Page 3 of Puck My Heart

Solace: We’ll wait until tomorrow and drive up. You gonna be alright?

Hux: I’ll be fine. Looks like someone’s home. You know who else is coming?

I waited, but nothing else popped up. Not three wavering dots, nothing. I checked my reception but the damn thing didn’t even show one bar. Giving it up as a bad job I pocketed my phone, gritted my teeth and broke the pristine snow with my boot.

Never one to buy into the team superstitions before a game, a sense of deja vu washed over me. I checked back at my truck where I parked behind the garage, but the headlights were off, and it hadn’t slid backward off the drive. Ballsing up, I forced myself to take the next steps until the misguided self-belief that I’d done the hardest yards settled over me, and that everything would be cream from here on in.

Right until I reached the door, my hand raised to knock on the heavy, carved oak my father and Sol’s had a hand in one year. A truly atrocious job, but it was theirs, and so it stayed.

I couldn’t bring myself to knock on the damn thing. In the end, I didn’t need to.

The door pulled inward, letting the glow from inside the cabin fall onto the snow sparkling in my peripherals. In the middle of all that stood a girl dressed in less clothing than the last puck bunny I saw at a Chimera’s game who tried to sneak into the locker room.

It always blew me away why anyone wanted to go in there. It smelled like a laundry basket of stale socks at the best of times, but those girls were up for pucking anything to get their player.

This girl…

She blew the puck out of me.

Long legs were covered in fluffy knitted socks dotted with bobbly pom poms and crocheted snowflakes that reached to her knees. From there her tanned, toned legs were bare until my gaze drifted to her thighs—fine, bikini line—where a pair of daisy dukes barely covered anything at all and exposed plenty, including the curve of her butt cheek where she turned side on to me, and her toned tummy that glinted in the light with some sort of blue jewel. Also a snowflake, upon closer inspection. And the swell beneath her perky breasts were on show too, though thankfully her nipples were covered in a white crop that could have been a part of a Hooters uniform. Blonde hair borrowed from a fifties pin up girl bounced around her shoulders, and baby blues sat above a strawberry, bow lipped mouth that made mine water.

Maybe from the scent that matched the color. I couldn’t tell because my brain stopped functioning as blood flowed south.

I’ve been away for far too long.

Then her lips parted, and my whole world shattered.

“You always perv on your best friend’s sister so openly, Hux?”

I blinked as she snapped me out of my daze. “Anya.” The last time I saw her, she’d just graduated high school, was headed to college. I swallowed hard, the image of what I wanted then clashing with reality. Something possessive roared in my chest, and everything that happened today—the media mess, trying to care for Tabitha and failing, Benny’s bullshit, the drive in… Now the girl I used to crush on when I shouldn’t, dressed like a puck bunny? I snapped. “Hell, girl, get some clothes on.”

I stepped forward, reaching over her head, intent on grabbing the door from her hold. For some reason I expected her to back up out of the space I encroached on so I could shut the door and?—

I don’t know, give her a blanket to cover up with, or something. Not that the inside of the cabin resembled anything other than a sauna from this range though my backside felt distinctly icy in comparison to my front. Or maybe that was just because I was closer to her.

“You got a man in here to look after you?” I paused. “Or a girlfriend?”

Anya, whose head barely reached the centre of my chest, stared up at me andlaughed.

There’s that giggle I remember.

I swallowed hard. “Back up, girl, before you get trampled,” I muttered.

“Thisgirlwas doing just fine, thank you.” She poked my belly button, then my bottom rib, hitting a ticklish spot I didn’t know I had.

I flinched and dropped my bag. It thunked on the floor, and I winced. It’d serve me right if I broke everything in it, including my skates.

She stared down curiously, and I was left looking at the top of her golden head, not a dark hair in sight.She always was a natural blonde. Nothing about her seemed fake, not like the bunnies I was used to hanging around the team.Perving on your best friend's sister is poor form.Baby sister, too. Fuck, Sol would slice me open with my own damn blades if he caught me like this.

I tugged hard on the door, but she refused to let go. “Anya, my ass is freezing.”

“Then get inside. What’s in the bag?”

“All my kit. I came from a media session then—” I shook my head, pushing back the image of Tabitha’s face all cut up. And the rest, but I didn’t want to face that memory again right now.What is up with this memory fucking lane shit today?“Fuck. It’s been a day, all right? I nearly fucking smashed my truck intothe same damn— Fuck,” I repeated, my vocabulary reduced to single syllables. “Just let me in.”

She held out a hand, waving me around her. “I got the door,” she said softly.

“Thanks.” I let go, rubbing my hand on the back of my jeans. Side stepping around her I pretended my gaze didn’t drift back to the gem in her navel, or that my fingers didn’t itch to tweak it.

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