Chapter 5 Fish
FISH
Collette St. Pierre can skate.
Not the way media people skate, gripping the boards, shuffling like baby deer, one fall away from a lawsuit.
She came out this morning in borrowed skates with a camera in one hand and glided past me at full stride like she’d been doing it her whole life.
Which she has. She’s a St. Pierre after all, of course she can skate.
But knowing that and watching her cut across the ice filming Bouch’s drill with one hand while dodging Nelly’s terrible crossovers is something else entirely.
She moves like she belongs out here. Confident.
Easy. Not trying to prove anything, just doing her job and looking …
“Fish! You planning on joining practice, or you just gonna stand there?” Coach yells out across the ice, grabbing everyone’s attention.
Coach. Right. I push off and fall into the drill. Evan slides up beside me and doesn’t say anything, which is worse than if he did.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.” He smirks.
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asks.
“Like you can read my mind,” I tell him, annoyance rushing over my body because Evan is my best friend on the team. He puts up with my antics mainly because he doesn’t say much.
“Because I can read your mind.” He passes me the puck. “And whatever you were thinking about needs to stop.”
I shoot wide on purpose just to annoy him. He swears at me in Russian. “Wasn’t thinking anything.” Evan glares at me, knowing I’m full of shit. “Fine, but it’s not what you think.”
“That you have a death wish?” He raises a brow.
“I’m not an idiot. She just surprised me that she could skate, that’s all. You don’t normally see the content girls on the ice,” I explain to him.
“Because they can’t skate.”
“Exactly.”
“You know who her brothers are, don’t you?”
“No shit,” I grumble.
“And she’s French-Canadian too.” I know all this. “Of course she can skate.”
I roll my eyes at him. “I was just saying I’m surprised, that’s all.” Getting annoyed, he just raises a brow at me and continues skating.
After practice, she’s waiting at the tunnel with the mic. Quick social hits, thirty-second answers, keep it fun, move on. She’s already done Nelly and Bouch by the time I come through.
“Fish.” She points the mic at me. “What sport would you play if you were more athletic?”
I still. “What did you say?”
“Football, golf, basketball?”
“If I was more athletic?” I repeat her question because I am fucking athletic, I’m a hockey player.
“Yeah,” she says in all seriousness.
“But I am athletic.” She gives me a look that says otherwise. “Are you serious?”
Her attention gets pulled by Evan walking in behind me, and she asks him the same question. He stops, looks at me, and then back to her.
“More athletic?” he repeats, wondering if he got the translation right.
“Yeah, like soccer or baseball,” she adds.
“Me. I’m athletic. No?” he asks.
“That’s what I said.” I slap him on the shoulder, glad I’m not the only one confused by this question.
“But if you were more athletic …” she reiterates, and I can see the other girls trying not to laugh.
“Is this a trend?” I groan while she keeps holding the mini mic in front of me. “Fine. I’d be a sailor,” I tell her.
“And you, Evan?” She turns the furry mic to my best friend.
“Soccer probably.” He nods as we walk off into the tunnel to the giggles of the content girls.
“More athletic,” I grumble, shaking my head as we walk away.
I find her in the tunnel packing up after I’ve gotten changed, the other girls are already gone.
“More athletic,” I say to her.
She doesn’t look up. “It’s a trend, Fish. Did I bruise your ego?”
“Kind of.”
“It’s for content, the public loves it. All the teams are doing it. And you gave a great answer, sailing, very unexpected.”
“I panicked,” I confess.
“Clearly.” She zips the bag and finally looks at me. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t out here actually thinking I’m not athletic.”
“Fish, you play hockey for a living. I literally watched you skate for two hours this morning.”
“So, you admit I’m athletic.” I smirk at her.
“I thought you were tougher than that.”
“Come on, say it, you think I’m athletic.” I goad her.
“I’m not saying shit.” She grins at me. Oh, I think the St. Pierre stubbornness runs through her veins, too. “I’m not one of your puck bunnies who will happily stroke your ego.”
“Oh, I can assure you they very much do enjoy stroking my ego,” I say, wiggling my brows at her.
She scrunches up her face. “Ew. I don’t need to hear about what you did with that brunette.”
“Oh, she definitely liked stroking my ego.”
She slaps me but is laughing. “You’re so disgusting. I bet you haven’t even called her back after she gave you a good stroking.”
“I didn’t get her number.”
Collette rolls her eyes. “Of course you didn’t.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what that means.” She narrows those hazel eyes onto me.
“Danielle knew what she was getting into when she went home with me. I gave her the best night of her life, and she has a story to tell forever.”
“You really do live up to your reputation.” She huffs.
“My reputation?”
“Yeah, of being a fuck boy.”
I’m offended. “I’m not a fuck boy. I don’t promise the women I take home anything more than a fun night.
I don’t lie about who I am. I don’t ask for their numbers.
They know the drill, all they care about is ticking my name off the long roster of hockey players they want to screw.
You know, there’s like a puck bunny Reddit all about it, I need to keep my average up. ”
Collette’s mouth falls open. “There’s a Reddit about you screwing puck bunnies.”
“About all the guys in the league that screw puck bunnies.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Have you not heard of it?” I ask her. She shakes her head. Shit. Well, I just put my foot in it then. “Well, then, forget it.”
“Oh, I so can’t forget it.”
“Oh, I think you should,” I argue with her, there are people on there she might not want to read about.
