The Pilot and the Puck-Up: A Hockey / One Night Stand / Virgin Romantic Comedy

by Pippa Grant

  “Report tomorrow.”

  Her entire body goes rigid.

  Not the good, I’m having my brains fucked out and I’m going to come so hard the fucking moon feels it rigid. That was last weekend.

  This?

  This is No stiff. This is this isn’t happening stiff.

  “Joey—”

  “Good,” she says. “New coaches. A fresh start. The change will be good.”

  Her voice cracks on the last word. My soul cracks along with it.

  “I’m still fucking coming to see you on my days off.” I’m not going to cry.

  Zeus Berger doesn’t fucking cry.

  She squirms like she wants off my lap. I don’t want to let her go. I don’t ever want to let her go. “You’ll need a new apartment up there, won’t you? Can you live near your sister? And Chase? That’ll be nice. Being near family.”

  “Joey—”

  She twists out of my arms. “Do you need to pack? Is this normal? Overnight notice?”

  My phone rings. Of course it does, because if I know, half the world knows. I’m fucking lucky I heard from my agent and not through SportsCenter like some dudes do. I throw it against the wall and stand, hitting my fucking shins on the fucking coffee table again. “Joey.”

  She turns and looks at me, and I swear to Gretzky I’m staring at a ghost. All the light’s gone from her eyes. The fight’s gone with it. Her spirit. Her drive.

  She’s a shell of her normal badass.

  “This is life, right?” she says. “I need to get back. We’re signing…shit…in the morning.”

  My phone rings again, a crooked, sad, off-key ring that suggests it’s about as dead as the muscle in my chest is threatening to be. “Joey—”

  “Good luck, Zeus. You’re gonna do great.”

  Her voice is cracking again. She darts out the door like her pants are on fire. I charge after her, because fuck, we’re working this out, but she’s not waiting at the elevator, and when I yank on the doorknob to the stairwell, the fucking thing breaks off in my palm, because I’m not normal.

  I drop my head to the door.

  Two months ago, she would’ve been right.

  A trade was a good thing. New coaches. New ice. New rhythms.

  A fresh start.

  Except I found my fresh start in a clubhouse on a golf course in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains a little over a month ago.

  And she talks tough. She walks tough. She acts tough.

  But Joey?

  She’s not tough.

  She needs to be loved just as much as I do.

  And I’m not gonna be here to do it.

  35

  Joey

  When my daddy died, I refused to cry.

  He’d been sick for so long. Hurting. In so much pain. Death was a relief.

  I told myself it was for the best.

  What would’ve been for the best is if he could’ve gotten better.

  He lived a hard life, and he died a hard death. He knew Gracie and I loved him. He knew I’d take care of her after he was gone.

  I told myself he didn’t need my tears. That I’d already grieved while I watched him wither away and there was no fucking point to letting my weak side show.

  I should’ve cried.

  He was my daddy. He stayed when my mother didn’t. He deserved my tears. He deserved to be mourned.

  But I refused, because I didn’t want to be weak.

  Like feelings make you weak.

  They don’t.

  They make you human.

  I’ve spent a lot of years being really bad at being human.

  But today? Today, I’m embracing the shit out of being human. I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m lonely.

  I’m so fucking disappointed in myself.

  “Joey, hon, you need to pull your shit together,” Peach whispers to me as I trudge beside her on the way to our conference room where a buttload of lawyers are waiting with Chase Jett. Zeus’s best friend. The man who probably knows Zeus is moving today to be closer to him and Ambrosia, and who will probably get to have dinner with him like a normal fucking friend four times a week, even during the season.

  I hate Chase Jett right now. And he’s about to invest a metric ass-ton of money in my business baby.

  “Either that, or we need you puking your guts out loud enough for the whole building to hear,” Peach continues. “I slip you the papers under the door, we’ll blow sanitizer on them once you shove them back, and nobody will be the wiser.”

  “I’m fine,” I lie.

  And we both know it’s a lie.

