Page 25

LUKAS

L ukas woke up alone. This wasn’t a surprise. Even in her teens, Elliette had been an early riser, getting up an hour before she had to leave for school to make breakfast for her father.

With a flash of hopefulness, Lukas sniffed at the air, but no delicious aromas were coming from his kitchen. Too bad. He remembered Elliette always going all out.

More times than he could count, when he’d been staying with the Rogans during the off-season, he’d woken to the smell of bacon, pancakes, and freshly brewed coffee. Sometimes even cinnamon rolls.

Of course, Elliette’s father barely did more than grunt in acknowledgment of her efforts, and even that was rare.

Still, she kept doing it.

Lukas understood why now; she’d been holding out hope that the man—despite his cool indifference—might someday truly notice her. See her.

It had made Lukas sick back then. He felt even worse now.

Back then, he’d made a point of praising her skills, taking second helpings and sometimes even thirds, though it made him more sluggish on the ice.

He understood now how his attentions had affected her. He should have been more careful with her impressionable heart. But at the time, he’d thought he was merely being polite.

Or was that a reckless lie he’d told himself? Had he subconsciously meant to communicate more?

He rolled over and checked the time. Practice started in a couple of hours. The first regular-season game was only a few days away.

He inhaled and closed his eyes. Elliette’s scent—peonies and vanilla—perfumed his sheets and tugged at his heart. His mind. His gut.

He curled his arms around his pillow and drew it close, burying his nose in the fabric. It was rare moments like this, when he could almost imagine a future where he woke up to her scent every morning. That is, if he had been anyone else. If he hadn’t had his blood. Or his face.

But then, maybe Elliette wouldn’t have been so drawn to him if he didn’t look the way he did. She was a woman after all. He couldn’t blame her for reacting like all the rest.

Or maybe he wasn’t being fair to her.

No matter. It was a moot point. He was Lukas Bakken and all that entailed. And fantasies were just that for a reason. Last night, this morning, and her scent on his pillowcase were all he’d ever have of her.

He arched his neck, fixing his eyes on the wall behind his head, straining to hear any movement on the other side. But he heard nothing. She was probably already hard at work.

Maybe she was talking to her brother—making sure everything was truly settled and he wasn’t faulting her for any rift between two old friends and teammates.

Lukas closed his eyes for what he thought was a few seconds but snapped awake when the alarm went off on his phone.

He checked the time. “Shit.”

Less than an hour later, Lukas parked his Lotus at the rink, amazed that Elliette’s floral scent was still in his nose, impossible to shake, as though she’d imprinted herself on his senses.

He got out of his car, slung his bag over his shoulder, and jogged up to the door that Rafe held open.

“Yo,” Rafe said. “You’ll never guess who we ran into after you went home last night.”

“Who?” Lukas switched his bag from one shoulder to the other so he could better navigate the door.

“Elliette Rogan’s girlfriends. At a different bar.”

“Oh yeah?” Lukas asked because what else was there to say?

“Elliette—” Rafe began.

“Elli,” Lukas said, correcting him.

“What?”

“She prefers Elli.”

“Oh,” Rafe said. “Well anyway, she went home early, but Rogue knew her crew, so he introduced us. And—FYI—her name’s Amy.”

Lukas glanced up at Rafe and scrunched his forehead. “ Whose name is Amy?”

Rafe looked confused by the question. “The girl I was asking you about before. Remember? Pretty. Petite. Long black hair. Her grandparents are Korean, by the way. From Seoul.”

Lukas shot a blast of air through his nose and led the way down the corridor, headed for the locker room. “Sounds like you actually talked to her.”

“A little,” Rafe said. “She’s shy. Works with preschool kids, but she might have to find a different job because she doesn’t get benefits and needs better health insurance.”

Lukas glanced back at Rafe, then had to stifle another laugh when he saw the somewhat stunned, somewhat thoughtful look on his hell-hound captain’s face. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the guy was smitten.

“Is that right?” Lukas teased, hoping to hear more.

“She drinks Surly Furious IPAs and loves cheese, though she didn’t tell me that. I figured that out on my own. She’d actually stopped talking to me by that point. Not sure if I said something wrong.”

Lukas hoped this Amy person wasn’t the type to dick Rafe around. The hell hound was clearly into her, and when hell hounds got played, the emotional shrapnel tended to spray. Innocent bystanders could get hurt.

“Hey, do you think you could get her phone number from Elli?” Rafe asked, tapping the back of Lukas’s shoulder.

“ Me? ” Lukas asked.

