Page 9 of Lovesick (The Minnesota Mustangs #1)

RUDE AWAKENING? PARTY OF ONE

CREW

I stand before a two-story mansion, suddenly feeling incredibly small amongst the ornate, gold detailing, intricately sculpted columns, two-bay garage, vine-overrun veranda, siding exterior constructed of grouted cobble, and shingled roof that attaches to grandiose gables.

The length of the driveway—popcorned with gravel and sandwiched between crimson sugar maples—elongates its welcome to my threadbare shoes.

The yard itself is neatly trimmed, scattered with honeysuckle bushes and dotted with perspiration from the storm clouds overhead.

Awash in a halo of gilded light from a lone streetlamp, my gaze slides up to the giant, foreboding casement windows, making a pitstop across the exterior of the house in hopes of finding a modicum of mundaneness—a sign that I belong here even despite my class status.

But as my feet turn cold, I’m not allotted any time to change my mind.

I can hear rumblings of a conversation from within the house, the acoustics of footfalls amplifying, and the button-up that I threw on for this occasion is suddenly two sizes too small.

I loosen my tie with bleached fingers, feeling it squeeze my neck like a noose .

It’s really hot out here. Why is it hot out here? Minnesota is fifty-nine degrees on a good day. Oh my God. I’m burning up. I’m sweating in places I didn’t know I could sweat. I’m not normally a nervous person, okay?

With my stomach turning like a goddamn concrete mixer, the double doors swing open, heralding a warm pall of air, and if I wasn’t already nervous enough, my pulse rockets through the roof when I see who’s standing on the other side of the threshold.

Because no, Coach Lawson’s six-foot-three body is not crowding the doorway like I expected.

Instead, I’m met with someone exponentially shorter than me…

and someone I never thought I’d ever see again.

Her silky, chestnut waves of hair are unmistakable.

The vanilla and jasmine scent clinging to her is irreplaceable.

And those eyes—so hauntingly blue that I now see the resemblance between her and her father—promise to dismantle my entire world, piece by piece, until there’s no hope of rebuilding what once was.

Merit.

I’m frozen to the spot, unsure if she’s a hallucination of my innermost desires as my heart cries out to her in the most visceral of wails. Given the chance, I wouldn’t be surprised if it crawled out of my fucking body to reach her.

She doesn’t move either, though I deduce that it’s more out of shock than relief.

She’s donned the prettiest pink dress I’ve ever seen, its neckline dropping just slightly to display her elegant collarbones.

It’s tailored perfectly to her lithe body, and the hem consists of pleated fabric that tapers in at her bikini line, creating two sections of puffy material on either side of her hips.

A light brush of mascara thickens her lashes, the apples of her cheeks are powdered in a rosy hue, and there’s a thin gloss slathered on her pouty, kissable lips.

Lastly, her hair is thrown into a sleek bun as rebellious strands curl free to frame her doll-like face. In short, she looks flawless.

Shit. There are a million questions circulating through my brain on a conveyor belt, but none of them materialize before Coach Lawson interrupts our creepy staring contest with, thank God, zero awareness of the strange tension arcing between us.

“Crew! It’s so lovely of you to join us. Come in,” he greets, beckoning me with a large hand.

He’s never called me by my first name before. This is serious.

Nausea coats my tongue, and swallowing doesn’t wash away the vile taste.

I painstakingly inch into the house, moving at the pace of a snail while Coach Lawson has me pinned under his gaze like a taxidermied butterfly.

Irrationally, I blame it on the cold. Rationally, I blame it on the ghost of my dearly departed one-night stand.

Either Coach is more oblivious than I thought or he’s too polite to comment on my strange behavior because there’s still a larger-than-life smile plastered to his face. “Crew, this is my daughter, Merit. She just started her junior year at Minnesota University.”

Oh, we’ve met before. And no, that little detail never seemed to come up.

I prayed that this day would come. I was ready to trade all my earthly possessions for ten more minutes of her measly time, but I never envisioned this train wreckage in my melatonin-induced slumber.

