by Pippa Grant
Including Felicity and her three friends. The four of us are taking six chairs because there was something scary in her eyes when she told me I was going to prop my ankle up or else. Server doesn’t mind. Felicity’s friends don’t mind.
The women who keep stopping at our tables and shoving their boobs at me for autographs don’t seem to mind.
I mind.
Shouldn’t. Learned a long time ago to pick my battles. Fight only what needs fighting. Mind only what needs minding. Fix only what I can fix, be only who I can be. On the rink, I fight for the puck. Off the ice, I don’t fight at all unless I have to. Got enough food. Got a bed. Can get a woman when I want one—less and less lately, getting bored with screwing for screwing’s sake, even before Z found Joey and left me the lone single guy in our brotherhood, and I know random women won’t solve my foot.
I mind my foot.
I mind being fucking injured.
I mind sitting here watching punks sending drinks to Felicity and her friends, getting rubbed all over by chicks I don’t know, watching the games going down across the country while I can’t be on the ice.
I mind feeling like a dumbass who wants to talk to a woman. A specific woman. An off-limits woman.
She gives good hug.
Last woman to hug me was my sister. Woman before that was knocked up with another dude’s baby. Before that? My ma.
Last woman to comment on why I don’t talk more? Asked while she was sticking her hands down my pants. Came up with, Oh. I guess that does all your talking for you, doesn’t it, stud muffin?
Never wanted to talk to a woman before. Man either, for that matter.
Not like this.
“You coming to Felicity’s show tomorrow?” Maren asks me.
Before I can grunt an answer, Felicity goes pink. “I’m sure he has something better to do.”
Better? No.
Smarter? Yes.
“Like what?” asks Alina. She’s the one always wearing the necklace with a wishbone on it. Plays a killer cello. After those two songs before the game last night, I watched her YouTube channel until I got distracted watching videos people have posted of Felicity at the comedy club.
“Your show’s over before the game starts,” Alina continues, “and you’re funny as fuck. Who has anything better to do than to come watch?”
“Felicity’s not funny,” Felicity says without moving her lips in that high-pitched happy voice. “She’s a sad excuse of a woman who spends too much time playing with dolls.”
“You are too funny,” Kami says. She’s my favorite of Felicity’s friends. The vet. Plain, brown hair, brown eyes, never says a bad word about anyone. Smells like dogs. Let me leave Loki at her office to keep him out of trouble until after dinner.
Said I have time before I need to talk about a sanctuary or zoo for him.
Fuck. I live in a cage. The world’s watching cage.
Not a bad cage.
Price I pay for playing hockey, and I got my ways of making sure the world only gets what I’m willing to give off the ice.
But a zoo?
That’s a cage.
“Save the self-deprecating humor for the stage,” Maren tells Felicity. “Ares, I insist you come. Alina can’t make it, and Kami and I can’t hold off all of Felicity’s admirers by ourselves.”
Felicity switches to her grumpapotamus voice. “Admirers? You mean the weirdos who think she’s funny.”
Settled.
If she has weirdo fans, I’m going.
Fuck. Murphy needs to find her a new sitter.
“Ignore Harold,” she says to me, as her, her cheeks going a deep pink. “He’s full of shit and thinks everyone’s weird. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“Yes, you do,” Alina says.
“You really do, sweetie.” Kami pats her on the arm.
“It’s unanimous.” Maren grabs an onion ring out of the basket the server drops on the table.
“It is not,” Felicity argues.
“Ares?” Maren says.
I nod.
Felicity opens her mouth.
I grunt.
She sags in her chair. “I’m done with men,” she tells the table. “So I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“Felicity? Whoa, babe, you’re looking hot.” A beefy guy in a Chicago jersey tries to pull out the chair my foot’s on. He thumps it. I clamp a hand on the back and give him my best I’ll eat your grandmother for Thanksgiving dinner growl.
Don’t like to fight. Not fair, because I win every time. So I’ve learned a few tricks to prevent going that far.
