Page 13

LUKAS

Game day

L ukas hopped over the boards and dropped his ass onto the bench as the next shift took the ice. He pulled off his helmet. Sweat dripped from the ends of his hair onto the rubber mat beneath his blades.

Rafe MacConall collapsed beside him and tipped the end of his stick toward the stands on the other side of the rink. “See those two guys?”

The stands were full of fans who liked to watch the pre-season games, but Lukas knew exactly who Rafe was referring to, primarily because they weren’t decked out in red and black, and they didn’t look like they were there for the entertainment or for anyone’s autograph.

They didn’t cheer. Hell, from what he’d noticed, they didn’t even smile.

“Clocked them earlier,” Lukas said. “Reporters, right?”

He’d felt their watchful eyes on him during the pre-game warmup, so he’d made damn sure not to hold back when it came to his shoulder. If they were here to report on his recovery, he wasn’t going to give them anything too sensational to write about.

“No,” Rafe said. “Not reporters. They’re from Vegas. Steer clear.”

“The Las Vegas Leprechauns?” Lukas asked. It wasn’t unusual for other teams to send scouts.

“They’re not from the league,” Rafe said. “They’re bookmakers.”

“ What? ” Lukas’s head jerked up to give the two men another look.

“Bookies,” Rafe said.

“I know what bookmakers are, Rafe. I meant what are they doing here?”

“Setting the odds, of course. But if you’re more worried about reporters, that girl you’re seeing….”

Lukas shot him a confused glance, and not just because he wasn’t used to having full-blown conversations in the middle of a game. “I’m not seeing anyone.”

“That girl who was photographed with you,” Rafe explained. “The one in the article this morning. I hate to break it to you, but she’s a reporter.”

Lukas clenched his teeth. The morning’s sports column announced the trade, then projected the playoffs based on how stacked the Spriggans’ lineup was this year.

But there was also the photo of him and Elliette, both of their expressions piqued with emotion, and the typical pull quote:

Lukas Bakken doesn’t waste time

connecting with local female population.

“Relax. I’m not seeing Elliette Rogan.” He pointed up to the stands where she was sitting. “Don’t you see the resemblance? She’s Rogue’s little sister. She’s got a job with the team.”

“You mean that shit was real?” Rafe asked, sounding stunned. “She said Oisín sent her to the training room to interview me. I thought she was an outside reporter who’d slipped past security.”

“She’s the team’s new digital and social media manager.” An odd sense of pride quickly replaced Lukas’s irritation with the article.

“Huh,” Rafe said, considering.

“Yeah,” Lukas agreed.

Will “Q” Quesenberry, the teams’s first-string center took a mighty swing on net. Lukas and Rafe rose from the bench together in hopeful anticipation, then sank back down when the shot pinged off the pipe.

“Who told you that?” Rafe asked. “About her getting the job.”

“I was there when O’Rourke hired her. She’s doing a series of posts and feature articles on all of us, starting with me.” Lukas was still unsure how he was going to survive the torment.

The second line skated back toward the bench while the third line leaped over the boards and onto the ice.

“I would think you’ve had enough exposure,” Rafe joked. “Didn’t I see a series of photos of you in an elevator with three flight attendants in last month’s Creature Confidential? ”

“They weren’t flight attendants. They work for my accountant.”

“Hmmm. I did like the math on that story. Three on one. Nice.”

Lukas clenched his teeth and didn’t acknowledge the joke, if that’s what it was supposed to be. That whole story had been trumped-up by the media. Nothing had happened in that elevator, and those women didn’t deserve the scandal.

Lukas adjusted his gloves, eager to get back in the game.

Rafe kept talking. “Who was that girl who came to our last game with Rogue’s sister? The short one. Asian. Long black hair.”

“No, idea,” Lukas said.

“She was pretty.”

“Okay.”

“You really didn’t notice?”

“Nope.” Lukas hadn’t been paying attention to anything except for how to not pay attention to Elliette. In fact, that whole time, he’d barely heard a word Rogue had been saying, and the guy was his best friend. Or, at least, he had been.

Rogue may have known about all the shit Lukas was working through with his clan, his dad, and his own shattered dreams, but that didn’t mean Lukas didn’t owe him an apology for nearly three years of radio silence.

Speak of the devil. Rogue skated off the ice, hopped on top of the boards, and swung his legs over. He backed his padded ass up, shoving in between Lukas and Rafe on the bench.

“Fuck,” Rogue said. “I couldn’t even get a single shot out there.”

Two more headed in, and Lukas and Rafe changed on the fly, jumping over the boards and taking their positions—Lukas at the far end of the blue line, Rafe at center ice.

