by Elise Faber
“Then what happened?”
“We respawned and then lost all of our armor, but guess what?”
She smiled. “What?”
“I found mine!”
“That’s great, bud,” she said. “Everything else going okay? You still like your teacher?”
“Yup.”
“And soccer?”
“Yup.”
“Gonna play hockey this season?”
“Nope.”
Anna froze. “What’s your dad say about that?”
Bray sighed. “He says I should do what makes me happy, so long as one of those things isn’t just video games.” A beat. “I need to not forget to exercise.”
“I think you get plenty of that,” she said.
“Yup. That’s what Dad said.” He paused, and she could almost sense the words struggling to fruition in his brain. “Something about habits or health or . . .”
“Healthy habits?”
“Yes! That video games are fine, but my body needs exercise to work. Just like how you can’t make an Iron Gollum without—”
And here she lost her battle with Minecraft terms.
Or at least her brain glazed over.
“Oh!” Brayden suddenly exclaimed. “Angie and I are making cookies. She says I need to add the chocolate chips!”
“Fun,” Anna said. “Love you. Bye”
“Love you. Bye,” he said back, though so quickly that it might as well have been one word.
Smiling, she tucked her phone back into her pocket and settled down at her dining room table.
The little envelope stared back at her.
“Fuck it,” she muttered and tore open the flap.
Then gaped.
Because apparently little could mean good.
Especially in this case, as she’d been accepted into the program. Come January, she would officially be on her way to becoming a teacher.
Anna sat there for a long moment, the paper crushed against her chest.
Her smile was so big it hurt her cheeks.
Carefully, she folded it and set it next to her laptop then settled in to work. She’d swung for the fences, and for once in her life, the ball had actually made it over.
Home run.
And so now she needed to not screw it up.
Step one of that? She had homework to crush.
Ten
Blue
He’d fucked up.
He should have come up with an excuse to miss Max’s wedding. Faked being sick—was the bird flu still a thing?—or made up a death in the family.
Except, Max knew that Blue didn’t have any family.
His parents had passed a couple of years before and as an only child and a military brat to boot, connections tended to be few and far between.
Just the guys.
Or well, the guys and girls.
Because aside from Brit being his teammate and friend, he’d become close with his friends’ wives—with Sara, Angie, Mandy, and Monique, their former goalie, Spence’s, wife.
“You just like hanging with them because they mother you,” Anna had teased a few months back.
If she’d only known how right she was.
Blue had been short on mothering for a long time.
His own mother had been in the military, his father the stay-at-home parent.
Which had basically meant that he’d had year-long stints of TV dinners and signing his own permission slips, punctuated by visits home from a mom who cared deeply but who also just didn’t have much of a mothering instinct.
She was never the mom to make cookies for the school bake sale or to make sure he had new clothes for back to school or to write encouraging notes and stick them in his lunch box.
Blue had made his own lunch.
Or it hadn’t gotten made.
He sighed and tugged at his tie, watching the guests starting to file into their seats, all while knowing he couldn’t hold it against his parents too much. He’d had food, a safe place to stay, he’d gotten rides to school and hockey practice—the first because school was required by law and the second because hockey was one extracurricular that his dad was all in on.
Bruins fan for life.
Blue bit back a smile.
He knew he was lucky in so many ways.
It just would have been nice to know that he’d been loved, that he hadn’t been some unplanned burden, especially since that was how he’d felt for most of his life.
Unwanted. An unnecessary complication and—
Fuck.
This was getting really heavy for a wedding.
“You need to take Anna on that date.”
He jumped, no way to play it off, not when PR Rebecca somehow managed to sneak up on him in five-inch stilettos.
Off his game.
Yeah, since his Anna-induced orgasm haze.
No.
Blue stifled a sigh because he wasn’t off his game due to orgasms—or a lack thereof, if he was being totally honest. He hadn’t been able to sleep with anyone since that night with Anna, and though he’d been trying to convince himself that his dick was just tired of playing the field—read, he’d had such a long enough streak of pussy that it just couldn’t be bothered—Blue knew it wasn’t that he’d finally gotten his fill of women. Nope, it was because he’d finally gotten his fill of women who weren’t Anna.
And also because he’d hurt her.
Just the reminder of that slice of pain sliding across her face, the way her bright blue eyes had dimmed, made him feel like the world’s biggest asshole all over again.
“Anna doesn’t like me,” he said, focusing on the problem in front of him.
