by RJ Scott
“And I’m an expert in getting out of situations.” He kept talking, something about using J-turns, and none of it made a lot of sense, because there was no one in this world who knew my car as I did. How the hell he imagined he would get the huge beast into anything like an at-speed turn, was beyond me.
“No one said I wouldn’t be able to drive my own car,” I continued.
He crossed his hands on the steering wheel and then looked at me. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.” He paused to give me time to react, but the gentle apology, or acknowledgment that he knew I was unhappy disarmed me.
“I don’t like it,” I said after a while.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“No person in the public arena asks for this.”
“But you think we bring it on ourselves?” It was only what I was thinking anyway.
He frowned. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you implied it.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then I must have misunderstood your implication about me being in the limelight.”
“I didn’t… you know, I’m not going to argue with you. None of this is your fault.”
“Yeah,” I muttered and then stared straight ahead as he pulled out of the parking lot. He hadn’t actually said anything about bringing it on myself. No, that was down to me.
What if I hadn’t chosen to play hockey? What if I hadn’t shown confidence and ability on the ice? What if I hadn’t worked hard and been drafted into the NHL? What if I didn’t have Instagram, or had refused the ESPN naked body shoot? Was this all my fault for real?
I couldn’t think about all of this when all I wanted to do was play the game I loved to the best of my ability. I just wished the fear wasn’t all-consuming.
Chapter Seven
I focused on Jason’s driving, which was good, even though I winced when he pulled too close to a curb. Or indeed when he accelerated, braked, turned left, or right, in fact I was in a perpetual wince, and it had become a thing that I wasn’t overly proud of. I was a grown-ass man, but yet again this whole protection nonsense had left me feeling vulnerable and guilty and fucked the hell off. As soon as the engine died, I unbuckled, ready to step out, but Jason placed a hand on my arm.
“Stay in the car until I clear the scene.”
I stayed put, and watched him as he scouted the area, wondering what he saw. If I could’ve looked through his eyes would I have noticed things that weren’t normally obvious to me? By the time I was allowed out of the car, I’d imagined assassins at every turn, and I felt vulnerable and angry, and at a loss again on how to handle all those emotions. Damn him and his sexy eyes and his inability to see he was messing with my head.
“This is fucking stupid,” I snarled as I followed him down the alley to the front of the store.
“Uh huh,” he replied, in an off-hand way that implied he wasn’t listening to me at all, and was instead doing whatever bodyguards did.
“You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for the hacking of the screen, the team didn’t seem to care when it was just notes and a dead bird.” We reached the front door, and he paused and allowed me to open it. The routine was nice, but it wasn’t good when I quickened my step to get inside.
Where it was safe.
This was ridiculous. Smiling broadly at whomever was staring at me, regulars, people I knew, I reached the front of the line, having discussed the chances for the Dragons in our next game. I loved this time of the day, meeting the same people, making friendships that I thought went beyond me being a hockey player. Only this morning, my smile felt fixed, and I was looking for a hidden meaning in every single word. It made me edgy, uncomfortable and even more pissed as the minutes in the line dragged on.
“Morning,” Martha said brightly as I got to the front.
“Hey, Martha,” I replied, aware that Jason was right up in my space, hovering at my shoulder, touching me, a wall between me and anything that could hurt me.
“It’s been a while,” she offered with a smile.
“Been busy,” I gave my excuse.
“Lemon and vanilla today.” She passed me the bag, which Jason intercepted.
The fuck? He opened the bag and peered inside, shook it, then nodded and let me take it. Martha glanced from me to him and back again, and I could see a hundred questions waiting to spill out.
“This is my friend, Jason, he loves muffins.” Hell, I didn’t know if he loved muffins or not, but Martha was distracted by the comment.
“A new victim!” she exclaimed as she put another muffin into a bag and handed it to Jason, who took it without hesitation and handed her a five-dollar bill in return. “No, first muffin is always free.”
“Thank you,” he murmured, but I saw him put the bill into the tip jar.
The two of them exchanged a small amount of conversation and then it was time to leave. Part of me wanted to stand right there in the warmth of the shop, where everything seemed normal. This hovering that Jason was doing, taking my muffin, staring around him with suspicion, was getting on my last nerve. I understood I needed someone watching out for me, I’d agreed to that, but did he need to be this close to me to stop me getting flowers? I was stopped at the door by a regular who fist bumped me and congratulated me on a Dragons win from two weeks ago.
“My brother-in-law is a Philly fan, so when you won…” The guy was talking about goals and stats, and I knew I was nodding. Jason was in my peripheral vision, right at the door, a tension in him as he observed the conversation. I felt as if I was a kid who needed hurrying along. It was stressful, I was getting tense, and weirded out. It was getting to Jason too, and I brought the discussion with the fan to an end, worried I was being rude, apologizing and making up the excuse of being late for practice. By the time I made it out on the sidewalk I was done with the whole thing, and witnesses be damned, I was letting him know.
“You’re freaking me the fuck out,” I snapped, then stalked through the alley to my car, Jason right on my heels, so close that if I mis-stepped he’d barrel into me.
