Page 2 of Puck Me Already

He said, "Nat's holding an emergency meeting with the two of us."

I rolled my eyes.

I loved Natalie. She was really the sweetest, but ever since she became our social media manager and overall personal assistant, everything was an emergency.

"Get dressed. She'll be here in five minutes."

I slammed the door shut and rummaged through my closet for a shirt and pants. As I slid on my shirt, I heard, "Get your asses to the living room. Now."

Great. Natalie was yelling already.

Instead of going straight to the living room, I ran to the kitchen. I grabbed a bottle of water and a can of Diet Coke from the fridge. She loved Diet Coke, and Carmi wouldn't think of getting her a drink.

As I flopped onto the sofa, I tossed the can to Natalie. She smiled, which I hoped meant that she wasn't actually upset with me and that it was something dumb—like a puck bunny saying something weird or Carter going viral with his inability to dance.

She cracked open the can with a lot of force and pointed it at me. "Explain why the hell you were an asshole to the new female ref and why there's now video of you verbally assaulting her and a guy after a game?"

I cracked open my water bottle and gulped some nonexistent air in surprise. That game was months ago. Why the hell was this just coming up now?

Natalie had to know why by the way her eyes bored into me.

I took a drink. "It was low-hanging fruit, and he pissed me off after the first fight. Everyone knew that he was dating her, and I had to poke him a little bit. I didn't mean anything about it."

Natalie sighed. "Well, now you’ve got a dozen different women's groups attacking you for being a misogynist."

Carter crossed his arms. "Shouldn't this be something we discuss with the PR team? Why am I here if this was just to chew out Spence?"

He shot me an apologetic look, but I got it. Who likes having to kick out your bedroom partner just so your roommate can get chewed out? He really didn't need to be here.

"They're the ones who brought the matter to me, and you're here because you failed at your job of controlling Spence." The way she stared at me just tore at my soul. I really did hate letting her down. "You went too damn far."

I hated being scolded like I was a child. I didn't think it was that big of a deal.

Besides, since when was it Cartsy's job to manage me? Sure, we were on the same line, but he rarely, if ever, told me to can it. Only Coach did that. Including that night, which was why I went straight onto the bus. I never threw any punches.

I folded my arms and said, "I'm not going to be sorry that I played my game, and I said some crazy shit. Can't I just give some money to a women's shelter? Hell, isn't my charity already linked up with three of them?"

We all knew the only reason I was so close with the whole Carmichael clan was the fact that I used to hide at their house since my dad was a piece of shit who would beat on my mom whenever he got drunk, and I couldn't be the protector all the time without it doing some damage to my psyche. They were my safe space.

But because of that, I gave lots of money to domestic violence charities and women's shelters. I just didn't make it known all that often since people didn't need to know.

"You're going to have to make the support more public."

I shrugged. "I can handle that. Make the check now. Hell, make three of them. That way, all three of those shelters get money."

"You need to make a statement, and I can't write it for you," Natalie said with crossed arms.

I groaned.

I hated writing things like that. That should be done by someone who knew how to spin things. Now, if we needed to piss people off, my words and style would be perfect.

"Fine."

Chapter 2

Natalie

Iwent to the guys’ place to do the usual Monday routine when they were in town—order food, pack their suitcases if they were traveling, give their non-hockey-related schedules.

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