Page 9

Logan

" I 'm going to kill you," Alice swears early the next morning, stomping toward me as I'm leaned up against the side of the team bus, waiting to load to head to the airport.

"Shit," Diego mutters from beside me. "Which one of us is she mad at?"

"Not me," Micah says. "I know how to behave."

Everyone looks at Jordan.

"Why the fuck are you all looking at me?" he growls, yanking one of his earbuds from his ear. And then he notices Alice storming toward us and his brows furrow. "Who pissed her off?"

"They all figured it was you," Nash says.

Jordan sends a dirty look at the rest of the team.

"Uh, you looked at him too, you lying dick," River mutters to Nash, who just smirks and glances back down at his phone.

"It was me."

Everyone turns to look at me.

"What the fuck did you do this time?" Joaquin asks.

Archer just shakes his head, looking at me like he already knows. Shit, he probably does. It's goddamn spooky how much of our business he knows before anyone else. And yet…we know damn little of his.

Funny how that shit works.

He isn't nearly as subtle as he thinks he is, though. He may have Micah fooled, but I know damn well that he's been sneaking around with his sister since we played Vegas. I caught them in the elevator together. He was all over her…and she wasn't telling him no.

But that's not my fucking business so I keep my mouth shut and my nose out of it. If he wants to play with fire, more power to him. I'm not going anywhere near those fucking flames.

"Don't worry about it," I mutter to Joaquin, pushing away from the bus to meet Alice.

She draws to a stop a few feet away, her arms crossed and a thunderous scowl on her face. "You told Charles Montaque that you're dating Peyton," she growls.

"He's already running the story?"

She snorts. Loudly.

"I'll take that as a yes," I mumble, scrubbing a hand down my face. "So he has her name already?"

"What do you think?"

"Shit." I tip my head back, looking up at the sky. It's cloudy and overcast. Hopefully we get the fuck out of here before it starts raining. Otherwise, we'll be sitting on the goddamn tarmac for hours, waiting for clearance to takeoff.

Peyton might actually find a way to murder me if she's stuck beside me on the tarmac for hours. She's still pissed that I'm making her fly out for the game with us. I probably should have told her before I demanded that she make herself come for me yesterday, but I wasn't thinking about the game. When I'm with her, she's the only thing I'm thinking about. The rest of the world doesn't even register. But she tried to smother me with a couch pillow, which was basically her squirming all around on my lap with her tits in my face while I pretended to fight her off. Good times.

She might actually murder me for not telling her shit one day, though.

I'll probably deserve it.

I tip my head down, glancing over to where she's sitting in the back of my truck, reading a book. "Peyton," I call, and then wait until she glances up at me. "Come here."

She huffs like I'm getting on her fucking nerves and then reluctantly shoves her bookmark into her book before sliding off the tailgate. She sashays toward me, her lips pursed.

"How can you annoy me again this morning, Mr. Moreno?" she says sweetly. The look in her eyes is pure sass. She's fucking with me just because she can.

Alice chuckles quietly, drawing Peyton's attention to her.

Peyton's eyes widen, her cheeks turning pink. "Oh. Um, hi," she mumbles. "I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."

"Don't mind me," Alice says, holding her hands up. "He annoys the hell out of me, too."

"Why am I not surprised?" Peyton says before cutting her eyes at me. "You're three for three, you know."

"What?"

"She's the third woman who says you annoy the hell out of her. That's not a good hat trick, Logan."

"The only other woman in my life you've met is Lauren," I protest, chuckling.

"I'm counting me as the third. You definitely annoy the hell out of me."

"She's met Lauren?" Alice says, unable to hide her surprise.

I cut my eyes at her. "Did you think I was joking when I said I was going to tell her everything?"

"I…" Alice shakes her head, her expression bemused. But I see the glimmer in her eye as she glances between me and Peyton again, as if she's wising up to the fact that I'm not fucking around about her. I'm dead serious about this girl. I have no secrets from her.

"News broke about us this morning, angel," I murmur to Peyton. "And they already know your name."

"Lovely," she sighs. "I'm guessing they're already running through my whole life story too?"

I glance at Alice who hesitates before nodding reluctantly.

Peyton stands quietly for a minute and then nods. "Fake dating you better be worth it, Logan."

"This isn't fake, Peyton," I growl. "We're dating."

She sniffs at me, lifting that pert little nose in the air. And Christ Almighty, I want to back her up against the bus and fuck her until she's screaming to everyone who will listen that she's mine. But I can't do that. Not yet. She needs to work out for herself that she's in love with me. I can bide my time until then because I already know that's where this is headed.

