Chapter 6
Hunter
I was avoiding Catherine Davis. Like a coward. For two days, I had become a damn professional at it. I ran outside instead of using the building gym. I took the stairs if I heard the elevator ding. I grabbed coffee two blocks over instead of downstairs.
After that night in the gym, I had told myself that seeing her naked in the shower getting herself off was a one-and-done situation.
We were going to forget it happened and move on like mature adults who understood consequences.
That was the plan. At least it would have been the plan if I could stop thinking about her.
My brain was a traitor, and it kept taking me right back to that pool house.
The way she’d frozen, not because she was horrified, but because she was turned on by me. That was the part that messed with me.
If she had screamed, thrown shampoo at my head, and told me to get out, I could have shoved the whole thing into a mental box labeled horrible accident and moved on, but she kept those fingers buried between her thighs.
Her green eyes were so lust-filled, and her breathing was fast. Shit.
I was getting hard again just thinking about it.
And to make matters worse, I didn’t even have to close my eyes to remember the way she looked at me in the gym when she said, I’m twenty-four years old, Hunter.
I’m a woman now. As if I didn’t know. As if that wasn’t the problem.
My phone rang on the kitchen counter, dragging me out of the same thought spiral I’d been stuck in since my morning run.
Max. His timing was impeccable. I needed a distraction so I wouldn’t head to the shower to get myself off while I was thinking of licking Catherine’s tits.
Shit. I was a monster. Her dad was my coach. My friend.
I hit answer and put him on speaker. “What?”
“Good morning to you too, sunshine.”
“I just ran six miles in Dallas heat.”
“Come get breakfast.”
“No.”
“No?” Max sounded personally offended. “That’s it? Just no?”
“I can’t. I’m heading to the arena.”
“For what?”
“Leo Karlsson is coming in today.”
There was a pause. “Baby Karlsson signed?” Max asked.
“He did,” I confirmed.
“Damn. That’s sick. I’m coming over. We can drive over together,” Max offered.
“You weren’t invited,” I said grumpily.
He laughed. “You really need to get laid, bro. Isla is at camp. Take advantage of this time to get your dick wet.”
“Shut up,” I chided.
“Bro, you know I’m right,” he sighed.
Yeah, I knew he was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it.
“I’m coming over,” he said.
I hissed. “Give me ten. I need to take a shower.”
“I’ll give you five. We both know it won’t take that long for you to come,” he replied.
I groaned. Again, he was probably right. It had been about six months since I had gotten laid. Meaningless sex on the road wasn’t as intriguing as it had once been for me.
“Bye, Max.” I ended the call. He probably wasn’t joking about being here in five minutes, and I was hard as fuck after envisioning licking Catherine’s tits.
I went to the shower and shampooed my hair.
Then I soaped up my hands and massaged my cock.
Immediately, a vision of Catherine in that sports bra came to mind.
Her full breasts. The way they pressed together, giving her some serious cleavage.
I grabbed onto the wall as my head tipped back.
I stroked harder, thinking what it would feel like to fill her, and that was all it took for me to come.
My body jerked from the sensation. The vision of her wet, naked body in the shower.
Her fast breathing. Hell, I even pictured her screaming my name as she came.
It took me a few moments to get my bearings.
Then I quickly started soaping up my body.
“You ready, asshole?” Max’s voice drifted through the condo.
He used his key. He was only supposed to use it for emergencies, like if I needed him to run to the pharmacy to get fever medicine for Isla.
That had only happened about three times in the last few years.
Which made me remember that Max was a good friend.
He was the kind of guy who had my back on and off the ice. Isla liked him too.
I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist. “I’ll be right out.”
I dried off and got dressed in a T-shirt, boxers, and shorts.
Summers were stifling in Dallas, but at least it was cold in the arena.
I much preferred a colder climate, but the city had been good for Isla and me, so I couldn’t complain.
I put on a pair of socks and running shoes and went out to the main room to greet him.
“I need coffee,” he said, making his way to the kitchen. I followed him. He stepped around me like he owned the place. “You’re cranky.”
“I miss my daughter.”
“I get that. How is Isla liking camp?” he asked.
“It’s been three days. I haven’t gotten a letter yet. Holland said it may arrive by day twelve or thirteen, and she’ll be home at the two-week mark.”
“I don’t think it’s Isla that has you extra cranky. You’re like old-man-with-a-bad-hip cranky.” He grinned.
