Page 4

FOUR

SAINT

Unlike a lot of the guys on the team, I’m a morning person. It’s always been that way.

Comes with the territory of pretty much working a full-time job since I was in high school in order to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

If I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t eat. Providing for his wife and kid is something that my dad should’ve been doing, but he was too fucked-up to do anything other than try to drink himself to death.

And even though most of us have been doing this for years now, my teammates still waste their time bitching and complaining about having to be up at 5:00 a.m. for a practice skate.

It didn’t make a difference to me.

When everything started imploding and going to shit in my life, I turned to the one and only thing I had: hockey.

It’s been my escape for as long as I can remember. It saved me. It gives me an outlet, a way to get out every ounce of my aggression without getting into trouble that I already can’t afford.

I’ve been obsessed with the game since I picked up a stick for the first time when I was seven and learned early on the more I pour into it, the better off I’ll be.

I once heard this saying in a class back in high school that you are a product of your environment. Meaning that if you were raised by fuckups, then nine times out of ten, you’re going to become the very same fuckup.

It’s statistics.

But if nothing else, I’m a stubborn motherfucker, and I refuse to let that happen, if not for myself, then for my mom. Because she deserves at least one good thing in her life, and I want to make her proud.

I know that she loves me, but my mother is a victim. She’s fallen prey to my father’s narcissistic, brainwashing bullshit and abuse. That’s what motivates me, pushes me harder, to be the best and accept nothing less.

Her.

My plan has always been to get drafted by the NHL, and then I can put her in a nice house in a safe neighborhood that’s not falling apart.

Get her anything she needs or wants without blinking or having to think twice about where the money will have to come from.

So I can take her the fuck away from my father and make sure she’s safe, cared for, happy .

Until then, I put my head down and keep the tunnel vision.

Besides, I would never give my father the satisfaction of ending up like him.

And that’s why whenever I’m exhausted and weary, I remind myself of that very thing.

How no matter what hand I’m dealt, I’m going to be more than just the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks with a shitty life and an even shittier father.

More than the kid who had to pay for dinner in quarters or had to take secondhand hockey gear because it was all he could get.

But mostly how much I can never fucking be like him.

Sticking the end of the hockey tape in between my teeth, I work on wrapping the end of my stick, shifting it back and forth in my hand to make sure it’s taped correctly.

“Hooooooly shit,” a voice sounds from beside me as my teammate Bennett Legros flops down onto the bench, dropping his hockey bag on the floor next to him. “I have to tell you what the hell happened to me this weekend. You’re not even going to believe it.”

Let’s be real, my tolerance for people in general is pretty fucking low. Never been much for small talk. I can barely tolerate my teammates, and that’s really because I have no other choice.

But if there was anyone I could almost call a friend, I guess it would be the dramatic, cocky, and completely unaware-of-personal-space goalie sitting beside me.

We’ve been playing hockey together for the last two years, and the fucker just has a special talent for weaseling himself in, so I couldn’t get rid of him if I tried.

Trust me, I’ve tried. Until I was blue in the face, but apparently, “fuck off” in Bennett language is “love me forever.”

“Yeah, something tells me I’m going to believe it if it has anything to do with you,” I grunt my retort, glancing back at my stick and pretending that I didn’t spend the last five minutes taping it just so I can cut this conversation short.

“Listen, dude, honest to God, I accidentally found a dead body.” His voice is exasperated, but there’s a hint of awe in his tone like it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to him all month.

“You know I actually do believe that, Legros, because whenever there is shit , you’re not far behind.”

“What can I say? It follows me around,” he mutters, unzipping his bag and pulling out his water bottle. He might annoy the shit out of me the majority of the time, but he’s one of the best goalies I think I’ve ever seen.

As long as I’ve been playing hockey, I’ve learned one thing: goalies are a whole different breed, and Bennett is no exception.

He starts to suit up for practice and shakes his head. “It was wild. The one time I decided to go off campus and go to Bourbon like a fucking tourist, and there’s a dead dude in the middle of the street. It was traumatic, to say the least. Fuck, I think I might still be a little drunk.”

“Well, you were on Bourbon Street, so I’m not really sure what you expected.”

Shrugging, he rakes a hand through his hair. “I mean, I went there for a good time and… a hand grenade because you know that’s my shit, not the coroner on the literal corner.”

I roll my eyes, and he just smirks, a shit-eating grin that reveals teeth that are far too perfect for a dude that plays hockey, but he’s like me and never takes off his mouth guard. “Surprisingly, though, finding a dead body is not the talk of the campus. You are.”

“Enlighten me. Why am I the topic of conversation this week?” I sigh.

“Everybody’s talking about your little stroll”—he waves his fingers through the air—“down sorority row in nothing but underwear. Jesus, dude, can you leave a little for the rest of us?”

