Jaxson
Fuck, this was a bad idea.
I felt that notion in every inch of my body, which was buzzing in warning with Grace Tanev sitting cross-legged and barefoot in the passenger seat next to me.
She was singing along to some song I’d never heard before, the lyrics in a foreign language that I guessed was Korean. One of her hands was tapping on her knee and the other was feeding her sour gummy worms from the pack nestled between her legs. She had remnants of the beach on her feet and calves, white sand hugging her tan skin in a way that made me jealous. Thank fuck I’d gone with the rental. Snacks and sand, in my baby?
I shuddered even at the thought.
I could tell she hadn’t slept for shit. Her eyes were tired, a little puffy, the edges of her smile still sad. She also looked like she’d rolled out of bed and grabbed an Uber without a second thought when I texted her this morning. She had on tiny, flimsy little sleep shorts and a spaghetti strap crop top with no bra underneath. Her hair was greasy and pulled into a ponytail, which had half-fallen out, the hair tie holding on for dear life at the back of her head.
She didn’t wear a stitch of makeup, either.
I found that more irresistible than anything else.
I was so used to women getting dolled up for me. And don’t get me wrong, I fucking loved that. There was something about a woman with her hair curled, her eyes lined, thick lashes and ruby red lips that just made me want to fuck. I liked having a woman like that on my arm. I liked the way Grace had looked all dolled up at the NHL Awards two weeks ago.
But this?
This was like having a backstage, all-access pass to the most mysterious woman I’d ever met. It was unfiltered. It was real.
And goddamn, it was sexy as hell.
Those shorts revealed every slender inch of her legs, and with her sitting cross-legged the way she was now, I couldn’t stop peeking over at the lean muscles of her inner thighs, and how that flimsy scrap of fabric just barely hid her pussy from view.
Yep.
This was a bad, bad idea.
Add in the fact that being in a car on the highway with no destination in mind gave me fucking hives, and you could say the first couple hours of our drive were not the most comfortable.
I wished I had fond memories of road trips from growing up, but for me, it usually meant one of two things.
One — there was an AHL player offering private lessons that my father was convinced I had to have, and he’d pawn every single thing my mother or I cared about to afford it if he had to.
Or two — he and Mom were fighting, and Mom had shoved me into the backseat as if I were a suitcase to take me with her wherever she was planning on blowing off steam for a few nights.
And that’s all it ever was, a few nights max.
She always went back.
Which meant I had to go back, too.
“Let’s play a game,” Grace said, smacking her thighs.
I jolted a bit at the interruption of my thoughts, glancing over just in time to see her tucking the half-eaten bag of worms away. She then sucked the sugar from her fingertips in the most innocent, I do this all the time way.
But all my dirty ass mind saw was those pink lips wrapping around her digits and sucking them clean like it was happening in slow motion.
I tore my eyes away and back to the road, fists whitening a bit where I held the wheel. “Let’s not.”
“Oh, come on,” she pleaded on a pout. Then, she narrowed her eyes on a knowing smile. “It would make me feel better. I was sitting here, getting all sad, thinking about Trent…”
She let out an exaggerated sigh, proving she could be an actress as tears glossed her eyes.
I shook my head. “You are a nuisance.”
“That’s what he said, too,” she said, her voice soft and quiet.
The words felt like a kick to my chest, and when I looked over at her, she was staring out the window, hugging her knees to her chest.
Fuck.
“What game?” I asked.
And the little rascal whipped around with a huge smile, clapping her hands together.
I held the wheel with my left hand so I could reach over and tickle her with the right. “You think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you?”
Grace wiggled out of reach, sticking her tongue out as I put both hands back on the wheel.
“Hmm,” she said, tapping her chin with her fingertip. “Oh! How about the picnic game?”
I cocked a brow at her.
“So basically, I’ll start by saying that I’m going to a picnic. I’ll tell you a few things I’m bringing, and you ask me if you can bring something, too. But you’re trying to figure out the category of what you’re allowed to bring. So, as you ask me if you can bring things, I’ll say yes or no, and you have to put the pieces together to figure out the requirements.”
I blinked. “And you find this fun? Sounds to me like torture equivalent to watching video in a room full of smelly hockey players.”
She waved me off. “Stop being so grumpy. I’ll give you an example. If I said I was going to the picnic and I was bringing strawberries, a tomato, and hot sauce, you’d say…”
“Gross.”
She laughed, swatting my arm. “Come on,” she whined, and then she leaned across the console, her top gapping in a way that made me work a little harder to keep my eyes on the road. Her next words were slower, softer, and laced with intent. “Play with me, Jaxson Brittain.”
I cracked my neck on a slow and controlled exhale, refusing to look at her and see the wicked smile I knew she was wearing.
So much for those boundaries we’d set.
“I’d say… can I bring a red bell pepper?” I ground out.
“And I’d say yes, and you’d say, ‘is it things that are red?’ and I’d say YOU WIN and then it’d be your turn to throw the picnic.”
She sat back down and shimmied her shoulders on a little victory dance, and I just shook my head.
This fucking girl.
In my normal day-to-day life, I was rewarded for being serious. I had to be serious — about hockey, about my team, about my career. I had to be serious when it came to negotiating my contracts, or finding the right trainers to work on my body, or about what food I ate.
My father had instilled that in me from the first time I held a fucking stick.
