Page 2

Be A Good Boy

July — Three Months Earlier

Aleks

My phone was burning a hole in my pocket as the team’s media relations manager attempted to burn a hole through my head with his murderous glare.

Strings: Call me. It’s important.

Strings was the nickname I’d given to my only friend in the world back when I first met her. We were just sixteen then — she, an awkward girl with a guitar glued to her hand, and I, a broody asshole with a hockey stick glued to mine.

I knew her as Mia Conaway, my best friend.

The world knew her as Mia Love, world-famous pop star.

Mia’s text came through just as I was shoved into the conference room where half of our public relations team, along with our General Manager, were ready to lay into me. I’d had no choice but to put my phone away and wait to respond until after my lashing.

But where I should have been focused on the threats being thrown my way after I’d fucked up — yet again — all I could think about was her.

Despite how close we were in high school, our lives had gone in separate directions over the last eight years, the two of us living on different coasts, and practically in different worlds. Every now and then, our paths crossed — she’d get to come to a game of mine, or I’d catch one of her gigs. Sometimes we’d find ourselves reunited with her parents for a holiday. But for the most part, about the only time we communicated was through a text or a smart-ass comment on social media.

So the fact that she’d asked me to call her, that she’d said it was important…

“You’re bleeding,” Dan Kilman said, rolling his eyes as he fished a tissue out of the box in the center of the conference room table. He handed it to me with a flourish before he was pacing again.

I dabbed at the corner of my lip where it had split, not the least bit fazed.

I was a hockey player, for fuck’s sake.

Bleeding was like breathing for me.

“You also don’t seem like you’re taking any of this seriously,” he added. I’d never seen him look so stern. His pale bald head was glistening from a sheen of sweat as he paced the room, his dark brows furrowed together in frustration. Usually, Kilman was a bright smile and an assuring nod as he sent you to an interview you didn’t particularly want to do but had no option to refuse.

Right now, he looked ready to split the other side of my lip.

“I’m sure Mr. Suter is taking this all very seriously,” our General Manager assured Kilman. Richard Bancroft — known affectionately as Dick — reminded me of a mall Santa. He wore a jubilant smile nearly one-hundred percent of the time, his eyes twinkling, belly jiggling with each little laugh he let loose.

Even now, when I knew he was also fed up with my shit, he looked like nothing more than a proud father ready to defend his son at the principal’s office.

“Listen. I understand. Tensions run high when you’re a man with as much testosterone as you have running through those veins of yours,” Dick said with a guffaw, thumping the table across from me with one large hand. “But… this is going to be your last warning to keep the fights on the ice.”

“Last warning,” I repeated, monotone as ever, one eyebrow arching into my short hairline as I assessed him along with the rest of the team. Kilman and Bancroft were taking the lead, the other two staying silent, jotting notes down every now and then. One was Kilman’s assistant and the other was head of our social media. I was pretty sure they weren’t actually writing anything of merit, but rather avoiding eye contact with me. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It is,” Kilman said. “You’re lucky Coach McCabe is on vacation and we were able to assure him we had this handled because if he were here, my bet is there wouldn’t be another warning. Your ass would be out on the street.”

I scoffed a laugh at that, looking from the little man to my GM. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful (okay, so maybe I did) — but who the fuck did this guy think he was?

I was the lead scorer on our team last season — even more goals than their precious Vince Tanev.

Hell, I was the lead scorer in the fucking league .

And we won the Stanley Cup.

This guy was really going to threaten to have me off the team for a little bar fight?

“What Danny here is trying to say is that he has this covered. He and these two stars can handle the media,” he said, with a nod to the silent ones. “And our legal team has already put the pieces into place to get charges dropped.” Dick gave Kilman a subtle warning glare before he turned his gaze on me. “But yes, you heard me right, son.” He flattened his lips like he was disappointed he even had to say this. “If anything like this happens again, we’ll have no choice but to release you. And as it stands, we’ve decided to suspend you for the first two games of the season.”

My lips curled into a snarl of a smile as I shook my head and kicked back in my chair, crossing my right ankle over my left knee and folding my arms over my chest. It was usually the league who did the suspending, and typically only for bad behavior during a game or during the season. Since it was the offseason, and my little bar fight had happened on my own time, the league would stay out of it.

But apparently, my team decided I needed to be punished to learn my lesson.

As if my prior team hadn’t proven I never would.

“If you want to start the season out on two losses, that’s your call to make,” I said.

“You’ve forced our hand!” Kilman raged, but Dick put a hand on his forearm to stop him from continuing.

“We don’t want any of this — the legal trouble, the media attention, or the suspension. But the league won’t stand for us to just let this slide, offseason or not.” Dick steepled his fingers on the table. “You did knock a man out cold, after all.”

I had to fight to keep from scoffing again. If there was one thing I knew about Richard Bancroft, it was that he loved media attention. That was why he’d agreed to let local reporter Maven King follow Vince Tanev with twenty-four-seven access during his rookie season. It was why he set up one of our defensemen, Jaxson Brittain, and Vince’s little sister with a season of interviews after the hockey world found out they were together. It was why he was all but begging our goalie, Will Perry, to allow media coverage of his upcoming wedding after the whole world thought he’d be single forever.

