Page 1 of Face Off
Prologue
Hayley
“Couldn’t have a family of your own, so you thought you could just move in on mine?” Boyce Cameron spits as he comes face to face, chest to chest with Brooks at center ice.
“Fuck you,” he growls in response as he grips Boyce’s jersey after dropping his gloves to the ice.
His hand cocks back as he uses all his force to swing it forward, making contact with his face. Stumbling a little on the ice but never letting up as they go at each other.
“Brooks! Just walk the fuck away!” I yell from the player’s box. But it’s muffled and hard for him to hear me as they go at each other.
“Break it up,” the refs say as they try to separate the pair. But Brooks refuses to let up. To let him stake claim on me after all these years. After he abandoned me in a time of need.
It’s Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals. A blood bath if you will, as the team I’ve been contracted to work for, the Seattle Skipjacks, take on the Arizona Heat. Tension’s been runninghigh every game of the series, all leading up to this. Boyce Cameron, the Heats star center, being the instigator of it all. It has nothing to do with the Skipjacks. It has everything to do with Brooks Miller, how he has weaseled his way into my heart, stepping up when Boyce was nowhere to be found.
Now, here I stand, watching the man I love, brawling with the man I thought I once loved.Punch after punch continues as blood drips down to the ice. Boyce stumbles onto the ice, giving Brooks the advantage as he uses the last of his force behind his punches.
As the refs finally pull Brooks off Boyce, I hop the wall separating the players from the ice, running—well slipping more than anything to reach Brooks. Never once glancing at Boyce, who’s slowed to get up from the ice.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” I say to him, my hands flying to either side of his face, inspecting the fresh cuts on his cheek.
“Baby, it’s just a cut,” he says between pants as he tries to get his heart rate down. “All series, that asshat has been talking so much shit about you and Camden. I just lost it,” Brooks says, turning to me and pulling me to his chest as he towers over me in his skates.
“That’s right, walk away with the whore,” Boyce yells. Brooks stiffens at my side, gritting his teeth, ready to lunge at him again. “You better watch yourself, Miller. You have no idea who she really is. Still doubt that kid was even mine to begin with.”
“Cameron, final warning. Get to the box now. Miller, you’re out for the rest of the game,” the ref says, skating over to him. “Dr. Marshall, if you will.”
His gaze still locked on Boyce after his comment, I pull his face back to mine, silently reminding him to let it go. Picking up his gloves and tucking them under his arm, his fingers entwine with mine. Skating slowly by my side, he makes sure I don’t slip as we make our way off the ice.
“Should have let me deck him again.”
We walk into the locker room, taking a seat on the bench so I can clean and dress his wound. “He’s not worth it,” I say, grabbing my medical bag from the cubby in the corner.
“I don’t care who he is to you. He had no right to say what he said about you and Cam,” he says, looking me in the eye. A protectiveness showing through them.
I kneel in front of him, taking his hands in mine. “I know,” I say quietly. “But you have to know why he would say those things. Boyce—”
I don’t get to continue, as my father and owner of the Skipjacks barrels into the locker room.
“Hayley Richards, what the hell has gotten into you? And you, Mr. Miller. What in the fuck went through your mind when you decided to throw down during one of the most important games of this entire season!”
“Richards?” He looks up at me, pulling his hands from my tightening grip. “Did he just say Hayley Richards?” The look of shock resonates on his face as he stands to put some distance between the two of us.
“Brooks…” I reach out to him, but he moves further away.
“Of course, it all makes sense now.”
My heart cracks as his once warm eyes darken with anger and hurt. Skates still on, he darts out of the locker room, slamming the door behind him. Tears that once stung the backof my eyes are now front and center, streaming down my face as I stand here looking at my father. Disappointment written all over his stoic face.
Hayley
12 months earlier…
“Dr. Marshall, phone call on 5-0 line one,” the receptionist’s voice says over the loudspeaker. “Dr. Marshall, phone call on 5-0 line one.”
“Dr. Marshall,” I say, answering the phone at the nurse’s station in north pod. I lean my right elbow against the desktop, glancing at the clock on the wall to see what time it is.
“I’ll never understand why you insisted on taking your mother’s maiden name.” My father’s voice beams through the phone as I inwardly groan.
