by Elise Faber
She plunked her hands on her hips. “Is there a reason you keep breaking into my back yard?”
He shrugged. “Is there a reason you don’t answer your doorbell, except at three A.M.?”
She would not be amused.
She would not smile.
But damned if the man wasn’t right.
The only time she’d answered her door for him was the one occasion she should have been most wary. Though, in fairness, she’d gotten considerably more wary after the man standing a few feet away from her had shown up on her front porch.
“I was comfortable,” she said. “And I figured that anyone important would call or text.”
“And what if someone important did call and text?”
She lifted her brows. “Did you?”
An unrepentant grin. “No.”
She sighed and shook her head. “What are you doing back here?”
“Don’t friends hang out?”
“Friends usually have boundaries, and they don’t hang out every minute.”
Guileless green eyes on hers. “Is that so?” He nodded to her house. “Why don’t you teach me more of these mysterious friend rules?”
Char pressed her lips together, fighting once more against the urge to smile. “Why are you really here, Log?”
His chest rose and fell on a large exhale. He took a step closer, gaze serious now. “Do you really want to know?” he asked, moving closer still, until he was near enough for her to see the streaks of brown hidden in the depths of his emerald eyes.
Did she want to know?
It took her less time than it should have to admit, “Yes.” She did.
Fingers down her cheek, a soft touch smoothing back her hair. “There’s no one else I want to spend time with,” he said.
Her breath caught.
Then she frowned.
“No one?”
Logan snorted, the puff of air disturbing the curl he’d just tucked away. “Why do you sound so incredulous?”
“Really?”
Lips close and yet so far. Temptation mere millimeters away. She wanted. God how she wanted.
No.
Char stepped back, paced away. “I’m mean, come on, really? You’re confused that I sound incredulous?” She spun around, met his stare, and found it clouded with what was definitely confusion. “You’ve decided to flip the script on something I thought I knew for eight years, Logan. I was hurt. Devastated. And you were in the tabloids with an actress.” She sucked in a breath. “Then I didn’t hear from you, didn’t see you anywhere except on the ice, not even when you were playing in my building.” Another breath, this one a struggle against that old, jagged pain. “Then you agree to sign with the Gold, and I spent the first half of the season expecting something. An explanation. Derision. For you to make a pass.”
“Char—”
She turned away again, continued her pacing. “Instead, I get the consummate professional. A leader on the ice. An asset off. The perfect fit.”
Heat at her spine.
She didn’t turn around, couldn’t bear to look into his eyes.
“Then the season’s over,” she said when he didn’t speak. “And you show up with a present, with groceries. You tell me you want me. But I haven’t seen one fucking bit of that want for eight years.” Char’s hand shook as she absently went to push back her hair, but then Logan was in front of her, doing it for her, his hand lingering as it cupped the side of her throat.
And fuck, his touch was everything.
Her body was alive. Her nerves fired with pulses of pleasure. Need burned hot through her center.
“I had to wait until the season was over,” he said, carefully wrapping his arms around her.
“Log—”
“Friends hug,” he said, moving slowly enough that she could stop him, could step back or push him away. But all of those depended on her having one ounce of self-control when it came to this man.
And—case in point as her body pressed flush to his, as her arms wrapped around his waist, as she inhaled that spicy scent directly into her lungs—she had none.
Not with Logan.
Never with Logan.
Gorgeous, handsome Logan. Sweet, caring Logan. Heartbreaking, shattering—
His palms slid up and down her back, a slow and steady rhythm that calmed and made her yearn more than ever. “I had to wait until the job was done, Starlight,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I will never get between you and your dream.”
One sentence that undid her.
One sentence that broke her heart all over again.
That made anger and hurt and terror and so fucking much hurt well up inside her. She pushed against his chest, shoving hard enough to make him stumble back a step. “You already did,” she said, eyes burning with tears she would not let fall. “You shoved yourself into my dream and then casually set it aflame. Then you danced on the ashes before they had even cooled.”
“Char—”
“No,” she said, throwing her hands up. “Don’t push me on this, Logan. When I said friends, I didn’t mean that as an avenue to something else. I meant fucking friends, and that was it.”
“Star—”
“Either take it or leave it,” she said, leaving the blanket, abandoning the glass, and shoving past him to move toward the slider. “Because the one thing I know for certain is that when you ended us eight years ago, you ended everything—our future, our present, our possibilities.”
She yanked open the door, slammed—and locked it—behind her.
Then, heart aching, eyes stinging, throat clogged with tears, she went upstairs to take a fucking bath.
Thirteen
Logan
He’d fucked up.
And he hadn’t even had the opportunity to give Char the why of why he’d ended things between them.
He’d known he shouldn’t have gone back to her house.
