The Play of His Life

by Amy Aislin

  “Shots on Goal is a strong addition to Aislin’s delicious world-building surrounding the sexy, competitive world of hockey.”—Shots on Goal

  Lucy Lennox, bestselling author

  “With lots of hockey, delicious food, and the sweetest couple ever, Amy Aislin scores a hat trick with Shots on Goal.”—Shots on Goal

  Kelly Jensen, award-winning author of Block and Strike

  “I’m a sucker for a well-written second-chance romance and that’s exactly what we get with Amy Aislin’s second novel in her Stick Side series.”—The Nature of the Game

  Dog-Eared Daydreams

  “I’m still floored by this book. It’s well-written, atmospheric, often funny, often heartbreaking, and devastatingly romantic.”—On the Ice

  Love Bytes Reviews

  “This small town Christmas romance is full of festive cheer.”—Christmas Lane

  Wicked Reads

  “I LOVED Nat and Quinn so much, and am so impressed with the story that Amy Aislin wove together here. I enjoyed this one a TON.”—The Heights

  The Novel Approach Reviews

  “I. Loved. This! It made my heart happy and put me right into the Christmas spirit. I definitely recommend this one.”—Ballerina Dad

  Joyfully Jay

  Stick Side series

  On the Ice

  The Nature of the Game

  Shots on Goal

  Lighthouse Bay series

  Christmas Lane

  Lakeshore series

  The Heights

  Other books

  Ballerina Dad

  Elias - rereleasing May 2020

  As Big as the Sky - rereleasing August 2020

  The Play of His Life was originally published in April 2017. This new version has a brand new cover, but very little new content other than updates to grammar, fixing a minor inconsistency, and the inclusion of the bonus epilogue that was originally available via subscription to my newsletter.

  If you’re reading this for the first time, I hope you enjoy it. If you read the previous version and are revisiting Christian and Riley, I hope your re-read brings you just as much pleasure as it did the first time.

  Either way, my endless thanks for your enthusiasm and support!

  ~Amy

  Copyright © 2020 by Amy Aislin

  Second Edition.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Originally published in April 2017.

  Second edition published in April 2020 with a new cover and minor updates to the content. For a full list of content changes, please visit: https://bit.ly/3bXwzbg.

  Cover design by Paper and Sage.

  For Mom and Dad. Because you’ve always encouraged me to follow my dreams. A girl couldn’t ask for better parents.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by Amy Aislin

  Now serving alcohol!

  Now serving alcohol?

  Christian Dufresne read the sign again and then a third time. But no. The words didn’t magically reconfigure themselves into something more likely, like Now serving apple turnovers! Or Now serving paninis! Or Now serving the best crepes in town…with REAL maple syrup!

  Not that Christian had ever had their crepes—this place hadn’t existed the last time he came to town—but they looked awesome in the picture on the display board he could see through the glass window. He’d reserve judgement on their worthiness after he found out whether or not they offered real maple syrup, or just the gross, generic, gloopy kind found in grocery stores everywhere except Quebec and Vermont.

  If it wasn’t real, it wasn’t worth it.

  And look at that. He’d just made up a new slogan for real maple syrup! He should be in marketing. Oh wait. He was!

  But seriously. What the hell was the point of a small bakery that didn’t even serve dinner—they closed at five, for the love of God—offering alcohol? Did nine-to-fivers working in downtown Oakville order a glass of wine or beer to enjoy with their muffin or mini quiche or cookie or lemon tart? Were they that bored with life in suburbia?

  Or maybe just that desperate.

  The door handle turned easily in his hand and he stepped inside, out of the blowing snow and into the heated bakery. He took his gloves off and felt his fingers start to thaw. Goddamn the fucking snow. Actually, no. Scratch that. Goddamn the cold. A windchill of minus twenty degrees Celsius just made him want to lie in the street and die. Game over. The only good thing about winter? Hockey. And snowboarding. But mostly hockey.

  It was empty inside the bakery, a surprise given the amount of people out on the street no doubt doing some last minute Christmas shopping. Why they didn’t head to an indoor mall—they were heated!—was beyond him. Instead they went in and out of stores on Lakeshore Road like it wasn’t cold enough to freeze your boogers.

  Idiots. All of them.

  Although he could probably be lumped into that category as well, couldn’t he? He’d been walking outside too as if living in Vancouver hadn’t desensitized him to this kind of bone-deep cold. All because his mother wanted a fresh baguette from the new bakery, Warm Glow, to go with dinner. He’d barely stepped foot in the house before she was already sending him on an errand. Seriously, he hadn’t even brought his duffle bag to his old room yet.

  Outside, the wind blew so strong it rattled the door and dislodged a clump of snow from the bakery’s awning. It fell to the sidewalk with a crunchy-sounding splat, narrowly missing a woman laden with shopping bags. This. This was why he lived in Vancouver. Mild winters and little snow.

  Goddamn Ontario winters.

