Page 81 of Puck Happens

I barely had enough room to scramble to my skates when I felt him behind me getting another shot into my ribs. Right under the pads, the bastard.

“What the fuck?” I heard Coach McKay shout.

In full rage now, I turned on Ron and wrapped my arms around his waist. In one smooth twisting motion, I took him off his skates and sent him crashing down in the space between the bench and the wall, in a takedown move my dad would be proud of. I heard him grunt in pain and barely had a chance to let the satisfaction of that wash through me before hands were grabbing me by the back of my pads and heaving me off of him.

I got in one hard shot to his kidney to pay him back for the sucker punch before I let myself be pulled away.

Coach McKay got in both of our faces. “Knock it off! Le Coeur, you should know better. What kind of fucking example was that for the team? Both of you, hit the showers. Now. And make it cold.”

It had been a shit practice and now my chin was throbbing from where he’d clipped me. My side hurt from where he’d connected to my ribs. Worst of all, Ron was right. Hitting him hadn’t fixed anything.

We hit the showers as ordered and stayed as far away from each other as we could.

When I was finished dressing, my gear packed up, I finally snapped.

The thing I’d been forcing myself not to do all week was now the only thing I could do.

I made my way from the locker room, down to the hallway where Liv’s office was. This was stupid because there was no good reason for me to be down here. If someone saw me I couldn’t say, “Oh, just stopping by PT.”

Nope. It was just Liv down here.

In my head I did a little recap.

TheIgnore Liv Planhadn’t worked.

TheFuck Liv Out of My System Planhadn’t worked.

I was officially out of plans.

She worked with us after morning warmups, watched the scrimmages and then spent afternoons in her office writing notes and her coach's reports. There had been a couple of times O’Rourke came down here after practice. Even Skalsberg was coming down once in a while to shoot the shit with her. Skalsberg brought Smith one time.

It was a whole fucking party.

Not me, though. I kept my distance.

God, I wanted to see her. I wanted her to kiss my chin better and tell me that Ron was an idiot and I did the right thing getting into a childish fight with him.

Then I wanted to bend her over her desk and fuck her until my head was right.

I stopped in front of her door and looked through the glass.

As I suspected, she was still there. Sitting behind her desk, typing something into her laptop. Her hair was up in one of those messy buns, and I could see her tongue pressed into the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on the screen in front of her.

She wasn’t wearing my jersey and I was struck by the reality that she would never wear my jersey. Instead. she was wearing some generic purple and black Bruisers’ t-shirt and those ass-hugging leggings she always wore. I wondered if I walked into her office, bent her over the desk, stripped her leggings to her thighs and just sank my cock inside her, if I finally, finally would have some peace.

Not pleasure. Just the secession of pain.

I knocked on the glass and she looked up to see who it was.

I didn’t know what to make of her expression. I wasn’t that guy who could read all the emotions on someone’s face, especially when they were complicated.

Happy. Sad. Pissed. Those were the only ones I could recognize and process.

Her expression didn’t say any of those things. Or maybe it said all those things. I couldn’t tell.

She waved her hand, inviting me in.

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. Fought the urge to close the blind on that little window, because that would be extra suspicious. She got up from her desk and met me halfway.

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