It hadn’t been in his plans to see her again, the ones made in the dark much earlier that morning, but after he’d gone to the beach, after the phone calls and sitting on the sand, counting the minutes that passed by, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Hadn’t been able to find his patience when all he wanted to do was go back to her place and kiss and touch, coax and love his way back into her heart. As the waves had crested on the shore, their ever-pounding rhythm had wound him tighter and tighter.
Until the ocean was no longer calming.
Until he’d been unable to sit still.
Still, Logan had planned on driving back to his place, to work out until oblivion found him.
Then he’d seen the exit for Char’s house.
And he hadn’t been able to resist.
Just as he hadn’t been able to resist going into her back yard when she hadn’t answered the doorbell.
Stupid.
So fucking stupid.
But she’d been beautiful in her cut-off jeans, her legs on display, the curves of her ass tempting him even from ten feet away. She’d smiled when she’d first seen him, the impact of that initial reaction filling him with so much fucking joy that he’d blown it.
He should have led with I deliberately broke up with you, in a way that ensured you’d move on, so you didn’t give up your life for me.
Or perhaps, I still love you and I’ve never stopped.
Or better yet, I’m so fucking sorry and I’m getting on my knees—even the bad one that sometimes still aches from ACL surgery—to beg you to give me just one more chance.
He hadn’t said any of those things.
Instead, he’d given a half-explanation that only hurt her further.
Fucking hell.
“Shit,” he muttered, jabbing at the button on his garage door opener to close the heavy metal panel after he’d put his car into park. He turned off the ignition, slammed out of the door, kicking it shut with enough force that he’d probably dinged it.
Or broken his toe.
Well, what did
he need his toes for?
Hockey was done for the moment.
He was alone.
He was . . . fucking moping.
Sighing, he dropped his chin to his chest, inhaled deeply, and tried to quell the anger. All season, all fucking season he’d been striving for patience, slowly trying to prove to her—hell, to himself—that he deserved another chance, so when he’d finally pulled the trigger, he’d found it nearly impossible to go slow.
If that wasn’t a fucking pattern in his life, Logan didn’t know what was.
Slow down, you’ll crack your head open! his mom had regularly bellowed when he’d barreled down the road on hand-me-down rollerblades.
Slow down with the puck, you’ll make fewer mistakes had been his travel coach’s favorite mantra.
Slow down. Think. from Luc before he’d asked for the trade.
Even this season, Calle, the assistant coach in charge of offense had told him to move slower and more deliberately when funneling the puck up to his forwards on the board.
Slow down.
So easy in retrospect, so fucking difficult in the moment.
He’d always wanted everything as quickly as possible. First place in every tournament he played growing up, first on the ice during travel hockey, first game in the NHL, first goal, first full-season league. First . . . woman he’d loved.
Speed had been great for his career—granted, he was able to temper it.
Which he had.
He’d made it an asset instead of a detriment.
But speed wasn’t great necessarily when it came to relationships, not when it meant first love had turned into first heartbreak in the span of several months. And speed really wasn’t fucking great when he was trying to show the woman he’d never stopped loving that she could trust him to take care with her.
Fucking barreling right through on those rollerblades again.
Another sigh had him lifting his chin.
He punched the alarm code and pushed into the house, closing and locking the door behind him. It wasn’t that he was obsessed with safety or saw a threat behind every corner, but he’d lived in big cities for years now.
This wasn’t the small town he’d grown up in, nor the small suburbia Char had spent her last years in.
This was San Francisco, and that meant there were some inherent dangers.
So, locking her doors was definitely an item he planned to address on his plan to take care of her, but it had been shuffled down a few spots because . . . well, first he needed to figure out how to get her to not kick him out of her house.
Or back yard.
Or maybe, he should just start with getting her to talk to him.
He crossed to his fridge on another sigh, knowing that the contents were much sparser than what he’d filled Char’s with that morning but happy that at least she had food to eat for dinner while she was probably plotting ways to happily dismember him.
Or dull his skate blades so he’d eat it on the ice—
No. She wouldn’t mess with the team.
She’d just mentally voodoo doll him in ways that wouldn’t affect his play. His cock twitched, and not in a good way because he knew that she knew that he didn’t need his dick to play hockey.
That would be the first to go.
Cupping himself and shuddering, he acknowledged his ridiculousness then moved on to more important things than his cock.
Dinner.
He had a mind to eat dessert, but since that wouldn’t be happening for the foreseeable future, he focused on food by pulling out the fixings for a salad—spinach, crumbled tofu, quinoa, precut slivers of pepper—and ate with the deliberate focus of fueling his body rather than taste. Not that it tasted bad, but it wasn’t a giant steak and a loaded baked potato, and strictly speaking, he didn’t need to continue Nutritionist Rebecca’s meal plan, but he was going to. He’d never felt better, but more than that, it had been really fucking difficult to transition into her plan. It wasn’t like he wanted to eat junk food all summer, but he also really liked to indulge in his food and beer and didn’t want a repeat the struggle of cutting out extra carbs and sugar and meat.
