Page 1 of Exes and Oh Hell No

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FORD

“I’m looking forward to much needed R&R now that the season’s over,” Connor Byrns, left winger for the Green Mountain Avalanche hockey team, rolls his neck, working out the tension.

I follow him off the plane, shifting my weight as a sharp twinge shoots through my knee. “No kidding. I need recovery time.”

Connor’s gaze flicks to my leg, brow raised. “Still bothering you?”

I wave him off. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

He gives me a long, skeptical look. “Sure, Ford. Whatever you say.”

I ignore him. I’ve spent a decade forcing my body to keep up with the brutal pace of the game. A little pain won’t kill me.

“You staying with Gram Cracker?”

I smirk at the nickname he’s given my Gram. Just thinking about her old Victorian house nestled deep in the woods makes my shoulders loosen. There’s something about the place—the thick trees surrounding it, the private lake tucked behind it—that feels like a reset. “Yeah. Looking forward to it.”

“She’s gonna be on your ass about Carly.”

I shoot him an annoyed glance as we weave through the airport crowd toward baggage claim. “We weren’t that serious.”

“You and I know that. But Carly? And Gram Cracker?” He lets out a low chuckle. “That’s another story.”

I exhale sharply. He’s not wrong. Gram was convinced Carly wasthe one, which just proves howoffshe is when it comes to my love life.

“The good news,” I say, grabbing my duffel off the carousel, “is that Carly’s family sent her on a ‘broken-heart healing’ cruise. She’ll be gone for two months, so I won’t have to worry about her.”

“Yeah, but Gram’s gonna double down now. You’re twenty-nine. She wants great grandkids.”

I scowl. “Marriage and kids can wait. I’m in the prime of my career.”

Connor shakes his head. “Tellherthat.”

Dread coils in my stomach. When Gram sets her mind on something, she’s relentless.

Then, like a ghost slipping through the cracks of my mind,shesurfaces. Long, thick brunette hair. Big, soulful blue-gray eyes. The soft curve of her lips when she used to smile at me like I was her whole damn world.

Harper Adams.

My chest tightens. The last time I saw her, Todd Matthews had his arm around her.

Jealousy slammed into me like a freight train.

The kind that drowns out reason.

The kind that makes you see red.

I’d just been drafted into the NHL. Harper said we should “think about ending things” since we’d be two thousand miles apart.

But I couldn’t.

I’d been with her since our junior year of high school. Harper was more than my first love. She was the oxygen I breathed.

And then I saw Todd with her.

My brain short-circuited. Images of him stealing all the little things we’d built together sent me over the edge—our coffee shop, our table in the Italian restaurant we loved, the way I used to walk her across campus.

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