  All that effort and it looked like his mother wasn’t going to get her bread after all. Inside the bakery a store employee wearing a green apron was upending chairs and setting them on the tables upside down.

  Crap. He looked behind him, and sure enough a sign on the front door’s glass window read Open. Which meant the Closed side faced the street he’d just come from. Whoops. Well, the door had been unlocked.

  Christian went to inform the employee that he’d forgotten to lock the door but something…something in the way the guy moved…how he didn’t favor his right knee so much as paid attention to how and where he stepped. How his spiked dark blond hair reflected the light from the ceiling lamps. How the muscles in those broad shoulders moved under his T-shirt. How tight that butt looked in those dark jeans.

  A hot rush of familiarity swept through him and wings grew in his stomach. And then he brilliantly said, “You!”

  The employee turned quickly, knocking an elbow into one of the chairs on the table next to him. It crashed into another, and the resulting clatter when they hit the floor acted like a goal horn going off in Christian’s head. Jolting into action, he rushed forward and tried to save a third chair. But the other guy already had it and Christian’s hold on it only served to unbalance them both. They played an accidental tug-of-war as they desperately tried to right themselves, but either one of them slipped, or the floor decided to move, or unseen hands pushed them. Whatever the reason, the two humans in the room joined the chairs on the floor.

  Goddamn fucking fresh bread. Goddamn his mother’s innocent, “The new bakery on Lakeshore has the best Italian ba
guette. Could you go grab one for me? We need it for dinner.” And goddamn the idiot underneath him who was laughing his fool head off.

  “Are you kidding me?” Christian grumbled, trying to take stock of what, if anything, hurt. It only made the tool on the floor laugh harder.

  And goddamn tall, jacked, blue-eyed, blond ex-boyfriends too while he was at it.

  But that laugh. It hit him right in the solar plexus, right where he kept their memories tightly buried so they didn’t incapacitate him when he wasn’t looking.

  That laugh was instant friendship. It was two new French Canadian seven-year-olds making fast friends in school when they realized they could have a conversation in a language no one else could understand. It was summer days spent riding their bikes to the corner store. It was winters snowboarding and playing hockey. It was Christmases sneaking into each other’s windows. It was starting high school thinking they’d be best friends forever. It was that first kiss in tenth grade, and the second one only seconds after, and the very last one years later, at a time when they had needed each other more than ever.

  It was home.

  Blinking against the onslaught of never-forgotten memories, Christian groaned and sat up, taking care to touch Riley as little as possible as he did so. Even though what he really wanted was to spread himself out all over him.

  Don’t think about the guy underneath you. On his back. Looking hotter than ever. Nope. Don’t go there. No dirty thoughts here.

  “Fucking ghosts,” he said instead.

  Riley was crying tears of laughter.

  “What the fuck is so funny?” Christian asked.

  “You,” Riley said when he could breathe again. “You’re still Crotchety Christian.”

  “Fuck you,” Christian said, and hauled himself off the floor.

  Once upon a time a “Fuck you” from one of them would have resulted in a “Sure. How do you want me?” from the other. Which, more often than not, led to much more pleasurable activities. But it’d been six years since the last…

  …Since the last.

  “You’re still blaming ghosts for everything.” Riley interrupted his thoughts.

  “Fucking Ouija board,” Christian muttered.

  “Dude, it was fifteen years ago,” Riley pointed out unhelpfully. He sat up, then used the table to haul himself to standing. Shit. Had their fall further messed up Riley’s knee? But no. Once upright, Riley stretched out his knee, tested his weight on it, then bent with ease to pick up the fallen chairs. His biceps flexed under the short sleeves of his T-shirt and Christian didn’t bother fighting the memory of how they’d once felt under his hands, his mouth. He felt the flush overtake his cheeks and reach his ears. Hopefully Riley would think it was a result of their recent…exertions.

  “Well, in fifteen years I haven’t figured out how to out-Ouija them and send them back to where they came from,” Christian said. “Have you?”

  “Nope.” Riley laughed a little and grinned at Christian like he was having the best day ever. Damn but Christian had missed Riley’s constant optimism and good humor.

  “Well, there you go,” Christian said. Like that was that.

  Riley snorted. “That makes no sense at all.”

  Finished with placing the chairs back on the tables—with no help from Christian. No, he was too busy ogling Riley’s ass as he bent and stood, bent and stood. Jesus, could he be more obvious?—Riley turned those ocean eyes on him and his goofy, happy grin shifted from hi-old-friend-I-haven’t-seen-in-a-while to hi-ex-lover-I-never-got-over.

  Or maybe Christian was projecting.

  And before Christian could say “Can we go back to the way things were?” or “God, I missed you,” or “Please take me home and never let me go again,” or “RILEY, I STILL LOVE YOU!”, Riley reached out and yanked Christian hard against him. Not to kiss him. Or to throw him down on the nearest available surface and have his glorious way with him. No, clearly it was only Christian who was having an X-rated party in his head.

