Page 4

Tobie

Three of the hottest men I’ve seen in my life stare at me.

I can barely see them out of one eye with a contact missing, so I squint for all I’m worth.

The tallest one snatches up a hockey stick, and I retreat.

I heard them out here. I couldn’t help but hear them getting ready to crack my head open after I’d finally gotten myself out of the locked stall.

Just in time to die.

I’d been waiting on the other side of the bathroom door for the perfect time to open it.

I must have timed it wrong because two of the men had run into each other. Another had sprinted down the hallway. One of them had screamed. I’m not sure which one did the screaming, but something tells me it wasn’t the big guy with the scowling, gruff expression currently holding his hockey stick.

I retreat a little more.

His handsome face twists into annoyance. “Stop that. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I eye the hockey stick.

Hot guy with piercing green eyes and short, dirty blond hair is a little less terrifying when he lowers it. He’s still stupidly tall and stacked with so much muscle straining a long-sleeve black T-shirt that he could pick me up with one arm and not notice he’s carrying a thing.

“You were making weird noises.” The guy rubbing his head does nothing to hide his curiosity. He’s not so terrifying. Cute. Longish, light brown hair, flint-gray eyes, and an open, friendly expression.

I blush. “Uh… I locked myself in the bathroom stall. I was trying to get out.”

“But the noises?” he presses.

“I was trying really hard.”

Between smacking a shoe against the door, I’d rattle it, cursing every bad thing that had ever happened to me, growling, yelling, and probably sounding like I was insane.

And yet, insanity had worked. The door had flown open, clocking me in the head.

I’d yelped in surprise, but I hadn’t even cared that I’d hurt myself again.

I was free.

The guy halfway down the hallway comes back. “You’re rubbing your head.”

I try to place his accent, but I can’t. I want to say Spanish, but that doesn’t sound right, even though he looks like he might be with his short, curly brown hair, olive skin, and pretty brown eyes.

I stop rubbing my throbbing head. “When I first tried to open the door, I…” How do you say you ran at the door, bounced off it, and knocked yourself out without sounding like an idiot? “Uh… I failed.”

Gruff Hot Guy’s eyes sharpen. “We’ll go back to the arena, and I’ll take a look at it. Head wounds are bad. You feel dizzy or sick?”

“I felt a bit sick before, but that’s because I had my nose to the floor,” I say.

They stare at me.

Three of the hottest men you’ve ever seen in your life, Tobie, and this is the state they find you in.

“Come on. It’s too dark here to see anything.” The gruff one leads the way up the hallway toward a bead of light at the end while the other two fall in beside me.

“I’m Reid. You want me to carry you?” the sweet one offers.

“I’m okay, thanks.”

I definitely have a head injury. Why else would I refuse an offer like that?

“I’m Javier,” says the guy with dark brown eyes like velvet. “It’s Portuguese,” he adds.

I cock my head.

His mouth curves in a sexy half smile. “I can always tell when a girl is distracted by my accent. My parents are Brazilian, but I’ve always called Boston home.”

“Tobie… Tobie Myers from a town in Nebraska so small no one has ever heard of it.” I smile at him as I try not to let his accent continue to distract me. I’m probably more concussed than I realize because I swear his eyes spark with interest.

“That short for something?” he asks.

“October. Fall was my mom’s favorite season, but I’ve been Tobie for so long, it’s practically my name now.”

“It’s cute. The grumpy one is Caleb.” Reid leans toward me and says in a loud whisper, “He’s half-Canadian, so you’d think he would be the nice one, not me.”

I bite my cheek to hide my smile when Caleb’s back stiffens as he stalks ahead.

In the arena, I shiver as we near the ice.

Caleb rests his stick against the plexiglass and motions me over. “Let me have a look.”

Despite all his gruffness, his fingers are gentle as he takes his time, carefully probing the back of my head. It is an honest-to- God scalp massage, and the only reason I’m not leaning into it and moaning is because I’ve humiliated myself enough tonight.

I wince when he touches a sore spot.

“You have a small lump,” he says, slowly pulling his fingers from my hair and taking a step back. “You should go to a doctor, get it checked out. Just in case.”

I glance at his forehead and the redness there. “You bumped your head too.”

I’d heard the crack of two heads colliding as I shoved the bathroom door open. Reid was rubbing his head. Caleb must have a titanium skull to shrug it off without so much as a curse.

Reid flashes me a grin. “We’re hockey players. Takes a lot more than that to get us down. If we’re sick or dizzy, Doc always checks us out. Concussion is a bitch.”

As he speaks, Caleb is toeing off his sneakers and sitting on a bench to pull on skates.

