Page 7 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

Seven

Smitty

I grunted as I hooked the bar onto the supports, sweat dripping down my temples, my chest, my back.

Fucking hard work staying in shape.

I just wanted to eat pizza and sushi, lift the TV remote and a beer instead of dumbbells and doing bench presses. I wanted my cardio to be fucking.

There was nothing like having a woman in my lap, her naked body pressed to mine.

Hips and ass and breasts and curves.

Floral-scented shampoo and shining brown hair, bright green eyes.

Okay, I wanted Kailey in my lap, Kailey naked in my bed. But…she didn’t like me. I needed to realize that, get over it.

Sure.

Tell that to my dick that had woken me up at four in the morning, rock hard and weeping after I’d spent most of the night dreaming about Kailey and what she’d look like naked and in my bed…naked and coming in my bed.

There was a reason I was in the weight room, lifting until my arms shook, running on the treadmill until my legs felt like rubber, and the sun wasn’t even up yet.

Practice that day was going to be hell.

But…I had to do something.

And if exercising until my dick got soft was the only something I could think of, then so be it. My body would appreciate it as the season went on.

Stay strong.

Stay healthy.

Stay—

My cock twitched.

Hard, apparently.

Sigh.

Wiping my face with a towel, I stood, moved out of my weight room (which was really just my office with my desk shoved into one corner that I’d stopped using as an office because I always ended up doing any work on my couch, my laptop—and sadly, not a woman—plunked on my lap).

Up the stairs to my bedroom and into the shower, giving in approximately thirty seconds after stepping into the scalding stream, wrapping my fingers around my cock, gripping tight, stroking fast and hard, coming in an embarrassingly short amount of time considering I’d done just this same thing after getting back from my hike the night before.

Four hours and I could barely hold out for a minute?

I was in trouble.

Especially since I was fantasizing about a certain green-eyed brunette who wanted nothing to do with me.

I’d barely come, but just those green eyes appearing in my mind was enough for my cock to get hard again.

Cute.

As in, I was either going to walk around with permanent blue balls, or I was going to get tendinitis from whacking it so much to relieve it.

Ignoring my dick—because short of getting to work on that tendinitis, that was all I had. Embrace the blue balls, Smitty! That’s all you’re going to get!

Why did my inner asshole always sound like the announcers at the rink?

No clue.

Except that hockey had been my life for so long that I pretty much always thought in references.

Except that hockey had been the only reason I’d made it through school, my only motivation when the letters flowed around the page, that they flipped upside down or twisted onto themselves or rotated over backward.

It didn’t matter that it always took me a long time to finish reading a book, even though I was enjoying the story.

I could just get out on the ice and skate my ass off.

And that would be enough.

Work hard. Hit hard. Get the fucking puck and get it up to my teammates so they can score.

Shoot from the blue line. Hope someone would tip it in.

Protect my goalie, my teammates.

Fight and check. Stay on my skates. Clear the crease.

None of those required doing something I wasn’t good at.

But what I had to do next did.

Hazel’s homework. I’d tried to summon the energy to look at the packet the night before. Really, I had.

But I’d been feeling so fucking down, like such a goddamned loser.

Kailey didn’t like me.

I liked her.

Why? Why did it matter? Why did I care? Why did I think I had a right to her affection?

Newsflash, I fucking didn’t.

But people liked me, and?—

“Fuck, man,” I muttered, yanking my hands through my hair, twisting the handle for the shower hard enough that it groaned in protest when I turned off the water.

Rough hands using my towel to dry off the pertinent bits, ignoring my dick.

Throwing on clothes and was thankful I could wear sweats and a T-shirt to the rink that day instead of a fucking suit. Socks and shoes on. Hoodie over my head.

Down the stairs.

To my laptop, still sitting on the coffee table where I’d dumped it last night, frustrated that I was so off my game that my normal strategies for reading and working weren’t useful.

Opening the top, dropping onto the couch.

The screen brightened, illuminating the document, and…fuck it, I couldn’t sit down and deal with that again.

I needed to get out of the house.

Needed to clear my head and not do this here.

Grabbing my laptop, I shoved it into my backpack, threw it over my shoulder, and got the hell out of my house.

Thirty minutes later, I was at the practice rink—well, at the player’s snack area that was tucked away between the locker rooms and the training suites and various offices.

It was really just a conference room filled with recliners and couches, a small kitchen shoved against the back wall.

Food was either made by the staff at certain times, or—like now—there was stuff we could fix ourselves.

A Keurig for coffee, pastries from a local bakery, a fridge stocked with fruits and veggies and lean protein. Packets of oatmeal and various cereals.

For the guys who were used to all forms of continental breakfasts, it was a familiar spread of items.

For me, who’d been up since four and yet to have coffee, it was a welcome—and empty—sight.

“Fuck,” I muttered, shoving a pod into the coffee maker and grabbing a mug so I could brew myself a much-needed cup.

I needed to take advantage of the empty and get my broodiness out, get back to myself, stop caring that Kailey didn’t like me, accept that she wasn’t going to like me, so the guys didn’t know that I was all twisted up inside.

Because despite all the talk, I couldn’t do acceptance about Kailey.

I just…didn’t have it in me.

But, okay, here was the deal. I knew I was going to accept that she wasn’t going to like me romantically . I wasn’t that much of an asshole to expect a woman to fall for me just because I was bordering on obsessed.

In a perfect world? Yes.

In a world where I was him—a big brute who was only good at hitting things with my fists or stick or puck and, okay, I was also good at finding hole-in-the-wall restaurants—but I was fully aware that I wasn’t a catch like pretty Marcel or supremely talented like Raph and Oliver were.

I did okay. I ground it out, got shit done, knew I had an important role in the locker room.

But I wasn’t going to be gracing billboards or be in the All-Star game.

I hit shit and made people laugh, and I did both of those things well.

So, her not falling madly in love with me, that I could deal with.

But I wasn’t going to stop until she liked me as a friend.

I was a good friend. I could be that for her, and even if it wasn’t all I wanted it to be, it would be enough for me.

“Good plan, Smitty,” I muttered, scooping the cup off the Keurig and feeling a million times better as I snooped in the pastry box, loaded up on apple turnovers, and then went to one of the recliners.

Since I was in the room first, I had full control of the remote, and I clicked on the TV, immediately shuddering when I saw it was paused on some weird-ass documentary about Australian animals, a wombat waddling across the screen.

The marsupials creeped me the fuck out, and I knew it was either Theo studying up on something, or one of the guys trying to mess with me.

Either way, I was messed with.

Whoever thought they were cute little critters had clearly lost their minds.

First, they had a pouch.

Second, they had scary-ass claws.

Third, they had beady black eyes.

Fourth…none of this was getting me any closer to completing my personality test.

“Fuck.”

A sigh.

A glug of coffee.

“Okay, dumbass”—a breath—“just get this done.”