Like looking like a mean motherfucker.
“You mind?” he says. “I’m talking to my girlfriend.”
Felicity slides lower in her chair.
“You don’t have a girlfriend,” Maren says, “and if you did, she wouldn’t be any of us at this table.”
“Shut up before I make you,” he replies.
She looks him up and down. “I could take you.”
“Bring it, asshole.”
“Did you just call me an asshole?”
Maren moves to stand. Kami grips her arm to stop her. Alina shakes her head and double dips her onion ring in the ranch dressing. Felicity’s gone all the way under the table.
The dick of the night is leaning over like he might take a swing at a girl.
I sigh while the two of them get closer and closer.
If Maren was my sister, I would’ve stopped this before it started. Mostly because it annoys Ambrosia when we interfere in her business, and that’s fun. Not because she can’t handle herself.
Maren seems like she can handle herself. All of them do. Except maybe Kami. Pretty sure she’d sacrifice herself to save an ant.
But I’m not sitting here when standing will bring it to a quick end.
I thump my boot to the ground.
“Ares, sit down,” Felicity hisses under the table.
And she doesn’t just hiss. She launches herself at my good ankle and wraps herself around my leg. Her boobs are pressing into my shin.
Murphy’s sister is chest-humping my leg under the table.
My junk’s going for gold again. Hope it’s fucking dark under there.
“Could you two please stop?” Kami says to Maren and the dick. She’s got the wide-eyed look of someone who doesn’t have enough ice cream to deal with a fight.
“It would be in your best interest,” Alina agrees. “Remember what Maren did to you the last time?”
I push my chair back.
Felicity hits that ticklish spot behind my knee. I yelp and almost kick her. She’s a tricky little beast.
“Bockman.” Another dude—this one shaped like a barrel with the number 42 shaved into his hair and sporting a Thrusters league championship T-shirt from three years ago—steps up to the table and tries to angle into the fight. “Leave Felicity alone. You had your shot.”
“Shove it, assface,” Bockman retorts. “She don’t want you.”
Felicity heaves a sigh under the table. I can tell because her boobs rub up and down my shin, and her hot breath heats my skin through my jeans.
Alina’s munching on onion rings. Maren looks like she might open her jaws like a snake and swallow them both whole. Kami’s given up and is sliding under the table with Felicity.
Why do they come here?
I finally succeed in standing without kicking or kneeing Felicity.
“Door.” I point to the exit.
Both men look up at me.
“Whoa, it’s the Force,” the second guy says. Like I’m a god or something. Named after one, yeah. Feel like one?
Who the fuck wants to be a god? Too much work. Too much drama.
Rather play hockey.
“Didn’t see you there,” he adds. “Oh, fuck. Are you with Felicity? Shit, man. Getting some on the side while you heal up, right? She’s good for that.”
I growl.
She tries to pluck my leg hairs out through my jeans.
&nbs
p; If she were my sister, and not Murphy’s, I’d be holding her upside down over a toilet right now.
The first one—Bockman—looks down at my boot. Ankle’s screaming again. Needs to get over itself.
“Felicity doesn’t do pussies,” he sneers at me.
So, the hard way.
This is going to fucking hurt.
“Whoa, hey, dudes. Where’s Felicity?” A third guy joins the group, which is a problem, because I only have two hands and I’m down a leg. This one’s got a full head of dark hair and the guts to wear a Nashville jersey in here. He’s trailed by three women who are all eyeballing me like they want to see my tattoo or offer me chocolate mints.
I like chocolate mints.
Don’t like fighting in bars.
“I’ll get the shorter two, you get Bockman,” Maren tells me.
I grunt, grab Bockman and the second dude by the collars, and lift.
Felicity squeaks and lets my leg go, which is good, because she might’ve gotten kicked in the face if she didn’t.
“What the fuck?” Bockman’s fighting it.
The other guy breaks into a broad grin. “Sheila! Sheila, get a picture of this! I’m getting Forced!”