  I’m not fine. I’m puffy-eyed and my throat hurts like a bitch and my nose has been running so bad my snot’s making the skin on my upper lip melt.

  I have acid snot.

  Because I’m in love with a man who’s moving hundreds of miles away.

  I keep telling myself I didn’t actually break up with him. That he didn’t say he wants to break up with me. That I’m a strong, kick-ass pilot whose world doesn’t revolve around a man.

  None of it helps. Because my life doesn’t revolve around Zeus, but it’s sure as hell been fucking amazing for having been enhanced by him. Am I really going to fall apart?

  No.

  But I’ll miss him. I’ll fucking miss him.

  You have any idea how big of a hole Zeus can leave in someone’s heart?

  It’s about Zeus Berger-sized.

  My heart had to stretch to fit him, and now it’s deflating on itself because of fucking fear.

  All the sports channels are talking about how this is a great opportunity for him. Best coaches for his playing style. A chance to really break out. Continue his career for another four, five, eight years.

  And he should. He fits on the ice. Playing hockey is what he was born to do.

  Much like flying is what I was born to do.

  Peach pushes me into the bathroom and takes a wet paper towel to my face. “We’ll tell them you took some jet fuel to the eyeballs,” she says.

  “Jett’s never going to buy that. He thinks I swallow jet fuel just to fart fire out my ass.”

  “Honey, don’t say that in the meeting. Just keep your mouth shut and sign where the lawyers point.”

  There’s a quarter of a billion dollars on the line this morning.

  She’s right.

  I need to get my shit together.

  We walk out of the bathroom, and shit.

  Gracie’s here. Grinning and walking in place with a huge-ass platter of cookies. “I brought…” she trails off as she takes me in, and she immediately looks to Peach.

  “She swallowed some jet fuel,” Peach lies.

  “I’m fine,” I tell Gracie. “Love the cookies. They’re…”

  They’re a perfect celebration for what we’re about to do. She baked her signature sugar cookies and slapped that printed frosting on top of every one. They’re adorned with stars and planets and—fuck.

  She even has Jupiter and Jupiter’s moons. I named Zeus’s nuts Europa and Ganymede not four days ago, and he asked if Ganymede was some kind of code name for me giving his balls a disease.

  Dammit, now I’m acid-snotting again.

  “Joey.” Gracie shoves the cookies at my partner and smothers me in a hug that smells like sugar and squeezes all squishy and soft and motherly except the part where she’s still walking in place to beat Peach with their stupid fitness trackers. “It’s not weak to love somebody. It takes fucking balls. If anyone can make this work, you can.”

  “I don’t—” I start, but I can’t lie and say I don’t love him.

  Not to Gracie.

  “Shh,” she says. “Let go and live a little. He’s good for you.”

  I don’t know how or why, but Gracie knows. She gets it. Maybe Peach is giving her some kind of signal behind my back. Maybe Gracie saw the news.

  Or maybe Gracie loves me enough to know me better than anyone, and it’s her turn to play Mom.

  “I’m scared,” I whisper.


  “Then pull a Joey and kick the fear’s ass,” she whispers back. Her shoulder bumps my ear while she continues to walk in place, and if normal wasn’t so comforting right now, I’d steal both their fitness trackers and mail them to Ares for him to eat.

  I order my emotions to get the fuck out of my way.

  I have business to get to, and then I have to...fuck again.

  I don’t know what.

  But thirty seconds later, when we walk into that meeting room, my heart swells like it got stung by a monster wasp and my whole chest cracks in two.

  Jett’s wearing his growly face. The lawyers all look like they’ve got rotten eggs shoved up their asses.

  And the tinny sound of boy band music is coming from the corner behind the conference table, where Zeus is sitting on the floor in blue jeans and a T-shirt with some glitter-sparkle troll on it, back to the wall, earbuds in his ears.

  My eyes bulge. My lips part. And I have to bitch-slap some tears to keep myself from falling apart. “What are you doing here?”

  Zeus pops one earbud out and meets my eyes.

  There’s no hold my beer and watch this shit.

  No smile.

  No swagger.

