“Dude, you look like you’re trying to take a shit.” A finger is pressed into my eyebrow, right into the scar I got when I was twenty-six. “Stop frowning. You’re going to get more wrinkles, old man.”
“Stop touching me, rookie.” I smack his hand away and glare over at the obnoxious idiot sitting next to me.
His eyes narrow and he puffs his chest out indignantly. “I’m not a rookie anymore.”
Fine, so Miller, a right-winger who has some of the slickest mitts in the league, has been with the Carolina Comets for a few years and is not technically a rookie, but he sure as shit still acts like one.
Can’t say I blame him though. I did the same stupid stuff he’s doing at his age. Going out partying, always a different woman on my arm—it’s almost like a rite of passage in the NHL.
But I’m thirty-eight and too old for that crap.
“Compared to me, you just started skating yesterday.”
He snorts. “I’m pretty sure compared to you, just about everyone in this league just started skating yesterday, Apple.”
Apple. It’s a nickname I both love and hate.
I love it because it represents my ability to set up my teammates on plays and earn a top spot in NHL history with the number of assists I’ve racked up over the years.
But I also hate it because it’s a reminder of the years that are stacking up against me because it’s not just Apple for assists. It’s for Granny Smith Apple. They’re calling me old, as if I don’t fucking know it.
That sinking feeling of losing the game I love slips into my gut again. No matter how many times I try to shove it away, it slithers back in. The expiration of my contract with the Comets is creeping closer and closer. By the end of this season, I’ll be an unrestricted free agent, and because of my age, it’s a real possibility that the team won’t sign me again.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared that my time in the NHL is coming to an end, which means my chances of hoisting that Cup again are dwindling by the day. I don’t know how to face either of those realities.
I’m lucky; I know that. Making it to the NHL and sticking around, especially as long as I have? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Hoisting the Stanley Cup? Un-fucking-likely.
Having done it once, though, I want to do it again, and I want it bad.
This is exactly why I can’t afford any distractions this year. Hockey is my sole focus. It’s the only thing that matters, the only thing that has ever mattered. And if I’m being completely honest, it’s probably mattered a little too much sometimes. I’ve put all my time into the game. There’s no way I’m going away without a fair fight.
“Seriously, man, what’s with the shit look? You’re supposed to be jazzed. We’re playing hockey!”
Miller bumps his shoulder against mine, and I hate to admit it, but his smile is downright infectious.
We’re on a five-game homestand, and so far, we’ve won every game. We have just two more to go before the short Christmas break, and then we’re on a sprint for the playoffs. There is nothing like playing in front of a home crowd, especially when you’re winning. The roar of your number one supporters cheering and clapping for you to win is incomparable. I much prefer it to being on the road for a multitude of reasons, but it all starts with the crowd.
“Just trying to stay focused,” I tell him.
He nods. “I get it.”
Except he doesn’t. He’s young. Barring any injury, he has many, many years ahead of him. Me? I know it’s just a matter of time before I’m passed to another team for a yearlong contract…or not offered one at all.
I know some players are cool about it—anything to keep playing, right?—but I don’t want that. I’d rather bow out with a team I love than play for one where my heart just isn’t in it. I’ve watched too many good men fall to the wayside and have all their accomplishments turn to dust because they went out with a team where they weren’t appreciated for the skilled player they were.
I refuse to let that happen to me. I don’t want to be a forgotten great.
“Give the old man a rest, Miller,” our goalie says. “Wheel of Fortune just ended. It’s past his bedtime.”
I glare at the smartass little shithead. He just started with the team at the end of last year, and frankly, he’s a prick. Too fucking big for his pads, that’s for damn sure.
But he’s good. Really fucking good. Probably the best chance we have at winning the Cup this year. We didn’t go down because of bad goaltending last year, that’s for sure.
“I don’t need you coming to my rescue, Greer.”
He scoffs. “I think the words you’re looking for are Thank you.”
I stare holes into his back as he shoves off of the bench, all his gear on and ready to go, then heads out to the hallway to join the other guys.
“Damn.” Miller whistles lowly. “That guy is something.”
I don’t tell him he’s also something, just a different kind.
Miller rises, then claps me on the shoulder. “See you out there.”
I’m the last one out of the dressing room. Always am and always will be. It’s my thing. Not a superstition, just a comforting sort of habit. I like to take a moment to clear my head with nobody around.
So that’s what I do. I breathe in, then out. In and out.
Rinse, repeat.
And I’m almost to that state of calm I like to enter just before a game when I hear a clicking sound, then a muttered, “Shit.”
I whip my head up to find the one person I didn’t want to see before the game, the one person I need to avoid if I’m going to have a distraction-free season.
