Jaxson
My whole life, I’d been walking in a fog, in a dense and heavy cloud that I thought would stay with me forever.
But one night with her had brought in the sun.
From the time I was born, I knew the plan for my life. That plan revolved around hockey. I had a stick in my hands at the age of three. I was playing on a team by the time I was five. My parents sacrificed family vacations for hockey camps, Christmas presents for hockey gear, and board game or puzzle nights for evenings watching video of every team we could study.
I was meant to live out the dream my father had. The dream that was stolen from him.
And that’s what I did.
Don’t get me wrong — hockey was my dream, too. Nothing filled my soul the way being on the ice did.
But no matter how I performed, I had a lashing waiting at the end of every game from the man whose approval I desired most.
It was impossible for that not to chip away at someone’s spirit.
Before I even realized what was happening, I woke up in the middle of a life that felt like it was being lived by someone else. I was a professional hockey player — a defensemen who made my father passively okay with my performance twenty percent of the time and angry as hell the other eighty. He always felt I could do better. He was always pushing me to do more.
I survived the pressure through numbing myself with whatever substance I had available — mostly, alcohol and women. Fortunately, I’d also found a family in my teammates, especially in the last year.
Most days, they were the only thing keeping my head above water. They gave me a reason to play — not just for my dad, or for me, but for them.
One of my teammates who was like a brother was Vince Tanev, our new winger who’d stepped in like the leader he was born to be.
Which was exactly why I was trying to ignore the fact that I hadn’t thought of much other than his sister since the night he won NHL rookie of the year.
I was at his house now, waiting on our goalie to meet up with us so we could play a round of golf. I hadn’t seen them since our weekend out in Austin two weeks ago, everyone settling into the off-season. But now that I was in Vince’s space, I couldn’t help but think about his sister.
Which was a real fucking problem.
I’d spent the better half of the last fourteen days doing my level best to erase her and that night from my mind. Because it didn’t matter how easily the conversation came, how heartily she’d made me laugh, or how my body had hummed to life with her hips in my hands as we danced in a crowded club.
Grace Tanev was off limits.
She was in a relationship. She was eight years younger than me.
She was my teammate’s little sister.
That was a hurdle not even I could jump.
I didn’t understand why I even wanted to jump it, but she had done something to me. If my life were going according to plan, then she was the nuclear bomb that blew it all to bits.
It was like she’d shaken me from a deep slumber, and now I was wide awake, looking around with a new perspective on life and absolutely zero desire to go back to bed.
I’d done a somewhat decent job of letting the idea of her go. I had resisted the urge to look her up on social media, had ignored the fact that she’d given me her number, that she’d put it in my phone before we said our goodbye.
Because that was exactly what it was — a goodbye.
Until it wasn’t.
“You really want to lose your money that badly, Fabio?” Vince asked Carter with a whistle, shaking his head. We were at his new place on the beach, half of it still littered with boxes, waiting for Will Perry to show up so we could hit our tee time. “You know my game puts yours to shame.”
Carter Fabbri, or Fabio as we called him, had been a rookie this past season, too. Unfortunately, he’d also been sent down to the AHL in March to help them during playoffs. That happened sometimes, if the NHL team could spare a player and the AHL team needed some help. But it always stung like a bitch when you were called down, because it meant one thing was clear: you were expendable.
Still, everything reset after playoffs. Carter had moved to Tampa to show his dedication to the team, and he’d be at camp with the rest of us come September. I wasn’t sure where he’d end up after that, but I hoped he’d be with us.
The kid needed to clean up his performance if he wanted a permanent place as a center in the NHL.
“I’ve been practicing,” Carter defended. “Besides, you’ve been so busy crawling up Maven’s ass, my bet is you’ll be too distracted to play.”
“Hey, leave my ass out of this,” Maven called from the kitchen where she was organizing glassware in the cabinets.
“But it’s the best one I’ve ever seen,” Carter said with a pout, which earned him a slug on the arm from Vince.
“Gotta say I agree on that one,” I piped in, ducking before Vince had the chance to pull me into a chokehold. “I still dream about that yellow dress…”
I smirked with the tease, one I knew would piss Vince off. Maven was his fiancée now, but she’d been in all our lives throughout the season as a reporter tasked with covering Tanev’s first year in the NHL. We all knew she was off limits, and we loved her more like a sister now than anything.
But I wouldn’t miss out on a chance to give Tanny Boy a hard time.
Vince shoved Carter out of the way and started chasing me, and I dodged the coffee table and hopped over the couch, staying just out of reach. Carter started humming the “Benny Hill Theme Song,” clapping his thighs in time with the bazooka sounds he was making with his mouth like we were Tom & Jerry.