He regarded me steadily, that stubborn tilt of his chin matching the determined look in his brown eyes. I waited for him to tell me he was just doing his job, or that I was being a brat, which I knew I was, or that he understood why I was freaked out, because I’m sure he did. He just stood there, this immoveable object messing with my life. Did anything faze him? Huffing I spun to face my car, and stopped dead.
It was gone.
I didn’t have much in the way of material possessions in my life. A lot of that was due to childhood experiences when it had been the norm to move from place to place. After all, no one wanted the angry kid who was obsessed with hockey. No one until the Pressgrove family anyway.
But that car was my baby, and I felt sick that something I’d poured all my love into had been stolen from under my nose.
Standing in Martha’s with a group of people watching, the cops were making a big thing about the make of car.
“It’s a desirable car,” Cop One said to Cop Two, making sure to know I was included in this conversation.
“When I got it, I was seventeen and it was a shell. I didn’t buy it that way.”
Cop One looked skeptical, because rich hockey players could buy anything they wanted, right?
“It’s probably already at a chop shop being split apart and sold on, piecemeal.”
Something tightened in my chest. That car was my goddamn statement to the world that I was here, and I liked muscle cars.
Jason took the cops to one side, talking to them in a low tone not even I could hear, but I saw them taking notes. I even spotted Cop Two sending me a sympathetic glance.
“The car locks on this old vehicle make it vulnerable,” Cop One said as he and Jason came back to me. “The parking lot was empty, you know.”
“I know that.” I was about to explain how I parked there on every visit to Martha’s but I could feel the weig
ht of Jason’s accusing gaze.
Cop Two joined us. “Maybe if you’d driven a high-end secure Porsche and parked in plain sight like other hockey players do, then it wouldn’t have happened?”
“Thank you for your helpful analysis,” I said, and Jason moved between us. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask them for a detailed analysis of the statistics of car crime, but that would mean extending our time taking up room in the cafe.
I didn’t know Jason well enough to understand what his facial expressions meant, but the set of his jaw and the way he was blocking the door and was glued to his phone made me think he was worried. Was it an indication that he thought things had escalated? Or was he just pissed off? The cops left, the team sent a car to pick me up, and now I was at practice with an angry bodyguard hovering at the gate, and with no car.
I was late to practice, but arriving with a thunderous clatter of anger and irritation was enough for most of the team to give me a wide berth. Coach exchanged concerned glances with Jason, who shook his head and stood at the gate as I hit the ice. He’d dealt with me and my missing car, plus getting the cops involved, all while looming over the situation looking as badass as he could.
I explained in brief words what had happened, but wasn’t ready to go into detail.
“Shit luck,” Loki said as he waited next to me for our turn at working the rush. We watched Simba and the new kids passing neatly, and I knew that once I was out there instinct would kick in, but for now I couldn’t imagine having the focus to be able to work. The practice arena wasn’t open to the public today. “Do they have any idea who took it?”
“No.”
“Does you protector guy think the stalker took it?”
“Who the fuck knows what Jason thinks.”
“Next!” Coach instructed.
With that there was no more time to think about my car, or any of what was going on in my life. It took me a while to get back in the zone, I messed up twice—turnovers on passes, and a simple shot that went wide. I wouldn’t have cared normally, everyone has their off days, but at other times the team would chirp at me, ask me what was going on, but this time everyone was eerily quiet and avoiding eye contact. Everyone was in a weird space where no one knew what to say, and even though my anger at the stolen car was lessening, everything was still wrong.
I took Simba’s wing on the next rush, Loki on the other side, and we shuttled the puck between us, moving at speed. Loki carried it around the back of the net and passed it to me before I took a shot, and when it rebounded Simba knocked it in. I should have gotten it in there myself, but we were practicing positional rebounds and had to imagine D-men between us and the net.
Coach blew his whistle and stalked over to me, and abruptly the conclusion I’d reached in my head was torn apart by one very angry man.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded, right to my face, in front of the guys. He wasn’t given to grandstanding speeches, but his single question was enough to make the things he wasn’t saying obvious.
“I fucked up,” I admitted, “I want to go again.”
He stared at me for a moment, then blew his whistle. “Again.”
By the time we’d made it back to my apartment I actually felt as if I’d achieved something good at practice, but was exhausted, and Jason was quiet. His silence was getting on my last nerve, and as soon as the apartment door was shut I was done with the entire day.
“Tell me we have some security footage of my car being stolen,” I demanded, stripping off my scarf, hat, gloves, jacket, and throwing it all onto the sofa. My hair was still damp from the shower, and I flicked the heating control, just to get some warmth in my bones.
“Limited,” he said. Man of few words.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Talk to me, tell me everything that’s making you look so serious.”
“We have footage from the freeway exit, of the car, but there isn’t a clear image of the driver.”
