Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
WILDER
What the fuck?
My feet are rooted in place, my stomach hurdling down in the same direction, every single limb on my body completely frozen. Somehow, I manage to keep my mouth from falling agape from the shock coursing through me.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been stunned to the point of being speechless. Growing up in the fucked-up world that I did, you quickly learn that the worst is always going to happen.
Not if, but when.
Adjust and lower your expectations, and nothing will ever surprise you.
But there was no way I would’ve even seen this coming. Never in my wildest goddamn dreams.
And trust me, there have been far too many dreams since that night about the tiny blonde standing in front of me with those wide blue eyes, her cheeks flushed pink to match her full, pouty lips. Lips that I kissed until they were red and swollen and bruised.
What in the actual fuck is happening?
Did she know who I was that night, did she fucking seek me out? It wouldn’t be the first time a woman has, but fuck, that means I got it wrong.
“You look shocked,” Coach Taylor says to her with a low chuckle, angling his body toward her as she steps aside, her gaze still planted on me like she’s unable to remove it. “That’s been a lot of people’s reactions recently to meeting the superstar here.”
My jaw steels, the muscles working, his words slithering down my spine as if they’re not meant as a compliment from the man who’s my new boss.
Her brow cinches together, confusion evident, and her eyes flit to Taylor before she clears her throat. “S-superstar?”
His lip turns up in a smirk, gaze moving between the two of us. “Wilder played in the NHL for ten years. Boston for a handful of them. The guys on the team say he’s a legend. The GOAT, as they like to say.”
I fight back the urge to scoff.
A legend who’s been let go from his team because he’s a “liability.”
I’m a fucking liability.
Ten years in the NHL, ten years of sacrifice, three Stanleys, rookie of the year… all to be summed up and dismissed as a goddamn liability.
Fuck that, and fuck them.
It’s simple. They turned their back on someone who gave his entire goddamn life to their franchise. It was more than just a slap in the face. It was them pissing on my grave after trying to bury me six feet under.
I was never a liability when they used my volatile temper and my aggression to their advantage. I only became a liability when they could no longer control it.
Maisie’s eyes drag to mine, not that mine ever left, and she chews on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t follow hockey, so I wouldn’t know. Sorry.”
So she’s either lying, or maybe she had no clue who I was that night, but it still doesn’t change the shit storm we’ve found ourselves in.
“Well, I guess you do now,” Coach muses, shoving his hands in the pockets of his pants, offering her a wink.
“I have full confidence that Coach Hawthorne is going to take care of you, and if you need anything, you know where to find me. Wilder?” he says to me with a nod. “I’ll leave you both to it.”
My throat feels tight, too tight to even speak, but somehow, I push out the words “Yep. Thanks, Coach.”
I swallow thickly as her eyes find mine again, as we stand there in heavy silence that might suffocate us both.
What the fuck am I supposed to say?
How am I supposed to handle this?
She shifts from one foot to the other, and I force myself to keep my gaze on her face, not dip any lower at the tight little dress she’s wearing. The fabric that molds to her waist. The little fucking bow that’s tied at her chest.
I clear my throat. “Let’s talk in my office.”
The things I need to say aren’t something I can say to her out here, surrounded by my players and the coaching staff that would immediately rescind the position they just gave to me if they found out just how well I knew her.
“Sure,” she says when I trail off, nodding. “Uh, yeah, that would be great. Thank you.”
Neither of us says a word as we walk, her uncomfortably following behind me.
I don’t trust myself to say anything right now, not when I feel like I’m going to lose my goddamn head and the entire arena has a front-row seat to the shit show.
The ice I’m skating on is already too thin.
Maisie brushes past me as I stand in the doorway to my office. It sounds formal and stuffy as fuck to say that I even have an office, something I’m still not used to despite being here for a few weeks now.
The last thing I ever thought I’d end up is the guy who sits at a desk and pushes paperwork, who’s coaching these kids whose parents probably paid for them to be here.