“Sorry,” she says quietly, that sweet voice of hers all too familiar to my ears. She wrings her hands in front of her, looking uncomfortable being alone with me. “I, uh, didn’t mean to interrupt. I thought the room was empty.” She lifts her phone. “Need to shoot some content.”
“Your uncle send you back here?”
I don’t know why there’s venom lacing my words.
No…that’s a lie. I know exactly why—she’s the epitome of everything I want but can’t have, and I fucking hate it.
The discomfort in her gaze is gone, and in its place is a glower that would make lesser men cower. “I don’t need permission.”
I try not to react to that because we both know she loves waiting for permission from me.
She steps farther into the room and begins snapping photos of some of the gear, ignoring me the entire time. I assume it’s for some social media thing she has going on.
I know I shouldn’t be sitting here staring at her, not when I have a game to go play and especially not when I can hear my teammates in the hallway going through their pregame routines, getting ready to head down the tunnel.
But I do it anyway.
I trail my eyes from her long, toned legs over one of those hip-hugging skirts I swear are the only thing she owns, past her blouse that’s unbuttoned just enough for me to see the swells of her breasts to the perfect pout of her full lips, which are currently trapped between her teeth as she concentrates on the task at hand.
She’s gorgeous, and that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because I know what she feels like…what she tastes like.
Over two and a half years have passed since I’ve touched her, but somehow it feels like just yesterday, and my desire to do it again hasn’t waned no matter how hard I’ve tried to stay away from her.
She inches closer to me. I’m not even sure she realizes she’s doing it, but I sure as fuck do. The scent of fresh vanilla and lavender wafts toward me with every step she takes, and I’d be a damn liar if I said I didn’t want to reach out and touch her.
But I can’t.
I really fucking can’t.
I shake my head and rise from the bench, needing to get out there for the game before I get my ass chewed or do something I know I’ll regret.
The second I stand, she whirls around and realizes just how close she is. She takes a tentative step back, and I don’t blame her since I’m over six foot eight with my skates on. That doesn’t mean I like it.
I match her step back with one of my own. She gulps, tipping her head back, all that gorgeous red hair of hers hanging down her back as she stares up at me with wide eyes.
That hair that looks good wrapped around my fist…
Those eyes that kill me…
I take another step toward her.
“S-Smith…”
But that’s all she’s able to say.
“Hey, there you are.” Blake, one of the other social media managers, strolls into the room, not realizing what he just interrupted.
Really, I should thank him, because he just stopped me from doing something monumentally stupid that we agreed we’d never do again.
“Smith, you’re just the man we’re looking for. Did Emilia ask you about the player profile?”
I slide my eyes to Emilia, who looks like she wants to murder Blake right now. I kind of want to murder him too, but for different reasons.
I am not doing a player profile.
For one, I don’t need people all up in my business. For two, I don’t want to do it. I have more important shit to focus on than someone with a camera following me around trying to get a behind-the-scenes look into the life of a pro hockey player.
“Blake!” Emilia hisses, but he ignores her.
“Please tell me you’re in,” he says to me. “Because the fans voted, and they want you.”
Last year they did a piece on one of our defensemen and his family. I know the fans ate it up, but I figured that was because you got to see it all—the wife, the kids…how he balances everything.
“They want me?”
He laughs, probably at how absolutely fucking shocked I am. “Yeah. Guess that whole quiet, brooding thing you have going on makes them curious.”
Curious? I think he means nosy as fuck.
But I guess I get it to some extent, not being in the industry and being curious about how it all works. I’d probably be dying to know what it’s like to play in the NHL too if I wasn’t here.
But why me? Of all the players on our team, why pick me? I’m boring as shit. Old compared to the other guys. Single with no sordid past. I don’t have a family, and my only friends are on the team.
So again…why me?
I look at Emilia, and to my surprise, she doesn’t flinch under my heated stare.
Was this her doing? Because this definitely violates the whole ignore one another and pretend it never happened agreement we have.
As much as I’d like a repeat of our weekend together, it’s not going to happen.
It can’t happen.
She is off-limits for so many reasons, and that’s exactly why I’m going to stay away from whatever little project they want to try to rope me into.
“So, what do you say?” Blake asks, his blinding white smile pulling my attention from Emilia to him. “You game to let us follow you around for a bit, get some footage?”
“No.”
His smile slips just a bit like he really thought he was going to get me to agree with just a grin. “Not even for the fans?”
“No. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a game to win.”
Blake’s jaw drops and he looks like he wants to say more, but I don’t want to hear it.
I turn on my skates and head for the tunnel, but not before taking one last glance back at Emilia. She looks disappointed, but that’s okay. I’m disappointed in myself too.
Because despite all the reasons I shouldn’t, I still want her.