The problem he could fix.
Leaving Anna alone so he didn’t hurt her again.
“She spent a hundred thousand dollars on you,” Rebecca said. “If she doesn’t like you then at least she wants to fu—”
Cutting her off before she got too close to the truth, Blue shook his head. “Did you even look at the name on the card before you charged it?”
PR Rebecca froze, brows furrowing for a split second. “Blue Anderson!”
He shot her a chagrined smile. “Those bidders were scary.”
“You—” Brightly painted red lips parted before she sighed, her tone softening, almost musing. “You’re right. That woman in red might have given me a story I couldn’t spin.” Her eyes shot to his, narrowed. “Don’t think I’m refunding you that money.”
Blue lifted his hands in surrender. “No,” he said. “I just considered it a donation.”
“Hmm.” The glared stayed in place long enough for him to really start to sweat. “You still need to give me a date.”
He shook his head again. “Remember the whole Anna doesn’t like me thing?”
“Easy to see why—”
“Hey!”
“Shush you. I don’t care if she likes you or not,” Rebecca said. “I need social media fodder and, my dear, you promised me a date with pictures.”
Blue’s mouth dropped open. “First of all, you guilted me into that date, and second of all, you threw me to the wolves. Those women—”
“And men,” Rebecca interjected with a shark-like smile.
He narrowed his eyes but amended. “And men. I don’t care about gender so much as I care about what they had planned for me.” He lifted a palm when she opened her mouth again. “Don’t prevaricate. Whatever it was, you know it wasn’t a nice dinner followed by a movie.”
A beat. “No,” she eventually said. “I did do some research on the woman in red after that night. Turns out that she moonlights as a dominatrix. Which is great. I’m all for us girls to go after what we want”—Rebecca made a face—“Although I’d prefer for her X-rated activities to not be attached to my family-friendly hockey team.”
“See?” Blue said. “I did you a favor and gave you a giant donation. My work here is done.”
Rebecca glared. “You played the system.”
He sighed. “I thought we just agr
eed that was a good thing.” He pointed around them. “Plus, if you want social media fodder, wouldn’t a wedding be a much better catch?”
Silence. The glare turning into a deadly expression that Blue had no problem admitting scared him.
“A wedding is a sacred event,” Rebecca snapped. “It is Max and Angie’s special day, and I won’t ruin it with attention they don’t want.”
A slender blonde tossed her arm around Rebecca’s shoulder. “Wow,” Brit said. “I think that is the most human thing I’ve ever heard you say.” She stepped to the side, nudged Rebecca’s arm. “What have you done with our publicist?”
“Shut up,” Rebecca grumbled. “It’s important.”
“Yes, it is,” Brit agreed. “So underneath all those designer dresses and spiked heels, you’re a big softy.”
She shoved her finger in their faces in turn. “Don’t. Tell anyone.”
“We won’t,” they echoed.
“And you’ll go on that date?” she asked, eyes locked with his.
“What? No. I didn’t say—”
Brit smacked him. “He’ll go. Anna deserves a night out. She’s been busting her ass helping with the wedding and going to classes.”
“I—”
It was Brit’s turn to glare at him. “Did you know that she made all of the flower arrangements?” He shook his head. “Well, she did because the florist broke her leg two days ago, and so Anna stepped in. And the decorations? Want to guess who did those when the wedding coordinator was dealing with the caterers? Hmm?”
“Anna.”
Brit threw up her hands. “Of course, Anna,” she said. “And so she deserves a nice night out. One with a guy who can be charming and not take advantage.”
The last words were a warning.
“I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve a night out,” he said. “But wouldn’t it be better with someone who she actually likes?”
Brit’s mouth curved. “Probably.”
A shrug from Rebecca. “But since there’s not one of them around, you’ll do.”
Wow.
“And here I’d thought you guys had my back.”
Brit snorted. “We do,” she said. “But we also have Anna’s, and I know she needs a couple of hours break and some food that isn’t from a college cafeteria.”
Rebecca nodded. “Exactly. Treat Anna and snap one selfie. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Rebecca!” Brit said, realization suddenly dawning on her face. “Is that what this is about? PR nonsense?”
A shrug that was devoid of guilt. “It’s not nonsense.”
Brit put on her scary face. “Dinner for Anna. But only because she’s with Max and Angie and Brayden. Oh, and because she’s awesome.”
Rebecca’s bright fire-engine red lips parted.