Trading in my jersey for a fucking whistle and a clipboard after the career I’ve had feels like the worst form of humiliation I could face.
Coaching at my alma mater in a city I swore I would never fucking return to. A place that has haunted me since I was a child.
But per usual, the hand that I’m dealt is the shittiest in the deck.
I can’t ignore the sweet smell of vanilla that surrounds me as she passes, a scent that has my pulse pounding and my dick stirring in my pants as my body recalls the last time I was this close to her.
But I push it down, letting my anger that’s been simmering beneath the surface rise, boiling over.
Flattening my palm against the door, I roughly slam it shut and turn to Maisie. “What the fuck?” I grind out. “Tell me the truth, did you know who I was? Don’t lie to me the way you did with Taylor. I want the fucking truth.”
“Are you serious?” she says, whipping around to glare at me as I rake a hand down my face, then back up through my hair, trying to keep my shit under control. “Of course I didn’t know. How dare you accuse me of lying?”
“Oh, right, forgive me for assuming that you’re capable of doing something as fucked-up as lying,” I say as I stalk forward until we’re toe to toe, until I’m in front of her, peering down at her sensual lips, the flush tinting her cheeks, whether from anger or something else.
“When you ran out and left me with cum and your virgin blood still glistening on my cock.”
Her mouth opens, the stuttering response bubbling out of her. “I… I—”
In a heartbeat, I’m cutting her off, covering that fucking mouth with my palm, silencing her.
“I don’t want to hear bullshit excuses. You let me fuck you like a goddamn animal against that wall, and I had no fucking clue that you were a virgin!
” My gaze moves to her throat when she swallows, her nostrils flaring.
She’s not afraid.
And even if she was, I’m too pissed off, too shocked to worry if I’m going too far right now.
“Jesus fucking Christ. What, are you, a puck bunny? Is that what it was? Wanted to give your virginity to a famous hockey player, so you let me fuck you in a bathroom so you could brag about it?”
This time, her eyes flare with anger, the air crackling between us as she reaches up and flings my hand away from her mouth. “You’re an asshole!”
I laugh, but it’s devoid of all humor. “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be the first to try.”
She shakes her head, and for a second, it looks like there’s hurt beneath that mask of fury she’s wearing.
It makes me pause.
“What else am I supposed to think when two weeks after I fuck you, you’re here at my job? And you’re a goddamn student, huh?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Her blue eyes widen.
“Maybe that it’s a crazy freaking coincidence since not every girl in the world is out to fuck a superstar.
” The emphasis is clearly an insult, and I narrow my eyes, pinning her to the office door behind her.
“Maybe I’m just a girl who wanted to lose her virginity without it being such a big deal.
Maybe I wanted to get it over with so I no longer had to worry about it.
That’s why I didn’t tell you. Not because I was trying to…
I don’t know, trap you in anything. God.
Who freaking hurt you to make you such a giant dick? ”
She has no fucking clue.
Most people wouldn’t from the outside looking in.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’re a goddamn college student, Maisie?”
Her chin lifts. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a hockey coach, Wilder?” Defiance shines deep in her light eyes.
Jesus Christ, this is a cluster fuck. A fuckup of epic proportions.
Sure, I don’t give much of a fuck about this job in the long run, and I don’t even want to be here in the first place, but I have one chance.
One shot to “fix my image” so I’m no longer seen as a liability. So I can go back to the NHL. But one chance.
That’s the only reason I’m here pretending I give a shit about this job, wearing a mask that doesn’t fit, placating people who I want nothing to do with.
I fucked a student in what just might be the best sex of my entire goddamn life. The girl I’ve had running through my head like she belongs there every minute since she ran out on me.
A girl I now have to spend the rest of the year working with on whatever the hell it is Coach thinks is going to help with my public image.
It was one of the conditions he laid down when he offered me this job. That I had to actively engage in improving my public image, which means participating in all team-sanctioned events and being the team’s new liaison for this service program that apparently she’s a part of.
