Page 157 of Offside Devil

She steps even closer and lays a hand on my arm. “Whatever you need, Zane, I’m here. I’ll support you in whatever way you need.”

I step around her. “All I need now is for you to clear my schedule today and leave a message for Hollis.”

“Right. Yeah.” She folds her hands behind her back. “I’m on it.”

I don’t regret telling Coach to delete the video. I’ll walk through every level of hell and back before I let Mira take my mistake on the chin. Even if I was okay with every depraved psycho with an internet connection watching (and rewatching) her back bend in an orgasm—which, for the record, I’m extremely fucking not—she’s taken enough heat just being with me.

Someone out there is looking for her, and I’m not going to be the reason they find her.

I’m so busy thinking that I don’t see Carson waiting outside the front doors until it’s too late to avoid him.

“You look like shit, Whitaker.” He spits on the ground like we’re in an old-timey Western. “Tough night?”

Not tough enough to divulge a single word of it to you, asshole.

“I had a great night,” I growl. “Maybe if you didn't miss a shot at an empty goal and trip over your own skates, you'd have had the same.”

His face tightens. “There was a rough patch in the ice.”

“A rough patch no one else found all night?” I shrug like it’s a mystery we’ll never have the answers to. Even though we both know he was too busy barking orders at Nathan like the captain he isn’t to see the puck coming his way.

Carson knows that.

I know it.

And Coach Popov knows it.

All at once, he seems to brush it off and smirk. “At least the only rough patches I find are on the ice. They’ll get smoothed out before the next game. But fuck knows how you’re going to smooth out your rough patch.”

Everything in me stands at attention. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Is that what you told that useless fucking Irish asshole you call a sponsor when he came around asking questions?” Carson hisses. “What about Coach? You know, it’ll be easier if you fess up now. Waiting for the other skate to drop will only make things worse.”

I cross the distance between us before I even make the conscious choice. Carson holds his ground, but barely. Fear flares in his eyes as I tower over him.

“What the fuck did you do, Deluth?” I growl. My hands are shaking, practically begging to wrap around his throat.

“Nothing.” He smiles. “I haven’t done a fucking thing.”

Liar.

Years of lies have helped me tune into when someone else is bullshitting. And Carson is lying right through the teeth I’m about to knock out of his head.

“What did you do?” I roar, charging forward until we’re chest to chest.

Suddenly, a smooth hand slips around my wrist. My instinct is to shake it off. To kill Carson for grinning up at me while he tries to hurt the people I love.

But Mira is the angel on my shoulder. “Cameras, Z. There are cameras everywhere.”

She tugs me back, and I retreat a half-step.

Then another.

I let her put five feet of space between me and Carson before I take a breath and look down at her. But she isn’t looking at me—she’s scowling at Carson like I might need to hold her back in a second.

“Keep a handle on your boss, nanny.” Carson spits the title at her like a slur. “Who knows how many more blows his reputation can take?”

Mira tugs on my hand before I can lunge forward again.

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