Page 8 of Puck Struck (Dirty Puck #3)

The press event coordinator walks over once we’re inside the building, her smile bright. “Remember to have fun,” she says, completely oblivious to the mammoth glacier standing next to me. I match her smile, giving a thumbs-up I’m sure will be in every picture posted online.

We start posing with fans, the two of us forced into close proximity.

Logan’s stone-cold silence is deafening, even over the clicking cameras and excited voices.

It’s a new type of hell, trying to act like I’m not affected.

The more I grin, the harder he glares, his jaw clenched like he’d rather be anywhere else.

We stand shoulder to shoulder, me smiling, him scowling. I throw an arm around him, a friendly gesture to mask the tension, and crack a joke. “Hope we don’t break the cameras,” I say, striking a goofy pose.

A kid in the front laughs so hard, it makes me crack up too.

I catch a flicker in Logan’s expression.

It’s a shadow of something that might almost be confused with amusement.

I bet he’d hate knowing I caught it. For a brief second, I think I might actually be able to crack through his asshole shell, but the fleeting moment passes and he’s all business again, his features hardening back to stone.

“You’re not as scary as you pretend to be,” I say, trying to keep it light. It’s a tease, an olive branch. And for a second, I have to wonder why I’m even bothering.

“Don’t get used to it,” Logan shoots back. His voice is ice, and I swear I can see my breath when I exhale.

The kid stops laughing, but not before I see a flash of curiosity in Logan’s eyes, a question hanging in the air. It rattles me. And while I hate to admit it, I need to understand why.

Why does this guy have me inside out, trying to incite him and push him away one second, and then pull him closer in the next?

Why should I care about this mess of a man?

Why?

And then a little voice deep in the recesses of my mind calls out, “Maybe because you’re just as big of a mess and misery loves company.”

On the bus ride back to the hotel, my head feels heavy and my shoulders slump. It’s like the armor I wear in public is finally wearing thin. The lights blur into neon smudges as I scroll through my phone screens and ignore the deep ache in my chest.

“You okay?” Tate asks in a low voice.

“Never better,” I say with a grin that fools no one, least of all me. I lean back, pretending I’m more exhausted than exposed, and close my eyes.

We get off the bus and head into the lobby once we’re back at the hotel.

Logan tries to break away, ready to make a clean escape before I can latch on to anything close to real.

But we get roped into more schmoozing, sponsors waiting and eager for face time before he can make a run for it.

The fans weren’t bad. But this? The handshakes and bullshit?

It feels like drowning, like suffocating, and I need air.

I drop back to where he stands, take a breath, and decide to throw something out there, to see where it lands. “Growing up, I never got to do events like this.” My voice is low, uncertain, and it sounds weird as hell to my own ears. Vulnerability isn’t a language I speak. Not anymore.

Logan’s silent, his face completely impassive. I don’t know what I expected, but I keep talking, the words tumbling out faster than I can catch them. “But I guess it’s good to keep us in the spotlight.”

The spotlight is the only light I need to care about. But I don’t say that part. It would be too much to expose, too much to explain.

“Why do you care so much about what people think?” His question isn’t as cutting as it could be. It’s almost worse. Like he’s really asking, and I’m not ready to give him the truth.

“Because if they like me, they’re not looking too hard.” I smirk and give a half-shrug. “Joking. Mostly.”

The pause is brutal, long enough to make me feel like a fucking idiot. And the look in his eyes is as far from a joke as it gets.

When we’re finally able to dip out of the group of people looking for photo ops, we head up to the room.

The elevator ride is quiet and I can bite through the tension cloaking the air around us.

My phone buzzes in my pocket as I step inside.

I almost ignore it, but a flare of panic makes me grab it.

A notification from Instagram pops up on the screen.

My finger hovers over it for a hair of a second before I stab it and open the app.

Connor. Did you forget? Because I didn’t.

My heart jumps into my throat, a hiss of air slipping from my lips. I delete the message before I can think, before I can breathe. The fake user account doesn’t tell me shit about who’s sending these messages, how they found me…or what they plan to do now that they have found me.

I’m not Connor anymore. Haven’t been for years. I left that all behind, locked away in a vault of my deepest, darkest secrets.

I sneak a glance at Logan where he stands on the balcony, his gaze fixed, watching every move I make. It’s like he’s waiting for something, maybe even the whole fucking story. But it’s not a story I’ll ever be ready to tell.

He gives his head a shake then looks back toward the city, and I let out a shuddering breath.

I’m alone in this, and I hate that it scares me less than the idea of him getting close.

I shouldn’t want him to get close. He treats me like I’m no better than dirt on the bottom of his shoe, and I’m not dealing with that shit any more.

I don’t deserve it. I’ve been at the bottom for most of my life and I clawed my way to the top.

There’s no way he’s gonna send me back.

But then a jarring thought niggles my brain.

Like recognizes like.

And maybe I’m not the only one who’s hiding something.