“So you know which way it was being driven? Surely that narrows down—”
“I’m confident we’ll find the car and the person who took it soon.” He interrupted my statement and I knew he was trying to calm me down, but it didn’t help. There was only one person who would really understand what that car meant to me; Kyle, and I hadn’t even told my best friend I had a stalker, or that I needed a bodyguard shadowing my every move. Kyle had been the one to help me find the shell of a Mustang owned by a guy in North Carolina. We’d road-tripped there with a borrowed trailer, and had shared things I’d never told another person, and he knew why buying this car had meant everything to me.
I need to tell Kyle what is going on. I need someone to tell me everything is going to be okay.
Jason sidestepped me, picked up my jacket, shook it, and hung it on the back of the chair, but I stopped him from touching the rest, blocking his way, and glaring at him.
“You’re not my maid, for fuck’s sake just leave it alone,” I snapped and immediately felt guilty. What kind of person was I turning into when I couldn’t even talk civilly to another human being?
“Yes, sir,” Jason murmured, then headed for the kitchen and the coffee machine.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”
He glanced back at me as I stood helpless not knowing how to apologize. I was a nice guy, I didn’t do rudeness, I wasn’t nasty to people. He gave me an inscrutable smile. “It’s fine, I get it. Coffee?”
“I need to talk to someone first,” I said and waved my phone in front of me. Then, not waiting for his comment, I went into my bedroom for privacy, and hoped to hell I could connect with Kyle and that he wasn’t on the ice in practice. He answered on the second ring and I let out the breath I’d been holding.
“G!” he exclaimed, sounding out of breath, and I knew I’d caught him working out, which was exactly where I should have been had I not been told to go home and get my head straight by my concerned coach.
“I’m sure you’ll see it on Twitter soon enough, but I have a stalker,” I announced without preamble, then heard a curse, fumbling, and movement, until Kyle was back on the phone, his voice echoing as if he’d moved into a private hallway.
“What the hell?”
I imagined him standing there in shorts, wet with sweat, high on the endorphins of exercise. Not like me, hiding away in my bedroom, with my own personal hero to save me from the bad guys. Where did I start? Maybe I should have told Kyle sooner, but Jason had reassured me that Kyle and his family would be okay, and that none of this extended to them.
“It started with things like a dead bird, and notes, vandalism, and then whoever it is hacked the Jumbotron with some alleged prostitution shit, and the Dragons are pissed, and I have a bodyguard called Jason who is six-four of gorgeous sexy brick wall, and is in my space all the fucking time, and then today someone stole my car!”
By the time I’d blurted everything out to Kyle, I felt my stupid irrational anger leach from me. We were only a few days apart in age, but Kyle had always seemed older to me, the responsible one. He’d looked out for me when I’d joined the family, and along with his mom and Bobby, they hadn’t let me go.
“Shit,” was all he said, but in that single word was a whole heap of messages about staying safe, and how angry he was, and how he’d get on the next plane and make things right. As if he could do that last thing when he was one of the key players at the Arsenal. Abruptly I felt I shouldn’t have told him, and guilt began to spread through me.
“But, on the positive side…” I began, but had nowhere to go with that statement.
“Your car,” he murmured. “Shit.”
I sat on my bed, realized the blinds were open, and turned them so no one could see in, although who would be doing that at any angle I didn’t know.
“Yeah, my car.” My beautiful scarlet Mustang, that was all my own, paid for with my own money, loved, protected, a symbol of everything I’d never had as a kid, a pe
rmanent possession that was mine. Somehow taking that was worse than the hacking of the screen, or the birthday present, or the fact someone, a man, had pushed me face first into a wall.
“What can I do?” he asked after a short pause.
He’d already done what he could, just by letting me list all the things that had happened; he’d taken half the worry away from me, and I groaned when I realized what I’d actually done.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” I said, and massaged my temple where pain was knotting.
“I’m glad you did,” he said, and then I got the sense he was walking, and I didn’t know the back end of the Detroit practice arena that well, but every place had quiet corners where privacy was key. “What can I do?”
“Nothing, seriously, I have Jason.”
“Oh yeah, the sexy brick wall, tell me more.”
“That’s what you took from all of that?”
“Spill.”
“He makes me so fucking angry, up in my space, all over me, and all I want to do is shove him off the balcony.”
“You don’t even have a balcony,” Kyle deadpanned. Asshole.
“Having a stalker is my own fault, I get that,” I admitted to my best friend, because who else could I tell? “I play on my social media presence, I did that goddamn naked body shoot, I might as well have painted a target on my own back.”
“Hang on, G, the fault is with the person doing all of this. Tell me you know that.”
“If I wasn’t so out there, then—”
“Stop that, now.”
“But—”
“Seriously, this isn’t on you. Did you hire the bodyguard?”
“No, management did that. I never wanted one.”
“Because you think that being the big bad hockey player flooded with testosterone means you are invincible?”
“I wouldn’t have said it exactly like that, but yeah.”
“You need to get over yourself,” Kyle said. “Remember last year and the treehouse?”
I felt hot. Kyle, Bobby, and I had fixed up the old treehouse that we’d built that first summer I’d billeted with them. Fifteen and I’d never had the chance to do something as normal as making a secret place for our club meetings.
