Page 134 of Friendzone Hockey
They’re not leaving? I don’t ask it out loud, but I’m sure it’s on my face. Philip chuckles.
“I’m taking my boys to a hotel for some much-needed attention,” he says, leaving it to my overactive imagination to decide what “much-needed attention” means. “But we’re looking forward to it.”
They leave, one on each of Philip’s arms. Never have I been happier to see someone get the fuck out. But as soon as the door shuts, Stacey’s arms around me become noticeable. They’re not arms I’d think anything about usually, but today they’re different.
Familiar, but new.
And then they become a trap.
“I read your journal, Dashie,” he says in a voice that could melt steel.
Fuck me. I’d forgotten I’d thrown it at him during a hasty retreat. “Y-Yeah, and?”
“You’re coming with me.”
He shuffles me through the kitchen and toward the back of the restaurant while butterflies tear up my insides and waves crash in my ears. For the first time, I can’t begin to guess what’sgoing to happen. Will we fight? Yeah, of course, but that’s all I can be sure of. And to be honest, I don’t care what happens. For weeks now, I’ve felt like I’m leagues away from Stacey, even when he’s in the same room.
We feel like us right now. I’m alive again.
He releases me once we’re in the back where the cubbies and lockers are. I spin around.
“Don’t you dare think I’m running to you just because they’re gone,” I say, even though that’s exactly what I want to do.
“Oh, for crying … I wasn’t with them, Dash.”
“You had fucking kiss marks all over your damn body.”
“Wouldja just come here a minute? I don’t like you all the way over there.”
I’m less than a foot away from him. “No.”
“Can you have mercy on a guy whose heart was just put through the fucking blender, Dash?” He clutches his chest. “I thought I was never gonna get to have you. I believed that with all my damn being. If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of doing anything with them.”
All I hear is that he wasn’t with them. Still don’t love the idea of them kissing his body, but this is leagues better.
“Even before you expressed your feelings about them, I couldn’t do it. It was my lame attempt to get over you, but there is no getting over you.” He turns away from me, punching the wall, pounding the shit out of his knuckles.
Stacey punching the wall doesn’t do anything bad to my insides. I know he’s the safest place in the world.
His chest rises and falls. He can’t look at me. I don’t know if I can look into those brown eyes of his just now either. If I do, I’m gonna want him, and there’s something we need to talk about before that can happen.
Stacey whips around, brows frowning, chest heaving, slightly crazed.
He’s so fucking sexy right now, I might die. Heart attack right here. Cause? Sexiness overload. I want him to kiss me again. Worse, I want to provoke him into kissing me. I want the feral side of him who grabbed me in Dad’s office and showed me what a real kiss felt like.
I’ve never felt all that powerful during sexually charged interactions, but with Stacey it’s just like when I’m flying down the ice, a puck in my cradle, about to score. I want him to fuck me—that’s not even a question—but I want so much more than that. I want to be consumed by him. I want him to sink into me until we mold so completely, we can’t be pulled apart. I want Stacey to belong to me, and only me ever again.
I step toward him, one, two, three steps.
We meet in the middle, intense air swirling around us like a tornado. He grips my face, and my hands slide up the side of his shirt, connecting with his hot skin. My heart might implode.
He’s shaking.
“I want you so bad, Dashie.”
“I want you, too, but?—”
“But?”