I didn’t have time for games.
Yet here I was, on a road trip with no final destination, with a girl housing gummy worms and goading me into playing a game meant for children.
And the most unfamiliar feeling was sinking into my bones, lightening my chest, releasing the wrinkle that almost always rested between my brows. It was a foreign feeling, both soothing and anxiety-inducing, like I was enjoying the best meal of my life not knowing I had a fifty percent chance it would give me food poisoning and a night of hell later.
It was the kind of feeling that made you pause, that made you wonder if it meant something.
I didn’t know whether to run from it or straight into its clutches.
An hour of the drive passed easily, Grace telling me what she was bringing to her stupid fucking picnic while I tried to guess what I could bring along. Eventually, I figured out that her category was things that start with s and end with e, and then it was my turn.
I was much less creative, bringing only fruits to my picnic.
When we were just outside of Lake City, I pulled into a gas station, ending the game at least for the moment as we both crawled out of the SUV and stretched.
“I’m getting snacks!” Grace said enthusiastically, and then she was skipping inside with me staring at the giant bags of food we still had in the backseat.
I didn’t fight her on it, though. I just shook my head and watched her go before sliding my credit card and filling up the gas tank.
My phone rang when it was halfway full, and I frowned at the words DADDY P lighting up the screen. Will Perry was the best goalie in the league. He was also an unnervingly quiet bastard who kept to himself, which was why I was surprised to see that he was calling me.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard his voice on the phone before.
“Hey, Daddy P. You calling to get some advice on your golf game? Because I gotta tell you, after yesterday, I think you might be beyond my help.”
I heard him grumble on the other end before he said, “I don’t have time for jokes. Are you free today?”
I frowned again at his serious tone, replacing the gas nozzle and taking my receipt. “Uh… not exactly.”
“Goddamnit.”
“What’s up?”
Will let out a long exhale, and I could picture the way his brows would fold together on that sigh. I’d seen it a thousand times. “Nothing, I just… my nanny left me high and dry again, so now I don’t have anyone to watch Ava and I was supposed to…”
His words cut off, another frustrated sigh mixed with a growl.
“It doesn’t matter. Thanks, anyway.”
“Sorry I can’t help, you know I’d be there in a heartbeat to hang with my favorite girl.”
Will paused before saying, “But?”
Shit.
“But… I, uh, decided to take a trip.”
“A trip,” he repeated, and then Grace was sprinting toward me with her arms full of chip bags, candy boxes, random ass drinks, and God knew what else.
“Yep, and I’m about to get back on the road so I better—”
I tried to cut the phone call before Grace got to me, but she was lightning fast, that little thing, and she nodded to the backseat as she scrambled closer. She had a crossbody bag on with a ring of keys and two outrageous keychains — one that looked like a leather whip, and one that was nothing more than a fuzzy puff ball.
“Hurry, open the door before I lose all this!”
I muttered a curse before swinging the door open, and she dumped the snacks with a satisfied smile before beaming up at me.
“I got the weirdest things. They had alligator jerky!” She stripped her crossbody bag off and tossed it into the car, those damn keys jangling like mad. She paused when she noticed I was on the phone. “Who’s that?”
Daddy P’s voice rumbled in my ear next. “My thoughts exactly.”
“I’ll call you later. Try Maven. You know she’s always offering to help you out.”
“Avoiding the question, I see,” Will assessed. “Why do I feel like I need to warn you to be careful?”
I swallowed as Grace skipped around to the other side of the SUV, her flimsy shorts bouncing along with her perfect little ass as she did so.
“Probably because I’m playing with fire,” I mumbled back.
Daddy P barked out a laugh. “Can’t wait to hear about this at the tournament,” he said. “Be easy on the girl, whoever she is. Later, Brittzy.”
“Later,” I said, and then I hustled inside the gas station long enough to piss and grab an energy drink.
When I got back to the car, Grace was head banging in the passenger seat to a Bad Company song, pausing only long enough to belt out the lyrics before she was drumming with the alligator jerky in both her hands and head banging again.
There was that feeling in my chest again.
Just as I slid inside, Grace held her phone out in selfie-mode, taking a video of the two of us.
“Today, I’m starting an adventure. A road trip with my new best friend — Jaxson.” She smiled at me then. “Jaxson, tell me something good.”
I cocked a brow at the camera, flattening my lips as I looked back at her.
“Calm down, no one will ever see this video but me,” she said, reading my concern. “I take a video every day and tell future me what I was doing on this date. I always like to remind myself of all the good in my life, even on the seemingly ordinary days.”
I laughed a little, staring at her like the bizarre creature she was. “And you don’t post it?”
“Post it?” She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, on social media you mean? I don’t have any.”
That shocked the hell out of me, and my widening eyes must have told her so.
“Tell the camera something good so I stop wasting valuable space in my phone,” she said, wiggling the camera in my face.
I shrugged, looking around like there was an answer floating in the air before I looked back at the camera, and at the girl sitting next to me, reflected on the screen. Her sunglasses were halfway down her nose, her smile wide as she took another bite of the fucking alligator jerky in her hand.
“It’s off-season, and I’m on a road trip with a pretty cool girl.”
Grace slid her sunglasses down even farther to smile at me. “Awww,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Then, she popped her sunglasses back on and said, “Stop flirting with me, Brittzy.”
She cut the video with me biting back a smile.