Her eyes narrow on me. “Are my brothers on there?” I nod. She looks surprised. “No.” I nod again. “Fuck. Do they know?”
“I assume so.” I shrug. “The team knows.”
She shakes her head. “What do they say about you on there?”
“There’s a grading system of sorts,” I explain, rubbing the back of my neck because I think I’ve just started something that is going to bite me in the ass.
“Grading system? For like, your dick?”
I nod. “Yeah. And our moves. They also mention kinks and those sorts of things.”
“Show me,” she asks.
“Yeah. I’m not doing that.”
“Um, yes you are. You’re the one who told me about it.”
“That was because I assumed you knew about it,” I argue with her.
“Well, I didn’t, and now I can’t unknow this,” she argues back.
“Then you’re going to have to find it yourself.”
She gives me a look of ‘are you serious?’. I don’t need her to see something about her brothers and then all the blowback coming back to me.
“Are you bullshitting me?”
I shake my head. “I’m serious.”
“And you’re okay with that information being online?”
“No. I hate it,” I grumble, kicking some imaginary dirt on the ground. “Look, I know my reputation, but having your intimate moments put on a scorecard is kind of degrading.”
“Then why don’t you stop sleeping with bunnies?”
I let out a sigh. “See, that is my conundrum.”
“You like sleeping with bunnies?”
“They can be fun.” She scrunches up her nose at that. “Are you slut shaming those women?”
“No. Never,” she quickly adds. “They can do what they like. I just don’t like the idea of the website.”
“Not much you can do about it.”
“No one reads Reddit anyway,” she adds.
I nod. “Well, now that I’ve said too much, enjoy the rest of your day, and I’ll see you tomorrow, St. Pierre.”
The next day, Collette finds me in the hallway. Practice has ended, and some of the boys are meeting up at Murphy’s for lunch but I’m running late.
“I need to talk to you,” she says.
That sounds serious. “Good morning to you, too.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “I’m sorry.”
Huh. I stop and stare at her. Why is she apologizing to me? “What are you sorry for?”
“I know you told me not to look, but I did, I had to.”
Oh.
“The Reddit thing you told me about yesterday.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, now I feel bad teasing you over the puck bunny,” she confesses.
Aw. That is incredibly sweet that she feels bad for teasing me. Not sure if anyone has ever felt bad about that before.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you though?” Her brows pull together.
“Collette,” I say, placing my hands on her shoulders, those hazel eyes looking up at me as I tower over her.
Damn it, she is beautiful. I could lose myself staring down into those pools of amber.
“I’m fine. It’s been there for years. I’m used to it.
” I inhale her citrus scent, letting it swirl around my nose.
This is the closest I’ll ever get to her. I’ll take what I can.
She’s watching me like she’s trying to find the crack again, like the one I accidentally showed her yesterday, but I make sure to keep it tightly under wraps and don’t let it slip today.
Her hands come out and grab my wrists, and her skin touching mine sends goosebumps over me. “I couldn’t stop reading. It’s …” She exhales, and I notice the worry in her eyes for me. “It’s a lot.”
“I warned you,” I tell her as I try to let my hands fall from her shoulders, but she is still holding onto me.
Now we are standing in the corridor holding hands.
If her brothers see this, they are going to kill me, if anyone sees this, they are going to kill me.
I quickly pull free of her touch, which surprises her.
“You did.” She pauses as she bites her bottom lip nervously. “I told Pierre and Felix.” I knew she would. “I know. I know. But I couldn’t just sit on it. They’re my brothers, they have a right to know what people were writing about them.”
“And?”
Her face changes to something softer and sadder than I’ve seen from her before. “Pierre wasn’t so bad. He was with Kitty for most of it, so there wasn’t much. But Felix … Felix had a phase after his breakup, before he met Harper. He was in a bad place and he …”
“I get it.”
“Women wrote things about him. Detailed things. And I watched him read it. I was sitting right there, and I saw his face and …” She swallows. “He tried to laugh it off, but I know it hurt him, especially as things with him and Harper are precarious.” I don’t say anything, I just listen.
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
“For what this time?” I ask her.
“For being flippant about the brunette stuff. The ego stroking jokes. I was treating it like it was funny, and it’s … it’s not. Not when people are writing about you like you’re not a real person. Like you’re just a body they get to review.”
I want to brush this off. I want to say something cocky and stupid and redirect the conversation to something that doesn’t make my chest feel like this. But she’s looking at me with those hazel eyes, and she’s being honest. The least I can do is not be a dick about it.
“You didn’t know.”
“But I do now.” Those hazel eyes widen.” So …” she nudges my shoulder with hers, “I’ll find new material.”
“Please don’t,” I reassure her, because our bantering back and forth is becoming the highlight of my days.
“Too late, I’m already workshopping new ways to insult you.” She grins.
This makes me laugh. “Can’t wait.”
For a second, she just stands there like she wants to say something else but doesn’t know how to land it, then she shakes her head. “For what it’s worth, your reviews were pretty solid.”
“And?”
“You know what they say, your ego doesn’t need the boost.” She grins.
“Maybe a little one …” I tease.
“There were a lot of rave reviews.” She smirks.
“I aim to please.”
“Sounds like you do. Keep up the good work.”
“Thanks. You know, anytime you want to …”
Collette glares at me. “I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.”
I hold up my hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I forgot where I was.” I smirk.
“Have a good day, Fish.” She walks off down the corridor.
I watch her go. Collette St. Pierre intrigues me, and I know she shouldn’t, but she does.