Page 9 of Pucked Up (Punk as Puck #2)

CHAPTER

FOUR

HUGO

“So. How is it? I’ve heard the East Coast isn’t as miserable for you dirty Euro trash as the West.”

The sound of my brother-in-law’s heavy Scouse voice crawled under my skin. Not Roger’s accent but the way he always managed to sound like such a fucking snob. “First of all, no one calls anyone Euro trash anymore. It’s not 1984. And secondly, it’s perfectly fine. But so is the West Coast.”

“They can’t even do a proper brew.”

“Luckily for me, I don’t like tea. Coffee is just fine, and even in this small town, there’s no shortage of coffee shops.” Which was true. There were as many coffee shops as there were petit roadside churches, which seemed to decorate every street corner.

I didn’t understand that, but then again, I was a Catholic-born Atheist who hadn’t set foot inside a house of worship since my husband’s funeral.

And that was under both protest and the fight I’d lost with his parents.

Reid had made it very clear after his accident that he hadn’t wanted any big ceremonies when he died.

The fucker had always been planning his funeral. Of course, he lived for so many years after his accident I thought we’d end up two crotchety old men together with some hot, pool-boy-esque caregiver taking care of his needs until we died of natural causes.

I’d been half-right.

He had gotten a hot caregiver a few years before he passed, but while I felt old, I was barely middle-aged.

And while he had died of natural causes, the genesis of him dying young had come from the drunk piece of shit who’d hit him when he was coming out of the pub.

We’d been living in Montreal at the time—a place we could both be comfortable.

It wasn’t France, but I could speak my mother tongue, and people weren’t weird about it.

I could go out in public and not have someone ask me to repeat mundane words because they thought the way I said it was “Just so sexy.”

Reid always found it hilarious.

I did not.

“So. You’re really going to settle in there and get comfortable?” Roger asked.

That was a loaded question. I’d settle as much as I could.

I’d rented a little house right on the edge of town, which wasn’t too far from the rink but far enough that I could escape when I needed to.

I had my car, my training schedule, a new favorite restaurant that served a passable cassoulet on the first Sunday of every month, and a little bar I could go to when I needed to get laid.

Although I wasn’t sure I could frequent that bar ever again. Not after Boden.

Going to the rink was bad enough. It had been exactly one month since I’d been officially appointed as the coach to the Wolves community league para-ice hockey team and nine days since I’d walked into a room and set eyes on the man who had fucked me right into oblivion a few weeks before.

My little fire.

A man who had made me question my decision to never give my heart to anyone ever again.

Of course, I thought it had been a good bet.

Even when I had him on the shower floor, between my legs, running my hands all over his naked body, it was safe because this was a onetime deal.

It didn’t matter how good it felt or how right.

It would be over after that one night, and I would never have to see him again.

Except the universe was feeling unusually cruel, it seemed.

I’d gotten the call for the coaching job from an old friend of Reid’s.

I didn’t know much about Arnaud except that he had a disabled son who won gold in hockey for Canada in the Paris Paralympics.

Our conversation had been short. He’d asked point-blank if I would be willing to pull some strings and get his son an offer on a PPHL team.

That wasn’t going to happen. That would have been spitting in the face of Reid’s dream for the PPHL and what it could be.

But I was looking for a way out of my current life.

I was rotting in our old apartment, surrounded by the things that served to remind me of what I’d lost without giving me hope that there was something else for me in the future.

I was too young to be burying myself alongside Reid, but for a while, it was starting to feel like I was just waiting around to die.

Of course, if I’d known that the man who’d rearranged my insides was also going to be the team captain who wanted to rearrange my outsides for taking the job of coaching the Wolves—and, ironically, Arnaud’s son—I would have said no.

I would have continued to rot.

But here I was, and fuck it all, I was going to make the best of it.

“Listen,” I told Roger as I pulled into the rink parking lot, “I’ve just reached my office, and I need to go.”

He scoffed. “How much work could some little nothing team be?”

