43
ERIK
Iwasn’t the closed book Kayden was making me out to be. That doesn’t mean I agreed with all of it. I just wanted to stop any more fights before they began. And he was right about something: We had to put hockey first or we would all lose.
But that level of peace between us wasn’t meant to last. Something would come along and mess everything up.
Being tied three games mirrored the conference championship series. That would put a shit ton of pressure on anyone, but that wasn’t how my boyfriend looked at it.
As expected, he told me that pressure was exactly how he liked it. In fact, he thrived on it. To me, that’s just a bullshit thing guys like him come up with to look like hotshots. They claim to be half in love with danger or death. It’s like they’ve got no idea how stupid that sounds. I would’ve cupped a hand over my mouth to suppress laughter if things hadn’t turned so serious.
So far, Kayden and I had basically gotten along during the series, but it hadn’t been easy. He would try not to say dumb things, but they would spill out of his mouth anyway. I would ignore them. We’d sworn off sex for most of those two weeks.Yeah, that wasn’t long for most people, but in our world of regular fucking, that might as well have been a year. We’d taken a break from just about everything that qualified as a distraction because we couldn’t let such a perfect opportunity slip between our fingers. And now we were down to the wire.
But the tension was there. Oh god, was it ever. No use in denying it. Kayden would get a little irritable here and there, and so would I. We were both on edge, but were filled with determination too. The trick was to not screw things up.
We couldn’t ignore each other completely, though. That would’ve been unrealistic. Ignoring every dumb comment that left his mouth would’ve been impossible. I did go to his place a few days before game seven. That was mistake number one.
We ordered dinner from Skip the Dishes, but nothing heavy like La Nova Pizza. Chinese food, something Buffalo wasn’t known for. You know how my boyfriend eats, right? Well, this wasn’t Buffalo wings but, amazingly, he managed to eat like a pig with a pair of chopsticks too.
Like, he made a smacking sound with his lips and not just after shoveling food into his face. He did it the entire time he chewed too. And the sound grew louder and louder. For real. I’m not saying an eardrum was ready to burst, but it was irritating all the same. I squirmed, drew a deep breath, and forced myself to stay calm.
Sometimes all it takes is for one thing to make you snap.
Finally, I said, “Would you chew like a normal human being, for chrissake?”
And that was it.
He froze, looking like I’d slapped him across the face—which was what I really wanted to do at that moment. Almost two weeks of restraint undone in a matter of seconds.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“You can’t hear yourself eating, I guess.”
“No, I guess not.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is insane, that’s why. And I can’t take you anywhere, you know that, right?”
“We’re eating in, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I mean, theoretically. You know what I mean.”
My boyfriend didn’t roll his eyes exactly, but they did shift away a little.
“In that case, it can’t just be about the way I eat,” he said.
“Maybe it isn’t.”
I felt the temperature in the room rising. My chest tightened. Matter of fact, my whole body tensed up. I couldn’t take much more of this.
Now my team co-captain wore this look that I always associated with an arrogant attempt to take control of a situation. Basically, it was a dumbass smile paired with arched eyebrows. He wouldn’t get mad, not overtly, but the hostility was there.
“Look, Erik, darling, light of my life, if there’s a problem, why don’t you come right out and say it?”
“Fine. Maybe I will. You spend god knows how much time lecturing me. If you don’t know how that can turn into a problem, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
