A surge of excitement almost made me forget about the heavy fatigue I was carrying from the long day. “Me too. As soon as possible, actually.”
That shy smile. Holy fuck.
“Really?”
“Mmhmm. As long as you do.”
“Definitely, yeah.” He laughed, looking away from the camera as a hint of color bloomed in his cheeks. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about since the other night.”
“Well, that explains last night’s game.”
A laugh burst out of him, and he looked at me again, mischief sparkling in his eyes. “Right! Exactly. So we need to see each other ASAP so I don’t get fired.”
“No pressure, right?”
“No, definitely not.” He sobered again, and the shift was dramatic. This time he looked really nervous, and he couldn’t quite hold the camera’s gaze or mine. “In all seriousness, it’s been on my mind a lot. I mean, it’s like I finally have some clue who I am.”
“What do you mean?”
Jase moistened his lips, eyes flicking toward me for just a second before darting away. “I mean, up until literally the moment you kissed me, I was second-guessing if I was gay at all.”
All the breath rushed out of my lungs. “Really?”
Still avoiding my gaze, Jase nodded. “The thing is, I had two ex-girlfriends tell me they thought I must be gay. The first, because I guess I wasn’t so great in bed, and she didn’t think I was into it. Which I wasn’t. So I tried to get better. Do things she liked, get myself into it more, but…” Jase shook his head. “No matter how much I tried, I really just wasn’t into it. Then when Lila and I got together, it was different at first. I don’t know, maybe because it was new, or maybe because I hadn’t been touched in so long, I didn’t care who was touching me as long as someone was.”
“But were you attracted to men?”
He seemed to consider it for a moment before he nodded. “Yeah. Not a lot of them. It didn’t even really register at the time, probably because I was so far in denial, but once in a while, some guy would turn my head, and… Yeah. Yeah, I was definitely attracted to men.” He sighed. “But the thing about Lila is that she had a way of getting into my head. Like the first year we dated, she kept making all these little comments about how my game wasn’t so great anymore. She made it sound like she was concerned about my ability to play and how I needed to get out of whatever funk I was in. And I believed her.”
I inclined my head. “Wasn’t that the season the Snow Bears swept the Cup finals?”
Jase nodded. “Yeah. I was second-guessing myself and berating myself the entire time. It took Coach and a couple of my teammates sitting me down and showing me my stats for that season compared to the one before it for me to see that I was playing better than I had in my entire career. But I’d let Lila get under my skin enough that I believed her. So when I started thinking maybe I really am gay, I kept going back to that and thinking, no, it’s just Lila fucking with my head again.”
“Whoa,” I whispered. “But… why? I mean, why would she do that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t stick around to figure it out. My buddy’s wife thinks it was a power thing. Like a way for her to keep me beaten down and feeling like shit so I’d be grateful she was willing to stay with me. Whatever it was, it fucked me up good. By the time I made it to the other end of that relationship, I didn’t even know who I was anymore. And then when Lila ‘let it slip’”—he rolled his eyes—“in an interview that she thought I must be gay, suddenly everyone and their mother was talking about it. So she picked it up and ran with it, and she made up all the bullshit about catching me with…hell, I lost track of every guy I supposedly banged during that time. But then the next thing I knew, everyone and their mother was talking about that, and asking me about it and talking about it. In between telling me I was a piece of shit for cheating on her. Which I never did with anyone.” Jase sighed, broad shoulders sagging. “So, like I said, whenever I started wondering if maybe I