Page 10 of Pucked Up (Punk as Puck #2)

Ford burst into laughter and grabbed my shoulder, giving me a gentle shake. It was obvious he was the mediator of their little trio. “Breathe, dude. And unclench the butthole. Tucker has no idea you’re here, nor would he care if he did.”

That…well, it stung a little. I hated that I wanted to be liked by these guys, and I hated that Boden was campaigning against me. But now that Ford was here, I realized it was time to implement one of my plans.

I was not above psychological warfare.

“Would you come with me to my office?”

“You know, your accent actually kind of does sound like Bodie’s.”

I flushed. I’d been a massive snob when I first moved to Montreal. I told myself they weren’t real French, after all. It was American French. And then I’d gone and fallen in love with the people and the city and our life there, and I regretted what a dick I’d been.

After Reid’s accident, I’d not only mourned our old life together, but I also mourned the home we’d built. I’d grown accustomed to the idea of trades and having to pack up and move anytime the league decided they wanted to shake things up, but we’d gotten comfortable there.

We’d bought an apartment, had a fish tank, and had talked about getting a cat.

Then it all went to hell one flu season, and it was all over.

“I lived in Montreal for several years,” I said as we headed down the hall.

“Oh, damn. Do you know Bodie and his family?”

I tried to hide the guilt on my face. I’d never met him before the night at the bar. I’d only met Arnaud briefly before. But I’d heard about them both plenty. I just hadn’t connected the dots when the gorgeous man was gasping and begging beneath me.

“Not everyone who lives there knows each other. You know it has a population of?—”

“Yeah, yeah, what? Like six billion people?” Ford said as he breezed past me and plopped into the seat across from my desk.

I choked on a cough. “That’s not entirely accurate.”

“Million, billion, whatever. Same-same, right?”

It was not, but I also didn’t have time for a statistics lesson. We stepped into my office, and I walked around my desk, easing into my chair. “Are you comfortable?”

“Yeah. Carol-Ann’s been kind of a pain in the ass lately, but she’s been alright today.”

“Is that your girlfriend?”

He blinked, then burst into laughter and rucked up the leg of his sweats to show off his prosthetic. It was different than most of the guys wore. It had a flesh-colored cover wrapped around it that looked like it was covered in bite marks.

I did not want to ask.

“I named her Carol-Ann after Poltergeist . You know that movie, right?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, you get it.”

I did not get it. “So. I want to speak to you about being alternate captain.”

Ford paled. “Look, man. I know Bodie’s been kind of a pain in the ass, but please don’t take it out on me. I work in a goddamn grocery store, okay? I need this.”

“What? No,” I said, leaning over my desk. “Ford—or, ah, Bell. Do you prefer Bell?”

“I do not,” he said with a sniff.

“Ford,” I amended. “I’m not taking away the A. I’m offering you the C.”

He stared at me for a long time. “Okay, but… Bodie has the C.”

“I’m aware.”

“So…”

I took a long breath, trying to use my words carefully. “ So , I’m not so sure he’s the best player to hold it at the moment.”

Swallowing heavily, Ford glanced at the door, then shook his head. “I kind of—” He hesitated. “I’d like to have it when he moves on. I mean, look, Brian was a decent coach, but he didn’t do the job we needed him to do.”

I had no idea where this was going, so I sat back and let him speak.

“Bodie should have had scouts at our games years ago, but Brian was a chickenshit. He didn’t want to answer awkward questions like, what if your team captain gets pissed off and tries to shove his fingers up the nose of an opposing player, accidentally elbowing a reporter in the face again.”

I bit the inside of my lips to keep them from smiling. I’d seen the video. Boden looked wild and so full of that passion I was only slightly obsessed with. And in Beijing, he’d been ready to commit crimes. It should not have been attractive, but God help me, it was.

“So he just kept blowing him off. And yeah, I know Bode fucked up in Beijing, but he won the fucking gold four years before that. He’s been in a sled since before he could walk—which, I mean, I guess that makes sense.