“I said I’d get two,” Maren growls at me as she twists the third guy’s arm behind his back. He’s grinning too, smiling for the three women with their cameras out.
“Can’t count,” I tell her. Got appearances to keep up here.
“Should’ve let me have Bockman.”
We make our way through the tables, Bockman fighting and kicking chairs, Number 42 smiling for all the phone cameras aimed at us. The bartender leaps over the polished wood and helps us.
“Happens every time Felicity comes in,” he tells me after we’ve dropped the three puckheads out the door. “Got better once Nick got traded back home—guys mostly know not to fuck with his sister—but she’s like a magnet. It’s the multiple personalities or something. Just draws them to her like moths to the burning end of a roman candle. Do me a favor? Don’t tell Murphy.”
“Some guy was a dick last summer when Nick was hanging out here with us,” Maren tells me. “So Nick came in here every night until the dick came back, sat at the table next to him, stared at him his whole meal, and kept stealing bites of the dude’s food.”
“Guy never came back,” the bartender says.
Maren squeezes her lips together like there’s more to the story.
Knowing Murphy, there probably is.
Murphy builds electrified iron fences that shoot fireballs at anyone who looks over the gate when a keep out sign will do.
Good goalie though.
We get back to the table, my ankle throbbing harder with every step, and fuck. There’s another guy talking to Felicity, like he grabbed her attention before she was all the way out from under the table.
Three women block my path to her. Puck bunnies.
The one with a red dye job smooshes her boobs to my bicep and trails her fingers down my forearm. “You are so strong. You’re not even flexing, are you? Ohmygod, I’m so turned on right now.”
“Back up and let me have a feel,” Short One With Glasses says.
“There’s plenty of him to go around,” Red Dye Job answers. “Get your own arm.”
That’s me. A big piece of meat. No feelings. No brain. No heart.
Just meat.
Meat and a fucking bum ankle.
“What does your shirt say?” the third one asks. Don’t know why I think she’s a doctor, but I do. She’s got that doctor vibe. Like she just came from surgery. Smells a little like that anti-germ hand stuff, but not the sweet kind women get in fancy soap shops.
Not like Felicity. She smells like key lime pie.
“Skabana-Rama?” Doctor Blondie says, reading my shirt. “Is that like a band or something?”
“It’s a religion, Becky,” Red Dye Job informs her. She rubs her hand all over my left pec. “See the temple?”
“I thought that was a mongoose.”
The guy’s getting too close to Felicity. Alina and Kami are moving in too, and Felicity’s face is drooping and she won’t look at me. Like this isn’t a surprise.
“It’s not always like this,” Maren tells me.
The third one strokes my ass.
“Lavoie,” I say and point to the dartboard at the far end of the bar.
All three bunnies let go of me. “Duncan’s here? What? Where?”
While they’re looking for my teammate—the one who’s most popular with the bunnies despite the fact he never takes them home, and who’s across the country with the team right now—I slip away, around the table, and pick Felicity up by looping an arm under her armpits and boobs. “Mine,” I growl at the latest goober to try to score with her.
She makes a funny urp noise and grabs on to my arm. “Ares, if you don’t sit down—oof.”
Yeah, I sit.
I sit right down and swing her onto my lap.
The chair gives one weak squeak of warning and collapses beneath us.
Felicity squeals and grabs me tight around the neck as we hit the ground.
I almost take a spindle up the ass. That’s gonna leave a mark.
Not as bad as the mark on my ankle though. Son of a bitch is shooting iron spikes straight off a fire up to my knee.
“Ares?”
I focus on her big green eyes. Think about hamburger. Hamburger and skating around with the Cup. Happy places. Fuck, I’d take being able to lace my skates today.
She grabs my face in her strong hands and stares at me as though she can see into my soul. “Where does it hurt?”
I shake my head no. Doesn’t hurt. Even though my whole leg is aching like a bitch.