I was sliding on my socks around the kitchen island, half-hiding behind a laughing, red-faced Maven, when a figure appeared in the foyer. I thought it was Will at first, so I kept up the charade. But when a suitcase was dropped to the marble floor and a soft cry followed behind it, we all stopped, our heads snapping in that direction.
And there she was.
Staring right at me.
The girl who was impossible to forget.
Those green eyes I’d fallen so easily into that night in Austin were glossy and red, her button-nose the same rosy shade. The bags under her eyes were a terrible hue of purple and gray, her shoulders slumped, bottom lip trembling the longer she stood there without anyone saying a word. She was petite even in heels, but standing there in flip flops, she was so slight, so small, like a little mouse.
Grace Tanev.
Her long, straight blonde hair that had blurred my vision the night I twirled her around on the dance floor in Austin was a tangled mess, dirty and greasy and dull. She’d covered it with a ripped-up ballcap that said Asshole on it.
But even with her lips in a flat line, I could remember her smile.
I could remember her laugh, her ridiculous dance moves, her even more ridiculous questions.
I remembered everything.
As put out as she looked, her bronze skin still blazed against the white t-shirt she wore, against the tiny denim shorts she wore with it, like she had been at the beach for weeks. Her shirt had a cartoon of an opossum wielding a gun like a cowboy and the text under it said we ride at dusk.
I would have laughed if the sight of her didn’t make my chest spark with something possessive and feral.
She looked like hell, like she’d been through hell, and yet she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Before I could think better of it, I started toward her — at the very same time Vince did. He gave me a strange look before I stopped in my tracks and he continued on, rushing to his sister and wrapping her in a fierce hug.
Maven turned back to unpacking, giving them privacy, and Carter pretended to be on his phone.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t look away.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
A flash of that night with her danced in my vision, and I knew the answer to my question. I thought I’d never see her again. I thought I was strong, resisting the urge to text her or to attempt to keep the connection we had so easily when I knew it was a bad idea.
But now she was here, in the same room with me, and I felt her pulling me in like a goddamn magnet.
Vince stepped back after a moment, holding Grace’s shoulders in his hands as he spoke in a hushed voice to her. She said something back, and then Vince hugged her again and grabbed her suitcase. They walked down the hall and up the stairs, and when they were gone, Maven blew out a breath.
“That didn’t look good,” she said.
Carter’s mouth pulled to the side as he looked up the stairs and then back at me. His eyes narrowed a bit then, but before he could say a word, Vince was back, running a hand over his head.
“She okay?” Maven asked.
“No,” he said. “But she will be. I told her she could stay here with us.”
“Of course,” Maven said, rounding the kitchen island until she was slipping her arms around Vince’s waist. “For as long as she needs.”
Vince nodded, blowing out a breath and kissing Maven’s forehead. He seemed to relax with her embracing him, but my muscles were coiled tight.
Carter tried to lighten the mood with a joke, and then our goalie walked in, breaking the tension of the moment as he grumped about it being too hot to play golf.
He was always grumping about something.
I mumbled a quiet lie about needing to use the bathroom before we left, excusing myself down the hall.
Then, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and I made my way up the stairs two at a time.
You are an idiot.
Turn around.
She doesn’t want to see anyone right now, least of all you.
She’s fucking crying, bro.
Leave. Her. Alone.
I heard every word my common sense was trying to scream at me, but it was like I had plugs stuffed into both my ears, like I had no choice. My body moved without me wanting it to, mind powerless to stop me.
Vince’s new place was massive, with so many rooms I wasn’t sure which one he would have put Grace in. But I heard her sniffling through a cracked door toward the middle, and I paused just outside it, rapping my knuckles lightly on the wood.
“Come in,” she said softly, pathetically, her voice hoarse.
I pushed the door open just enough to see her, for her to see me, and then we both froze.
I wasn’t sure what I expected. Maybe it was for her to tell me to fuck off and leave her alone, because when she lit up with a smile, it twisted my gut — like I didn’t deserve that, like it was dangerous for me to want every smile she ever had to give. Her cheeks lifted, eyes crinkling, and two more tears slid down in perfect unison, like the smile had set them free.
“Hey,” she said, and it was just one word, just a greeting. But that smile, the way she watched me, it made me feel like I had the power to make everything okay.
“Who do I have to kill?”
She choked on something between a sob and a laugh, wiping her nose with a bunched-up tissue in her hands. She swiped the tears away next. “He’s not worth the jail time.”
