Page 18 of Puck Struck
And in that moment, I realize how alike we might be.
Both so broken, both fighting with everything in us to keep doing what we love.
After the game and a round of victory beers in the locker room, the team piles onto the bus for a press event. Logan keeps to himself, much like he did back at the arena. He doesn’t need the glory like I do, it doesn’t fuel him like it does me.
The second I step off the bus, Logan pulls me away from the guys. I turn, more startled by the electric current that zips down the length of my arm at his demanding touch than his hard glare. Even after he was such an insufferable asshole to me, he can still make my heart rate rocket.
A camera flash temporarily blinds me, and I plaster on a smile.
“You finally gonna thank me for giving you that win?” God, I just can’t seem to stop myself from fucking with this guy even though the look on his face assures me that he’d very much like to snap me in half with his bare hands.
“If we weren’t in front of the press right now, I’d pound you into the fucking pavement, you little asshole.” Logan’s voice is as frigid as the cold wind cutting through my jacket. Then he takes a step back, plastering a fake ass smile on his face, and tobe honest, I don’t know how it doesn’t crack from the effort. “Come on. You’re with me.”
Fucking mentorship bullshit.
It’s going to be a long fucking night.
The press event coordinator walks over once we’re inside the building, her smile bright. “Remember to have fun,” she says, completely oblivious to the mammoth glacier standing next to me. I match her smile, giving a thumbs-up I’m sure will be in every picture posted online.
We start posing with fans, the two of us forced into close proximity. Logan’s stone-cold silence is deafening, even over the clicking cameras and excited voices. It’s a new type of hell, trying to act like I’m not affected. The more I grin, the harder he glares, his jaw clenched like he’d rather be anywhere else.
We stand shoulder to shoulder, me smiling, him scowling. I throw an arm around him, a friendly gesture to mask the tension, and crack a joke. “Hope we don’t break the cameras,” I say, striking a goofy pose.
A kid in the front laughs so hard, it makes me crack up too. I catch a flicker in Logan’s expression. It’s a shadow of something that might almost be confused with amusement. I bet he’d hate knowing I caught it. For a brief second, I think I might actually be able to crack through his asshole shell, but the fleeting moment passes and he’s all business again, his features hardening back to stone.
“You’re not as scary as you pretend to be,” I say, trying to keep it light. It’s a tease, an olive branch. And for a second, I have to wonder why I’m even bothering.
“Don’t get used to it,” Logan shoots back. His voice is ice, and I swear I can see my breath when I exhale.
The kid stops laughing, but not before I see a flash of curiosity in Logan’s eyes, a question hangingin the air. It rattles me. And while I hate to admit it, I need to understand why.
Why does this guy have me inside out, trying to incite him and push him away one second, and then pull him closer in the next?
Why should I care about this mess of a man?
Why?
And then a little voice deep in the recesses of my mind calls out, “Maybe because you’re just as big of a mess and misery loves company.”
On the bus ride back to the hotel, my head feels heavy and my shoulders slump. It’s like the armor I wear in public is finally wearing thin. The lights blur into neon smudges as I scroll through my phone screens and ignore the deep ache in my chest.
“You okay?” Tate asks in a low voice.
“Never better,” I say with a grin that fools no one, least of all me. I lean back, pretending I’m more exhausted than exposed, and close my eyes.
We get off the bus and head into the lobby once we’re back at the hotel. Logan tries to break away, ready to make a clean escape before I can latch on to anything close to real. But we get roped into more schmoozing, sponsors waiting and eager for face time before he can make a run for it. The fans weren’t bad. But this? The handshakes and bullshit? It feels like drowning, like suffocating, and I need air.
I drop back to where he stands, take a breath, and decide to throw something out there, to see where it lands. “Growing up, I never got to do events like this.” My voice is low, uncertain, and it sounds weird as hell to my own ears. Vulnerability isn’t a language I speak. Not anymore.
Logan’s silent, his face completely impassive. I don’t know what I expected, but I keep talking, the words tumbling outfaster than I can catch them. “But I guess it’s good to keep us in the spotlight.”
The spotlight is the only light I need to care about. But I don’t say that part. It would be too much to expose, too much to explain.
“Why do you care so much about what people think?” His question isn’t as cutting as it could be. It’s almost worse. Like he’s really asking, and I’m not ready to give him the truth.
“Because if they like me, they’re not looking too hard.” I smirk and give a half-shrug. “Joking. Mostly.”
The pause is brutal, long enough to make me feel like a fucking idiot. And the look in his eyes is as far from a joke as it gets.
