“Last chance, boys,” Eva shouted. “Passing drills. Now. Or you’re all getting written up.”
The three of them geared up again and started their punishment drills.
“So what happens now?" Dunn asked, passing the puck to Henny. “Friends with benefits, or…?”
Henny slapped it over to Roscoe. ”You think I'd let it happen again?"
“Why not?” Dunn asked. “You two are tight as hell. You’re both adults. You’re obviously into each other. Why does it have to be some big fucking deal?”
Henny laughed. “So you’re the relationship expert now, Dr. Ruth? As I recall, you got your panties in quite a bunch over your little ice princess there, crying into your whiskey on Christmas while Roscoe and I consoled your weepy ass.”
“I can vouch for that,” Roscoe said. He banked the puck around the corner, sending Dunn chasing after it. Dunn nailed it back in Henny’s direction.
“She's not into it,” Henny said. “Neither am I. Last night never should've happened."
Dunn and Roscoe exchanged another one of their special little looks, then Roscoe said, “Dude. Pretty sure last night was years in the making."
Henny shook his head. It was pointless to explain—they wouldn't understand. No one did. Just because Bex was smart and funny and knew almost all of his secrets… Just because she’d been there for him in all the ways that mattered… And yeah, just because she was fucking beautiful… So what? That didn't mean he wanted to fuck her. Didn't mean he wanted their friendship to be anything more than that—friendship.
Did he?
Did she?
Oh, fuck. What if she had feelings for him, and he’d just been too dumb to see it all these years? What if she thought he had feelings? What if all this shit had already wrecked their friendship?
His head was spinning again.
“Well apparently Bex told your fiancée the whole story, so if anyone knows anything, it’s Eva.” Henny slapped the puck over to Dunn as they made their way back toward the rest of the group. He hated himself for what he was about to ask, but he was at a total fucking loss, grasping at straws. ”Maybe you could talk to Eva, find out where Bex’s head is at?"
“Noooo.” Dunn barked out a laugh, slamming the puck down to the blue line where second-line forward Lance Fahey was waiting to scoop it up. “There’s not enough room in that dog house for both of us, my friend.”
“Plus,” Roscoe chimed in, “Dunn’s a cuddler. Kind of invasive if you’re not into it.”
“Look," Dunn said, “I’m the last guy to advocate talking about your feelings. But maybe you should, you know, talk about your feelings. Sit her down, lay it on the line, see if there's more to this than friendship."
“There isn’t,” Henny insisted. “I don’t have feelings for her—not like that. We’re—”
“Incoming!” Out of nowhere, a blue-and-silver burst shot across the ice, crashing into Henny from the side.
Just one of the guys fucking around, but today was not the day. Henny twisted around and grabbed the guy’s jersey, slamming him against the boards.
The guy was laughing his stupid ass off.
“I come to check you out,” he said, his damn Russian accent like a jackhammer to Henny’s skull.
Kuznetsov.
Russian hockey players are my Kryptonite…
He tightened his grip on the jersey, shoving Kooz harder against the boards.
Eva blew her whistle.
Fuck. Henny was losing his shit. Backing off, he released Kooz, smoothed out the wrinkles in his jersey. “Sorry. Bad day.”
“Hey! Don’t turn into mush on me, nineteen.” Kooz flashed him a smile that left no doubt as to why Bex had a thing for the Russian goalie.
Asshole.
“Just friends, huh?” Dunn shook his head, skating away with a smirk the size of Texas plastered across his smug face.
“One question.” Roscoe clapped Henny on the back. “When can we start calling you guys Benny? No? How about Hex?”
If this shit wasn’t so supremely fucked, Henny might’ve laughed at that one. “Whenever you want your ass beat. That’d be a good time.”
“Rain check? I’ve got drills to finish.” Still laughing, Roscoe skated off.
Henny let him go. Didn’t matter what the guys thought. Playing it cool was the only way to go here. The only way to not make things worse.
So as confused and—unfortunately—turned on as Henny was, that’s what he’d do. Play it cool. Move on with his life. And forget this whole mess had ever happened.