  “I’m not leaving,” he says.

  Jett rubs his temples. One of the older lawyers mutters something that sounds like worse than raising four girls. One of the younger lawyers has black Sharpie scrawled across his forehead.

  My chin wobbles. “You have a contract. You have to go.”

  “Fuck the contract. I’m not leaving.”

  The oldest dude in the room clears his throat. “Ms. Maloney. Ms. Diamonte. May we proceed, or would you prefer a more private location?”

  Peach shoves me in a chair. Gracie’s waiting in the lobby, because she hates paperwork as much as I usually hate playing nice.

  And she also has an hour or six to get in more steps while Peach is stuck at this table.

  “Let’s get this show on the road, gentlemen,” Peach says. “Or in the air, as the case may be.”

  “No.”

  I don’t know how many pairs of eyeballs swivel to look at me, and I don’t care.

  All I care about is that steady intensity radiating out of Zeus. “Do your work,” he tells me. “I’ll be here.”

  I don’t know anything about his contract, but I know if he got traded and he was supposed to be in New York today, but he’s here in Huntsville, at Weightless, he’s probably getting himself in trouble.

  Possibly jeopardizing his career.

  Because that I’m not leaving he’s spouting?

  This is Zeus. He doesn’t do anything small. He’s not leaving. Period.

  “You can’t do this,” I whisper. Not because I don’t want him to stay. Not because I don’t love him.

  Dog, I love him. But he can’t give up his career for me. Or anyone.

  “You’re going to the fucking moon,” he says. “Sign your papers.”

  As though that’s the final word on the subject, he slips his earbud back in, shifts to pull a paperback out of his back pocket—another romance novel?—and disappears into his own world before my eyes.

  I look at Chase.

  “This gonna be a problem?” he asks mildly, as though it’s not Zeus making him look like he wants to pull his hair out by the roots.

  “Nope,” Peach answers for us. “Let’s get to work.”

  “Mr. Berger—” the oldest of the group of suited men starts.

  “Shut up before I fire you, Hawkins,” Chase says.

  He’s in blue jeans and a Crunchy grocery polo—his main gig at the moment, though Ambrosia runs a lot of stuff for him—and I think we’ve identified the source of the teeth-gnashing.

  “We doing this?” he asks me.

  I look at Zeus.

  Sitting there on the floor, silent, out of the way, reading a novel when he’s supposed to be meeting his new team and getting ready for hockey season.

  “I’m not leaving whether or not you sign those papers,” he says without taking his eyes off the book, as though he’s some mutantly mature, suave form of Zeus I’ve never met before, “but I’ll be very disappointed in you if you don’t. Chase is a good guy. He’ll stay out of your shit. And not just because he knows I’ll flatten him if he screws you.”

  Chase smirks like he, too, has a hidden cache of battery-operated spiders and knows how to use them.

  I narrow my eyes at him.

  I fucking hate spiders.

  “This gonna be a problem?” I ask, turning the tables on him and ignoring Peach’s heel scraping my shin under the table. I’ll begrudgingly admit to liking the guy. And not just because he’s known Zeus and Ares long enough to appreciate them the way so few people do.

  He’s agreed to a lot of stipulations other people wouldn’t have. Which means he’s either smart enough to realize Peach and I know what the fuck we’re doing and can handle expansion, or it means he’s doing this for reasons he’s still keeping to himself.

  I don’t like that second option.

  He doesn’t blink as he taps his copy of the paperwork. “You know what I like about this?”

  “That it’s going to double your investment in five years?” Peach suggests.

  “The training.”

  Zeus growls.

  Apparently he knows about the clause where Chase is entitled to crew training so he can have private flights with Ambrosia.

  The part about Ambrosia specifically isn’t in there.

  The part about Chase getting a flight a month with a guest of his choice is.

  I hold his gaze. “That’s worth a quarter-billion dollars to you.”

  He grins.

  Like a teenage boy in a zero-gravity sex toy shop.

  The weird thing is, I think I get it.

  “Mr. Jett—” one of the lawyers starts.