That man wanted whatever would keep his arena full.

But I guessed that didn’t include me laying some asshole out after he threw his fucking Long Island iced tea on me.

Begrudgingly, I could admit I overreacted. I was dancing with a fine-as-hell Boomer’s regular — I think her name was MacKenzie? — when we were both suddenly drenched. And it couldn’t have just been a regular Long Island iced tea, either. No, it had to be a fucking blue one — like we were kids at a bar sneaking drinks underage.

Security was typically pretty good at keeping anyone the team didn’t want partying with us behind the ropes, but it was a fucking club. Shit happened. Sometimes, an asshole or two got through.

And I was all too eager to handle my own security.

I had a lot of pent-up energy buzzing through me at all times. During the season, I got it out on the ice. In the offseason, I worked it out in the gym. But that wasn’t enough. So yeah, give me an excuse to lay a motherfucker out, and I’m going to take it.

I’d grabbed the guy by his stupid, bedazzled polo and cut his laugh attack with his bros short. One of his friends got away with a single sucker punch before I slugged him so hard in the jaw, he spun like a cartoon before flying back into a table and causing bottles to crash to the floor.

Then, I’d knocked out the offender who’d thrown the drink.

I was escorted out of the bar right after, and as they loved to do, the paparazzi had followed me that night. They were always praying for me to fuck up.

Lucky for them, it was my specialty.

And I knew they were all giddy to post the photo of me — skin pale white from the flash of their cameras, blue liquid staining my shirt, my lip split and bloody, and a smirk on my face as I flipped them off proudly.

“If it was just this, we’d be fine,” Kilman said, calling my attention up to him. “But after all the shit you caused in Seattle, the shit we took for signing you in the first place, and the hell you gave us during playoffs…”

He shrugged, holding up his hands again as if I’d see a zip tie around his wrists.

I wished I cared.

I wished I took their threat seriously, that I was scared straight and inspired to get my act together.

But the truth was that I hadn’t felt much since I was a kid.

Hockey was about the only thing in the world I gave a fuck about, but even that felt like a shallow love some days.

Like right now, staring at the two gentlemen I was supposed to respect and fear, I should have been begging for them to trust me to make things right. I should have been pleading for them not to cut me.

Instead, I was almost praying they would.

Maybe then, I’d lose what last little bit of life I was holding onto and just let myself slip away into a drunken numbness forever. Maybe I’d walk willingly into the open arms of an addiction, one of the many I fought daily to stay away from. Maybe I’d hole myself up in some shack on a beach somewhere and become a recluse.

They loved to bring up Seattle, as if I wasn’t already aware of the shit storm I left behind there. It was the first team I played for in the league, and though I’d helped take them from a nothing team, to one of the top contenders for the Cup each year, the last thing they were ever going to do was thank me.

Because on the ice, I was a blessing.

Off the ice, I was a curse.

I should have had regrets. I should have wished I could go back in time and get my act together. Maybe I should have gone to therapy or found a productive outlet for my rage. I could have taken up pottery or some shit like Vince Tanev.

But I knew the truth.

There was more of my parents in me than I wanted to admit, their addictions thrumming through my veins no matter how I tried to deny them. At least I’d stuck to alcohol and sex, and I kept a tight enough rein on both to skate by without causing too much trouble.

I liked being wild.

I liked feeling numb .

I didn’t care about anything enough to keep myself on the straight and narrow for long.

And nothing could keep me from that thrill of pushing the envelope just to see how far I could get before someone followed through on their threats.

“Message received loud and clear,” I finally grumbled. “I’ll be a good boy. Promise.”

I saluted with the snarky comment, ready to get the fuck out of this room and call my girl.

My girl .

I laughed at myself with that thought. Mia Love was far from mine, and yet she was the only person in the world I gave a single flying fuck about.

I cared more about calling her in this moment than I did about saving my career.

Especially because she’d said it was important.

Sometimes, I could close my eyes and see Mia as the shy girl hiding behind her large-framed glasses and scribbling lyrics in a notebook when I first showed up at her house. I had been exhausted from the flight from Switzerland, as scared as I was numb about the whole experience of being flown to America to billet with a family so I could play hockey.

She wasn’t Mia Love, world-renowned pop star, then.

She was just Mia Conaway.

The daughter of the couple who was agreeing to let me live in their home so I had a chance at making a life for myself.

“Am I free to go, or should I go pick a limb off the nearest tree and line up on the wall for a switching?”

Dick laughed where Kilman flattened his lips, very clearly unamused. His assistant snickered but covered it with a cough.

“You’re excused,” Dick said, standing with a grunt. “Keep your nose clean and you won’t hear from me again until the preseason. But don’t be surprised if Coach has a particularly grueling first practice for you.”

He smirked with one eyebrow cresting into his white hairline, like we were buddies and he was on my side. But I knew better.

To Dick, I was just a money-maker. I was a goal-making, fight-starting piece of entertainment who could help put asses in the seats when we had a home game.

He wasn’t my friend.

Then again, no one was.

No one other than a brown-haired, blue-eyed pop star living across the country.

I dialed her number as soon as I pushed through the conference room door.