Chapter 4 Bates
It’s been one week since the party, one week since I lost all grasp of control with Serena. I was a man unhinged, and while I loved every second with her, I wasn’t fully in charge of my emotion, and that’s unacceptable.
She has a way of tearing down my resolve with a single bat of her eyelashes, turning me into a feral, crazed man.
And that smart mouth of hers makes me want to cross lines we’re not ready for.
Which is why I’ve kept our physical interaction to a minimum, made easier by the away game stretch we’re just now getting home from.
But that has only kept my eyes glued to my phone, watching her every step through my cameras, ones that have been buried in her life since before my letters started showing up at her door.
Thank God for modern technology though, and thanks to the help of Kol and Cas, I don’t have to stand outside of Serena’s window to keep an eye on her.
Every inch of her home and office is covered by my surveillance—well, aside from the bathrooms. I may be her stalker, but I’m not some creep.
It’s eight a.m., and I’m waiting for the rest of the team to show up for practice. I’m always ungodly early, but I’m usually on the ice, not glued to my phone in the locker room—usually, as in before I met Serena. She consumes my life in an absolutely unhealthy way, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
She’s sitting in her cozy living room, typing rapidly on her laptop, which is gently sitting on a pillow on her thighs. Her legs are extended out, crossed at the ankles, and resting atop the ottoman.
Freddie, my handsome boy, is fast asleep next to her, the front half of his body buried beneath a blanket.
I need some snuggles from him soon. I’m having withdrawals. It’s been a few days since I snuck into her place while she was at work, and I miss my little guy.
Almost every day, she brings him to the office. But if she has a lot of interviews or will be out of the building, he stays home, and I sneak away from my responsibilities to see him.
“Hey.” Kol’s greeting cuts through the silence in the room, and I can tell from the deep resonance in his voice that he likely woke up mere minutes ago.
His black hair is tucked under a baseball cap, poking out from beneath it.
My gaze flicks up to him, and I lift my head in a quick nod. “Hey. Just get up or what?”
He rubs his light blue-almost gray eyes with his hands as he drops down onto the bench beside me. “Yeah. I slept like shit last night. I had a nightmare that you’d forced me to go to a matchmaking party, and I woke up screaming.”
My eyes fall, and my lips purse. “Shut the fuck up.”
Laughs burst from us, but the kind where exhaustion hangs on the end of the exhales.
“Cas isn’t here yet?” He leans his head back against the cubby, closing his eyes.
“Obviously not,” I mutter, my eyes locking on the image of Serena and Freddie sitting on the couch, with a perfect empty spot beside them, begging to be filled.
She shuts her laptop and tosses it onto the couch beside her before turning toward Freddie with a soft smile and big eyes. What I imagine is baby talk forms on her lips as she picks him up and peppers him with kisses.
She should be heading to the office soon. Her calendar had the next few hours blocked out, and I can only assume it’s for work.
Closing out of my surveillance app, I switch to a different app and start her car for her. It’s ten degrees Fahrenheit outside this morning. It should probably run for a good ten minutes at least before she leaves.
A couple of other guys walk into the locker room, and while Cas and Kol know about Serena, no one else on the team does, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. I haven’t gotten caught because I’m careful.
Begrudgingly, I lock my phone and set it face down beside me before standing to my feet to get dressed. If I’m not watching her, I’m going to be on the ice, getting some shots in and stretching my legs out.
I quickly get dressed as Kol continues to rest. I kick his leg before I step into my skates, and he grunts.
“Get off your ass. Let’s go.”
“I’m going to wait until Cas gets here.” He crosses his arms.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Cas greets him, as if on cue, and Kol’s face turns down.
“You couldn’t have been gone for five more minutes?” He pushes himself to his feet and stretches his arms and neck out as Cas and I laugh at him.
He’s never been a great morning person, and this is a normal practice time.
Early morning skates on game day, he literally has me slap him until he’s fully awake.
It’s a routine that has normal people turning their heads, but I have learned to have fun with it over the years. This isn’t a new behavior of his.
“Hurry up,” I mutter before strolling out of the locker room.
