Page 1 of Puck My Heart

CHAPTER ONE

HUX

I stared through the snowflakes obscuring the traffic heading in the other direction as I drove out of town and ignored the empty passenger seat at my side. That was easier than figuring out how to lie to my best friend.

Yeah, I’m so full of shit.

“Still there, Hux?” Solace’s voice crackled a bit.

I threw the windscreen wipers on to their fastest setting and frowned. The forecast hadn’t mentioned heavy snow, but then I’d been distracted after a media mess I’d had to fix when our mascot—now former mascot—got his stupid ass drunk. Not the worst of faux pas perhaps, but he also decided to assault one of the go-to puck bunnies the boys loved to flirt and fuck around with, and…

Well. Let’s just say she won’t be fucking around with anyone for a while. Certainly not hockey players.

“Yeah. I’m still here.” I released the steering wheel to rake my fingers through my hair. The longer strands fell over my eyes, obscuring my view of the quickly whiting out road. “Sacking Benny when he was in handcuffs was shit.”

The in-car stereo system went so quiet that I thought the line had dropped out.

“There was no coming back from what he did, man. You know that.” Solace’s deep voice sobered.

My goalie had been my best friend for years, since before we made the team together, and he’d been my sounding board since I pulled the captaincy for the Chimeras.

“I know.” The heel of my hand thumped the steering wheel. “Fucking waste of his life, and now he’s fucked up hers, too.”

Tabitha, the girl that Benny assaulted, would be in hospital for a while. Luckily, she was surrounded by family and friends, but she’d told me flat out she never wanted to see another hockey player ever again.

I didn’t blame her.

“You did the right thing by the team.”

“For the team,” I echoed.Yeah, because that was the first thing I thought of when I walked into her too-white room full of bleeping machines. Said no human ever to the traumatised female in the bed.“Being captain is a shit job sometimes.”

“Just like being goalie is shit too,” Solace reminded me. “Nothing like watching the great Huxley Radfield getting his ass whooped when I’m back up the other end of the fucking ice yelling at you when you’re too riled to hear me.”

“Shouldn’t you be giving this advice to Shannon or Deuce?” I snorted but as usual, Sol had managed to drag me out of my slump. “Thanks, man.”

“Not a problem. We’ll see you soon, then?” His casual tone didn’t slip by me.

My shitty cloud descended along with a wind that whipped my truck halfway across my lane. “Fuck. Yes,” I replied, yanking some measure of control back on the steering wheel. “In this weather I’ve got no idea how long it will take me to haul ass up there. GPS says four hours, but?—”

A cloud of white obscured the world, and I was talking to a dead phone.

One bar flickered, and my reception died along with my visibility.

“Shit,” I muttered to the empty passenger seat, wishing for the first time I’d brought someone with me. Not that I’d want anyone in the truck on a day like today. Especially this damn weather. Too close to the day?—

Fuck, no.

I refused to go there. The team shrink might have words about avoidance but my life was all hockey by design.Go Chimeras.At least I did, until I had to take an enforced break.

This sojourn along memory lane to the house our parents bought together in the Ozarks when we were kids and visited the month we were drafted to the Jericho Chimeras would be hard enough with Sol’s family there, and mine absent. I hadn’t been back to the cabin in years. This time, I traveled alone.

Lights came at me from the wrong direction, breaking me out of my reverie. I swerved back into what I thought was my lane in time to avoid a head on collision and considered canning the entire trip. But that meant going home to an emptier apartment on Valentine’s weekend. All I’d think about was the girl our mascot had ruined. How to fix the media when I couldn't do anything else. Hell, I’d probably make it worse, which was why Coach enforced the trip I tried to cancel in the first place.

More headlights came at me, along with a blared horn.

Fuck, maybe this isn’t my lane after all.

For the next four hours I charged through increasingly shitty conditions no puck bunny would ever want to risk as I drove inwhat I thought was a straight line and listened to nineties metal. When reception died completely on my phone I pulled up a few old pop albums Sol’s baby sister begged to download the last time I visited the cabin. Literally, it was the only music I had stored on my phone. More memories, but only some of those were ones I wanted to forget.

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