Rage hit me in ways I didn’t expect, and I had to breathe through it. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Hugo, écoutes,” he said in his shitty A-Levels French. “Je, uh…je…je pense, uh…tu?—”

I ended the call without letting him finish and put my phone on silent before turning my car off and getting out.

The rink parking lot was empty save for a couple of cars that belonged to the moms who brought their kids in for lessons.

It was Wednesday, which meant that Tucker Banks, one of the alternate captains, was here teaching them.

I had the team folders on a drive, which I’d plugged into my laptop and studied over the last few days.

Most of them had similar stories—recent accidents, had never even been near an ice skating rink in their lives, but were now looking for a way of connecting with other newly disabled adults that they could relate to.

Tucker, just like Boden, was different than most of the team. His life had been on the path to the NHL with a freshly signed contract until an accident had taken both of his legs and a decent percentage of his usable vision.

But unlike Boden, he didn’t aspire to do more than he was already doing now.

He’d been banned from the Paralympics his first year there and hadn’t made noise about wanting to earn his way back.

He was currently working his day job as the coach for the blind peewee team as well as offering private lessons, which I assumed was to make up for the sorry excuse for a salary that the peewee league offered.

I had no idea how half these people survived. If it hadn’t been for the money Reid left me, I would have been in the same boat. I would have been forced to crawl my way back into the public teaching sector with my tail between my legs and a mouthful of crow.

But instead, my husband left me a fortune I would have traded to have him back and decades of empty years with no idea how to fill them. Though apparently, this was my start.

I was starting to wonder, though, if I should take up crochet. I could binge vintage Star Trek while making little stuffed animals and sell them on Etsy when I was through. It sounded better than having to face the fiery left winger who made my dick half-hard even when he was insulting me.

Maybe I should also get back into therapy because that was not a normal response.

I slammed the door, startling myself with the noise, then sighed and grabbed my bag as I hurried toward the side entrance.

I wasn’t exactly avoiding Tucker, but I was not not avoiding him either.

He and the other alternate captain, Ford Bell, were loyal toward Boden to a degree I’d never understood. Not even in my marriage.

I would have done anything for Reid, but in my head, there had always been lines, and he’d felt the same way.

It was kind of a wonder, watching the way those three players loved each other. It was a bond that nothing would be able to break.

Which was one of the myriad reasons I would not be pursuing Boden.

The list was endless and began with the fact that I was his coach and ended with the fact that I’d been trying to save him embarrassment by not giving away the fact that we’d had sex, and now I was pretty sure he thought I didn’t remember him.

That was something I was going to have to remedy. I was going to have to remedy a lot, actually. Boden had very clearly decided the way to solve the problem of me coaching was burning the team to the ground. And as much as I appreciated his fire, I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

I was not an incompetent coach. I knew the game inside and out.

Hell, I’d helped Reid design the fucking league, for Christ’s sake.

We took the existing rules, studied them front to back, and then applied them to a professional league setting.

I might not have understood what it was like to live in their bodies, but I knew how to play the fucking game.

He was not going to make me look like a fool. If he wanted to set himself on fire, he could burn alone.

I did feel a little ridiculous sneaking through the hall though. I could hear Tucker’s voice as he instructed his student, and it was kind of a surprise. He was a smart-mouthed little fucker on the ice and in pregame, so hearing him sound…maybe not soft, but kinder, was a nice change.

I pressed myself against the wall and peered around the corner to see him on the ice, guiding a kid around in circles with the bottom of a long hockey stick. The kid was laughing as Tucker spun him in a wide circle.

Leaning over the rink, very clearly trying to show off a low-cut blouse, was a woman with salon-red hair.

“It’s always so fuckin’ awkward when women try to flash him their tits when they forget he can’t see them. ”

I jumped and smacked my temple against the wall, turning with a tight smile to see Ford staring at me with a quirked brow. “I wasn’t, ah?—”

“Spying?”

“Avoiding him,” I blurted, because for five seconds, that sounded better than being accused of player espionage. And then my face heated. “I, euh…I mean…”