She wouldn't let me kiss her or touch her if she didn't feel it. She may be trying like hell to pretend she doesn't feel it, but she wouldn't be here now if she didn't. And we both know she wouldn't have offered herself up to the press in Lauren's place if she wasn't in love with me.

As much as she'd like to think she did it for my sister's sake, we both know she did it for me too. Just like we both know I told Montaque she's my girlfriend because I want the whole goddamn world to know that she belongs to me.

I wish like hell that I'd known who her prick of a father was before I opened my mouth, though. I wouldn't have done it. Not because I don't want everyone to know that she's mine, but because I'm worried as fuck. She's been through every bit as much as Lauren has. Putting her in front of my sister like a shield knowing the truth doesn't sit well with me. I want to protect her too. She fucking deserves for someone in her life to protect her. It's pretty goddamn obvious that no one else ever has.

She's terrified to trust because she's never been able to do that. She's been let down and hurt over and over again. Letting me in is probably the most terrifying thing she's ever done. And yet, she still offered herself up anyway. She's still here anyway.

I can't fail her. I fucking won't fail her.

"Okay, so I'm going to need someone to fill me in on whatever the two of you have going on here," Alice says, waggling a finger between us. "Because I can't sell a story if I don't even know what it is or why I'm pushing it."

"We told Charles Montaque that we're dating to give Logan time to figure out how to protect Lauren," Peyton says. "Since he's never had a girlfriend before now, that should keep them occupied for a while." She grimaces. "If they already know who I am and have gone digging into my life, I'm guessing it'll keep them occupied for a while."

I wrap an arm around her waist, squeezing.

Alice worries her bottom lip between her teeth and then shoots me a look that tells me we need to speak privately. Fucking wonderful.

"Why don't you go finish your book, baby?" I murmur to Peyton. "I'll finish filling Alice in."

Peyton shrugs before strolling back to the truck. I keep one eye on her, making sure she's safely in the bed of it before I turn back to Alice.

"How much do you know about her past, Logan?" Alice asks, keeping her voice pitched low so it doesn't carry. "Because I'm having a hard time believing you know the full story and still set this in motion."

"I didn't know when I set it in motion," I mutter.

"Logan," Alice groans.

"I know. I fucked up, okay?" I pinch the bridge of my nose. "But I had my reasons, none of which really matter at the moment. What matters right now is making sure that she doesn't become a target. I don't want them thrusting cameras in her face, asking about her prick of a father."

"You know we can't stop them," Alice says. "He's a United States Senator, for God's sake. They're going to ask. We can hire security for her and refuse any interview requests, but we've never been able to stop the paparazzi. And we'll never be able to control what reporters do or don't ask. It doesn't work that way. It's a symbiotic relationship, Logan. We get as much from their coverage as they do."

"She isn't part of the game, Alice," I growl. "Our families shouldn't be on the table. Doesn't matter how much the team or the league gets out of their coverage if it causes more harm than good to actual people with actual fucking feelings."

"I'm not condoning the way they do things," she says softly. "I'm on your side. I'm just saying…there are ways to do things and there are ways not to do things. Starting a war with the press isn't going to get you what you want. You can't silence them just because you don't like what they do."

"I'm not trying to silence them. I don't give a flying fuck what they publish about me, the team, the league, or anyone except Peyton and Lauren. Neither of them signed up to play this sport. They didn't sign contracts agreeing to have their lives put on display or to have cameras shoved in their faces. After everything they've already been through, they shouldn't have to suffer because I'm in their lives."

Alice glances at me sharply, her gaze assessing and then she sighs. "I'll do what I can to mitigate the damage, Logan. But you need to prepare her for the probability that her father is going to be brought up. Her mother's death will be too. The sooner the two of you address it, the sooner they'll move on. If you want to protect her, you really need to sell the fact that you're crazy about her. Logan Moreno in love is big news. It's new. But her past is old news. Keep the focus on your relationship and they'll lose interest in her past."

I jerk my chin in a nod, hopping she's right.

"As for Lauren…" She tips her head to the side, sighing. "You need to prepare yourself for the very real probability that Montaque is going to print his story about her. Both of you need to decide if you want to head that off at the pass and tell it from your POV before he gets an opportunity to skew it. And believe me, he will skew it because that's the kind of ignorant prick he is. No one knows anything about her history, so there isn't going to be any mitigating the damage there. The best you can do is take control of the narrative and allow Lauren to tell her story her way. It's what she deserves. You know it is."

