Page 41 of The Wildest One

“Fuck, there is no story,” I said to my sister, and when I glanced around the table, I could tell that not a single face I looked at appeared convinced. “Things happen when you’re on the road. It’s the same shit on a different day.”

But that wasn’t true. At least not the latter part.

Jolie wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met.

I never spent three consecutive nights with a woman or even three accumulative nights. The way I lived my life, I considered that a fucking commitment.

And it was a commitment I’d been thinking about nonstop since I’d walked out of that hotel.

Eden turned her chair even more, her body fully facing me, and she crossed her legs. “We all know that things happen on the road. We’ve heard your stories. You’re not one to hold back when it comes to us. Which is why this suddenly feels strange … because you’re not sharing what happened during those three nights. And that, Beck, is not like you at all.”

My hands dropped from behind my head, and as I placed them on the table, I glanced down. I had shelves full of LA Whales sweatshirts, like the one I was wearing, but my favorite was the one I’d given to Jolie. At this moment—and so many fucking moments before this one—I wanted nothing more than to fuck the LA off her.

“Here’s what I’ll say …” I looked up, immediately connecting eyes with my sister. “I met someone in Boston and spent those three nights with her. But neither of us is in a place where we can make anything of it. What happened there, it’s going to stay there.”

Eden’s expression softened—something that wasn’t common. “That’s too bad.”

I waited a second before I asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Because what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing are showing me how much you like her.”

“There isn’t an inch of my fucking body that isn’t screaming right now.” Landon winced as he unlatched the straps of his shoulder pads and chest protector and lifted the heavy gear over his head. Every new piece of equipment he took off, he set it in front of his locker. “Today felt more like a game than a practice.”

The gray T-shirt he wore beneath his pads was soaked with sweat, and while he still had it on, I punched his shoulder. “Pussy.”

“Fuck that.” He shook the sweat out of his hair. “Even you were fucking hard on me.”

“I was the hardest on you—get it straight.” I pulled my grays over my head and tossed the wet T-shirt into the laundry bin. “That’s what you get for ratting my ass out.”

He froze as he looked at me and then started laughing. “Oh shit, Hart said something to you about Jolie?”

“I’m surprised as hell that he waited until this morning to bring it up, but yeah.” I took a seat in front of my locker to untie my skates. “How did he get it out of you?”

Landon stood next to me, holding on to the side of his locker. “He reached out after the Boston game, asking where we’d gone to celebrate. He wanted to buy the team a couple of bottles. He said he called you and you didn’t answer, so he tried me. That’s when I dropped the news that you were no longer at the bar.”

I rubbed my chest, the muscles in there and my biceps and shoulders all sore from today’s stick work and shooting. “Dirty bastard.”

His head hung. “I knew he’d give you shit for it, especially when he texted me during our flight to DC to follow up and ask how things were going between you two. Hopefully, he didn’t lay it on too hard.”

“It’s all good, my man.”

Landon was friends with my family, and since he didn’t have any here, he’d spent a few holidays with mine. I wasn’t at all shocked that he’d told Hart—he’d probably assumed I would tell him anyway—nor was I bothered by anything he was admitting.

“Have you talked to her since you guys were texting on the flight to DC?” He sat beside me to unlace his skates.

“No.”

He paused to look at me. “Do you think you will?”

Each locker was built out of wood and framed like a cubby. I leaned into one of the separating walls, pushing my back into the edge, letting the hardness work into my muscles.

“I’ve thought about it. But it’s a situation that won’t get any easier.”

Not with her being a sophomore. If it were her senior year, we could possibly wait it out since maybe there’d be a chance her dad would let her work from home and that home could be LA. But as a fucking sophomore, at a school on the other side of the country, she was years away from having any freedom. And with a schedule as inflexible as mine, that really made things impractical.

“If we talk, it’ll make me want her more, and she can’t give me more.”

More?Fuck. Who would have ever thought I’d want that?