Hard Checked (Ice Kings #4) - Stacey Lynn Page 0,70
while I’d like to blame our lack of conversation over the last week on that, it’s bullshit. For weeks while I traveled it was never an issue since she was usually at the bar so late anyway. We’d connect after my game, or before she went to work the next day.
I’ve barely spoken to her since the night I gave her tickets to my game. It was late, right after the game. I got back to the locker room when I got a text back from her congratulating me on our win, but saying she was wiped and heading home with her dad and Steve.
No invite to go to her place.
Which wouldn’t have bothered me except since then, she’s been distracted on the phone and while she’s answered my texts, they’ve been brief.
Something is bothering her and for reasons I’m not willing to delve too deep into on a charter bus with dozens of guys, it’s bothering me as well.
Holy crap.
I’m falling for Gigi. In a way that’s been slow, and yet steady, taking minute steps forward until I don’t know if I can turn back now.
That’s why this hurts so much. Why it’s kept me awake this week. Why I’ve done extra workouts to work the worry out of my brain before I take to the ice for games.
I don’t just like Gigi.
Love, though?
It’s too soon. Has to be. I’m only a couple months out of a divorce to the woman I loved over half of my life. It’s not possible to be falling in love again so quickly, is it?
And what did we agree to? Something easy, something uncomplicated… because I was the one who didn’t know how much I have to give.
Well. Shit just got a whole lot more complicated now.
I slide into a seat on the bus, smacking Klaus’s forehead as I pass him. “You headed out later?”
He’s grinning down at his phone, but when I smack him he flings his hand in the air and hits mine away. “Yeah, dipshit. Unless you keep assaulting me.”
I grab the back of his headrest and peek over his shoulder. “How’s Jillian?”
“Good.” He swipes the text screen closed and looks up at me to glare at me. “Mind your own business.”
“You get anywhere with her yet?”
Klaus and Jillian have been best friends for several years. They met at a signing we put on in South Park mall. She works for the company that has signed most of us to handle our promo gear. They provide the jerseys and hockey pucks and mature hockey sticks and we sign them and smile pretty for the camera.
Since that day, Jillian and Klaus have always been close. But I’ve seen the way he looks at her. I know he wants more. It’s not the first or the thirtieth time I’ve asked him this question and every time he rolls his eyes and repeats, “We’re just friends.”
“We’re friends,” he says, on cue.
I roll my eyes and plop down into my seat as more teammates pass by. “Where we going out tonight?”
I ask it loud, for anyone who’s planned anything. Across the aisle and a few rows up, Duke Fletcher throws his fist in the air and declares we’re taking over the hotel bar.
Good enough for me.
For the first time in a long time, I’m ready to party and not drown my sorrows.
I’m in a pretty damn good place right now.
It’ll be even better once I can figure out what’s going on with Gigi. Take care of that, and then move us forward, closer… perhaps end this charade of free and easy during the season.
Playoffs start in two weeks and I can’t think of anyone else I want at my side, cheering me on.
I’ve had too much to drink. Not enough to risk passing out in a woman’s bed without remembering in the morning. Not enough to pass out in the elevator. I’m aware enough to know when I needed to stop tonight and I was having a good enough time with the guys that that was a while ago. Instead, I joined in seeing Mikah Lutzgo get drunk.
At twenty-three, he’s the youngest player on our team. Sometimes that means we’re dicks to him. Other times it means we’re protective big brothers.
I’ve played both roles tonight which is why I have my arm thrown over his shoulders, propping him up as I get him back to his room.