Page 20 of My Pucking Crush

Carter smirks at me and slaps my shoulder. “Ha ha. Just kidding. He’s all yours.”

I spin around and wait to see shocked eyes glaring at me. Nothing.

Exhaling in relief, I wipe sweat from my face absentmindedly, the banged-up wrist zinging me with a bite of pain.

Carter’s comment about sucking dicks and fucking around is typical locker room talk. If you’re straight, you laugh it off.

If you’re confused...

Fuck, I’m confused. Or worse... I’mstillconfused. After twenty-plus years and countless hookups with chicks.Andguys.

I’ve never been in a relationship. Always used hockey as an excuse. During the season, I have to concentrate. Stay focused. The off-season is for training.

That’s what I’d told all the women who tried to get close to me. It’s what I told myself when I’d watch other guys date, get married, and have families.

Why them and not me?

Maybe I want success more. Maybe I take sport more seriously. The Crushers made me captain for areason.

“Ryan!” Philly, the trainer says. “Wrist. Now.”

My stick nearby, I grab it and shake my head. “Next break.”

On the ice, I’m fighting to get out of my head, doing drills the offensive coach put together to play against Cape May. They’ve been on fire, the way a team lights up when that magical cohesiveness sets in.

Football players make one pass per play. The quarterback throws the ball once to one guy. Or hands it offto one guy. Hockey players pass the puck hundreds of times to different players over the course of a fifteen-minute period. Sometimes the puck gets passed to every single position, including the goalie.

We watch for dilated pupils, nostrils flaring, shoulders tensing, and body angles to know what another player will do. Without cohesiveness, the puck feels like it’s coated in cooking grease, constantly slipping away.

A shock of dark curly hair that hangs low in the eyes catches my attention. The set of shoulders, strong cheekbones, sexy scruff over a square, cut jaw glues my eyes in that direction.

Luca.

Frowning.

He’s pissed.

Good.

So am I. But for reasons I can’t explain and don’t understand. Mostly all these feelings he’s dredging up inside me. Shit that I’ve worked really hard to stuff down deep and ignore.

Carter likes dick, but I have zero desire to give him mine. So, what is up with these feelings for my bodyguard?

For the life of me, I can’t break eye contact with Luca, sending my co-defender, Miles Hayden, who’snearly seven fucking feet tall and three hundred pounds, right into me doing ninety.

I go flying and land on my back, the force of the impact knocking the wind right out of me. Luckily, my helmet took the brunt of the impact when my head connected with the ice.

Through one fluttering eye, I watch Hayden skate off.

“Thanks, Miles,” I shout, but I’m ready to snap back up to my feet when shaved ice flies into my mouth.

Who the heck stopped abruptly right by my face causing layers of ice shaving to cover me? That’s a freaking massive violation of team etiquette and trust. Sure, as soon as we all learned to do that as kids, it’s all we did. Coaches made us skate laps till our toes were ready to fall off, though.Snowingwas so rude to do to a teammate.

So who...

I shake the powdered ice from my eye sockets and follow the jet-black, matte leather skates under finely pressed trousers and all the way up to that square jaw I couldn’t drag my eyes away from earlier.

Luca.

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