Several members of the team gathered around, to rub my head or wish me well. Brad grabbed my noggin and smooched the top of my head loudly. The guys all chortled. "We really need this win, Jacobi," Brad said. I mumbled something in reply. I was fully aware of our situation. "Look, just do what you did down in the AHL, okay? Same difference, right? Just a bunch of jocks in jocks."
"Yep, just a bunch of jocks in jocks." My nerves were jangling. The thunder of over eighteen thousand Vancouver Vipers’ fans filling the arena over our heads slithered into my pulse. Brad slapped me on the back then returned to his cubicle to finish dressing for the game. When I looked over at Cam’s spot, it was empty. I searched the locker room for him, but didn’t see neither hide nor hair of the man.
It was maddening to sit there, mulling over how badly I wanted to talk to him. I knew I needed to get my shit together. Cam’s tumble from the top was his own doing, right? If he would just be honest with one person, he could pull his ass out of this psychological tar pit he was mired in, right? Why should I fuck up my career over some stifled queer, right? I needed to stop letting the memory of that kiss haunt me, right? Just say, fuck this mess. Just say, fuck it. Fuck me. Just…fuck me and fuck Cam Evans.
"Two times two is four."
* * * *
Vladimir Oleczar was lying on top of me. It was not anything sexual, trust me. The Russian had a nose that slid sideways over his face, a black eye, no front teeth, and a lingering smell of fish on his breath. I shoved the Vipers’ first-line center off of me, or, I should say, I shoved at the Russian. The pileup in my crease was keeping Vlad pressed to me intimately. Thank God for hockey padding. There are some dudes you want snuggled tight between your spread legs, and some you don’t.
A scrum was breaking out directly to the left of the pile-up. Whistles were blowing. Players were shoving. Vladimir was breathing flounder in my face. But hey, we were winning, right? And the penalty call for goaltender interference that had to come would be the icing on the cake. We only had three minutes left in the third period. If I could keep the puck in front of me, we’d wrap up the first win of our road trip with a 2-1 final score.
"Vlad, man, ever hear of breath mints?" I grunted as the mountain of ripe men atop me began to lessen.
"You hear of being pussy?"
"I’ve heard of it," I said as I rolled to my side to gain my footing. "Generally it’s mentioned with your name
attached to it."
He called my mother a particularly nasty name. I skated off to find my stick. Let the refs figure out how many penalty minutes the Vipers would get. My job now was to stay focused on keeping my net free of pucks. So imagine my surprise, and that of the Puma team, when no penalty was assessed to the fishy Russian for plowing into me in the crease. I immediately got into the referee’s face to argue my case. The blind bastard informed me, and my team captain, that the Russian had been pushed, and thus was not of a mind to intentionally cause me harm.
"Wasn’t of a mind?" I shouted over Pierre’s shoulder. "Being a goon is all that carp-sucking fucktard ever has on his mind!" I threw my mask to the ice in a fit of pique. DeLoux steered me to the bench. A time-out had been called by Coach Webern. My mouth kept flapping at anyone in black and white stripes I could find. Brad skated up beside me, my mask in his hand. I met his look and knew the payback would be doled out. I smiled at the winger, turned to grab a new water bottle, and locked eyes with Cam.
The uproar that was shaking the stadium dimmed to nothing. If someone would have offered me a cure for cancer to describe what I saw in those hooded brown eyes, I would not have been able to save one poor, suffering soul. There were far too many emotions twirling in the man’s eyes to ever be able to express just one. Coach Mars shouting at me jarred me from the depths of Cam’s gaze.
"You’re a wall, Neal! Bricks and mortar." My head bobbed up and down. I sucked half a bottle of water down. "Keep your hands in front of your body."
"Right," I said before I skated back to my crease. The sounds of the stadium began to flicker out. "Eight times four is thirty-two," I whispered as I pulled my mask onto my head. We lost the face-off. A wrist-shot streaked at me, clipping the front of my mask then sailing into the stands. I looked at the clock as play was stopped. Two minutes and thirty-one seconds left. I tossed my head left then right, rolling it around until my neck cracked. The next face-off took the action to the Vipers’ end of the ice. I tried to stay tight on the action. My mind slid from the game. I glanced at the bench in search of Cam. He was a study in noncommittal expressions. If only I could get him to open up to me. Shit, if only I could get him to kiss me again, I’d–
Seduced by the Game Page 34