Page 16 of Nerd Jock Hockey


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I take his hand for the rest of the way back, and my quick little lesson has paid off for him. He’ll still need practice, but he’s already got the hang of the basic skating movement pattern.

“You fucking did it,” I say into his ear.

Cody shivers. Yeah,thatkind of shiver. It goes straight to my special places, and I have to beg my dick not to get a boner in the middle of the family night skate while I’m next to my younger siblings.

“Meyer magic,” he whispers.

“C’mon, Rach. Let’s practice those drills Merc showed you,” Bryce says. Merc calls them drills for Rachel’s benefit—she wants to be like her big brothers—but they’re just simple skate techniques.

Cody clings to me, watching her. “She’s really good. Not even just for her age. I know I can’t skate, but um, I watch a lot of people skate,” he clarifies.

“Yeah, we think she’ll make it into a women’s league. She loves the ice. We have a hard time pulling her off.”

“Wish I could skate half as good as she can.”

“You will. I’m gonna make sure.” I give him a goofy grin.

Dawson tugs on my jacket. “C’we get ice cream now, Ari? You promised.”

“Yeah, c’mon.” I lift Rachel to my side, and Bryce returns her skate trainer. I hold Cody’s hand, and we slowly glide our way off the ice.

Cody watches me differently. I detect some awe, but there’s something else too. I hope to fuck it’s him falling for me as much as I already have for him. I don’t know what I’m gonna do if he rejects me after this. Never step foot in this rink for starters.

I’ve got the kids on a bench in front of the concession stand, set up with ice cream. That’s how Mercy finds us. And boy is his frown deep. Whoa. I might have misjudged his “okayness” with this.

“You said you had the night off.”

“Which I used to take them ice skating.” He crosses his arms. “Okay, fine. I forgot to take the night off, but we had fun, didn’t we guys?”

“We got ice cream,” Rachel says, proudly showing him her dripping cone.

“Yeah, at nine o’clock at night. I see that. No one’s going to sleep tonight, dude.”

“I’ll stay up with them,” I promise.

He sighs, and my stomach plummets to the bottom of an invisible cavern. This is exactly what I didn’t want—a stressed out Mercy. He’s got so much going on. All I want to do is take a load off him, but now I’ve shown him that he can’t trust me. I’m just another person who’s let him down.

Cody rushes over. “Sorry, sorry, um, Mr. Mercy, is it?”

“Mr. Meyer,” Mercy corrects.

“Yeah. Meyer. Mr. Meyer. I’m Ari’s manager and it’s my fault he had to work tonight. The guy that was supposed to work forhim called in sick. I yelled at Ari so he’d come here. That’s … super bad workplace etiquette. It won’t happen again.”

Merc’s brows pinch together. He looks between Cody and me because, okay, it’s pretty obvious that a guy like Cody isn’t gonna intimidate a guy like me. He doesn’t look like he yells much, either. But Merc has no idea how much Cody’s icy glares affect me. Cody wouldn’t have to do much to get me to do anything for him.

Meanwhile, I’m over the moon that Cody would even try to get me out of hot water with my brother. I love Merc to death, but he’s fucking menacing at the best of times.

Great, now I’m staring at Cody, swallowing, licking my lips—my cock’s urge to be inside him won’t dampen until it gets what it wants—finding it impossible to fight the urge to be closer to him. So I don’t, moving next to him just so I can live in the airspace around him. Merc doesn’t miss any of that, and his brows raise in a new way, settling into a smirk.

I’m so fucking busted.

“Yeah, guess I can’t be too mad at you for coming in to work. Okay, c’mon little Meyers. We’re going home.”

“Wait!” Rachel says. She bounces over to Cody, signaling for him to lean down, planting a wet, ice-cream-stained kiss on his cheek. Oh, man. That’s gonna bother him. He doesn’t like icky and dirty things. “Thanks for the ice cream.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” he says.

There’s a sticky white lip imprint where she kissed him. He doesn’t react, doesn’t say a word about it.