CHAPTER TWO
HUX
I slung my duffle bag over my shoulder and stared at the cabin—read small mansion—that looked exactly like it did the last time I stood on the snow laden ground. The windows glowed with warmth from within, and though snow still fell lightly—of course it lessened now—I couldn’t bring myself to break the image of perfect, untouched powder that covered the pathway to the front door. Icicles hung from the veranda, and a shadow flickered beyond the living area.
A reminder that someone inhabited the cabin, and I was about to intrude on their peace.
Or several someones. I forgot to look at who Sol invited but apart from his girlfriend, Hallie, the place was easily big enough to house four oversized families.
Or at least, it used to.
Double storied with a loft where I used to hide and read—geeky me who hated the spotlight once before it became my job to stand beneath it—this used to be my favorite place in the world. Now I stood outside the refuge of its oak and cottonwood walls, my hands still tremored the slightest amount, and my feet refused to take the first damn step forward.
My pocket vibrated, shaking me out of my haze.
Solace: We’ll wait until tomorrow and drive up. You gonna be alright?
Hux: I’ll be fine. Looks like someone’s home. You know who else is coming?
I waited, but nothing else popped up. Not three wavering dots, nothing. I checked my reception but the damn thing didn’t even show one bar. Giving it up as a bad job I pocketed my phone, gritted my teeth and broke the pristine snow with my boot.
Never one to buy into the team superstitions before a game, a sense of deja vu washed over me. I checked back at my truck where I parked behind the garage, but the headlights were off, and it hadn’t slid backward off the drive. Ballsing up, I forced myself to take the next steps until the misguided self-belief that I’d done the hardest yards settled over me, and that everything would be cream from here on in.
Right until I reached the door, my hand raised to knock on the heavy, carved oak my father and Sol’s had a hand in one year. A truly atrocious job, but it was theirs, and so it stayed.
I couldn’t bring myself to knock on the damn thing. In the end, I didn’t need to.
The door pulled inward, letting the glow from inside the cabin fall onto the snow sparkling in my peripherals. In the middle of all that stood a girl dressed in less clothing than the last puck bunny I saw at a Chimera’s game who tried to sneak into the locker room.
It always blew me away why anyone wanted to go in there. It smelled like a laundry basket of stale socks at the best of times, but those girls were up for pucking anything to get their player.
This girl…
She blew the puck out of me.
Long legs were covered in fluffy knitted socks dotted with bobbly pom poms and crocheted snowflakes that reached to her knees. From there her tanned, toned legs were bare until my gaze drifted to her thighs—fine, bikini line—where a pair of daisy dukes barely covered anything at all and exposed plenty, including the curve of her butt cheek where she turned side on to me, and her toned tummy that glinted in the light with some sort of blue jewel. Also a snowflake, upon closer inspection. And the swell beneath her perky breasts were on show too, though thankfully her nipples were covered in a white crop that could have been a part of a Hooters uniform. Blonde hair borrowed from a fifties pin up girl bounced around her shoulders, and baby blues sat above a strawberry, bow lipped mouth that made mine water.
Maybe from the scent that matched the color. I couldn’t tell because my brain stopped functioning as blood flowed south.
I’ve been away for far too long.
Then her lips parted, and my whole world shattered.
“You always perv on your best friend’s sister so openly, Hux?”
I blinked as she snapped me out of my daze. “Anya.” The last time I saw her, she’d just graduated high school, was headed to college. I swallowed hard, the image of what I wanted then clashing with reality. Something possessive roared in my chest, and everything that happened today—the media mess, trying to care for Tabitha and failing, Benny’s bullshit, the drive in… Now the girl I used to crush on when I shouldn’t, dressed like a puck bunny? I snapped. “Hell, girl, get some clothes on.”
I stepped forward, reaching over her head, intent on grabbing the door from her hold. For some reason I expected her to back up out of the space I encroached on so I could shut the door and?—
I don’t know, give her a blanket to cover up with, or something. Not that the inside of the cabin resembled anything other than a sauna from this range though my backside felt distinctly icy in comparison to my front. Or maybe that was just because I was closer to her.
“You got a man in here to look after you?” I paused. “Or a girlfriend?”
Anya, whose head barely reached the centre of my chest, stared up at me and laughed .
There’s that giggle I remember.
I swallowed hard. “Back up, girl, before you get trampled,” I muttered.
“This girl was doing just fine, thank you.” She poked my belly button, then my bottom rib, hitting a ticklish spot I didn’t know I had.
I flinched and dropped my bag. It thunked on the floor, and I winced. It’d serve me right if I broke everything in it, including my skates.
