Page 42 of Confessions of a Former Puck Bunny

It’s just that we only have two months together and I haven’t seen him for two days.

I shook my head at myself. Really? I was thinking in terms like that when we hadn’t even been on one official date yet? For all I knew, we’d crash and burn within a week or two.

Oh my gosh, what if we crash and burn?

My lungs tightened, each breath somehow making them tighter instead of providing relief. I couldn’t care this much already. It made me think about how I’d fallen for Hudson and ended up hurt and completely broken.

I didn’t want to have to reevaluate all my life choices again, either. It sucked hard enough the first time.

Fully spinning out of control now, I set my laptop aside, forced myself to my feet, and went into the kitchen for water.

After downing a glass, I set it in the sink and stared at it. I wanted to put up walls and protect myself, but what I’d experienced most since erecting them was a lot of crushing loneliness.

I’d told myself over and over that I didn’t need anyone else. I’d been just fine pretty much on my own ever since I could remember. But sometimes…? Sometimes it sucked. Maybe even hurt a little.

Attachments are a weakness.

Falling in love is a weakness…

Not that I was quite there, but it was a good reminder to not to let myself start to think otherwise.

Everyone I’d let in before had hurt me, but Ryder and I didn’t have very long together as it was, and while yes, some attachment was already forming—er, had formed—I knew there was an expiration date.

Which would make it more manageable?

Confession #14:I’m a hot mess.

I really hoped I was a hot mess, anyway, because I spent way too long curling my hair and applying makeup to be a mediocre-looking one. The truth was, thanks to reevaluating my life, I knew I’d been a hot mess for years. Mom’s habit of hopping from guy to guy didn’t help.

On autopilot, I walked back into the living room. My roommates had left clothes and shoes everywhere, but I didn’t bother putting them in piles like I sometimes did, just so the place didn’t look like a pigsty.

I picked up my phone, going back and forth between telling Ryder it was fine, and canceling tonight altogether.

But then I thought about the way he kissed me. How he’d made the joke about currently being in negotiations when Dane caught us kissing for the second time that day.

Okay, freak-out over. The highs are worth the risk.

About an hour of mindless TV watching later, there was a knock on the door.

I smoothed a hand down my hair and opened it.

Ryder stood on the other side and my pulse ratcheted up a couple of notches as I took him in, from the way he filled the entire doorframe to his damp hair, button-down, and jeans. “Sorry I’m so late.”

“It’s okay,” I said, and I meant it.

A crooked smile spread across his face and then he leaned in and kissed me, wrapping his arm around my waist and fitting me against him in that way I couldn’t get enough of. “You look amazing. Please keep that in mind when I tell you what I’m about to…”

I tensed, thinking this was when the other shoe dropped.

“Coach expects us to watch game film on the team we’re going to play this weekend, and he expects us to have done it by tomorrow. The guys are going to the diner so they can eat while we watch it—Dane cleared it with Larry, the owner. He says it’s pretty dead so we can take over the TV.”

I worked to keep the disappointment off my face. “You didn’t have to come all the way over here to cancel our date. You could’ve just sent a text.”

Ryder laced my fingers with his. “I was sort of hoping that you’d come with me. Lyla, Megan, and Whitney will be there, too. Since it’s hard for the guys to spend time with them during the week, they sometimes watch film with us and help us spot ways we can defeat the other teams.”

My body tensed at the very idea, and yet a tendril of longing unfurled inside me, the desire to watch hockey still there in the background despite how hard I’d tried to snuff it out. First I was slipping with a hockey player and then there’d be watching games, and what was next? I turned into the old me? All my progress down the drain?

But that implied I had no self-control. And Idid. Not that forgetting my rules with Ryder exactly proved that.

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