Page 45 of Anatomy of a Player

After the closest game yet, I made my way down to the locker room. My shoes felt like they’d been filled with lead—they may as well have been, as boring as they were.

Despite how hard I’d worked to make my write-ups of the game more interesting, this part of my job now felt like a total lie, and even the frigid air conditioning of the locker room couldn’t combat the nerves that had sent my sweat glands into overdrive.

To compensate, I wrote down every word the guys said with meticulous precision, deciding I’d talk up the team in my recap and brag about how well they worked together.

My pulse spiked every time I sensed Hudson, his hulking presence ten times worse now that we were in the same room.

Three solid quotes later, I decided the best way to deal with Hudson was to not deal with him at all. Not every player needed an interview and I needed space—a chance to get my head straight so it wouldn’t be so hard to be around him. I was sure that once I met a guy who fit my new dating requirements, it’d be much easier. Then maybe my body, heart, and brain wouldn’t be at war, making and breaking different alliances.

Flipping my notebook closed, I headed toward the door, my eyes on the green exit sign.

“Hey, Reporter Girl,” I heard from behind me, and my heartbeats tripped over themselves. Instead of turning around, I took long strides for the door.

Just before I could make my escape, a large hand wrapped around my wrist. I knew without turning around it was Hudson. “That’s the second time you’ve left without a good-bye,” he said.

“Can’t say good-bye when you never said hello.” I’d meant for it to come out sharp, but when I dared to glance back at him, his confident grin was still in place, so apparently not sharp enough.

He ran his thumb over the pulse point in my wrist, and my blood rushed to the spot, wanting more. “Then you owe me both.”

I became all too aware of the fact that he was only wearing his hockey pants, leaving his chest gloriously bare. My fingers twitched at my side.

“Hudson,” I said under my breath, with as much power as I could. “You’re being inappropriate.”

His free hand curled around my hip, and he leaned his lips so close to my ear that they brushed it when he spoke. “If you think this is inappropriate, wait till you see what I’ve got planned for later tonight. Meet me at my truck.”

I attempted to swallow, but my throat had stopped working. “We can’t do this anymore,” I whispered. “I’m done playing games. In fact, I don’t want to play at all.”

With a ridiculously easy tug, he spun me to face him. I’d known his physical presence would make following through more difficult, but I was unprepared for the powerful surge of want that fired through me.

But then I noticed people in the background. A couple of his teammates were watching us extra closely.

I’d already made a huge mess of things, and I was about to ruin my credibility, not only at my job, but with myself. I’d promised to take better care of my heart, and I intended to do just that.Break the cycle, break the cycle.

I jerked my arm out of his grasp and took a step backward. “Mr. Decker, I’m happy to get your comments on the game, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t handle me like I’m one of your puck bunnies.”

Those words obviously had an impact; his grin was nowhere in sight anymore. The muscles around his jaw hardened, and the twinges I’d felt before all returned with a vengeance, until my entire chest throbbed with the sharp pain of them.

All eyes were on us now. I didn’t know what else to do, but I’d made my stand, so I clung to it. I lifted my notebook and said, “In the lastperiod, they caught up, and until there at the end, it looked like we might have our first tie game. What do you think you guys need to do to keep that last minute scramble from happening as the competition heats up and you face off with higher-ranked teams?”

Hudson stared, his eyes so cold now that I repressed a shudder. “We’ll do what we always do. Train hard and change up our defense when we need to. Our true fans, even the ones some condescendingly refer to as ‘puck bunnies’—know that we take each game, win or lose, and learn from our mistakes.”

My hand shook as I wrote down the words. It was especially hard to write “mistakes” since I swore his eyes had bored into me when he’d said it, like he was telling me that I was one of them. The puck bunny reprimand stung, too, heaping on another solid brick of guilt.

“There’s a reason we’re on top, and we plan to stay that way,” he said. Before I could force out a “Thank you for your comments,” under the guise of only doing my job, he walked away.

The rest of the players turned around, like they hadn’t been watching the interaction, and the air of the locker room turned thick and suffocating. I made my escape, but the arena air wasn’t much better.

Probably because it wasn’t actually the air. I’d vowed to be strong enough to keep myself from slipping and falling for Hudson, but now that he was clearly done with me, it didn’t feel like some big win.

It felt like I’d just lost something that I didn’t know I had.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hudson

Nothing was worse than not being able to be there for your team, which was why I wasn’t even entertaining the idea of telling Coach I’d fucked up my ankle. I’d put on a good show at practice last night, jumping right back up after Ox and I had collided, ignoring the fact that every movement brought on a wave of nausea.

This morning my left ankle was an impressive shade of purple, and so swollen that it’d taken a lot of cramming and swearing to get my foot into my shoe.

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