“I’m not interested in your fucking excuses. I’m going to pound that pretty face of yours the first chance I get. Get the fuck out of my sight.” My brother wasn’t a violent guy. He was quiet but determined, with infinite patience. I guess not today.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a hockey player?” Bria spat at her boy toy, doing her usual blame game. I guess it didn’t occur to her that she shouldn’t have been screwing around on Jock, teammate or not.
Vanderbuel’s gaze swung to me, and our eyes met. A sliver of awareness arced across an invisible thread connecting us. I felt a tug as if being pulled toward this man. He was hot, no doubt about it, but there was more. Something I couldn’t explain sent shock waves through me, and under the circumstances, I refused to explore it further. His green eyes pleaded for me, for anyone, to believe him. He did look devastated.
Then our fragile connection broke.
“You’d better go, dude,” Ziggy, our second-line left wing, suggested with a warning grimace.
“I’m sorry.” With one last sad glance at Jock and an accusatory glare at Bria, Vanderbuel escaped to the safety of his vehicle and tore out of sight.
I snapped into action. “Jock, let’s go in the house.”
I looked at his teammates, and they read my mind and nodded. They let go of him and backed away, not quite leaving yet, as we had one more problem to settle.
Jock’s attention turned to his cheating wife, and his face clouded with intense sadness shrouded behind a façade of anger.
“Jock, go in the house. I’ll deal with her.”
He studied me for a moment and nodded, fully realizing his fiery younger sister might do a better job of ridding themselves of this woman than he had over the years.
“Thanks, guys,” I said to his friends after Jock trudged up the steps and disappeared inside. “I’ll handle it from here.”
“You sure?” asked Kaden with a suspicious eye on my sister-in-law.
“Positive.”
They, too, left like their ample hockey asses were on fire, anxious to get away from this situation. In seconds, I was alone with this loathsome woman.
“Get out of here,” I hissed.
“I didn’t know he was a hockey player.”
“Get. Out. Of. Here. Now.”
“I need my car.” I recalled she’d taken a cab earlier to her alleged girls’ night out.
“Call a cab.” I was hard and unyielding. I wasn’t letting her anywhere near the house. I didn’t care if she had to walk. “And get a hotel. You’re not staying here.”
“But—”
The deadly intent on my face stopped her from saying more. She spun around on her impossibly high heels and stalked off, phone to her ear.
I headed into the house to find my dear, sweet brother sitting on the couch in the living room, head buried in his hands. His shoulders shook either from rage or from tears. I didn’t know which. With fourteen years’ difference in our ages, different fathers, and raised in different parts of Canada, we didn’t know each other growing up. Jock moved to Seattle five years ago, and we’d connected since I’d lived in Vancouver, BC.
I’d reveled in having a normal relative for once since the rest of the people sharing my DNA were dysfunctional as hell. Jock had been raised in Quebec by his father, a hardworking construction worker, and I’d been raised in Vancouver by my dad, who ran a motorcycle repair shop and had sketchy ties to an outlaw motorcycle gang. Our mom had cheated on his father with my dad, then cheated on my dad with a member of the local Sacred Hearts MC chapter.
From what I gathered, Jock’s childhood had been relatively benign and filled with hockey, while mine had been anything but. That was okay. What didn’t kill a girl made her stronger. I prided myself on being pretty damn strong.
Right now, that strength was a good thing because Jock and the kids were going to need my support. Bria had done the one thing Jock couldn’t ignore, deny, or forgive. She’d fucked one of his teammates—a new low even for her.
Chapter 3—Tail Tucking
~~Axel~~
I showed up the next morning at the practice facility, tail tucked between my legs, ready to grovel for forgiveness. I’d spent a sleepless night going over and over in my brain how I could’ve been so stupid. I should’ve realized there’d been something off about her. I’d ignored the red flags because I was lonely, nervous, and horny. Not necessarily in that order.
Now I’d pay for thinking with my dick instead of my brain. I had no doubt the entire team would know what happened before I even set one skate blade on the ice for practice today.
I’d formulated a plan during those sleepless hours. I’d apologize once again, go about my business, lie low, keep my nose clean, and hope this would all blow over. I was probably delusional. How did something like this blow over? Jock had been confronted by his wife’s infidelity, and even worse, with a team member in front of two other Sockeyes. This wasn’t going away anytime soon.
As I got out of my car, a Harley motorcycle rumbled past and slid to a screeching halt in front of the employee door to the building. The person on the bike swung one long, very shapely, leather-encased leg over the bike. She was definitely a female wearing formfitting black leather chaps and a tight leather jacket. She pulled off her helmet and shook out a mane of glossy, equally black hair.
I was instantly in lust because I was a horndog like that.
I strode toward her, my shame temporarily forgotten in the presence of this biker goddess. She was tall. I was taller. She was in excellent physical condition, but so was I.
“Hey,” I called to her as she slung a large bag over her shoulder and took a step toward the door. She had a key card in her hand and spun around with a questioning smile on her face. Her body might be badass, but her face was the face of an angel. Let me make one correction: had been the face of an angel. One look at me and her scowl transformed her angel’s face into that of a woman I’d be stupid to mess with.
