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CHAPTER 1

TIAGO

“Would you rather be trapped in a cabin with your archenemy or not be allowed to shower for a hundred days?”

Glancing up, I turned my head until I could see Jonah’s face, and it was exactly as horrified as I expected it to be.

“Who the fuck has an archenemy? You a fuckin’ X-Man?”

Antoine burst into laughter. “I’m⁠—”

“Say Daredevil and die,” someone shouted from across the room.

I turned my head just in time to see Antoine flipping him off. “Answer the question, or pay the fine.”

“No shower,” I said just to get things moving. “I don’t mind rank ball sweat over having to fuck a guy I can’t stand.”

We were five minutes away from the third period and waiting on Tucker to come in and tell us what a beautiful pack of motherfuckers we all were. This was game four in the playoffs, and it was nice to be home. But that was only because I could go to my house after the game, collapse on my bed, jerk myself off to sleep and not have to feel bad about the housekeeper who had to clean that up.

I did have a housekeeper, but I washed my own jizz sheets there, so…

“He’s only saying that because he has an archenemy,” Jonah said.

“What?” Antoine’s voice rose above the din. “Who?”

“That fucker from that one website? Gupta’s son? He’s been harassing our poor baby,” Jonah answered, snort-laughing.

Irritation crawled up my spine. Aravind—he said his friends called him Ara, so I never fucking would because the guy was a goddamn ableist tool. He was one of those assholes who didn’t seem to get that blindness was a spectrum, and he thought the fact that I could navigate a well-lit hallway without my cane gave me an unfair advantage over the other players.

Something he’d literally said to my face the last time he was here getting interviewed. I had no idea if he was going to be at the presser tonight after the game, but if he said one goddamn thing about it, I was going to be suspended for punching a journalist.

Or arrested.

Or both.

My hate for him felt worse, too, because his dad was a disabled player. Or, well, he was an NHL player who’d become disabled, and instead of trying his hand at the PPHL, he’d moved on to coaching.

Rohan was a good guy though. He was always hanging around the arena and came to almost every single one of our home games so long as the Glaciers weren’t on a roadie. And it was a pleasant atmosphere now that Noah’s ass had been booted across the country and demoted to coaching farm.

That part was satisfying.

If only Rohan didn’t come with his uptight, spoiled, arrogant, obnoxious, annoyingly gorgeous son, who…

“Alright, you fuckin’ beauticians!” Tucker’s voice interrupted my internal rant, and I turned my attention to him as he swaggered into the room, leaning heavily on his walking cane.

He looked very well put together in his suit and entirely unlike my disaster friend, who didn’t know right from left on days he wasn’t being forced to act in a professional capacity. He also looked happy, which I loved for him, even if it left me with an ache in the pit of my stomach.

I’d stopped looking for that kind of contentment a while ago, because every attempt I’d made at dating in the last six years had ended either really fucking weirdly or really fucking badly. The people who did want me wanted me because they thought my very faint accent was hot, or they were curious about getting dicked down by a blind guy.

And I wasn’t interested in fulfilling that little fantasy for them, so it was better that I took myself off the market and called it a day.

But it was lonely. And it didn’t help when reporters, including the hottest man I had ever seen in my life, constantly paraded around the field of vision I had left.

Uhg, Aravind and his stupid off-the-shoulder sweaters showing off all that skin, and his pretty lips, and those eyes, and…

“…and we can win this, eh?”

My second internal rant was disrupted, and I realized Tucker was still on his speech.