Page 181 of Pucking Strong

The moment he digests my words, he lunges, surprising us both with his drunken violence. I scramble backwards, crying out as Corey goes stumbling past me and into the wall. But he’s not actually stumbling. He was shoved from behind.

“Henrik!” I step back, eyes wide. “Oh god, stop!”

Henrik and Corey wrestle down to the floor in a great storm of grunts and curses. Their fighting tips over a stack of boxes. Plastic cups and lids go rolling around on the floor. Corey fights to break free as Henrik wails on him with both fists. Corey’s legs kick about, but Henrik keeps him pinned.

“Babe, stop,” I beg, trying to grab Henrik’s arm.

He shouts something in Swedish as Corey wrestles an arm free and starts hitting him back. “Did you touch him?” Henrik switches in English. “Did you fucking touch him?”

“Getoffme—fucking asshole—”

“Guys, stop!”

All the commotion gets the attention of people down the hallway in the main dining room. A woman screams.

“Someone, call the police!”

“God, no police,” I shout. “Henrik,stop!” I dive for him in earnest, pulling on his arm. “Just leave him.”

“He attacked you!”

“He’s drunk.” I pull on him harder. “Come on, baby. Just leave with me.Please.”

“Hey!” Hunter DeGraw comes running down the hallway, followed closely by Flash and Paulie. A Hawks player is there too. “Break it up,” Hunter shouts. He barrels in next to me and grabs Henrik by both arms, lifting him bodily away from Corey. “Let’s leave this kind of fighting for the ice, eh, fellas?”

The other Hawks player ducks around me and pins a bleeding Corey to the wall with his forearm, keeping him from lunging at us again. “Come on, Core, calm down.”

Corey laughs, blood in his teeth. “What’s the big deal, huh, Karlsson? Your boyfriend and I were just talking—”

“He’s my husband!” Henrik shouts, now restrained by Hunter and Flash.

In moments, Jake appears, all his mirth from minutes ago gone. He storms down the hallway in full team-captain mode. “What the hell happened?”

“Karlsson and Lamont were fighting,” Paulie explains.

Jake glances from Henrik, his clothes disheveled and his chest heaving like a rhinoceros, to Corey, who looks like he’ll have two shiners and is still bleeding from the nose. “Jesus. Why?”

“It was me,” I admit. “Corey’s drunk and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

“We were just talking,” he sneers, dabbing at his bleeding nose with the back of his hand.

Henrik jerks under the hands restraining him. “Don’t talk to him—talk to me!”

“Hey, hewantedto talk to me,” Corey taunts.

“Oh, you’re such a fucking liar,” I shout. “I was minding my own business, and you know it.”

“Please, you wanted me to follow you. Practically begged for it—”

“Say another word to him, and I kill you,” Henrik bellows, fighting against his teammates.

“Okay,” Jake shouts over him, stepping between them and putting up his hands. “Fuck’s sake. Ryder, get Lamont in the bathroom and clean him up,” he says at the other Hawks player. “He doesn’t get to walk out of this hallway to a bunch of cameras looking like the victim of a bear attack. None of us needs that kind of bad press.”

My heart drops out. Cameras? Of course everyone out there who heard the shouting will have a smartphone. And someone shouted something about the police. Oh, fucking fuck.

“I got him,” Ryder mutters, pulling on his teammate. “Come on, Core.”

Corey just smirks. “But Teddy and I weren’t finished.”

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