I hesitated. She was familiar, and I racked my brain for where I’d seen her before while warning myself to proceed with caution. My last pickup hadn’t ended well, and here I was contemplating such a thing again. Would I ever learn?
“You.” She pointed an accusatory finger at me and literally growled like a lioness with a larger-than-normal attitude.
I blinked a few times as the memories I’d temporarily put on hold flooded back. Yeah, I’d seen her. Last night at my teammate’s house shortly after he’d tattooed my face with his fist. She was the woman on the porch, either Jock’s nanny or some relative. They didn’t look anything alike, so I’d vote for nanny.
Regardless, if the loathing on her face was any indication, her loyalties lay with Jock, and I was guilty as charged. Facts were facts. I’d slept with my teammate’s wife, and I hated myself for being such a stupid douche. I tried to find the words to express my regrets and drew a blank.
She wasn’t done with me yet. She advanced toward me until we were a few feet from each other. Defiantly, she glared up at me, not the least bit intimidated by my size or muscles. Forcing my expression to remain impassive, I gazed back at her.
“You bastard. You dumb shit. What the fuck did you think you were doing? He’s your teammate. I don’t care if they just called you up or what. You’re a selfish dickhead.”
I held my hands out, palms up, and swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I—”
“Where did you run into the cheating bitch?”
“In the hotel a few blocks down the road. I thought she was just looking for a good time, and I was bored.”
Wrong answer. Her dislike of me amped up a notch. “You were bored? You broke up a family because you were bored? Are you that much of an asshole?”
“I…uh…I…” I had no defense for the indefensible. I was a horny, young hockey player. “I didn’t think.”
After a disgusted once-over, she spun on her booted heel, took a few steps, and spun back around. “My brother is a good guy, and
I don’t appreciate anyone hurting him. Not her and not you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely.
She rolled her eyes, not convinced of my innocence one damn bit. “Your days are numbered on this team if my brother and I have anything to do with it.”
With that final threat, she stalked off, slamming the large metal door loudly to punctuate her anger.
She was Jock’s sister. Fuck. This was worse than I imagined. And for some reason, his sister had a key card to get into the building, which meant one thing, she worked here too.
Steeling myself for what was to come, I pushed the door open and trudged down the hallway toward the locker room and my fate. I’d played the preseason for the Sockeyes before being sent back down. I was well aware of the layout of the SHAC, and I knew all the players.
I opened the locker room door, hoping I was early enough no one else would be there. I wasn’t that lucky. Half the team was inside. One by one like dominos falling, they stared at me, some with accusation, some with disgust, and others with confusion. I’d broken the cardinal rule of the bro code. Not only had I slept with a teammate’s woman but I’d slept with his wife, the mother of his five children, and every guy in this room knew it.
When I met Ziggy’s gaze, guilt colored his cheeks bright red. Ziggy loved to talk, and I knew then he was the one who’d been spreading the gossip. He cast his attention downward to his skates, as if lacing them up were the most difficult task he’d ever performed.
I sought out Kaden, the other teammate who’d witnessed my transgression. He shrugged, not willing to commit his support to me, and gave me his back as he made a production of digging for something in his locker.
I hadn’t been on this team for twenty-four hours, and I was already a pariah.
Easton, the one guy who always had my back no matter what, hadn’t shown up yet, nor had Jock. I debated on whether to apologize and grovel for forgiveness in private or in front of everyone. I opted for the public approach since this had been made into a team matter, not a personal matter. Besides, a public apology gave him less opportunity to beat the crap out of me again.
I sat down at my locker and worked on wrapping a stick. Our equipment guys would do that for me, but right now, I needed the distraction. No one was talking to me. I was persona non grata, and they treated me as if I didn’t exist. I didn’t blame them. They’d had months to gel as a team, and now I came along, the guy who violated the code, and they didn’t trust me as a person or a teammate. Even my Puck Brothers avoided me.
The door opened. I didn’t need to look up to know Jock had entered the room. The place was quieter than a morgue, and the atmosphere became as cold and oppressive as the gray skies outside. I sucked in a breath and forced my gaze off my stick and onto my teammate. He was stomping across the room toward me. His hands were fisted, and his face was contorted in rage. I’d played for a month with Jock, our backup goalie, and he’d always been the consummate professional, never once showing an ounce of emotion. He sure as hell was making up for it now.
I stood quickly because no one bluffed well sitting down. I wasn’t keen on sporting a left black eye to match my right one. “Jock, please, hear me out,” I pleaded, throwing every smidgeon of pride in the garbage and resorting to begging. “I’m sorry, buddy. Truly sorry.”
“Fucking bullshit. You aren’t my buddy.”
“It was one night. I didn’t know she was married to you.” Warning sirens rang in my head, but I didn’t heed them. I’d never been smart enough to back away from a fight.
“To me? So if she’d been married to someone other than a teammate, that’d be okay with you?” Jock stopped in front of me, his blue eyes stormy with rage and his entire body vibrating with barely contained murderous intent.
“Uh, no.”
“She called me this morning. She said you two didn’t do anything. That you gave her a ride home from the bar because she was too drunk to drive. The bars close at one, so I’m finding that story hard to believe.”