Getting on the ice will be good. I need to cool off after thinking of Serena and that night at her party. I went further than I should’ve, broke more boundaries than I’d prepared for.
My blood begins to boil as the image of her hand on that guy’s arm fills my vision. She was taunting me, luring me, and I took the bait so fucking hard. Too hard.
I rewarded her for being a brat and let her come, but I don’t know if I’ll be so generous next time. Maybe when she decides to disobey me in the future, I’ll bring her to the edge over and over and over again until she’s delirious and begging me for it, quivering and shaking for release.
Regardless, I shouldn’t have pulled her into the closet.
I got too close, too fast, but, fuck, it was impossible not to.
Having her at my fingertips as she looked up at me with those blue doe eyes …
I could practically hear her mental pleas for my touch.
But I need to be the disciplined one, especially with her playful ass pushing every limit I set.
Stepping onto the sheet of ice, I glide across the freshly Zambonied surface. I inhale deeply, the bite of the air refreshing me, grounding me.
This is my life. Practice. Games. Everything I do revolves around hockey. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But that was before Serena entered the picture, upheaving the clear path I had for my future.
Win the Cup by the time you’re thirty.
After that, I planned to add other elements into my life. Love. Family. Hobbies. But not until I lifted that Cup in my hands. That dream almost came to fruition last season.
It was right there in game seven of the finals last year ... one more shot. One more block. One more hit. I could taste the win, feel it humming in my bones.
Then we lost with five seconds left on the clock in the third period to the Florida Pythons. Absolute devastation. That loss was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to get through mentally. I was this close to fulfilling my dreams, and then, poof, it was just gone.
I blame it on the refs, on missing the obvious high sticking call that happened moments before their final goal.
It should’ve put us on a power play. We would’ve won.
But instead, the penalty wasn’t called, and Kol had to leave the ice immediately because he was gushing blood.
As far as the refs were concerned, it must have been caused by the wind.
But I know deep down that the entire game didn’t come down to one single play or lack of a call. It was a culmination of every second on the ice.
So close, but so far away.
I won’t let it slip through my fingers again, but this time, the equation has gotten a little trickier. In the midst of my picking up my broken-athlete heart, Serena entered the picture.
I would like to say that I fought the pull to her. That the initial attraction didn’t sway me from my original career goals. That the moment she walked into that team dinner and locked eyes with me across the room, I wasn’t absolutely gutted.
Gutted because I knew at that moment that she would be mine. Somehow, someway, she would belong to me, and I, to her.
I’m an intense person. Hell, all three of us are—Casper, Kol, and me. We always have been. We wouldn’t be the successful hockey players we are now if we weren’t obsessive and didn’t have an unquenchable work ethic.
Every second of our youth was spent running drills on and off the ice. Hours every single day. Camps. Traveling teams. World Juniors. We pushed each other as hard as we could every step of the way.
Half-assed isn’t in our nature. It’s everything or nothing.
I can’t have nothing with Serena. I need it all.
So, I adjusted the goals. Now, I plan on winning the Cup—still by the time I’m thirty—and I intend to do it with Serena in attendance, wearing my name on her back and my ring on her finger. Maybe with a few marks of my possession hidden beneath her clothes.
It’ll be perfect.
A few of the guys join me on the ice, stretching and warming up. We fall into the groove of things. Eventually, when the time comes and everyone’s on the ice, our coaches enter the bench, and practice officially begins.
We run through a few passing and shooting drills before working on special team drills. Power play lines, penalty kill, breakaways. This practice is a menagerie of drills and skill clinics. After we‘ve run the drills to death, we split into two teams for a quick scrimmage.
Repetition. Consistency. Confidence. That’s what makes a good hockey player.
All three things Cas, Kol, and I have in spades.
Depending on who you talk to, some announcers or press say we have more of one characteristic than the others, although they usually use the word cocky in place of confidence.
I would agree with their claims, but at least our skills back it up.
Which we prove in the first ten minutes of scrimmage, each scoring against our star goalie, Jordan Worthington. Wojo. Jojo. All the same.
He’s insanely talented. He leads the professional league in shutouts and holds the record for both our franchise and the league for total shutouts in a single season, and we still have months left in regular game play.