  Those arms he’d been admiring earlier wrapped around him in a hug and Christian reacted on instinct, wrapping his own around Riley and hanging on tight. Riley had always meant home and belonging and safety. That feeling hadn’t changed and it left Christian wondering why the hell they’d ever broken up in the first place.

  Ignoring the old hurt Riley’s presence dredged up, Christian buried his nose in Riley’s neck, an easy feat since they were evenly matched in height. He inhaled deeply and smelled pastry and sweat and Riley’s familiar spiciness.

  “Hi,” Riley whispered in his ear.

  Christian had to swallow past the growing knot in his throat. Stupid emotions. “Hi.”

  “Want a drink?”

  “Oh, fuck yes.”

  They released each other before things got awkward. And avoided eye contact because okay, maybe things were already a little awkward.

  Riley headed for the counter with nary a limp to be seen. A hockey injury two years ago had damaged his knee and ended his pro career. What had been devastating for Christian was probably a hundred times more so for Riley. But looking at Riley now as he moved around behind the counter, a slight smile on his face, knee fully recuperated, he looked as healthy and happy as ever.

  For Christian, Riley’s injury had been a huge WTF moment. A nodus tollens, if you will, which was basically a fancy word for “how the hell is this my life right now?”

  A hockey scholarship had taken Riley to the University of Denver right after high school graduation. Christian headed west to the University of British Columbia—or UBC as the locals called it. They’d gone from seeing each other every day for ten years, to seeing each other once every few weeks. Result? The eventual end of their relationship. And when Riley had been injured it had seemed like all of the loneliness, all of the pain, all of the heartbreak of being apart and then being apart had been for nothing.

  Christian stared hard at one of the ceiling lamps, letting the light burn the wetness out of his eyes. If he didn’t stop thinking about what could’ve been he was going to curl up in a corner of Warm Glow and sob his sad heart out.

  Distracting himself, he studied the bakery. It was rustic, like something found in the middle of Cottage Country. Low-hanging ceiling lamps, distressed wood tables and chairs, wood-paneled floors. A long display case was currently free of food and held only empty baskets. The digital display board above the counter listed menu items presumably not found in the display case, including those mouth-watering crepes. Next to the front door, a long, high table was tucked against the window with tall stools underneath. The place was decked out for Christmas: a wreath on the door, garlands on the walls, lights in the window, festive candles on all the tables.

  Christian locked the front door. When he turned back, it was to find Riley standing behind the counter, operating a machine and making…hot chocolate? Well damn. Not that he didn’t love a good hot chocolate but when Riley had suggested a drink Christian had thought he’d be getting something that would dull his senses.

  Riley raised an eyebrow and nodded at the front door.

  “Your closed sign is up, but your door wasn’t locked,” Christian explained.

  Riley grunted and poured the drink into a couple of mugs. “I’m always doing that. Your mother’s constantly on my case about it.”

  His mother. Who had sent him on this errand. Did she even want fresh bread? Unlikely. Was she at home making dinner? Definitely not. She was probably at her BFF’s down the street, cackling at how she’d so easily fooled her clueless son. Sending him on this “errand,” knowing exactly who he’d run into. They were going to have words later, that was for damn sure.

  “I thought you were giving me booze,” Christian said.

  Riley merely turned and grabbed a brown bottle off a shelf behind him. Tall and thin, it had a yellow label and the words Kahlùa splashed on the front in bold, red letters. Riley yanked out the stopper and poured a generous amount into both mugs.

  Christian perk
ed up. Spiked hot chocolate. Was there anything better?

  Sex with Riley.

  Quit it, brain!

  Riley set one of the mugs closer to Christian, picked up his own, clinked it against Christian’s and said, “Cheers.” Then he took a healthy swallow, ocean eyes never leaving Christian’s.

  Yeah, Christian knew a dare when he saw one. Determined not be outdone, he raised his mug in a silent toast and took a large gulp.

  “So?” Riley said.

  “It’s good. Rich.”

  “Yeah. Thought you’d like that. Unless you’ve lost the taste for hot chocolate over the past six years.”

  The reminder of how long it’d been since they’d seen each other brought a halt to their conversation. Christian looked away from Riley and fiddled with the label on the bottle. The weird mix of apprehensiveness, hopefulness, and happiness combined with the alcohol in his belly was making him feel…surprisingly mellow.

  He cleared his throat. “The chocolate’s really good.” It was almost bittersweet but not quite, sitting thick on his tongue. It was magic in his mouth. “What kind do you use?”

  “I can’t give away all my secrets,” Riley said with a wink.

  Whatever. Christian couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. The Mysterious Case of the Delicious Hot Chocolate would have to wait another day. His drink was awesome and that was all that mattered.

  And Riley. Riley definitely mattered. Christian was feeling so relaxed all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and cuddle with his boyfriend forever.