She stared down curiously, and I was left looking at the top of her golden head, not a dark hair in sight. She always was a natural blonde . Nothing about her seemed fake, not like the bunnies I was used to hanging around the team. Perving on your best friend's sister is poor form. Baby sister, too. Fuck, Sol would slice me open with my own damn blades if he caught me like this.
I tugged hard on the door, but she refused to let go. “Anya, my ass is freezing.”
“Then get inside. What’s in the bag?”
“All my kit. I came from a media session then—” I shook my head, pushing back the image of Tabitha’s face all cut up. And the rest, but I didn’t want to face that memory again right now. What is up with this memory fucking lane shit today? “Fuck. It’s been a day, all right? I nearly fucking smashed my truck into the same damn— Fuck,” I repeated, my vocabulary reduced to single syllables. “Just let me in.”
She held out a hand, waving me around her. “I got the door,” she said softly.
“Thanks.” I let go, rubbing my hand on the back of my jeans. Side stepping around her I pretended my gaze didn’t drift back to the gem in her navel, or that my fingers didn’t itch to tweak it.
The fuck is wrong with me?
I shook my head, grabbed my bag off the floor and stalked deeper into the cabin. Damnit, she never did answer me. “Have I gotta worry about a bear in here?”
“A bear, huh?”
“Or a lady bear?” I scratched the top of my head when she laughed at me again, and figured there was no threat of a boyfriend coming to assault me for perving on his girl. The thought left me warm and fuzzy inside, or maybe that was just the interior cabin temperature catching up with me. Aclimatising, right? Yeah, bullshit. Anya laughed at me again. “Stop that. Your brother said he’d wait until tomorrow to drive up. I’ve got no idea who else is coming.”
“No one.” Her denim clad ass swaggered past me. I got an eyeful of two pert butt cheeks hanging temptingly from the base of the material. Of which there wasn’t fucking much. And at perfect hand height to?—
My fingers itched. I’m so fucked.
“It’s just us. You needed a break. I needed a break. Well, post break up. And Sol wanted time with Hallie. Something about a new obsession.”
Double fucked.
I stared at a point over her shoulder and started to recite this season’s playbook backwards. “Uh, sure.”
Blonde curls whipped about her as she twisted to look at me over one bare shoulder. “Didn’t Solace tell you?”
“He probably did.” And I probably didn’t listen. No probably about it. Shit. Maybe he and Coach were right. I did need the break.
“If you say so.”
Her inflection left me doubtful of whether Sol actually had told me about the invitees for the weekend or not while I made it my life mission to study the wall behind her head and not look down. Finally blood flowed in the correct direction again, and I managed to make eye contact, or where eye contact should have been, but the space where Anya stood a second ago was empty.
“I say so,” I muttered, not sure why the grump in me rose that usually only came out during training or a really shitty game.
I didn’t follow Anya into the kitchen where she banged about a bit louder than I suspected she needed to be, or maybe I was just still on edge. Shit, I could have handled that better. I really should have turned around when the snow fell heavier and not driven in at all. But I’d promised Sol I’d turn up, and breaking my word hurt.
Swearing under my breath I took the stairs three at a time, relishing the strain in my thighs after sitting in the car for so long. I was desperate to piss, and tossed my bag at the floor of the bed into the first room along the hall that had been mine for years. An adjoining bathroom to the next bedroom offered reprieve. One scalding hot shower later I felt somewhat human. My body regulated to the internal house temperature enough that the semi-warm water droplets dripping from my still damp hair seemed cool.
I wrapped a towel around my waist, cleaned the bathroom of my presence in case Anya was sharing, gathered my clothes and headed back into the room where I left my kit.
And found a mostly naked Anya lying in my bed. A sheet was draped around her waist, and her back was partially turned to me while she read.
I stared at the slim curves of her shoulder blades where they dipped along her back, her blonde hair twisted into a messy top notch that exposed her nape. My blood heated at the thought of running my hands over that tanned, smooth skin a second before reality slammed home. I bypassed Grumpland on the way to outright asshole as I seethed at the pretty girl spread out before me who had no idea what sort of hell she just rained down on herself.
“The hell do you think you’re doing in my bed, Anya?” I snapped with the sort of volume that echoed across an arena during morning training. But here it was only us, and a small bedroom that my bellow filled all the same, my voice bouncing off the walls, splintering back at me.
Not that it mattered as she rolled over to face me and I realized I’d been wrong. So fucking wrong.
The sheet slid back with the movement. Anya wasn’t half naked at all. She didn’t have a stitch of clothing on her perfect body, and I got an eyeful of a pair of rounded, oh so tweakable fucking breasts as she stared at me with wide eyes.
Right before a sinful little smile curved her pretty lips.