Page 2 of Pucking Possessive (Kings of Castlebrook #2)

CALLUM

I have been in love with Lilac Fairbanks for as long as I can remember.

It’s not because she’s my best friend’s little sister and the only daughter of the family who saved me from a hard life as an outcast in Castlebrook Falls.

I can’t say that I don’t still feel like an outcast, but I do my absolute best to play it off like I don’t have a care in the world.

That isn’t true. I have one thing I care about deeply, but I’m good at burying my feelings deep.

Lilac is off-limits in ways I can’t even describe.

If I told her how I feel, it would ruin us both and the people closest to us.

I’ve grown apart from Adam Fairbanks. We don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but mostly I’ve seen how he doesn’t look out for Lilac in the way I think she deserves.

She should be protected, but it’s not my place.

So when it comes to her, I resort to looking like a creep, watching her any chance I get.

My girl doesn’t see me at first, but she will. It’s like she has a sixth sense when it comes to me. I can always tell the exact moment she feels me watching her. Her whole body stiffens, and her eyes search the room until they land on me.

There are many things I enjoy about silently admiring the girl in front of me, but the moment when she starts looking for me is the best part.

Seeing her flit around on the same ice that the guys and I practice on in that soft purple dress that hugs her body like it was made for her has me questioning if I’ll always be able to keep her at a distance.

The hem flutters around her thighs as she spins, that chestnut hair flying behind her in a wave, catching the lights overhead.

She lands the turn on a single blade like it’s nothing, graceful and exact, like she’s never once been off balance a day in her life.

Meanwhile, I haven’t taken a full breath in five minutes.

She does that to me. Every time.

Lilac Fairbanks might be the only person alive who could kill me with a pirouette and never even know it.

I’m not going to make it out of this alive, and somehow I’m embracing it.

I’m going to snap. Judging by the way my hands are flexing into fists to keep from rushing out there and scooping her up in my arms, it’s going to be soon.

I glance over at the exit off the ice and notice a rather large looking navy blue hoodie hanging there.

Number seventy-seven. My chest feels crowded because it’s fucking swelling with pride.

She wears my hoodie when she thinks I won’t be around to notice.

Yet, when I tell her to wear it so douchebags on campus don’t stare at her boobs, she fights me on it.

She’s confusing, and a brat sometimes, but she feels a lot like mine in this moment.

She must have hung it there just before she stepped out to skate, which means that she must have been wearing it even after she changed into her practice dress.

I'm still in jeans and a t-shirt, my skates and pads nowhere to be seen. Coach Kav is going to have my ass in a sling if he walks in and catches me literally drooling over Lilac, but it’s all fucking worth it for just a few more moments with her.

I should’ve gone into the locker room ten minutes ago, and really, she should be in the girls locker room with the other figure skaters, but Lilac isn’t one to follow the crowd.

As much as her parents tried to control her, she’s always been her own person.

She’s slowing now, coasting along the edge as her cheeks flush from exertion, eyes soft with focus.

She still hasn’t seen me, but I don’t miss the way she glances around after landing a trick.

She’s still looking for me, wondering why she can feel me, but I haven’t popped up to playfully give her a hard time.

I also know something’s bothering her, and it’s not just the normal stress of family, school, and friends.

I see everything. I never miss even the smallest things when it comes to Lilac.

I notice how she holds her shoulders like she’s bracing for something, how her lips twitch like she's trying to hold back whatever’s really on her mind.

Then she turns her head slightly, and I purposely step out from behind the partition. Lilac’s gaze snags on mine and it feels like my whole body is alive with something that I’ll never feel with anyone else.

There it is. That flicker that has always been between the two of us.

First it was a crush, but now? At least on my side, it’s festered into straight up obsession.

There’s a familiar spark of recognition in her eyes and I like the fact that aside from her brother, she doesn’t know anyone on this campus the way she knows me.

She looks a little annoyed, a little curious, a little too excited for someone who’s supposed to think I’m just her brother’s best friend.