Chapter Seven
“Any cleaner and we’ll be able to do surgery in here.” Fee reached across the bar and took the rag from Bex’s hand, tossing it into the bucket behind them.
“We’re a food and beverage service establishment, Fiona. Clean is the bare minimum.”
Fee folded her arms over her chest and smirked.
Bex huffed. “We can’t afford bad Yelp reviews over an unclean area.”
“Yelp reviews. Got it.” Fee sat on a stool and popped her elbows up on the bar. “Is Yelp our entire marketing strategy, then?”
“Laugh if you want, but online customer reviews are critical for social proof.” Bex grabbed a stack of papers from under the bar—charts and graphs, a few notes, the marketing plan she’d been working on before she’d started cleaning. “Read page seven. Studies show that negative reviews can actually prime people to have a bad experience, so even if it’s not technically bad, they’ll still believe it was. Then they leave negative reviews, and on and on, and soon it becomes an endless cycle of one-stars. Businesses have been doomed by lesser things, Fee.”
“Social proof. Bad reviews. Doom, doom, doom. Got it.” Fee shuffled the papers into a neat stack, setting it back on the bar. “In the meantime, whenever you’re ready to tell me what’s really going on, I’ll be right here. Waiting patiently. Not making a mess.”
Bex blew out a breath, her emotions rising up again like a wave. She’d tried to stop thinking about it, but her mind was completely wrapped up with Henny. After the most awkward goodbye ever, Bex hadn’t heard a word from him all day. It’s not like he had to check in with her. It’s just that usually, he did. Especially on days when he didn’t have a game.
Bex stared at her phone screen. “Can you text me? I think my phone service is screwy.”
Fee took Bex’s phone away. “Your brain is screwy. You’re totally obsessing. What is going on?”
It was a long moment before Bex could make the words come out of her mouth, and even then, she had a hard time completing the sentence. “Henny and I… I’m pretty sure we…”
“Oh.” Fee’s eyes widened dramatically. “Oh! Oh my God! What happened?”
Bex told her the story. It didn’t take long, considering she didn’t remember most of it.
“And now it’s just… it’s weird,” Bex said. “He said everything was cool this morning, but how can it be? He’s probably home right now planning his escape from me.”
“Bex. Henny’s a good fucking guy, and I don’t say that often. Do you honestly think he’d ditch you over a night of drunken sex that neither of you even remembers?”
No, she didn’t think that. Not really. But it wasn’t that simple. Whether they’d remembered it or not, something happened between them. They’d crossed the formerly uncrossable line, and there was no going back. Things would continue to get awkward. Then they’d start avoiding each other—cancelling plans, making excuses, hiding. Bex hated confrontation, so she’d simply pull away. Henny couldn’t deal with rejection, so he wouldn’t chase her.
She explained all this to Fee.
“And one day,” she continued, her throat tight and raw from holding back tears, “I’ll be picking out tomatoes at Wegmans and someone will bump into me, and I’ll look into his eyes and smile, letting him pass right on by, and later on I’ll be like, hey, I think I used to know that guy. And I’ll get this weird pain in my chest but I won’t know why and then I’l
l cry myself to sleep and—”
“Hey.” Fee reached across the bar and grabbed her arm, giving her a comforting squeeze. “It’s possible you’re overthinking this. Just a little.”
“I’m not.” Yeah, her brain liked to kick into high gear, project into the future, worry about crazy things that hardly ever came to fruition. But this was different. There’s no way things would stay the same between them. Sometimes, you just couldn’t go back, no matter how hard you wished for it.
“We’ve been friends since grade school. He lived with us for the last two years of high school.” Bex grabbed a knife and cutting board and got to work on the day’s citrus prep, trying to calm her breathing. “And now it’s all wrecked.”
“In all that time, you two never thought about… something more?” Fee asked.
“Nope.” It was the truth. For the first ten years of their friendship, boys weren’t even on Bex’s radar. Then in high school, they watched as all their friends paired off, hooked up, and quickly crashed and burned. She and Henny had a pact, even if unspoken—nothing like that would ever come between them, would ever put their friendship at risk.