“I’m thirty-three. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Dude, I don’t know. Something is up with you. Do you need to talk? Because I’m told I’m a good listener.” He leaned against the counter and took a sip of his coffee. “This is good stuff.”
“I have nothing to share, doctor,” I said to him, and that got me thinking of Catherine again.
I grabbed my keys from the bowl. “Let’s go before you drink all my coffee.”
He took one more sip just to annoy me, then followed me out.
We took the elevator down to the garage.
I kept my eyes on the doors and tried not to think about Catherine stepping into this same elevator, maybe in scrubs, maybe in those black shorts from the gym, maybe saying my name in that voice that made my common sense leave the room.
Max watched me for half a second too long.
“What?” I asked.
“You seem, I don’t know… distracted?”
He wasn’t wrong, and I hated how transparent I was to him.
“I need food, but first we go check in with Leo. My aunt Sierra called me this morning to ask me to take care of him. I said I would.”
Max started laughing so hard his shoulders shook. “From what I’ve seen on the ice Leo can definitely take care of himself.”
“You aren’t wrong, but he’s still family,” I reminded him.
We got into my SUV, and I pulled out toward the arena. Max immediately started messing with the stereo because, apparently, he had a death wish.
“Hands off,” I said.
“Your playlist is sad.”
“It’s not sad. Isla helped me with it.”
“It’s giving divorced dad staring at a lake.”
“I am a dad. I’m just not divorced,” I reminded him.
“And not getting laid,” he repeated.
“Max, I get enough from everyone else. You don’t understand what it’s like to be a single dad. Isla is my life. I can’t bring a woman into our lives and risk her getting hurt if it doesn’t work out.”
“I think it’s you that’s scared, but you have to get over it at some point,” he said, and he wasn’t wrong.
“Isla asked me to find her a mom,” I confessed.
“Damn, that breaks my heart. I remember when my biological dad took off and didn’t look back.
That shit messed with my head. If it wasn’t for my dad now, I don’t know where I would be.
See, my mom took a chance on Ryse, he didn’t disappoint, I got a dad and my sisters.
They may be driving me crazy now that they’re teenagers, but I love them.
Things got lonely when it was just Mom and me. ”
I shook my head. “Way to lay it on thick.”
“You’ve been alone long enough,” he said.
“You’re only four years younger than me. You should be settling down too. All those threesomes and puck bunnies must be getting old,” I said to him.
“Nah, I’m good,” Max said.
I gave him a sidelong look. “Sure you are.”
“I am,” he insisted. “I like my life.”
“You like chaos.”
“Same thing.” He shrugged.
I laughed because for Max, it kind of was. He leaned back in the passenger seat, one arm resting on the door, looking way too relaxed for a guy who had just given me an emotional lecture about not dying alone.
“Anyway,” he said, changing the subject before I could chirp him harder, “how long has it been since you’ve seen Leo?”
“Easter.”
“Damn. I still picture the triplets as those annoying kids running around family parties and stealing dessert off everyone’s plates.”
“They’re twenty-two now.”
“Don’t say that. It makes me feel ancient.”
“You’re twenty-nine.”
“Exactly. Ancient.”
I pulled into the arena lot and flashed my badge at security.
I cut the engine and grabbed my phone from the cupholder.
The arena had that offseason-preseason smell when we walked in.
Cold air. Rubber floors. Equipment. Coffee.
The kind of place that felt half asleep and fully alive at the same time.
Staff were already moving around the halls, and the testing area had been set up with tables, laptops, medical equipment, clipboards, and a few stations for the new guys coming in.
This part of the year always felt strange.
Not the grind yet, but not summer either.
The organization started waking up. Guys came in for physicals and baseline concussion testing.
Training staff checked old injuries. Doctors asked questions players lied about.
Rookies pretended they weren’t nervous. Veterans pretended we weren’t watching everything.
I had barely stepped through the doors when I saw Leo.
He was standing near one of the intake tables, filling something out on a clipboard.
He had gotten bigger since I saw him at Easter, which was annoying because I still remembered him as the troublemaker triplet.
He had Nils’s build, tall and strong, but Sierra’s softer eyes.
Max stopped beside me. “Holy shit.”
Leo looked up. For half a second, he stared at Max like he was trying to place him. Then his face broke into a grin.
“McGuire?”