Hell, maybe she's right. Maybe all I'm doing by stalling is delaying the inevitable here and giving Montaque more time to fuck her over and hurt her. I don't know anymore. But Alice has no idea what it's like to watch the sister you promised to protect slowly lose herself to a disease she can't control over and over again. She doesn't know what it's like to have to sneak into a mental institution to visit her or listen to her pleading with people only she sees not to hurt her. That's been my life…and it's been Lauren's.

How the fuck am I supposed to tell her that I fucked up and let her down? I don't know.

Just like I don't fucking know how I'm supposed to tell Peyton that maybe she was right about me and I'm the last motherfucker she needs in her life. I've been fucking up with her from the very beginning.

And the real hell of it? I don't know how to stop. When it comes to her, I don't know how to fucking stop. She's an addiction, something I crave with an intensity that borders on desperation. Even knowing that I'm fucking up and pissing her off at every turn, I keep doing it, because so long as she's pissed and fighting me and being mouthy and we're all over each other, maybe I don't have to admit that she's not the only one terrified out of her mind.

I am, too.

I am fucking terrified she's going to realize what I already know. She's been right about me all along. I am a fucking asshole who doesn't deserve her. And I have no clue how to become someone who does.

"Moreno!" Coach shouts, stomping into the locker room after the first period, his face red and his expression hard. The door slams behind him as he stomps in my direction.

Son of a bitch. He's been pissed all day because I'm all over the news again. There are few things he dislikes more than seeing our names on the news when it's unrelated to the game.

"What the fuck are you doing out there, kid?"

"Defending the goal," I mutter, mopping sweat from my face with a towel.

"I've seen toddlers stop pucks better than you have tonight," he growls, stopping in front of me.

Shit, he probably isn't wrong. My mind has been all over the place. The one place it hasn't been is on the ice. I need to get my shit together and get my head in the game before we lose it. They're killing us out there right now because I'm fucking up.

"Do I need to pull you from the net?"

"No, sir. I've got it," I say. "It was just a rough start."

"If you don't have it together soon, I'm pulling you out," he warns me before whipping his head in Diego's direction. "Get your head on straight in case Moreno has to come out, Tapia. And do not piss me off, kid."

"On it, Coach," Diego says somberly.

Coach shoots another quelling look in my direction before stomping away to talk to Archer. He pauses in front of Jordan briefly, shooting him a death glare. He doesn't say anything, though. He already reamed his ass on the bench once he got out of the penalty box for the third time.

I'm not sure what the fuck is up with Jordan tonight, but his mood is worse than usual. Actually, it's been worse than usual all day.

"Fuck," I mutter, bouncing my head against the wall behind me.

"You good?" Jordan asks, glancing over at me.

"Fucking fabulous."

"Right," he snorts. "You hit your head against that wall any fucking harder, Coach isn't going to have to pull you out. You're going to knock your own dumbass out."

"Maybe that's the plan."

"Whatever. Have a fucking ball."

I narrow my eyes on him. "What's up with you?"

"Not a damn thing. What's up with you?"

"Not a damn thing," I say.

"Well, at least we're on the same fucking page."

I snort, shaking my head before taking a big drink of water.

"You pissed about your girl being all over the news?"

I shoot him a dark glare.

"Figured," he grunts. "Want some advice?"

"Fuck no."

"Too bad. I'm in an advice-giving mood."

"Since fucking when?" I eye him sideways. The only advice Jordan ever gives is fuck and off, usually when someone is pissing him off. And that's all the warning they get before their faces become intimately acquainted with his fists. It's why he spends so much damn time in the penalty box.

"Since now." He purses his lips, staring at me for a moment. "Don't be another asshole in her life who lets her down because you're feeling sorry for yourself over whatever bullshit you're telling yourself over there. You dragged her into this. She's counting on you to lead her through it. Get your head out of your ass and lead."

"I'm not feeling sorry for myself," I growl.

"Really? Because that puck went right between your legs. Literally right between them." He extends his arms and brings them down between his legs, whistling. "And you were off in another world, thinking deep thoughts about the goddamn lights."

"I was thinking about you, actually, you prick. You know how much I love that pretty face of yours."

"Take my advice or leave it," he says, flipping me off. "Doesn't matter to me either way. You'll be the one who regrets it if you leave it, though."

I stare at him for a long minute, shaking my head. "I liked you better when you sat over there and didn't say anything."