“Dude. Seriously. We have to go home,” Reid calls out.

“And we will.” Caleb finishes lacing up his skates and taps six pucks into the rink before he steps onto the ice. “In ten minutes.”

Reid rolls his eyes, which makes me think it’s not the first time he’s hearing this.

I ask a question I should know already. “What time is it?”

Reid glances at me. “Ten.”

I’m not sure what disturbs me the most—being unconscious for so long or having my face pressed against a urine-soaked floor for well over an hour.

Caleb’s grace on the ice is impressive for a muscled guy well over six feet tall. Considering he’s only in a long-sleeve tee and the others in Wolverines hoodies with the name and logo of a snarling wolverine on it, he doesn’t seem to be the least bit cold.

I watch him slam a puck into the goal.

“Why are you here so late? Aren’t you tired from the game?” I ask.

Thank God the ticket agent corrected me before. They would have laughed me out of the arena if I’d called it a match.

“Caleb missed a shot, so he needs to practice until midnight to atone for it,” Reid explains.

That seems like a harsh punishment, but what do I know about college sports? “Isn’t your coach here to make sure?”

“Ah, no.” Javier shakes his head. “This punishment is self-imposed. Caleb talked our coach into letting him stay.”

“He volunteered us as tribute,” Reid adds with a grin.

“Fuck you,” Caleb calls out. “You volunteered yourself.”

“Because we have had the fact that this is a team sport drilled into us since we were kids.” Reid lowers his voice and adds in a conspiratorial whisper. “He took advantage of our selfless, giving nature.”

He says it with such a bright smile, I’m not sure whether to believe him.

Caleb flips him off and continues hammering pucks into the back of the net.

“Oh, well, sorry you lost,” I apologize.

Javier snorts. “We didn’t lose.”

I frown. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s his shot. The shot he never misses.”

“But you won ,” I say, still not getting it.

“He thinks it’s bad juju,” Javier explains. “For a guy who says he’s not superstitious, he sure is superstitious about that shot.”

“Why?”

“The last time he missed that shot was in his high school finals,” Reid says.

“And?”

“They lost the championship.”

I look at Caleb slamming the puck into the back of the net with such violence. I now fully understand why the goalies wear so much padding that they resemble the Michelin Man. Because to be on the receiving end of those…

I shudder.

“So now he thinks we’re going to lose the championship. Hence, him practicing for the next eternity.” Reid crosses his arms as he observes me. “Anyhoo, what’s your story?”

“ My story?”

Javier and Reid nod.

I shift from foot to foot, uncomfortable under their scrutiny. “Um, I don’t have one.”

“You’re in here with us, so you must have one,” Reid says.

I give one section of the stand a fleeting glance when my public humiliation reasserts itself in my mind. “Uh, not really.”

“For fuck’s sake, let the girl go home,” Caleb calls out as Reid narrows his eyes and lifts his finger in an aha gesture.

“It’s you.”

I back up, not liking where this is going. “Uh…”

Reid nods as he waves his hands. “The girl from before. I glanced up at the screen earlier, and you were on it. The kiss cam, I think.”

Shit.

“It, uh… it technically wasn’t me,” I stutter.

“I don’t get it.” A line appears between Javier’s dark brows.

“My boyfriend. That’s, uh… it was my boyfriend. Now my ex. I was just the girl holding the hotdogs.”

I mentally wince at my word salad. Have I never spoken to a person a day in my life?

Caleb stops slamming the pucks into the net to look at me. “What’s the hotdog got to do with it?”

“What happened to letting the girl go home?” Reid glances at Caleb.

Caleb immediately turns away. “I just asked so she would then go home. That’s all.”

Reid snorts a laugh. “Yeah, right. So, Tobie. What’s the deal?”

I have never been on the receiving end of so much attention from such hot guys before. “Uh, it’s not that interesting. Neither am I.”

“I have my doubts about that,” Caleb mutters, shooting me an intense, focused stare on his way to collect more pucks from an open bag near the rink’s entrance.

I consider lying, but I figure, why not tell them? They won’t even remember me tomorrow, so why not talk out this humiliation with someone before I go home and get started on pretending none of it happened?

“I came to surprise my boyfriend for our sixth anniversary. He likes hockey, and I, well, I don’t, so I?—”

“What do you mean you don’t like hockey?” Caleb interrupts, frowning.

“Let her tell the story, man,” Reid says. “Not everyone has to love it.”

“There must be a reason.” Caleb narrows his eyes at me. “You get hit with a puck or something?”

“Nothing like that. It just isn’t something I enjoy. Anyway, I was?—”

“But why ? Do you not understand it?”