Page 1 of Off-Ice Misconduct (Daddies of the League #8)

Ace McKinnon

T o be fair, it wasn’t originally my idea.

I can’t help that I’m insanely attractive.

Eye candy. Irresistible to even the most Mother of Fucking Theresas.

My GPA wasn’t high enough one semester, and my NCAA eligibility was at risk.

I went to my professor to ask if there was any way to bump my grade.

He did some weird thing with his eyes as if he didn’t want to say it, but he was definitely saying it. He wanted me to suck his dick.

It's just sex stuff, and I didn’t give a fuck.

What I give a fuck about is playing hockey.

If I don’t meet the GPA requirements, I don’t get to play.

And, yeah, there are other routes into the NHL, but my dad said I had to get a degree.

He’s literally fucking forcing me, using emotional blackmail to do it.

So, if I was gonna be stuck going to college, I was gonna be playing hockey while I did it.

I actually dragged my feet about it, despite having planned this inevitable future with my parents ages ago, but your mom dying your senior year of high school does bad shit to your head. I couldn’t even think about going to college, so I took a gap year. Oh shit, no wait. It was two gap years.

Look, I’m failing math right now, so ex-fucking-cuse me. To be fair, I thought I’d filled that requirement, but no, so I’m stuck taking a first-year math course—that I hate—in my third year.

Ugh.

Anyway.

The required GPA isn’t even that high. Yeah, practices and games and training make it difficult to keep up, and my duties as president of our frat house, but that’s not why I’m not making my grades. It’s because I love parties and women and men.

Why, Ace? Why would you risk your grades for a few amazing nights on the town?

Because I’m a young fuckhead, that’s why. I can admit it.

And.

And well.

Life is fucking short, okay? If anything’s proof of that, it’s my mom.

The most beautiful female hockey player there ever fucking was—I’ll fight anyone that says differently—died way too soon.

She had seven amazing seasons with the Canadian Women’s Hockey League.

Americans can play for that league, but she was a Canadian who became an American citizen when she married Dad.

She was competitive as hell, tough as nails, and the biggest Vancouver Orcas fan you’ll ever meet.

Like, obsessed. Jerseys, stats, post-game breakdowns.

She’d yell at the TV like the players could hear her.

But she also loved soft things like gardening, and farmer’s markets, and Gilmore Girls.

She taught me how to slap a puck at ninety-five miles per hour, and how to arrange perennials so they bloom in concert every year, making any garden an artistic masterpiece.

Don’t know if I’ll ever be into gardening, but hockey is the love of my life.

Mom died on the ice. Such a fucking stupid accident, too.

It wasn’t some big-league game either, it was a beer league she played for.

She fell backward. She was wearing her helmet.

Did you know you could wear a helmet and still get a concussion bad enough to put you in a coma?

Well, you can. Helmets protect your skull, not your brain.

She spent a week in a coma, fighting for her life. She never woke up.

How am I still playing hockey after that? Because surely my father would forbid it. The answer is simple: emotional blackmail. Same reason I’m in college. Mom wanted me to play hockey. She also wanted me to go to college.

So Dad uses the college fact against me, and I use the hockey fact against him.

And here we are.

Once I figured out this little system with my profs, sexual favors for better grades, I used it.

It’s not all my professors, okay? Just the classes I hate the most. Like English.

Some classes are just boring as fuck. Complete waste of my time.

I’m not gonna need any of that when I’m an NHL god.

My communications professor’s a man this semester, and my English prof is a woman.

Both are into me, and I know they’ll accept my deal without issue.

Coach approaches me as he does every time my grades dip.

I have a “discussion” with said profs. My grades bump back up, my spot on the team is secured, and I can go on living my best life without anyone—like my dad, the dean, or the NCAA—the wiser.

Easy fucking peasy.

I do what I need to do, get my grades up, and then it’s smooth sailing right into the off-season … um, I mean, summer holidays. Fuck, who am I kidding? I file things in my head as “hockey on” and “hockey off”. I could give a shit about anything that’s not related to hockey.

My summer will be spent practicing with my friends, playing street hockey, and doing conditioning workouts, in between massive parties that’ll drive my dad fucking nuts.

The coming year is my last year of college hockey, and the year I finally fucking graduate. I’ve got to make it count.