Page 94 of Ethan

For a long, taut moment, they just stared at each other, across the hundreds of miles. A lump grew in Ethan’s throat, and he couldn’t seem to clear it. Did he want the sex? Sure he did. He’d been wanting it for awhile.

But more than any sex, he just wanted tobewith Hank. To do dumb chores with him, and scroll through Amazon, joking about stupid gifts to buy his brothers, Livvy, and Hank’s sister. To just lie together in bed, head on Hank’s chest, listening to his heart beating, solid and real andpresent.

“That sounds . . .yeah.” On Ethan’s phone screen, Hank swallowed hard, like he had a twin lump in his own throat. Twin wants being denied.

“It’s gonna happen,” Ethan said, because he had to believe it was true. If he didn’t keep the faith, he was gonna lose his fucking mind.

“I gotta think so,” Hank said with a reluctant sigh.

“January,” Ethan repeated with a fervency that he felt but didn’t need to explain. Not when Hank felt the exact same goddamn way.

Chapter 13

January

Ethan wasn’t hungover, but he couldn’t say the same about Charlie.

“Fuuuuuck,” Charlie groaned, only lifting his head about an inch off the kitchen counter. “Can you like . . . makewayless noise, please?”

Ethan was currently in the middle of making oatmeal and slicing up some fruit—two generally pretty noiseless activities. He wasn’t sure he could do either of them any quieter.

“I wonder how Max is doing?” Ethan asked, instead of defending his nearly silent oatmeal creation. Charlie needed to eat something to combat the hangover; a something that was probably loaded with fat and sugar, but he’d freak out if Ethan even suggested it, because the further into the season the Bandits got, the tighter he seemed to be wound.

Of course, all that anxiety had to overflow at some point, and it had done it last night in spades. They’d had a big blowout New Year’s Eve party at Danny’s house, and Ethan had made the mistake of looking away for twenty minutes so he could havea quick, hushed conversation with Hank, and look what had happened.

Charlie had apparently decided that doing shots with Max was a good idea. Who had suggested it, he still didn’t know, because Charlie had wanted to talk about everything elsebutthe origin of his sudden drunkenness, and he was even more close-lipped this morning.

Understandable; he kinda looked like death warmed over.

“If he’s doing shitty, it’s his own damn fault,” Charlie mumbled into the counter. “It washisidea.”

Ethan wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he just grunted as he poured the oatmeal into two bowls. Setting the pan down as gently as possible, he added a few spoonfuls of brown sugar to his own and considered adding one measly half spoonful to Charlie’s, but he’d probably lose his shit if Ethan did.

Again, that hadn’t exactly stopped Charlie last night.

Fuck it,Ethan decided and added a whole spoonful, mixing it in so Charlie couldn’t see it.

Not that Charlie was really seeing much right now. He was kind of half glaring, half squinting out of a partially opened single eye. Hehadcome out of the bedroom wearing sunglasses, but Ethan had snagged them right off his face, making Charlie screech so loud it was amazing Mrs. Hunzinger, who lived next door, hadn’t called in a complaint for noise.

“You don’t wanna be hungover, don’t drink so much so fast next time,” Ethan said reasonably, setting the bowl in front of Charlie. “Come on, eat up.”

“Are you going to tell me I’m a fucking idiot again if I say you should’ve stopped me?” Charlie complained.

“Yes,” Ethan said. “I walked away for like ten fucking minutes to talk to my—to talk to Hank.”

His little stumble had Charlie raising his head the furthest it’d been since Ethan confiscated his sunglasses. “How’s Hank?”

“In Syracuse, andnotas hungover as you,” Ethan said.

“Fuck, nobody is as hungover as me,” Charlie said and slumped back down to the counter, nearly upsetting his untouched bowl of oatmeal in the process.

“In the history of the world, probably not,” Ethan agreed. He slid onto the next barstool over and began to shovel his own breakfast into his mouth. Unlike Charlie,hewas going to make it to optional morning skate, which Coach had kindly scheduled for noon, because he assumed that everyone would be feeling a bit worse for the wear this morning. Ethan figured that was the only way anyone was going to show up, anyway.

“You’re mean.” Charlie pouted. “Avery would be nice to me. And Livvy? She’d be the nicest.”

“That’s because Livvy’s the best of us,” Ethan said cheerfully, not feeling even the slightest bit upset by Charlie’s declaration. “I still argue that you’d have felt better if you threw up last night.”

Charlie’s face turned green. “Please,pleasestop talking,” he begged.