Merit is Coach’s daughter. I.e., off-limits.

I.e., if he ever finds out about the way I fucked her like a porn star, the best-case scenario is that he ends my hockey career by breaking my legs instead of castrating me with a rusty set of pliers.

All I can muster is a weak, “Cool.”

COOL? Who says “cool?” Have I lost my goddamn mind?

Now that I’m trapped inside, the temperature is definitely too hot for my long sleeves, and there’s no saying how long it’ll take for me to fold like a bad hand of poker.

I catch a fleeting glimpse of the back of Merit’s dress, and fuck me, it’s backless. A delectable sliver of spine entices me, and there’s a giant bow that rests right above her butt—the one I vividly remember grabbing until the flesh turned red.

My mouth waters, but it’s not food I crave.

God, what’s wrong with me? Get it together, man! Stop staring at her like she’s a piece of meat. She’s not. She’s…she’s so out of your league and so not interested in rekindling things.

“Merit, this is Crew Calloway, the new captain for the season. He’s one of the best players I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching. Got a real shot at going pro.”

My brain has to recalibrate before I realize that he just gave me a compliment. “Thank you, sir. It’s been an honor working under your expertise.”

Why do I feel the need to bow? Should I bow? Is that culturally appropriate in the United States?

Coach bursts into braying laughter—the kind that could set off an avalanche in the dead of winter. “No formalities here, son. Please, call me James.”

I’ve never called him James before. I kind of never imagined him having a first name for some reason.

In fact, I never imagined him having a life outside of hockey.

But he clearly does, holed up in his million-dollar mansion with his daughter who’s been a constant thorn in my side ever since she Irish goodbye’d me in my own apartment.

Everyone just loiters in the foyer, relying on the awkward silence to carry our lack of conversation. Speaking of foyer, they have a foyer .

A vaulted ceiling stretches into the heavens, hosting a crystal chandelier that reflects a warm haze onto the polished hardwood.

The crown molding looks like something out of an architectural digest, and there are potted monsteras stationed at the entrance, followed by a spiral staircase that probably leads up to the lion’s den, or more appropriately, Merit’s bedroom.

“I hope you’re hungry. My wife made dinner,” James says, strolling into the adjoining dining room.

I don’t think I could eat even if I was starving.

Merit lingers behind him, waiting until he’s out of earshot before glaring at me with enough venom to turn me into stone. “What the hell are you doing here?” she hisses under her breath, nostrils flared, and teeth bared in the semblance of a snarl.

“Do you think I planned for this to happen?” I snap, and suddenly, the short-lived relief of seeing her again is stubbed out beneath the hurt that comes to a screaming boil in my chest. High-pitched, corrosive, unbearable . “You ghosted me.”

“You lied to me.”

“About?”

“You—you’re a hockey player!”

“I never lied. You never asked.”

Even in her heels, she’s still considerably shorter than me, and I have to resist the urge to laugh in her face when she shakes with pint-sized rage. “Oh my God! I never would’ve slept with you if I knew you were a hockey player!”

Instead of retreating, I close the distance between us. “I feel like that’s an unfair generalization. Not all hockey players are bad.”

Surprisingly—or unsurprisingly, given her spitfire nature—she doesn’t back down, getting all up in my personal space with her sweet-smelling perfume and her beautiful blue eyes and a blistering hatred that shouldn’t turn me on as much as it does.

“Oh, and let me guess: You’re going to be the one to change my mind?”

Indignation bubbles in my stomach. “You don’t know me. You barely even gave me a chance. ”

“An omission of truth is a pretty big personality indicator,” she growls. “And do I have to remind you that you came on to me ? We both agreed to end the night in sex, did we not? I don’t owe you anything beyond that.”

This is so not going the way I wanted it to.

She hates me. And as angry as I am at the situation, I’m also partly to blame.

After her tirade about hockey players, maybe I should’ve been upfront with her.

I didn’t withhold the truth just so I could sleep with her.

I truly thought it didn’t matter. She acts like she’s been personally victimized by every single hockey player in existence.