She growls.
She’d be a terror on the ice. Wonder if she plays.
Now I’m picturing her in pads and gloves and skates, flying over the ice, swinging a stick, sending the puck between the pipes, and all the pain in the world couldn’t stop the swelling in my junk.
“Home,” I say.
She sighs. “Sorry. I should’ve picked somewhere else. I just thought—I thought you might like hanging with the team. Or as close as we could get.”
It takes effort to not hold her when she climbs off me. But I need to let her go. Murphy would lose his shit if I touched his sister.
I’m done touching her. And smelling her. And thinking about her. And getting hard in the junk remembering how soft and delicate she felt in my arms earlier today, and how strong her hands are, how bossy she is.
Bossy isn’t supposed to be good.
But she’s making bossy sexy.
“Stay,” Felicity orders. “Maren’s getting your crutch.”
“I already asked to get our food to go,” Alina says.
I pull the spindle out from under my ass. Suspect asking wasn’t necessary.
Got the feeling they leave with takeout boxes a lot.
Kami winces. “You poor thing. Does that happen often?”
I grunt.
I don’t mind playing the fool. Gets me out of interviews. Keeps friends on the surface. Easier to not let anyone down when they underestimate you.
Spent the first six or seven years of my life letting my family down. Couldn’t hear. Didn’t know I was supposed to.
Then I didn’t know what to do with the words when they came.
So I caused trouble instead. Me and Z and Chase, the hellions of Wishberry Lake.
Felicity strokes my hair like I’m a kid. My ankle’s swelling like a fucking balloon. Tailbone’s probably bruised. And my face is so hot I’m starting to sweat.
Me and Z, we got an act. I bust a chair on his watch, he reminds me we don’t sit in chairs when we don’t know where they’ve been, people ask for our autographs and the ladies offer to kiss our booboos.
We post shit on our internet accounts, fans go nuts, and endorsement offers roll in.
Mostly for Z, because I turn them all down. I play the fool on my terms, not on so
me corporate dime.
But because Z’s Z, he drops half of his endorsement checks in one of my bank accounts.
Fucker.
Says he wouldn’t get half of them if he didn’t have me by his side.
Lie.
We both know it.
Good thing he has Joey now. They’ll have kids, and I’ll pay for their college. Or their flying school. Or hockey gear. Whatever they want. With the money Z thinks he’s giving me.
Point is, I’m usually good with playing dumb.
But I’m not tonight.
Don’t want to think about why.
‘Cuz I think I know.
15
Felicity
I thought Chester Green’s would be good for Ares. You know, remind him that hockey’s more than just being on the ice. That people still love him even when he’s injured. That he needs to take care of his ankle so he can get back on the ice, and that they’ll wait for him while he’s healing.
My bad.
My total bad.
Because I didn’t really think I’d get approached by four guys when I was sitting with Ares Berger. Who does that? Seriously?
He’s scowling in the passenger seat. The sun set hours ago, but the soft glow of the solar-powered streetlamps and ambient city lights illuminate the interior of the car just enough to make his scowl extra scowly.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
The whole vibe in the car instantly shifts. I cut a look at him, and he’s watching me, growly-face-eater expression gone, something inscrutable lingering instead in his attentive eyes.
“What?” I ask.
Silence isn’t natural. I want to fill it with Lucy, with Tim, with Harold, and with me. All of us talking. But I force myself to let the question linger in the air. To let him talk next.
I’ll be quiet the whole ride home if I have to.
The whole night.
All week.
Okay, fine. I probably couldn’t make it more than about five minutes. It’s been fifteen seconds and I’m already starting to sweat with the effort of not filling the silence.
Silence is fine. When I’m alone. And not practicing my venting.
But it’s weird to be silent with another human being in the car.
I keep my jaw clamped shut. Lips tightly pursed. I’m supposed to swing by Kami’s family’s vet office to get Loki, but I pull over into a grocery store parking lot half a mile away instead.
