Page 23 of The Rebound Plan

I’ve never been one to date, even before I met Shannon. Discreet hook-ups? Sure, I like sex as much as the next person, although I can go longer without companionship than most of my teammates.

But relationships?

I don’t do relationships. My parents’ marriage imploded during my childhood, and then my father’s second marriage was a toxic, indulgent mess. Two brilliant examples of what not to do with one’s life.

Emery leads the way up the stairs. When we reach the top landing, Malik opens his bedroom door, and he gives her an appreciative once over that reminds me I’m not the only one who is shielded by her sharing my bed this weekend.

“That was a good workout,” he says to her, as if I’m not standing right behind her.

I clear my throat, and he grins. Caught.

Emery takes my hand. “We’ll see you downstairs after we clean up,” she says sweetly.

I’m relieved to close my bedroom door and take a long, deep breath.

She crosses to her suitcase, open on one of the deep window seats. “I’ll go first, if you don’t mind?”

All business now.

“Be my guest.” I flop onto the oversized armchair in front of the fireplace and close my eyes.

Immediately, I see Shannon climbing out of the pool, water sluicing off her long limbs, rivulets licking between her full breasts.

We met at the arena the day the Hamilton expansion team was announced fourteen months ago. There was a media blackout on who had been acquired, so we discovered who we were going to be playing with as each player arrived at the arena.

Max had already been tapped to be the team’s captain, and he and Shannon were the first ones there.

We’d never met before, at least off the ice, and it wasn’t like our lines were often pitted against each other on the ice, either. He came from New York, an unexpected star made available in the expansion draft by his hometown team. I was pulled off the third line in Los Angeles, where I’d been traded from Minnesota two years earlier.

What’s the opposite of a star in hockey? I’m that guy. A journeyman. Someone who, when they list the relatively small number of players to have played a thousand games in the big show, is a surprise.

That’s me.

My role on the new team was clearly spelled out in my first meeting with Dick Dorrian, the general manager—make every other team think twice about picking a fight with the new captain or either of the young stars-in-the-making, hometown hero Jenson Hale, and American import Hiro Watanabe.

On that afternoon, I strode into the arena focused on that plan.

None of us had come from the same team before, although a few of us had played together in juniors or minor league hockey.

I didn’t expect to see Shannon and fall hard. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, without question, but there was something more than just a skin-deep attraction there. She had a quiet presence I found immediately calming, but beneath that I saw sparks of a wicked personality. She was simply captivating.

I’ve spent the last fourteen months wondering if what I fell into was love or lust or lunacy. Definitely lunacy, given what is riding on me not fucking what might be my last contract in the NHL.

In sixteen years of playing pro hockey, I’ve never made it to the Cup finals.

Because the universe has a funny sense of humour, sixteen is the exact number of wins it takes in the playoffs to go all the way. And for a hockey team to get there, they might need to play up to twenty-eight games in a row. An exhausting, brutal, destructive two-months-long journey that chews ups and rejects fifteen other teams in the process.

I’ve never made it to those final four wins.

I don’t know what it’s like to be that close to euphoria.

The last two teams I played on didn’t have a chance of getting that close.

The Highlanders do.

And I’ve spent the last year so fucking close to losing my chance to be a part of that, all because I can’t fucking contain myself when Shannon smiles at me.

She fucking smiles at everyone.

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