Page 5 of My Pucking Crush

“Get back to Stamford. Now.”

I exhale and reach for my jeans. I changed out of my suit before heading to Club Dare. Team security dresses sharply, just like the players when they come and go from the stadium.

“Why now, sir?”

“Ryan’s in the hospital.”

Fear skitters across my skin. Did Max have an aneurism? These guys get whacked in the head with a stick and walk away like a fly landed on them. But there’s always the chance of a brain bleed that doesn’t cripple the player until hours later.

“What happened to him?” I hastily fist money from my wallet to tip my date who can’t finish me off. “Is he okay?”

My chance of hot sex stands up and takes my money. Walking out of the playroom, his perfect ass peeks out from beneath Max’s jersey.

“Yo, leave that jersey,” I mumble.

He shrugs out of the shirt, and drops it on the floor like it means nothing. Without a look back, he leaves me alone in the playroom.

I bend over to quickly pick up the jersey. It meanseverythingto me. I’d kill for Max Ryan to suck my cock just once. If he’s seriously hurt, my fantasy may never happen.

Not that it had a chance of happening anyway.

“Get to Stamford General.” Bronwin’s signal starts to break up. “I’ll explain everything in detail when you get here.”

THREE

Max

“You’re lucky,” an ER doctor says, glancing over the results from a barrage of tests.

For the last few hours, I’ve had every inch of my body examined, short of a colonoscopy.

The blow to the head with the lamp knocked me out for a few minutes. When I woke up, the woman and the men were gone. But the damage was done.

I was out cold, and they just left me. I don’t know if they wanted me dead. That’s a lot to clean up in a hotel.

Avoiding the risk of someone else finding me, I called Coach.

“So, we’re looking at a concussion, facial contusions, and a heavily bruised wrist,” Coach Tatum Beck confirms with the doctor.

The ailments strung together twist my stomach. Wiggling my hands, I feel a shocking sting from my left wrist. I’ve played with broken fingers. But a concussion will keep me off the ice.

My agent and my closest friends on the team stand behind Coach Beck. Stefan Willis and Troy Madison sport lethal grimaces. Beck probably dragged them in here. They’re the only guys who can talk me off the ledge when I wake up enough and try to get out of here.

I’m notoriously stubborn. But as the team captain, I have to think of the other players first.

My vision still wobbly, I notice my two teammates suddenly morph into three. Someone else hovers in the back of the room. He’s a blur, but that familiar buzzin my veins roars to life despite lying here all banged up.

Fuck. No.

My head isn’t screwed on right. I’m concussed. I’m probably just seeing things.

“Do you want me to call anyone else, Max?” my agent, Noah, asks, coming abreast of Coach.

He manages me and Willis, along with a few others on the Crushers.

“No,” I say sharply.

“Not even your mother?” Coach asks, his eyebrows pinched together.

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