Chapter 2
TWO
Lake
Being a professional hockey player has its perks.
Driving through a blizzard because my coach is an asshole is not one of them.
We’ve been hearing about this freakishly early winter snowstorm—hell, it’s November, so it’s not even technically winter yet—for days on end now.
The Snowmageddon that’s supposed to shut down the Sierra Nevadas.
So, cool, cool. Thanks, Coach, for keeping us a couple of hours late after practice was supposed to end. Not like we all have shit to do. Not like we’ve been warned to buckle down, stock up, and brace for the snow.
Not like we haven’t just returned from a long-ass road trip which means that we haven’t had time to do any of those things before today’s mandatory skate.
That he added to the schedule because not only is he an asshole, but the rest of us are too.
Bickering. Fighting in the locker room. All but throwing away a game that was within our grasp to win.
So…a brutal, exhausting extra practice added to our schedule, just for funsies.
Then racing the storm rolling in as I try to accomplish my stocking up.
Milk to buy.
Generators to buy gas for.
Toilet paper to hoard.
The only good thing about the coming storm is that I won’t have to talk to anyone.
That’s the real perk—not having to interact with any of the assholes who make up the Sierra’s locker room.
I have exactly three teammates I like—Knox, Riggs, and Leo. And I have exactly three teammates I like because I only have three who aren’t total trash humans or emotional vampires or who don’t fuck around on their wives and girlfriends.
Three.
Three perks hidden amongst twenty-three PIAs…and I have to win games with those pains-in-the-asses because that’s my fucking job as a professional hockey player.
As the captain of this team.
It would be a hell of a lot easier if I was playing with the Breakers or the Gold. They have this player-prioritized, family-first mentality that is not my experience, that has never been my experience as a professional athlete.
I’m a commodity. A resource to be consumed until my body gives out.
Always have been. Probably always will be.
Definitely if I stay with the Sierra, that’ll be the case.
My phone rings and I glance at the screen mounted in the dash, see that it’s my mother, and so not in the mood to deal with her bullshit, I reject the call. The wind is picking up and it’s been a long enough couple of weeks without thinking about the shit show that is my family.
That’s my career.
I get paid an obscene amount of money to carry a puck around the ice.
I also get paid indecently to put my name on a vodka brand, to pitch socks, and to model underwear.
My life is so hard.
“Yup. So hard,” I mutter dryly, squinting out the windshield of my SUV, glad that I’m almost home.
I’ll drink some of my “shit-tasting” vodka my friends like to give me a hard time about, put on a hockey game for a team whose schedule isn’t impacted by the incoming Snowmageddon, and forget about Coach, about practice, about the fact that, from the outside, everything in my life seems like it’s going perfectly, but, inside it, things feel…
Off.
“Fuck!” I growl, whipping the steering wheel hard to the left, nearly sending it into a skid, but thankfully the hockey gods have provided me with four-wheel drive and snow tires, and—since I grew up navigating through exactly this type of shitty weather—the ability to keep my vehicle under control.
Keep it under control and manage to not hit the object in the road.
No.
The person in the road.
“What the fuck?” I snap, pulling to a halt and throwing my gearshift into park. I hit the hazards as I get out to prevent an accident on the off chance that someone else drives up—fucking unlikely, considering that we’re supposed to be buckling down and bracing.
Not standing in the middle of the road trying to get mowed down by an SUV.
In a fucking blizzard.
“What the actual fuck?” I say, somehow madder than I was before.
Because the person is still in the road.
Standing there in a hoodie, a pair of jeans, and sneakers wholly unsuited for the weather.
Standing there like it’s the front of a fucking Target and they’re giving themselves a pep talk to spend less than two hundred bucks inside all while—they hang their head—knowing that it’s a pointless endeavor.
That money’s going to get spent regardless.
They aren’t standing there like it’s the middle of the road in a snowstorm, where visibility is limited and it’s highly likely they could get hurt—
Or say, run over by a large SUV.
Or say, acknowledge the fact that they nearly had just been run over by said SUV.
The wind is whipping so loudly that I can’t hear anything else—perhaps why they don’t acknowledge the almost-getting-run-over—as I stare at the person—at the woman—whose jeans are wet and filthy at least six inches deep from the dirty, muddy snow that’s quickly being covered by the fresh flakes falling from the sky.
I take a step toward her and feel something inside me still as I see them—see her—throw back her hood, sending a swathe of deep brown hair cascading down her back and shoulders.
The sight is…sinful, beautiful, terrible.
But I can’t focus on the fingers that have just reached into my chest and clenched around my heart.
Because she is launching herself forward and…
Colliding with the side of a car stuck in the snowbank.
A car that’s barely visible.
Because it’s white and almost completely buried.
The car—no surprise—doesn’t move, so she backs up, repeats the action.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, the sound of her second collision audible even over the wind so fiercely blowing in my ears, cutting through my jacket, my jeans, blowing my hair into my eyes. I move closer and hear her.
“Come”—a grunt as she stops shoving at the car and switches to yanking on the handle—“on!”
I move forward. “What the fuck are you—”
There’s a screech and I have to jump back to avoid getting plastered by the car door that’s suddenly swinging toward my face.
I jerk up my hand just in time to slap my palm against the metal panel.
It stings like a motherfucker, pain radiating down my arm.
I ignore it because I’m used to pain.
I ignore it because the woman turns around and—
Those fingers clenched around my heart squeeze tighter.
And…
I lose it.