You Had Me at Hockey (Bears Hockey #2) - Kelly Jamieson Page 0,44

after a long, sizzling kiss.

“Yeah.” I let him out with both sadness and a delicious contentment.

I finally did it! I cashed in the V-card. Not that it was weighing on me or anything. I was honest with Josh—I haven’t been waiting for anything. I’m happy I found a guy I really like, someone I really wanted to do the deed with, who wasn’t freaked out about it. And…wow. Can I just say, sex is awesome?

I limp back into my living room and fall onto the couch.

Or should I say…sex with Josh is awesome? Because I have a feeling it’s not always like that.

Oh yeah…the reason I’m feeling so great isn’t just because I finally had sex. It’s because of Josh. It’s because of how much we laughed last night at bad poetry. How he tried so hard not to be bothered by a spontaneous change in plans and to see the positive in it. How he was so thoughtful about my first time, even though I had to set him straight on a few things. How he accepts that women can love sex as much as men and not be sluts. And how he listened to me reading Robert Burns.

I slump back into the cushions, beaming a huge smile at the ceiling. Yeah, I really like Josh Heller.

Chapter 14

Josh

Sunday night is the first game I’m on the power play with Bergie, JBo, Brando, and Millsy, a.k.a. Easton the Traitor. The Bruins don’t get a penalty until the second period, and the game is tied, one–all.

Our new coach wants me to keep shooting the puck. “It doesn’t have to go in,” he tells me. “Just be a threat.”

I can do that. I’ll do better than that. I’ll put it in the goddamn net.

The Bruins haven’t figured that out, though. They’re all over Millsy and Bergie, and I get a great look at the goal from the point. With JBo a big presence in front of the net, their goalie has no hope of stopping my blast. The red light glows, the horn sounds, and the crowd roars. I lift my arms in the air and my teammates all jump me to celebrate the goal. My first power play goal. Only Millsy’s congrats are a bare tap on the shoulder.

Well, fuck him. We’re a goddamn team.

We skate by the bench to bump gloves with the rest of the guys, and the penalized Bruin glides glumly across the ice to return to his own bench.

I’m grinning as I sit on the bench. With JBo on one side of me and Bergie the other, I grab a bottle of Gatorade and hold it in front of Bergie’s mouth. He opens and I squirt some in, then turn to JBo, shoot some into his mouth, and then some into mine. “There,” I say. “That’ll keep the goals coming.”

“Millsy.” JBo takes the bottle and tries to squirt some into his mouth, but Millsy shakes his head.

“Oh no,” I say. “Don’t be an asshole right now. We just scored. Drink the fucking Gatorade.”

He stares at me for a couple of seconds, then scowls, grabs the bottle, and squeezes a purple stream into his mouth.

I roll my eyes and turn to watch the face-off at center ice. Is he fucking pissed because I scored and he didn’t? Jesus Christ.

My anger gets my adrenaline going and my next shift, I’m buzzing. When D’Angelo gets a breakaway, I chase after him, skating my ass off, and with a sweep of my stick I knock the puck off his blade just as he’s about to shoot at Gunner. The crowd, noisily cheering me on as I raced, erupts even louder in approval. Then when Bridges has the puck and he’s crossing the center line, I skate in on him and hit him. Off-balance, he goes down hard, losing the puck. This causes another huge cheer from our fans as well as a little unrest among the Bruins, and a couple of them come at me, one guy dropping his gloves. “Fucking asshole!” he yells at me. “Let’s go!”

“That was a clean hit, fuckface!” I’m not getting sucked into a roughing or fighting penalty for doing it. My mitts stay on my hands.

The refs join us to make sure things aren’t escalating, but I skate away knowing I’m going to be punished my next shift on the ice.

Sure enough, it’s not long before Currie, a fourth line winger who’s known as their enforcer, hammers me into the boards behind the