Page 27 of Twisted Play

All of them.

11

COLE

I took a shot and missed.Fuck!

“You okay?” Tristan skidded to a halt on the ice beside me.

Eva Jackson wasn’t at morning practice, and her absence was a distraction I didn’t need. She never smiled. She never joked around with the team. She never deigned to notice when any of the assholes on the team were clowning around for her attention. And in the two weeks since classes started, she hadn’t missed a practice. It was throwing me off.

Not that Eva ever noticed me anymore. We’d hooked up, she’d left, and now she didn’t see me at all. Why would she? Gorgeous, with long red hair, pink lips that begged me to sink my teeth into them, and curves for fucking days—she was a good girl, the best of girls, and fuck ups like me didn’t rate. She’d made that clear when she rolled out of bed after we hooked up, and she hadn’t given me a second glance since.

Money couldn’t buy attention from women like her, and I hated it. The one time I wanted to use my parents’ wealthand status to my advantage, and she never looked twice at me.

“She never misses practice,” I muttered to myself.

Tristan raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

Liar.I’d done my best to keep my obsession to my damn self because Tristan hadn’t bothered to hide his crush on her, but he knew exactly who I was talking about.

“Get your fucking head in the game, Carter,” Coach yelled, his heavy Russian accent carrying over the ice. “Or you’ll be skating drills until you puke.”

Tristan looked at me thoughtfully then raced off, eager to please, eager to impress like a fucking puppy. “Not gonna win any championships by mooning over a girl,” he shouted, much to my embarrassment.

I wasn’t fucking mooning. I skated after him, determined to shove thoughts of her from my head. But I couldn’t. She was like a goddamned drug, and I was jonesing for a fix. I hated that.

What fucking right did I have to worry about my little sparrow? She fucked me and then left, sneering at my apartment, reminding me I wasn’t good for anything other than my money. And if money didn’t make the man, what kind of man was I?

“Ask her out,”I said as I passed Tristan the puck. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

He eyed me. “I could turn into an obsessed stalker when she rejects me?”

Ouch.“You’re already an obsessed stalker. Didn’t you follow her to class last week?”

Tristan’s deep brown skin didn’t immediately show his blush, but he ducked his head to avoid my gaze. I chased him down the ice and let him avoid answering as we passed the puck back and forth.

By the time practice finished, we were sweaty and exhausted. Tristan elbowed me in the side as I dropped onto the bench in the locker room to strip before our shower.

“You okay?”

Before I could lie, a shadow fell over the two of us. “Cole,” Massi said through gritted teeth. “What the fuck was that today?”

“Cap—”

“Don’t ‘captain’ me,” he snapped. “You’re only still on this team because you’re a fucking superstar on the ice. Otherwise, we both know you’d be long gone, even with Coach’s soft spot for you.”

I surged to my feet, ready to fight this asshole. “I can out skate you any day of the week,” I scoffed.

He didn’t back down, his contempt searing into me. “You didn’t today.”

I didn’t.

Because I was distracted.

Worried.

About a soft fucking sparrow who wouldn’t give me or anyone else on the team the time of day if she didn’t have to interact with us for her job—even if I did want to wrap that red hair around my hand and tug her to me so I could bruise her succulent pink lips.