“You never fooled around? Not even a kiss?”
“No, Fee. I’m telling you. It’s not—it wasn’t like that with us.”
Despite what everyone thought, the last and only time she’d seen Henny naked was in high school, just after graduation. They’d wandered away from the beach party and dared each other to strip down and wade into Lake Erie, only to discover later that a fellow prankster had swiped their clothes. They ran all the way back to her car, giggling and freezing their assess off, fighting over a musty old blanket she’d found in the back seat. They couldn’t even talk, their teeth were chattering so hard. When they got back to Bex’s house, her mother caught them trying to sneak inside—Henny with his hands covering his junk and Bex wrapped up like a wet burrito—and immediately assumed the worst.
It took years for Bex to convince her mother that nothing had happened between them, and some days she still wasn’t sure Mom believed it.
After that, she had no interest in seeing Henny again without his clothes on, and she knew he felt the same way. And if she hadn’t known it before, he’d made it perfectly obvious that morning, bailing before he’d even touched his coffee or bagel.
Henny never said no to food.
Fee offered a gentle smile. “Has it occurred to you that maybe you two have actual feelings for each other, and that’s why you ended up in bed together?”
“Feelings? For Henny? No.” Bex chopped a lime into pieces so tiny, they were practically liquid. “No way. Eww. Just… no.”
“Did you… did you just say eww? About Kyle Henderson?”
“Yes. And I’ll say it again. Eww!”
“We are talking about the same guy, right? NHL’s Sexiest Player for, like, ten years running?”
Bex rolled her eyes, reaching for an orange. “Of course he’s hot. Of course he’s built like a Greek god. And fine, he’s basically the perfect mix of sweet-as-pie and stubborn-as-an-ass. And don’t even get me started on those eyes. Or his stupidly long lashes. Or that hair. But those are just facts—totally objective.”
“Oh, totally.”
“Besides, he’s a hockey player. Way more angst than they’re worth.”
Fee arched a brow. “Eva would probably disagree.”
“Walker and Eva are exceptions to the rule. They’re completely obsessed with each other.”
“I don’t know, Bex. That glow she gets when she’s looking at her man?”
Bex pointed at Fee with the knife. “Exactly. Obsessed.”
“Whatever you call it,” Fee said, “I’ve seen it on you every time Henny walks into the bar.”
Bex’s cheeks flamed. What was Fee talking about? She shook her head so hard it ached. “Hardly. It’s just… always hot in here. I’m probably sweating. That’s not the same thing as being obsessed or in love.”
Bex hadn’t known Walker and Eva that long, but whenever they were together, you couldn’t help but feel their love. It was the special, real-deal, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. The kind Bex had stopped believing in when her last relationship imploded.
But the way Fee was looking at her now, like she knew some secret Bex just couldn’t get clued in on…
Was it possible she had feelings for Henny? Those kind of feelings?
Her stomach fizzed at the thought, but she immediately dismissed it. Her body, which had always been a pretty good indicator about people, had become completely unreliable since last night. Now, whenever she thought about her best friend, it was like all her wiring short-circuited, sending jolts of electricity zipping up and down her spine. And inside her chest. And… other places.
Purely physical. That was all. It had to be all. Because one thing Bex was sure of? She didn’t crawl back to Buffalo after her epic relationship disaster just to take more risks, especially with the people she cared about. Henny’s friendship was not something she’d ever gamble on—not if she could help it.
“I’m just saying you should keep an open mind,” Fee said, swiping an orange slice from the cutting board and popping it into her mouth. “Yes, you’ve been besties since before you had your first orgasm, but so what? People change. Relationships evolve.”
“Or they go nuclear. We’ve seen it play out in this bar a hundred times. Hello, Love Hurts?”
Last month, some dickhead biker thought he’d drop a bombshell on his wife during a game of pool—he was filing for divorce. Poor girl bawled her eyes out, and he just continued chalking his cue, calling his shots like nothing was wrong. Bex and Fee had started calling him Love Hurts because of the song playing on the pub jukebox at the time. It was like something out of a terrible movie.