  Zeus snorts again. “Mr. Jett used to set off cherry bombs in the girls’ bathroom,” he mutters in full-Zeus mutter, which means the staff in the break room at the other end of the hall probably heard him.

  “Pens for everyone,” Peach announces. To me, she mumbles quiet enough for only me to hear, “Sign the fucking papers and let’s go to the moon.”

  I look at Jett, who has to know he’s taking a huge risk with terms that aren’t in his favor if we fuck something up.

  Then I glance at Zeus, who’s sitting on the floor, not leaving me when he’s supposed to be in New York.

  I’m signing the papers. There’s no question. It’s a huge step for Weightless. For the next generation of space travel in general, with the added bonus of the local jobs we’ll be creating and the research that we’ll be taking on in the coming years.

  I’d be a fool not to sign, and there’s no way I could sabotage Peach by not signing.

  But it somehow feels bigger than I ever dreamed it could.

  Because I’m not doing this just for me.

  I’m doing it for my family.

  My hand-picked family. Peach. Our crew. Gracie. My dad’s memory.

  Zeus.

  I pick up the pen, and his expression shifts.

  He’s not smirking over there over me doing what I’m told.

  No, that’s his Proud of you, you sexy badass smile.

  I’ve always been proud of myself, because there haven’t been many others I’ve let close enough to be proud for me.

  It’s…nice.

  Okay, fine. It’s better than nice.

  It’s fucking fantastic.

  I’m still going to kick his ass for not being in New York, but I’m going to do something else too.

  Just as soon as I sign this fucking encyclopedia-sized stack of papers.

  36

  Zeus

  I almost fell asleep reading my first NHL contract, and it was maybe twenty pages long.

  That stack of shit Joey and Chase and Peach and all the stiff-ass lawyers are going through is like Mount Olympus compared to my little anthill of paperwork. And it’s fucking fascinat
ing.

  Signature by signature, my girl’s teaming up with my best friend to get us all to fucking space. I’m just a puckhead kid from Minnesota who got lucky enough to know the coolest dudes in the whole universe.

  And yeah, Joey’s one of those dudes.

  But she’s my dude. You wanna make something of it, punk?

  They order in for lunch. Half the lawyers get salads. I get a smile from Joey and two pizzas I didn’t ask for—sausage, nothing resembling fucking vegetables or anything spicy—and Joey drips bacon cheeseburger on her contract.

  I sit on the floor fighting a woody the size of the sun for the next two hours. My ass is asleep, pretty sure my knees are cramping—had a hard day on the ice yesterday before the news bomb landed—and I haven’t read more than six pages in this romance novel my buddy Knox hooked me up with, even though this shit’s getting good, because I’m too busy watching Joey.

  Finally, everyone’s standing up and shaking hands.

  “Welcome to Weightless, Mr. Jett,” Peach says.

  I snicker. Joey snickers. Chase flips me off behind his back and gives Joey a noogie.

  She pulls some martial art trick that has him flapping one arm like a broken chicken wing while she noogies him back. “Careful, or we’ll get you a call sign next, and it won’t be flattering,” she says to him.

  Yeah, my dick’s about to bust out of my pants.

  She’s so fucking hot.

  “Can you teach Bro this trick?” he asks while he’s still incapacitated.

  “Is this a bedroom joke?” Joey asks while I make a show of getting snarly and overprotective of Ambrosia.

  “Yeah,” Chase says like it should’ve been obvious.

  “I don’t like dickheads touching my sisters,” Joey growls.

  My lungs freeze and my heart blows up like a fucking balloon. If Ambrosia’s one of her sisters—

  Fuck.

  My eyes aren’t wet. Your eyes are wet. Shut the fuck up.

  She lets Chase go. Fucker’s grinning like he’s amused at my expense again. Love that dude. Even Peach, that vicious, spider-wielding, crazy-ass punk face, is beaming.

  Joey saunters to me, grabs me by the troll on my shirt, and hauls me to my feet.

  Okay, yeah, I help her out a little.

  “You. With me. Now.”