Figured that would probably happen, but whatever. People are always going to talk; who gives a shit if it’s about me or something else. What they waste their time on is not my concern.

If I cared what people thought about me, I wouldn’t have time to worry about anything else in my life.

So what… I like to fuck and blow off steam. Sometimes I walk down sorority row in my boxer briefs because a girl kicked me out when I reminded her that it was a one-night thing.

I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. And I don’t stick my dick in the same girl twice.

I’ve got it down to a science.

A few of our teammates begin to filter into the locker room ahead of practice, offering us a nod and not much more. They already know I’m not much for conversation off the ice. I might be an asshole, but I’m an asshole who’s damn good at hockey.

That’s all I’m here to do. I’m not here to make friends. I’m not here to do anything but pave my way to the NHL.

That’s it.

That’s all it boils down to.

The rest is just a distraction, and I can’t afford distractions.

That’s why I signed up for extra ice time. Because I needed some extra time to work on improving my agility on the ice and conditioning, my stick-handling speed. Failure isn’t in my vocabulary, so that means that I have to push myself to the limit.

My position for the Hellcats is left winger, which means I spend a lot of time battling for pucks, intimidating the other team, causing them to fuck up so they draw a penalty and we can have an extra guy on the ice.

Unofficially, my title is the enforcer, the one who pushes them to the limit and makes them snap.

But what a lot of people don’t understand is that unlike the NHL and a lot of minor leagues, there’s absolutely no fighting in college hockey.

The NCAA does not fuck around with fighting on the ice, point-blank.

You fight? You’re thrown out of the game, and then you’re not useful to your team at all.

So as much as I like to get my aggression out on the ice, check the fuck out of guys, talk shit to them, back them into a corner, I do it without hitting anyone.

But off the ice? That is a different story.

You’d think after all the fights that me and my old man have gotten into that I wouldn’t want anything to do with it, but maybe…

I just like a little touch of violence sometimes.

Call it daddy issues, call me depraved or whatever the fuck you want, but it doesn’t make it any less true. At least I’m self-aware.

I set my stick down beside me and work on lacing up my skates while Bennett is prattling off about his night on Bourbon when it hits me.

Who better to pump for information than the guy who knows everybody’s business on this entire campus?

Don’t ask me how, but he somehow manages to be more involved with the drama than half the girls I know.

Turning to look at him, I lift a brow. “What do you know about a Rousseau? Lennon?”

Legros blows out a whistle, shaking his head. “Oh, Lennon Rousseau . I’m surprised you don’t know who she is.”

I shrug. “Should I?”

At first, I didn’t recognize who she was when I saw her stomping onto the ice, her face set in polite determination, words dripping with a saccharine sweetness that I could practically taste even from across the ice.

Even when she yelled her name as I was walking away, it still didn’t fully hit me.

Rousseau’s a fairly common last name in New Orleans, but then I realized where I knew her from.

That article in the Gazette . The one where I saw her standing, poised and proper, next to her piece-of-shit father, looking every bit the pet that I would expect her to be.

The article painted her family as the perfect Stepford family, complete with a white picket fence, but I knew better.

I knew there was more than what they wanted the world to see.

Because it didn’t divulge any of Rousseau’s transgressions, the ones I’m all too familiar with.

The realization slammed into me like a truck, causing me to replay our interaction over and over in my head. I suddenly hated that my very first thought about her was how hot she was and imagining that sassy little mouth in a hundred different ways involving my dick now that I knew who she was.

Yet the girl with the fiery red hair and a mouth to match plagued my thoughts the entire weekend, whether I wanted her to or not.

So yeah, I know who Lennon Rousseau is . But I’m not going to be telling Bennett that because I want to learn whatever I can about her. What the newspaper and social media didn’t say. That’s the shit I need to know.

“Everyone knows who she is. She’s little miss perfect.

On the dean’s list, the honor society, president of the Social Club bullshit.

Volunteers at charities and shit. Doesn’t party or do anything remotely fun.

” He leans closer as he says, “Dude, if you’re thinking about trying to hit that…

think again. She’s off-limits even to you , the mighty Saint Devereaux. “

That can’t be true because I’m fairly certain there’s not a single girl on this campus who’s insusceptible to my charm.

I arch my brow. “Off-limits?”

He nods, his lips twitching. “Yeah, so rumor is she has some kind of pact to stay a virgin until she gets married or something. It’s like this unspoken thing that everyone knows about.

Got a whole-ass promise ring and all. Heard it from a couple guys who tried to hook up with her.

So if you’re looking for an easy hookup, she’s not it, man. ”

A virginity pact?

This whole thing just got a lot more interesting.

Alright, Lennon Rousseau, you have my attention.