Page 18 of Ruled Out

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his beige golf pants and dropped his eyes to the floor as he shook his head. “After everything I did for him.”

I flew back to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me. The smell of Jessie’s spicy cologne was still fresh on my pillow.

I snatched up my phone and typed out a panicked message.

Me

He’s just mad, but I know he’ll come around, Jessie. I know it. I’m so sorry.

I waited and waited for a reply.

Finally, when the ticks turned blue, I prayed for him to start typing a response.

But he didn’t.

He’d chosen to run away, and he had taken my heart with him in the process.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JESSIE

Idon’t know why I left her college campus a week ago and hoped—maybe even half expected—to hear from Mia.

But I do know why I haven’t messaged her myself. One, we never exchanged numbers, and two, I know I need to stay away.

Just because she’s in the same city doesn’t mean I can see her. It doesn’t mean I can ask her to let me take her out so I can try to make up for the multiple occasions I fucked up.

But knowing what’s best for her doesn’t override my need. Is she thinking about me? About us?

Part of me hopes her memory replays that day in her bedroom on repeat, just as mine does. All of me wishes Graham hadn’t walked in on us. How far would we have gone? I’m betting all the way. I know that’s what she wanted—to hand herself over to me. She trusted me to take care of her. And I would’ve gone to the ends of the earth to make it special for her.

I still would.

To think some other guy has had that privilege with Mia makes me sick to my stomach.

I stare down at the pucks laid out along the ice as we warm up for tonight’s game.

“You gonna start taking shots at me or what?” Jensen shouts over at me.

It’s a big fixture and I’m already MIA. Worse than normal.

“Yeah, sure.”

Hit after hit, slap shot after slap shot, gets harder and harder, and I take each one faster than the next as I work my way through the line of pucks set up for me.

Jensen stops nearly all of them, which is unsurprising given his insane talent. But some are so fast that he barely gets a chance to move as they go rocketing past him and into the net.

The final puck leaves my stick in a crack that rings above the noise of the crowd and music, and Jensen stands dead still in the center of his goal.

He pulls off his helmet and slowly skates over to me, his eyes fixed on mine the whole time.

I’ve barely spoken today. At morning skate, I was pretty much nonverbal and the same again in the locker room.

What the guys expect from me is to be a joker, the first one to rip the shit out of himself or say something stupid. Masking like that is actually pretty easy for me; it’s less exhausting. When you act like the fun guy, no one asks questions. But today, even that’s too tiring.

“Want to talk about it?” Jensen finally speaks.

I flick my eyes left and then right as I chew on the corner of my mouthguard. “Here?”