I rake a hand through my gelled hair, loosening some of the product. “I didn’t mean it like th?—”

She cuts me off as her ocean eyes darken—something leviathan and all-out dangerous lurking in the bottomless depths, stalking me, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

“It doesn’t matter. If my father knew what happened between us, he’d kill us both.”

I scoff. “Daddy’s princess? I think you’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she shoots back, curling her hands into fists, that one vein in her forehead pulsing with a mind of its own. She looks like she’s a second away from ending my entire bloodline right here.

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“God, I forgot how infuriating you are.”

Maybe Coach Lawson was the perfect catalyst. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. I mean, sure, she hates my guts, but at least I was gentleman enough to rearrange hers first. Knowing that she goes to the same school as me is lethal information, and I’m going to misuse the hell out of it.

I hazard a step closer to her, mere centimeters away from “accidentally” brushing her shoulder, reveling in the hitch of her breath that suggests maybe some close proximity is exactly what the doctor ordered.

“Oh, really? You definitely weren’t thinking that when you were screaming my name the other night. ”

She blushes the most adorable red, but like everything I’ve learned regarding Merit, it’s simply an act of deception. A venomous-fanged serpent lying in wait underneath the dip-dyed petals of a lotus.

She pinches my arm and I yelp, rubbing at the target zone.

Even though it was prompted with murderous intent, I’ve finally felt something since the strange stasis she left me in.

I know I should be treading carefully, and I really do respect Coach Lawson, but playing with fire scratches an itch that I didn’t even know I had.

I’d let her fucking burn me just to be near her.

“We’re never to speak about what happened that night, capiche?” Tone colored in a vibrant shade of hostility, she looks up at me with the hatred of a thousand fiery suns, deciding to throw some kerosene on the situation by shoving her pointer finger straight into my chest.

I flex my pecs. “Why? Afraid it’ll bring up some repressed feelings?”

Even with her veneer of unconvincing disgust, she never severs contact. “Actually, I’m just trying to get through dinner without puking,” she snarks, fully aware—or unaware—of the fact that she’s still touching me.

I can’t fucking shake this girl. I don’t know what it is about her.

It’s not because I’m some thrill seeker chasing what I can’t have.

It’s because, deep down, I think we’re more alike than we both realize.

She’s leeching on to every sensible brain cell ping-ponging around in my skull, and dead set on overseeing my calamitous downfall.

She finally goes to tear her arm away, but not before I use my hockey reflexes to keep her in place.

When my fingers gently encase her wrist, I’m swaddled by the heat from her body, and I can feel her winged pulse beating erratically against her skin like a bird trying to escape from an iron-wrought cage.

“You’re a terrible liar,” I tell her, dropping the rival act for a split second, hoping that she does the same. My voice softens, and I can’t exactly explain it, but a saw-toothed chasm seems to open in the cavity of my chest, swallowing my heart whole.

In that terribly long minute when we’re both acquaintances reunited under a guise, I can push aside the fabricated hatred to unveil that vulnerable underbelly I saw when we were lying together, naked, trusting each other with more than just our bodies.

It’s still there, thawing under the surface of ice, just waiting to be unearthed.

And I won’t stop until I see it again.

Her wrist tenses—a reflexive response rather than a defensive one. “And how are you so sure I’m lying?”

“Because I can feel your pulse race every time you look at me.”

Caught in the act, she evades my eyes, her whole body turtling in on itself. There’s no resistance. No smear campaign. I don’t expect a complete concession, but I’m slowly chipping away at her not-so-impenetrable earthworks.

But right as she’s about to say something—probably at my expense—my stomach interrupts us with a loud, impatient growl, dissolving whatever unspoken peace treaty we had going on.

Aaand…moment ruined.

Merit chuckles softly, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that it sounds like the choir of a hundred angels descending from the heavens. I release her arm due to sheer embarrassment, but to my surprise, she just reasserts her dominance by latching on to my wrist and pulling me sideways.

“Come on, big guy. Let’s not keep my father waiting.”