He didn’t walk unassisted until he was seven, but that’s beside the point.

He was born with hockey in his blood. You can’t take that from him before he has the chance to prove that he’s not the sum of one fucking terrible mistake.

Of which Tucker and I take a lot of responsibility for, by the way. ”

I studied him for a long beat. “So, you’re saying?—”

“I’m saying fuck no. I do not want the C. And fuck you for offering it to me that way. Uh, respectfully,” he added.

“Respectfully.”

His ears pinked. “Yes.”

“But if I were to ask you, should Boden leave the team?—”

“Of his own free will?” Ford chanced.

I spread my hands with a shrug. I had zero intention of taking Boden’s C from him. I had zero intentions of booting him from the community league. I had every intention—so long as he got his head out of his ass and showed me the kind of player I knew he was—of getting a scout here.

But I wasn’t going to tell Ford that. I wanted him freaked-out.

I wanted him panicked. I wanted him to go back to Boden and warn him that he was on thin goddamn ice.

Ford went pale again. “I have to, uh… Listen, I gotta go. I have to call my sandwich guy. I’m late with my order.”

“You have a… sandwich guy?”

“Yes. He’s amazing. He creates miracles with salami. Don’t ask me his name though!” He stood up and stumbled toward the door. “But he hates French people. And coaches. And people new in town. And don’t ask anyone else about it. They’ll lie and say I made him up. Okay, bye!”

He was gone, and the moment the door shut, I let out a heavy sigh and bent forward until my forehead knocked on the side of the desk. “Ow. ”

Turning my head, my eyes snagged on my single office photo of Reid. I’d taken it in Key Largo during our five-year anniversary trip. He was standing on the end of a pier at sunset, the wind blowing his hair back away from his face.

His flow, he’d called it. His good luck flow. I could still remember what it felt like when I ran my fingers through it.

We’d been so good together. Best friends in ways I’d never been friends with anyone before him. But our relationship had cooled years ago. Not in a way that made me unhappy, but in a way that led me to forget how good something new could feel.

I thought, after Reid, I wouldn’t miss that sensation of lightning in my veins. And I hadn’t felt it with any hookup who had come after him.

Until Boden.

I wished I could get under a scalding shower and scrub him away from the inside out, but he was under my skin where I couldn’t reach. I didn’t know what to do. Time was supposed to fade this desperate want.

But every time I saw him, it only got worse.

And in just a few hours, I’d have to look into his angry eyes again and fantasize what we could have had, if he wasn’t such an obnoxious little shit.

Or if I wasn’t such a goddamn coward.

Two weeks later, and there was blood on the ice again.

By some miracle, Boden hadn’t been ejected, and he hadn’t tried to fight me this time.

But I could feel his glare like a physical thing as he sat in the sin bin.

It wasn’t set up for the sleds exactly, so all I could see was his helmet-mussed hair and his eyes, which were only just visible over the ledge of the penalty box.

He looked like an angry cat, and he was directing all that fury at me.

He was, once again, fucking up all my plays.

They should have had at least half a dozen decent shots on goal.

Somehow, they were able to save four. Tucker had managed to recover one, and Cooper had two.

Ford had the last one, though it went slightly wide and hit the post, and the Dogs recovered the puck to score against us with two minutes to go in the second period.

Boden had lost it then. I could tell he was angry at his friends more than he was angry at the guy with the number twelve on his jersey, but he had nowhere else to put his anger.

It was worrying. This was a goddamn community league. There was a reason fighting was prohibited. These guys were all friends, for fuck’s sake. We were definitely going to have a chat after the game.

A very long, hard, stern…chat.

I turned away, fighting the urge to fan myself as I gripped the back of Tucker’s jersey. “I want you taking over for him. I’m benching him.”

