It’s been over thirty-six hours since I last saw or talked to Gracie, and I’m going bloody mad.
She’s not responding to text messages. Her phone rolls straight to voicemail. The game in Florida starts in thirty minutes, and while I should be well-prepared to take the ice after a reasonable bedtime last night and easy practice this morning, I didn’t bloody sleep and I can’t bloody concentrate.
I’m so desperate, I’ve even tried ringing Joey.
Whose phone doesn’t go straight to voicemail, but it does eventually go to voicemail.
“You’ve not heard from either of them?” I ask Ares as I sit down beside him suit up.
He shakes his head.
“Zeus?” I ask.
“Cookies.”
I don’t have any patience to translate Ares-speak, so I pinch my lips together and concentrate what I can control.
Which is approximately nothing, as the last I heard from my father, Austling still believes Elin to be living at my penthouse and has yet to be made aware that plans are changing.
Because it’s a sensitive political situation, son, with more beneath the surface than we suspected. Another few days, and I expect to have an update.
Also, Yes, Gracie did chew me up one side and down another for not dissolving your betrothal years ago. Doesn’t quite understand royal duty, does she? But if you’re going to fall for a woman, fall for one who’ll keep you in line, son.
Or perhaps one who isn’t avoiding me because my father refused to admit to her that he’d done anything wrong, and possibly intimidated the hell out of her.
Fuck, I need to talk to her.
Murphy sits down beside me with a feral grin, talking to Lavoie on his other side while they suit up. “Four thousand,” he’s saying. “They’re getting delivered to the fucker’s apartment in two days. Over three hundred boxes of them. And I used the most disgusting dick I could find on the internet.”
“Should’ve sent him cookies with pussies instead, since it’s the last pussy he’ll ever eat,” Lavoie replies.
“That’s next week’s order.”
The two of them guffaw.
And my brain clicks. “Did you just say you ordered four thousand dick cookies to be delivered to someone?”
Murphy’s chortling. He pulls out his phone. “Yeah. Felicity’s ex. That fucker fucked with the wrong woman. Check this out. Four thousand of them, going straight to his apartment.”
He flashes a picture I refuse to describe, because it’s wrong. “Where do you purchase these cookies?”
“My favorite Dickookie website,” Lavoie supplies cheerfully.
“Four. Thousand. Cookies,” I repeat.
Murphy and Lavoie both grin like idiots and nod. “And I put a rush order on it.”
Bloody hell.
I grab my phone, look up a number, and ring straight through to the bakery in Goat’s Tit.
“Etta Jean’s,” a breathless voice answers. A honey-sweet, Southern, not Gracie voice.
“Miss Diamonte, please,” I say.
There’s a beat of silence, followed by another beat of silence that’s longer and filled with all sorts of questions, most likely beginning with something akin to you don’t sound like you’re from ‘round here and ending with and what the fuck do you want with our Gracie? “They’re both all tied up with a big project, honey-pie. Can I take a message?”
“No. Thank you.”
I hang up and text Viktor. Charter a plane.
And I don’t wait for him to tell me no, or that we can’t afford it, or that I’m being a bloody nuisance. Because I need to see Gracie.
I need to see her more than I need to breathe.
The game is ugly. I earn myself a split lip, though I also get to immediately score on a penalty shot.
I don’t have a clue if Gracie’s watching or listening, but if she is, you’re damned right I’m playing my heart out. Every time I pass a camera, I look into it as though I might see her looking back.
Ares gets wiped out by one of Florida’s D-men in the second period. He makes it off the ice, but I can tell he’s hurting. At intermission, the team doc orders x-rays on his ankle.
Fuck.
I meet Lavoie’s eyes. We look to Kavanaugh, Sokolov, and then to Bobby. The five of us nod in understanding.
These fuckers are going down.
The last period devolves into a bloodbath. We go up by one. Florida responds by shoving Murphy into the goal. Kavanaugh answers that by taking out their power forward.
I keep my focus only by reminding myself I’m no good to anyone—my teammates, my unborn child, Gracie—if I’m dead or maimed.
We barely pull off the win, and by the time I’m showered and ready to go, half my teammates have been bandaged or splinted.
“Fucking good thing we’ve got three days off,” Murphy mutters. He’s holding a bag of ice to his own split lip. Lavoie’s limping. No one’s seen Ares, but he’s waiting for us when we board the bus, his ankle elevated, which means he’s taking the entire back row since he can’t bloody well prop up a leg the size of a normal human in any less space.
We’re a disaster.
But we’ve survived.
I only hope my budding relationship with Gracie can survive too.