He couldn’t even do cheat days.
No self-control.
Diet plan day in and out. Limiting the animal products—odd omelet with organic cheese aside. The blueprint for his diet was to predominantly focus on plant-based proteins, to avoid processed foods and refined sugars, and not often indulging in his prescheduled Cheat Days that Rebecca built into the plan.
Because . . . circling back to not having any self-control. To moving too fast and—
His phone buzzed.
Frowning, he put down the fork, wondering who would be texting and why. The season was over, the Cup awarded to someone else. The guys would be returning to their families and, in some cases, to their own countries. They had two months off before team activities would be scheduled, and even then, the time commitment would be light until the season ramped up.
Most guys had their own rest and training schedule. Healing up, securing some ice time, hanging with their families, fishing—there was a lot of fishing.
Not Logan’s cup of tea.
But he did have a cabin in the woods. It backed up to a river some could fish in. He just preferred to watch the water flow by, to hang out and do nothing, to be with no one.
Well, he wanted to be with someone.
She just—rightfully—wanted to light his dick on fire.
Cool.
His phone buzzed again, reminding him of the message, and he picked up his cell, glanced at the screen.
Then immediately shook his head and sighed.
Because Brit had fired up the team’s group text chain.
His phone vibrated rapid fire in his hand, moving almost faster than he could as he unlocked the screen and began to scroll up through the newest messages to ferret out what the hell had gotten the boys—and girl—so worked up.
Brit had sent:
Housewarming party at Kevin and Rebecca’s house tonight.
This Rebecca wasn’t Nutritionist Rebecca, but rather PR Rebecca, and while she hadn’t used PR in front of this Rebecca’s name, Logan knew which one she was talking about based on the spouse.
Kevin—forward on the Gold—with PR Rebecca.
Gabe—head trainer—with Nutritionist Rebecca.
See what he meant about the Gold being a family? There were so many crisscrossing relationships that his head had practically spun when he’d come to the team and had been trying to keep track of them all.
That tactic he’d given up on.
Eventually, he’d just gone along for the ride, and pretty soon he’d grown to understand the various dynamics.
Which was why he kept reading.
Max: Last minute much?
Brit: As if any of us losers have anything better to do.
Coop: I resent that term.
Blane: Even if it fits? *rolling eyes emoji*
Brit: I’m declaring this an honorary Cheat Day.
Max: I’ll bring the pizza. Players only, or everyone?
Kevin: Everyone is invited. We’ve got the food covered. Molly’s is delivering.
Blue: Cool. I’ll bring an IPA.
Brit: I’ve got the shitty beer covered.
Liam: We know you do. I’ll bring something good to make up for Brit’s bad taste.
The messages went on, escalating the teasing for several minutes before everyone began to sign off and gather up kids who were around or good beer that would be too refined for what Brit had termed her college-aged palate. Logan squeezed in a reply, saying he’d be there, too.
Because, what else did he have to do?
Sit around and think about how he’d blown it with Char?
Pack his shit and drive up to the Sierras and hide out in his tiny cabin?
He’d save that for next week.
Rolling his eyes at himself, Logan washed his plate then headed upstairs to change into party clothes.
But . . . that was also why he was going to the impromptu gathering.
Because they gave him shit. Because he’d give it back—to Brit and her beer, to Max and his nerdiness, to Blane and his inability to father boys, despite really wanting to. His wife, Mandy, also a trainer for the team, was pregnant with another girl, and so his future of pink hair bows was secure. Though Brit had bought little Madeline skates for her first birthday, so there was certain to be plenty of hockey in the girl’s future.
Plus, with women like Brit and Charlotte in her circle, not to mention the fact that much of the staff and management were female, Madeline had no shortage of role models to look up to.
Hockey was for everyone.
Not just a slogan for the league any longer, it had been wholeheartedly embraced by the Gold organization.
More than words.
Actions.
And—
He froze in the middle of buttoning a fresh pair of jeans as the puzzle pieces in his mind settled into perfect arrangement. He’d given Char some words, knew she deserved more, but . . . more than anything he might say, she needed actions.
Show her.
Not tell her.
He’d taken a creative writing class in college, a long torturous semester where he’d felt completely over his head, but one in which the instructor said one thing on repeat.
Stop telling and start showing.
Words didn’t mean shit if they weren’t paired with actions.
Then add in his tendency to move too fast and . . . well, disaster was the first word that came to mind.
He’d given Char a thoughtful present, he’d done a little groveling, and just because she’d let him kiss and touch her, had offered up friendship, he’d assumed—