Tucker stared at me, eyes wide behind his mask. He knew though. I could see it on his face. Boden was fucking this all up, and it wasn’t fair to the rest of the team. I might have wanted him desperately, and dreamed about it nightly, but I couldn’t let him ruin this for these guys.

He was better than that, and I was starting to get truly angry about it.

Shoving up my sleeves, I gripped the wall and leaned down. “Are you going to fight me on this?”

Tucker sighed. “No, Coach.”

“Good man.” The buzzer sounded as if to punctuate my sentence, and that was it for the period. There was always a flurry of guys abandoning their sleds for their wheelchairs, then a fumble to get back into the locker room.

It was a reminder that they probably needed longer than fifteen minutes to be equitable to an NHL game, though this was not the NHL. But no one was complaining.

I followed the guys back through the doors, but as they all sat around wiping off sweat and spitting on the ground, Boden wasn’t with them. For a moment, I felt a surge of panic. Had he been left in the box?

I snagged Ford, who was just coming in through the door on one crutch, and I yanked him close. “Go over the plays for the third period with the guys. I’m going to find Boden.”

“Don’t bother. He took off.”

“Merde,” I swore. “Why?”

He gave me a look that said, Do you really have to ask , and no. I didn’t. But I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I let him go and bolted down the hall, heading for the back exit of the rink. I knew where he was parked and the little sporty piece of shit he drove.

I made it to the curb and saw him wheeling toward his car, his arms picking up speed as he saw me. I didn’t slow down. My feet stomped hard on the asphalt as I raced him and managed to slam my body against the driver’s-side door.

“Seriously?”

I took a breath. “Boden?—”

“No. You can yell at me and berate me and call me a shit player when I’m on the ice. You don’t get to do that out here.”

I stared. “Is that what you think I came to do?”

“I know you know,” he said.

I blinked at him. Shit. Was he really going to bring up our night together out here? Now?

“I know you know I’m trying to make you look bad.”

I deflated. Yes, right. Of course. It had nothing to do with how deep I took his dick. I licked my lips, which were far too dry. “You’re only making yourself look bad. I’m not going to stop you tonight, but is this really the captain you want your team to see?”

“Why do you care?” He slipped into French, and it was like something unknotted in my chest. “What does it matter to you?”

“Because it matters to you. I know what you want, Boden. I know that your old coach let you down, and I don’t want that to happen.

But I can’t do my job for them—or for you—if you keep this up.

What scout is going to want to recruit you to a PPHL team if this is how you deal with something you don’t like. ”

“Fuck you,” he spat in very clear English.

Bowing my head, I nodded. “I get it.”

“You fucking don’t.”

I wanted to laugh because he had no idea, but this wasn’t the time or place for it. The clock was ticking, and I had a dozen people waiting for me to do my job. “I want you at my office tomorrow.”

He stared at me, a challenge in his eyes. Mon petit feu , I thought loudly. I nearly said it but only just managed to hold it back.

“One o’clock.”

“I have work.”

“Make time for me,” I ordered.

He sucked in a breath, then swallowed heavily. “Three thirty. If you’re not at your desk, I’ll leave.”

I would be there. I would sleep in my fucking office and piss in a bottle under my chair if I had to. We were going to have this out. “You won’t miss me.”

He lifted his chin in defiance, and my fingers tingled to reach out and grip it the way I’d done at the hotel room. Or maybe it was that I ached to drop to my knees right there on the pavement and let him take me by the throat.

He loved giving over to me, but he loved that I fought him for it. That I took what I wanted. That I made him feel like he was a worthy fight .

Because he had been.

And he still was.

I just needed him to open his eyes and see that.

There was no point in standing there longer though, so I turned and made my way back toward the door.

As I opened it, I realized that I didn’t hear his car door slam or an engine start.

I gave in after a beat and glanced behind me, and I only just caught a glimpse of his wheel disappearing back around the side of the building.

Something like victory flared to life in my chest.

I hadn’t won the war, but one battle was down.

And tomorrow, I wouldn’t fire until I saw the whites of his eyes.