I was struck speechless. By the look on my face, Jock had to know I’d fucked her.
In my peripheral vision, I saw my teammates assembling in a circle around us. I wasn’t sure if they’d cheer Jock on or prevent him from ripping me limb to limb. All I could do was plead my case.
“I didn’t know she was your wife.” How much more did I dare say? She hadn’t been drunk when we’d met, but she’d certainly been horny. If I went along with her story, I’d be lying, and he wouldn’t believe me anyway, which would make this worse. Better to own up to my mistakes and take it like a man.
“You think I’m stupid. I never imagined I’d be”—he paused, and his voice cracked—“I’d be betrayed by a member of this team.”
“I didn’t—” I looked around the circle of men for someone who believed me and might be on my side. Not one of them did. Not only was I screwed with Jock, but this wasn’t a good prelude to my rookie debut.
“I don’t fucking care what your excuse is. You fucked my wife.” Jock lunged for me again. I backpedaled, trying to avoid him, and stepped on someone’s toes. They yelped and pushed me forward, right toward my attacker. Jock had a mean right hook and cuffed me hard across the jaw. He’d sucker-punched my dumb ass again. I slammed to the floor, and the guy leaped on top of me, whaling on me with his fists. He got in a few good hits before we were separated by an angry head coach and an equally angry team captain.
Kaden held one arm. Easton, who’d appeared out of nowhere, gripped the other. It took four veterans to keep Jock from jumping me again.
“Where’ve you been?” I said as an aside to Easton.
He shrugged unapologetically. “Sorry I was late getting here.”
“I could’ve used you several minutes ago.”
“Sounds like you could’ve used me the other night to knock some sense into your sorry ass.”
I didn’t know. He’d have picked her up, too, given half the chance. Before I could defend myself, Coach’s voice rose above the din.
“What the hell is going on here?” He was so furious, his face was red with all these veins standing out. I hoped he didn’t have a stroke. No one said a word. Even Jock’s face was wiped of emotion.
“Jock, you’re a seasoned veteran. You know better than to pick a fight with a rookie. What’s this all about?”
“It’s personal,” Jock said tersely.
“Personal?” Gorst leaned close to Jock and spoke through gritted teeth. “We are all professionals here. Professionals. We don’t bring our personal problems to this facility. Whatever beef you have with him, settle it outside the SHAC and keep it out of the media. Do. You. Understand?”
Jock nodded, swallowing hard.
“All of you. Don’t you have something better to do than to stand around gawking? We lost all three games of the last road trip, and this is all you have time for?”
My teammates began to slink off, shuffling back to their stalls. Even Easton deserted me, not that I could blame him. I turned to leave, too, but Coach’s furious tone forced me to turnaround.
“Not so fast, rookie.”
“Yes, sir.” I looked him squarely in the eyes, knowing he’d expect nothing less.
“You’ve been on this team under twenty-four hours, and already you have the most amenable guy in this locker room at your throat. I don’t know what you did to get him riled up, and I don’t want to know. It doesn’t happen again, or you’re done with the Sockeyes. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” I almost saluted. The man would do a drill sergeant proud.
“Get ready. Now.”
I hurried off to my stall, ignoring the glares from my teammates.
“Everyone on the ice in ten minutes. Don’t be late, or you’ll regret it.”
We worked at a frenzied pace to get our gear on, and nine minutes, forty-three seconds later, I was on the ice. Jock avoided me, and I avoided him. We didn’t speak another word to each other. In fact, no one spoke one word to me. I’d been shu
nned, and I didn’t have a clue how to fix this mess I’d made.
My dad always said my sleeping around would come back to bite me in the ass, but I don’t think he ever envisioned the results to be like this. I’m pretty sure he’d been referring to a surprise baby, nothing like this. My dad raised his sons to respect women, and dating a married woman was a huge no-no in his book. He’d been burned himself when my mom walked out the door one day and never looked back. She left him with three young boys, and he depended on his parents to help him raise us. I was the middle child, the peacemaker of the family. Now I’d been the one to wreck another family.
Dad didn’t talk much about how he felt or his life. As a result, his sons were equally closed-mouthed. I don’t recall him telling any of us he loved us, but we knew he did.
If he found out about this, he’d be sorely disappointed in me, but I had no intention of telling him or my brothers. My older brother by one year played minor league hockey in Canada. He was still trying to break into the big leagues. My younger brother was playing junior hockey. We were a hockey family. My dad played adult amateur hockey. Before he’d married my mom, he had aspirations to make a career out of hockey, but things don’t always work out.
My dad never remarried. He was devastated after Mom left. In fact, I’d never known him to even date another woman, though I supposed he must have over the years. Then last year, he dropped a bombshell on all of us. He was gay. It was an adjustment for sure, but in the long run, we grew stronger as a family. I’d met Dad’s new boyfriend over Christmas, and I really liked him.
I should’ve known she was married. All the signs had been there. Looking over her shoulder, constantly checking her phone, reluctance to talk about anything but sex. And looking back, I swear she’d given me multiple names over the course of the evening. Yeah, all the signs.
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