Lilac suddenly starts barreling toward me and slams into a hockey stop right in front of me, ice spraying around her and her delicate fingers tipped in light purple nail polish wrapping around the boards like she didn’t just do something most of the guys on our team haven’t mastered.

They didn’t have me teaching them how to skate when we were eight and ten years old, though.

Her shaky legs the first time she stepped onto the ice was where she got the nickname bambi.

I’m the only one who calls her that, and I plan on keeping it that way.

There’s a baseball player back home who still limps because I beat the fuck out of him with his own bat.

Maybe everyone is right about me. Maybe I do have rage issues, but it seemed like a legitimate reaction to a heinous crime at the time.

I’m doubling down, because I’d do it again.

Lilac caught onto skating quickly, and despite the fact that Adam hated when she’d tag along to skate on the rink her parents built for him, anything I taught her she picked up and surprised me with what a natural she was.

I’m glad she didn’t want to play hockey and opted for figure skating because I’d have to kill everyone on both teams for knocking into her.

“Seriously, cowboy?” Lilac’s voice is sweet, but she’s looking for some banter and I’m totally here for it. I come from a long line of bull riders, but most people at this pretentious college don’t know that. She knows everything about me. Almost.

I raise a brow, smirking. “Seriously, what?”

“Well, are you just practicing for a career as a figure skating judge or are you just watching me again like some creeper?” She gives me a pretty smile meant to get under my skin.

The only thing it does is make my dick strain against my jeans, and I’ll I can do is pray that I can get it tucked under my waistband before Coach Kav finds me.

He’ll have the whole team doing battle drills till we all die if he finds me in his arena with a hard on.

“I’m offended,” I say, slow and deliberate. “Creepers hide. I’m right here, out in the open, watching you now.”

She rolls her eyes, but her lips twitch like she’s trying not to smile. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Your practice ended a while ago,” I say, gesturing toward some of the girls on her team who are starting to file out of the locker room. “I think I’m doing everyone a favor.”

“By what, ogling me?” She bites her bottom lip to keep from laughing, and I think now is the first time that I realize she doesn’t think that’s a possibility.

I’ve gone so far out of my way to cover up the fact that I’m literally obsessed with her, that she doesn’t think that I’m attracted to her.

She thinks I look after her out of obligation to Adam.

“I’m just making sure none of the guys get too close.” I lean in just enough to make her flinch. Not out of fear, never that, but instead because she’s too aware of me. “It’s a hassle cleaning blood off of ice, you know.”

“Oh please,” she mutters, cheeks heating. “Like anyone’s interested.”

I sober for a second because it never occurred to me that by sabotaging every date she’s ever been invited on before it can happen, she might feel undesirable.

She’s literally the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life, but I realize now that maybe she thinks she’s been stood up by those fuckers I threatened.

Beat up. Murdered in cold blood. It’s all semantics and doesn’t really matter.

They were deterred, and that’s the point.

I change the subject, leaning on the side of the rink. All I want to do is scoop her up in my arms and make whatever has her eyes looking worried go away. “What’s wrong? It’s something. I could see it the entire time you were skating. A test? Is a professor bothering you because I can?—”

She hesitates, then sighs. “You always do this.”

“Do what?”

She softens slightly, just enough to let me see the edges of whatever she’s hiding. “You always know,” she murmurs, voice low. “When something’s wrong. It’s freaky.”

I shrug, casual. “You’re easy to read.”

“No one else ever notices,” she says, not looking at me. “Not even my brother. But you—” She shakes her head. “You always ask.”

And I always will.

“What’s going on?” I ask, quieter now. “I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

She sighs, leaning her elbow on the ledge of the boards. “My parents are trying to push me into getting engaged.”

I freeze. “To who?” To fucking who? She’s never been on one date. I would know. I fucking stalk her every hour of the day.

“Vincent Warshaw,” she says flatly. “The son of one of Dad’s business partners.

I’ve never even met him, which is mostly because I’ve been avoiding everyone.

Mom says it’s because I have no direction and he’d be good for me, but it just feels…

off. I know Dad has been having trouble with a couple of his companies, and I don’t want to think that he’d push me to do this to soothe some kind of bad business deal, but?—”