Bex shook her head, remembering the poor wife. “If that’s what marriage looks like—”
“I’m not telling you to propose to the guy, Bex. I just wouldn’t be so quick to shoot down the possibility of something more—however tiny it may be.” Fee lowered her voice, her eyes suddenly sparkling with mischief. “Especially since he’s walking in that door right now. With flowers.”
“What?” Bex’s head whipped around so fast, her neck cracked. Sure enough, Henny was standing in the front entryway, kicking slush off his boots and balancing a huge bouquet in his arms.
“And there’s the look.” Fee pointed at Bex’s face and smirked. “I’ll just go… put on some mood music. Let you two talk.”
“Fee, don’t you dare!” Bex reached forward for Fee’s hand, but it was too late. Fee was already on the other side of the room, studying the CDs in the jukebox. Seconds later, the unmistakably nostalgic piano chords of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” floated through the air.
Bex glared at Fee. Laying it on a little thick there, girl.
“Hi,” Henny said, all awkward and adorable. Beneath his jacket, he wore a dark gray V-neck sweater that clung to his muscular chest and made his blue-green eyes stand out like the lake on a clear summer day. His hair was rumpled, curling up at the ends like it usually did when he went outside with wet hair.
Bex couldn’t hide her smile, but she did her best to camouflage her relief. It was starting to be a regular feeling with Henny, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “Hi yourself.”
“Journey, huh? I was just, uh…” He looked at the jukebox, then back to Bex, thrusting the flowers across the bar. “These are for you.”
The bouquet was lush and vibrant, full of her favorite flowers—bright orange tiger lilies, white peonies, and peach roses.
She searched her memory, but couldn’t recall a time when Henny had given her flowers. She’d had her appendix out in college, and he’d brought her donuts and Burger Hut and fuzzy pajamas with pockets, and never had a more perfect gift existed. But… flowers?
She filled up a clean plastic pitcher with water and set it on the bar, then unwrapped the flowers from their tissue paper so she could trim the stems. “What’s the occa
sion?”
“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “For last night.”
Her eyes snapped up to meet his, her body instantly rigid. Thank you? Seriously? “Last night wasn’t a favor, Hen.”
“For the nachos, I mean. And the movie.” He wrapped a hand around the back of his neck. “Definitely took my mind off the suspension.”
Bex arched a brow. “Is that why you ran out this morning?”
“No, I decided to hit practice today,” he said, clearly eager to get back to neutral ground. “Just missed seeing Gallagher, which was probably for the best. Eva was running the show.”
“She told me.”
“Yeah, I wondered if you guys texted or something.”
“Why? Did Eva say something?”
“No, I—”
“You assumed I’d run to her with all the details?”
“Did you?”
“Did you tell Walker and Roscoe?”
The air crackled between them, and suddenly Bex was back in high school, boiling over with a melodramatic flare so ridiculous it almost made her laugh.
Of course he’d talked to Walker and Roscoe, just like she’d talked to Eva and Fee. How could she be upset?
Bex knew her fears were completely unfounded, but that didn’t make them any less real. Especially not when Henny was looking at her that way, his eyes turning stormy in the dim light of the pub.
“Bex,” he said, suddenly serious. “We need to talk.”
Her heart thudded in her chest. Desperately, she tried to remember the symbolism of tiger lilies and peach roses. Friendship? Love? Loyalty? Was this the best-friend breakup bouquet? Or the let’s-give-this-dating-thing-a-whirl one? Or maybe it was the I-sure-wish-I-remembered-fucking-you-last-night, let’s-try-it-again-sober one? Did they even make a bouquet for that?
Frozen in place, she wrapped her hand around the stems and grabbed her citrus knife, waiting for Henny to spit it out.
“I, uh…” His eyes roamed the room, back to the jukebox, the pool table, finally settling on the papers she’d left on the bar. He thumbed through the stack, reading over her marketing notes. “What’s all this?”
Down to Puck (Buffalo Tempest Hockey Book 2) Page 6