My chest ignited then, the spark turning to flame.
He.
That confirmed my suspicion.
That night in Austin, she’d told me in the most adorable, but firm way that she was taken, dating some guy she’d met camping. Even then, I had a feeling he was a fuck boy. In fact, I was pretty sure she knew it, too.
Judging by her tear-stained face now, the guy had blown it.
Idiot.
“You okay?”
Her smile waned. “Yeah, yeah,” she said quickly, waving her hand in the air like she was swatting a gnat away. “It’s his loss, right?” She shook her head, her voice fading, and I had a feeling she was just repeating something a friend had said to try to make her feel better. “Nothing a little sunshine and saltwater can’t fix.”
She forced another smile, and I frowned, stepping more fully into the room.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend to be fine. Pretend like you’re not hurting. Pretend like the bright side is all you’re thinking of.”
Her eyebrows slid together, but then she looked down at where her hands still clutched the balled-up tissue, and she shrugged.
“It’s easier than admitting the truth.”
Carter called my name from downstairs, and I cursed, stepping out of the room and down the hall a bit before yelling, “Be right there!”
Then, I slid back into the doorway, chest aching at the sight of Grace so small on that large, four-post bed. It was pretty much the only thing in the room so far, other than an empty bookshelf, a few pieces of art on the floor leaning against the wall, a half-dozen plants, and a TV mounted but not hooked up yet.
“Go,” she said with a weak smile. “I’m fine.”
But her eyes said differently.
‘What are you doing now?’
The question blurted out of my stupid mouth before I even thought about it — which was obvious, considering if I had thought about it, I would have kept my mouth shut. I would have listened to her when she told me to go. No — I wouldn’t have come up here at all. I would still be downstairs, pretending like I didn’t care that my teammate’s sister had swung back into my orbit.
Grace arched a brow, and then sat up straighter, painting on another fake smile. “Hosting a ball. Isn’t it obvious?” She splayed her hands, waving them out over herself and the room.
The corner of my mouth twitched up. This girl was heartbroken, and yet she was making jokes.
Two could play at that.
‘Okay. So tomorrow, after your ball is over, of course,’ I looked up at her with a smirk on my face. ‘What are you doing then?’
‘I really haven’t gotten that far,’ she whispered sadly, thoughtfully.
‘What if we went for a drive?”
Again — what the fuck, Jaxson?
“A drive?”
I nodded, even as my subconscious told me to shake my head and say never mind, I’m an idiot, excuse me while I fuck off and leave you alone like I should have in the first place.
“Where?” she asked.
“Anywhere.”
She folded her arms. “And my brother?”
A warning flared in my gut, but I ignored it. “Do you tell your brother everything?”
What. Is. Wrong. With me?
This was a girl with a broken heart, fresh out of a relationship that clearly hurt her. She was twenty-two — far too young for me.
This was Grace Tanev, my teammate and one of my best friend’s little sister.
Walk away, logic begged me. This is not your place.
But I stood tall, rooted in place against my will, watching her and waiting for her to be the stronger one because apparently, I couldn’t be.
Mischief bloomed to life in her sea green eyes, the first real smile I’d seen since Austin curling on her light pink lips. Then, she popped off the bed.
“Road trip?”
My eyebrows shot up.
I had more of a drive along the beach in mind, or maybe a long winding road in the country. But that didn’t stop me from opening my stupid mouth and replying, “If that’s what you need.”
If that’s what you need, Jax?
This was absolutely insane.
Again, I felt like a prisoner in my own body, like no matter how loudly my common sense raged inside my head, I couldn’t obey it even if I wanted to.
Because clearly, I didn’t want to.
Just being back in this girl’s presence had scrambled my fucking brain.
Her eyes narrowed a bit, like she didn’t quite believe I was serious.
That made two of us.
“What about practice?”
“Off-season,” I explained. And at that point, whatever was left of my common sense turned its back on me.
Grace’s eyes sparkled like diamonds.
“Anywhere?” she asked, echoing my earlier sentiment.
“Anywhere.”
Her smile climbed even more, and she crossed the room in two strides, holding out her hand for mine.
“We ride at dusk,” she said, referencing her shirt.
I ignored the sirens in my mind when I took her hand, and she shook it like we’d just done a multi-million-dollar business deal. Then, she backed away in a moonwalk, making finger guns and a pew pew sound that made me snort out a laugh through my nose.
I was pretty sure I’d just taken a wrong turn and steered myself right toward Disasterville.
But I couldn’t find it in me to change course.