Lukas hit the brakes and sent up a spray of ice, receiving the puck, and the team moved as a fluid unit, up and down the ice, making rapid-fire passes, the puck slicing across the ice from player to player.

With every swing of his stick, Lukas’s shoulder twinged, but it wasn’t enough to distract him from the puck—not to mention, block out the myriad thoughts that had plagued him all night.

Why did Elliette have to remind him of that night at the bonfire? He knew he’d embarrassed her, and his regret over the whole thing hadn’t lessened with time.

Lukas received the puck and skated down the ice, trying to keep his head in the game, even though his guilt kept pulling his thoughts back to Elliette.

All these years later, and he could still conjure the woodsmoke and the scent of too much beer on her breath.

He could recall the heat of her body as she recklessly leaned into him, her palms flat against his chest.

“Bakken! Here!” Tuttle cried.

Lukas passed him the puck, then flew down the ice, dodging collisions, remembering how it had taken all his strength not to shift into a wolf that night—something that could have seriously injured her, standing so close.

Fortunately, he’d held it together. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t shake the sound of his words—acidic, biting, and just as injurious—telling her she was drunk and embarrassing herself.

Saying he wasn’t into her.

Uncurling her fingers from his shirt and announcing to her—and to everyone in earshot—that she wasn’t the kind of girl who got on any guy’s radar.

That last barb had been the worst. People laughed, and Lukas had seen the pain on Elliette’s face.

Lukas got the puck back and— Slap! —took a shot on goal, giving it everything he had, punishing the puck with the weight of his shame because his justification was as thin now as it was back then.

The puck bounced off the post and the rookie picked it up, taking it behind the net.

The shift changed, and Lukas skated back to the bench.

He collapsed onto the plank, remembering how he’d held out hope all through that miserable night that Elliette would be too drunk to remember what he’d said.

But when he saw her red swollen eyes the next morning, he knew that had been too much to ask.

He glanced up at the stands and saw her learning forward, her eyes glued to the play.

More recently, Lukas had hoped she’d grown up, moved on from her silly crush, and gotten over the whole thing. Forgotten it, even, if that kind of hope didn’t make him too greedy.

But to know that her humiliation had festered, much like it had for him… Yeah, it sucked. But she was the one who’d put him in that position. Made him say all those cruel things by putting her hands on him, pressing her body against his.

If she boxed him into that corner again, would he play the scene any differently?

Yes and no. He wouldn’t humiliate her in public, but he’d shut her down just as fast.

He couldn’t tell her about his future. He couldn’t bear to see the disgust on her face.

And he wouldn’t give in to the scent of her arousal—a devastating musk that overran her usual floral scent and belied her earlier words: “Past tense. I don’t like you now .”

The shift changed, and Lukas moved down the bench to make room for Rogue, who returned, gasping for air.

Elliette claimed that her teenage crush had nothing to do with his physical appearance—something that would have softened him if she hadn’t, in that same breath, reminded him of another scene he’d worked hard to forget: finding a fifteen-year-old Elliette walking along a county road, in the middle of the night, trying to make her way home from an away game two towns over.

Her friends had apparently— accidentally —left her behind. Forgotten her, if that was to be believed. And Elliette’s father didn’t allow her a cell phone, not even for emergencies.

By the time Lukas had come across her—purely by fortuitous chance—she’d walked for nearly three hours. In the cold. In flimsy shoes. She’d been on the verge of collapse when he found her, and she shook all the way home.

Maybe, if he’d allowed himself to look into her eyes that night, he would have seen the seed of her teenage crush. But those eyes … God, those eyes …

He could barely allow himself to look at them now.

Petey skated in, and Lukas hopped over the boards, re-entering the game.

“Heads up!” someone cried.

Lukas hadn’t realized he’d lost so much focus. An opponent checked him from behind, and Lukas’s head crashed against the glass so hard his helmet popped off.

He landed face-down on the ice never having heard the whistle or the crowd’s devastated, “Ohhhhhhh.”

Lukas did, however, after a long while, imagine a voice calling his name from somewhere far, far away. Almost as if it were under water. “Bakken? Bakken, can you hear me?”

Slowly, Lukas opened his eyes. The trainer was squatting beside him. So was Coach Erikson with his hand on Lukas’s shoulder.

“Welcome back, son,” Coach said .

Lukas groaned and pushed himself up to his hands and knees.

“Anything hurt?” the trainer asked, helping him to his feet.

Everything hurt. “Got my bell rung. That’s all.”

“How’s your vision?” the trainer asked.

“Fine.” But when Lukas looked up into the stands, most everyone was blurry. Everyone, it seemed, except a wide-eyed Elliette, who was on her feet, pressing her hand to her heart like a shield.