“Sure. The two of you are close, right?”

“We’re not that close,” Lukas said, needing to dispel any rumors before they took root. “And whatever Rogue told you last night, he was exaggerating. Just giving me shit.”

“Sure,” Rafe said. “Whatever you say.”

Lukas glanced over his shoulder and scowled. “You know…if you want this girl’s number so bad, you should ask Elli herself. ”

“Maybe I will.”

Lukas opened the locker room door, and the familiar scent hit him like a welcome embrace: stale sweat hiding behind pine-scented disinfectant.

Most of the team was already sitting on the benches in front of their lockers, getting dressed: nut cup, pads, red-and-black-striped socks, pants, and practice jerseys.

“Yo! Yo!” Murph called from the far end of the room. He was still shucking off his plaid flannel shirt. “You shouldn’t have gone home early, Bakken. The night kept hopping!”

“Next time,” Lukas assured him, then sat in front of his locker and got himself dressed. He shoved his feet into his skates and tightened the laces, giving them such a strong tug that one of them snapped. “Shit. Anyone got a spare?”

“Equipment room,” Bjorn said. “On the shelf by the first-aid kit.”

Lukas grunted and got up, balling up the six inches of broken string in his hand. He lumbered on his skate guards out of the locker room and only made it twenty feet when Elli emerged from an office with a stack of folders in her hand.

He stopped.

She stopped.

He opened his mouth to say something, but she got the first words out.

“Have a good practice,” she said, giving him exactly the cool indifference he’d asked for.

So why the hell did it hurt so much?

He watched her go—her modest skirt doing a shit job at masking the shape of her ass or the way her hips swayed—until she turned a corner and disappeared from view.

With a sigh, Lukas headed back down the hall toward the equipment room, covering another twenty feet before he heard a muffled argument coming out of an intersecting hallway up ahead.

When he reached it, he found Rogue, Tuttle, and Petey in a tight huddle. They turned toward him with wary expressions, but said nothing.

“Uh…hey,” Lukas greeted, his curiosity piqued. It wasn’t unusual for the human members of any team to band together, but the residual energy from their intense conversation left an adrenaline-laced scent in the air. “What’s up? Am I interrupting something?”

“Not really,” Tuttle said. “Just helping Petey work through some trouble with a chick he hooked up with last night.”

Lukas smelled a lie. He shifted his gaze from Tuttle to Rogue, who met his eyes.

“We good?” Lukas asked.

“Yeah, man,” Rogue said. “We’re good. I talked to Tiny this morning. She said she’d had too much to drink, and it was a bad case of YOLO.”

“YOLO?” Lukas asked, irritated by the explanation. Was that all it had meant to her?

“You only live once,” Rogue explained.

“I know what it means,” Lukas bit out.

Rogue shrugged. “She didn’t put it that way exactly, but I knew what she meant.”

“Yeah?” Lukas asked. “What did she say?”

Rogue glanced at Tuttle and Petey, then back to Lukas.

“She said I shouldn’t expect her to ‘color inside the lines’ all the time.” He made air quotes around color inside the lines . “And how sometimes you have to ‘embrace the mess.’ ”

Lukas pondered those words. Did they make him feel any better? Maybe they did. Maybe that’s exactly what he’d been doing last night: embracing the mess.

“Obviously,” Rogue said, “between me and her, Tiny’s the one who’s got the way with words.”

Lukas nodded slowly. She was definitely clever with them, and she could even be funny.

Once, when she was sixteen, she’d asked him what time it was, and he’d responded, “Almost seven.”

She’d quickly replied, “West Virginia.”

He’d stared at her, not comprehending.

She’d smiled back, waiting for him to understand.

Finally, he’d been forced to ask, “ What? ”

She’d simply repeated herself. “West Virginia.”

It still took Lukas a second. Then he got it. And though he’d never been big into puns, and hers was pretty subtle, he still had to hand it to her. Words were her playthings. And she played with them however she pleased.

So, maybe Elli had the right idea about coloring outside the lines. He did only have one life. Why shouldn’t he grab on to what he wanted while he still could?

Even if his happiness was short-lived, at least he’d have a little bit of it.

“Dude,” Rogue said.

“Huh?” Lukas jerked his head up.

They were all staring at him with eyebrows drawn.

Shit.

“You okay?” Rogue asked.

“Fine,” Lukas said, then raised his hand, showing them the broken strings. “Gotta grab some new laces. See you on the ice.”

They all gave him chin lifts and watched him go. Lukas felt Rogue’s eyes on him all the way to the equipment room.