Clearly, I didn’t know what I was agreeing to at the time.
The plan is supposed to be lie low, look like I’m OU’s golden boy alumni, while Coach parades me around like a show pony, maybe get a championship to help my case. None of which I want, but are necessary.
This? Her? Yeah, not part of the fucking plan.
“Why didn’t I tell you? Well, it’s not like there was much talking involved, if you recall,” she adds, like I wasn’t an active participant in fucking deflowering her that night.
I lower my voice, articulating each word slowly so I’m crystal clear. “It was a mistake that never should’ve happened.”
“Of course it was.”
“I’m serious, Maisie. Whatever the intention was, however it came to be, doesn’t even fucking matter at this point.
” I step back and keep distance between us because the last thing I need is for someone to find us like this, caught up in something that they’ll never understand but make assumptions about.
“That night never should’ve happened. You’re a student, and I’m the hockey team’s new coach, and now we have to work together.
It looks really fucking bad that I’m in a position of power with the team working with you.
And you’re probably… what? A decade younger than me? ”
Fuck.
I rake a hand through my hair with the need to do something, anything, to keep myself from losing my fucking mind.
Logically, of course I realized she’s younger than me, but I’ve been so fixated on the fact that she’s a damn student, I didn’t even give myself a moment to consider just how much younger she probably is.
“It’s not like either of us knew, Wilder,” she says quietly, her voice low as our eyes meet.
“Coach,” I snap. “Coach Hawthorne. You can’t call me by anything other than what another student would call me.”
After a brief moment, she nods before lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders back as if she’s on the defense, like she’s preparing for a battle.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty. Almost… twenty-one.” Each of her quietly whispered words is like a physical blow to my gut.
Jesus Christ, she’s not even fucking old enough to have been in that bar in the first place.
“Goddamnit,” I blanche. “How’d you even get into the bar that night?”
Her shoulders lift in a shrug, my question remaining unanswered.
I don’t think she truly understands what’s at stake here. The amount of destruction this type of scandal would bring down on the both of us. If a whisper of this gets around, the entire campus will pick it up.
Gossip spreads like wildfire.
And just like that, ending up here, taking this damn job, all of it will be for nothing. Gone as quickly as the end of my career.
The only chance at showing the league that I’m willing to clean up my image and play nice, turn it all around… gone.
She steps forward, clutching that pink folder against her chest. “Look, I’m not going to tell anyone, okay? I swear. I wouldn’t do anything to get you into trouble. Or anyone into trouble.”
“It never leaves this office… because it never fucking happened.”
Her throat bobs in a swallow, and she nods, rolling her pretty pink lips together.
Shit, I can’t be thinking about her lips. About her in any capacity.
“Okay. Well, we’re going to have to work together on this project because it doesn’t seem like there’s another option.
Coach Taylor said you’re the one leading this for the team, and I’m not going to let the kids suffer or someone else take my place, because this is really important to me.
I won’t jeopardize the program or my role in it because of a stupid, thoughtless mistake.
” Her chin lifts higher, and she blows out a breath.
“So we’ll pretend that it never happened. End of story.”
I open my mouth to respond, but she keeps rambling. “I mean, honestly, we don’t even know each other. Um…” Her cheeks burn bright red; she’s obviously thinking about the details from the night that we spent together. “You know what I mean. We’re two strangers that have just met.”
Sounds easy, but two strangers who have just met don’t know what the other sounds like as they come. The little whimpers and breathy sounds that she makes as her pussy is gripping my cock, fingers yanking roughly at the hair at my nape.
But she’s right.
There’s no other option than to act as if that night never happened. So I push it down, shut it off. Stop thinking of what she looked like or sounded like when she came.
Stop replaying that night in my head over and over like a broken record.
Maisie Delacroix is completely, wholly untouchable.
And nothing is going to change that.