His lips curve into a smirk. "Maybe I'm a changing man."

"Yeah, that's bullshit. You've been in a pissy mood all night, and that's saying something because you're always a cranky motherfucker. What the fuck is going on with you? Since you're all up in my goddamn business, I'm stepping into yours."

"Nothing."

"Right. You're just extra fucking cranky and weird for no reason." I roll my eyes. "That makes total sense."

"The past is a bitch," he finally mutters.

"Oh. Oh, shit." My eyes wide, realization dawning like a hammer blow. "We're playing the Bucks."

He jerks his chin in a nod.

"I'm an asshole."

"You expecting me to disagree or something?"

"Fuck." I scrub a hand down my face. No wonder he's so goddamn moody. Jordan used to play for them before he and Jamison Peters, their captain, came to blows in the middle of a game. It was nasty. He knocked Jamison out, and team management gave him the boot. It almost cost him his career. He's fucking hated Peters since. "I'm sorry, man. You good?"

"I'm fine," he growls. "Why does everyone always ask me that shit?"

"Uh…you mean aside from the obvious?"

Jordan scowls at me.

"Mostly because people actually give a shit," I say quietly. "Peters is a dick, but we like you. We ask because we're ten toes down, standing behind you. If you decide you need to hit the prick again, we'll throw elbows and cause a scene. They can't boot us all."

"He's right," Archer says, picking his way across to us.

Jordan and I both look at him in surprise. Archer can be aggressive as hell on the ice, but he rarely starts fights. He damn sure knows how to finish them, though.

"We ask because we care," he murmurs to Jordan. "And we ask because we want to know if we're playing nice or starting a riot. Either way, we've got your back, fucker. Get your shit on. It's time to hit the ice."

"Jesus Christ," Jordan mutters, glancing between the two of us like he's never seen us before tonight. Guess he hasn't been paying attention. We're a fucking team. We ride together; we die together. That's how this shit works. Fuck Peters and the Bucks. If Jordan wants to spill blood, we're down.

"We're playing nice," he growls, grabbing his shit from the bench.

"Pity," Micah sighs, stalking past.

I throw my head back, laughing. Jesus Christ.

Peyton is waiting for me in the hall outside the locker room after the game. I skate right to her, picking her up off her feet. She squeaks, kicking her feet.

"Put me down right now!" she hisses.

"No can do," I murmur, breathing her in. "We're dating, remember?"

"I hate you."

"You keep saying that, but I don't think it means what you think it means, baby."

"You're sweaty and you stink, Logan."

"I don't seem to remember you complaining when you got me all sweaty, angel," I murmur, nuzzling my face against her throat. "Christ, you smell good."

"Logan," she groans. "Will you please put me down? Everyone is staring."

"That's the point," I whisper against her skin. "I want everyone staring, Peyton. I want them to know you belong to me." I had a whole goddamn game to think about what Alice said this morning. Actually, I've been thinking about the shit all day. I don't know if she was right or not. But I know I'm fucking crazy about this woman. I know my heart is beating out of my chest for her.

I've spent years keeping attention on me. But this time it's different. For once, I'm not causing trouble or being an asshole. I just get to be a motherfucker in love, one doing his best to be worthy of a woman lightyears out of his league. Maybe I don't deserve her. Maybe I never will. But I'm damn sure going to try.

I'm going to choose her. And I'm going to keep fucking choosing her until she realizes that I'm not her prick of a father and I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right here to catch her every goddamn time.

I can't give her perfect, but I can give her that.

"Logan," she groans. But she doesn't tell me that she isn't mine this time. We both know she can't. She's been mine since that night in the bar. And little by little, she's figuring that shit out, too.

I nip her throat before reluctantly lowering her back to her feet.

"Why don't you go wait with Alice, angel? We need to shower before we head to the airport."

She narrows her eyes on me. "You know I could have stayed at home today, right?"

"And made me come all this way by myself?" I tease, smirking. "What kind of assistant are you?"

"The smart kind, Logan." She rolls her eyes at me. "And the tired kind."

"You can sleep on the plane, baby," I promise, reaching out to stroke her cheek as Jamison Peters appears at the end of the hallway, heading straight toward Jordan. Fuck. "Go ahead and go find Alice."

"Okay," she murmurs, turning in the opposite direction.

I watch to make sure she's heading off before glancing back toward Jordan in time to see him shove Jamison away from him. Motherfucker. Maybe we aren't playing nice tonight, after all.