“And no freaking selfies,” Brit declared. “The Gold doesn’t take advantage of their players that way.”
Though the “not anymore” wasn’t spoken, it was still there.
Brit and Stefan had eloped, but their road to marriage hadn’t been straight. Their relationship had begun as a publicity stunt concocted by the previous management, and while the end product was good because Stefan and Brit were happy, neither of them had been on board with the process.
The publicist pouted. “Fine.”
Brit bumped her shoulder against Rebecca’s. “Maybe they’ll end up like Stefan and me, and this will be a really good story for Gold Time.”
Blue groaned as Rebecca’s grin widened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I can see it now. Love Found on the Auction Block”—she winced—“No, that’s tone-deaf. Maybe Bidding for Love?”
“Better,” Brit agreed. “Or—oh! How about Saved by the Gavel?”
“Holy fucking shit,” he muttered. “I’ve entered an alternate universe. I’ll take Anna out on a date because you asked and it sounds like she needs a distraction, but no selfies, no fucking love features on Gold Time. That woman is the last person I can imagine falling for. She’s just—”
Brit socked him. Hard.
Right in the kidney.
And he knew. Even before he turned and saw Anna standing behind him, hurt staining her features because of him. Again.
Son of a bitch.
He’d fucked up.
Again.
Eleven
Anna
Wow.
Why did she keep doing this to herself?
Why did she keep allowing Blue’s words to hurt her?
Normally she was a fucking steel wall. Never let anyone too close and if someone did happen to somehow make it past any of her barriers, they’d proven to her over and over and over again that they could be trusted.
Five people.
As in, that was the number of people who’d weaseled their way into Anna’s heart.
Brayden, Diane, Max, Angie, and Stefan.
Well, six.
Because Brit made Stefan happy and loved Diane as much as Anna did . . . and maybe also because she’d been nice to Anna, not pushing her to connect, but always helping her to feel included.
But the point was that Blue wasn’t part of that six. He was just a guy she’d slept with once—
Cough.
Okay, four times.
Still, it had only been one night, so she shouldn’t be vulnerable to him, and he definitely shouldn’t be able to get to her, to hurt her, to make her feel like shit.
Too bad he did anyway.
Well, no more.
She set down the spool of ribbon she’d been stringing through the final row of chairs and pulled out her cell from the pocket of her dress—yes, her dress had pockets and yes, it was amazeballs for mostly that reason . . . and also because it made her body look amazing.
In this moment, she was exceptionally glad for that small fact.
Stepping into Blue’s arms was too easy, too comfortable, too—
She rose up on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his cheek.
Click.
Anna forced a smile as she stepped back. “There’s your date,” she told Rebecca. “Put your PR skills to work.”
“Anna—” Brit began.
“Will you forward that over to Rebecca?” she asked Brit. “I don’t have her number.”
“I—”
“Great. Thanks.” She pocketed her cell then bent, snatched up the ribbon, and made her escape, bee-lining straight for the bathroom.
Thank God it was a single stall.
She slammed and locked the door, leaning back against it and trying to breathe.
Untouchable.
That was supposed to be her.
Unfeeling.
God, it had been so much better when she’d been unfeeling. This? Hurting because an idiotic man managed to poke a particularly open wound? This really fucking sucked.
Eyes burning, she turned for the sink.
“Ugh,” she muttered, wetting a paper towel and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. “No more. This is a happy day.”
That reminder was enough for Anna to suck in a deep breath, to shove away her hurt feelings, and to focus on what was important: Brayden, Angie, and Max.
Ribbons. Flowers. The ceremony.
Hoping to God that the wedding planner and the caterer had managed to repair the toppled cake.
Yup. Those were the things she needed to concentrate on.
Not Blue Fucking Anderson or his barbed insults.
Or his pretty eyes. Or sexy words.
Or that way he’d made her feel that night.
Because none of it made up for how he’d made her feel in that moment.
Angie made an absolutely gorgeous bride.
Her dress was the lightest shade of periwinkle, with crystals dotted sporadically on the lace overlay. But it was the rest of her appearance that was so Angie—her hair curled and styled half-up, half-down, a crystal droid securing the intricate coiffure, the matching R2-D2 pumps peeking from beneath her hem.
Nerds.
The both of them.
<
br /> And absolutely perfect for one another.
“You look beautiful,” she whispered as she hugged the bride tight.
“Thank you,” Angie murmured, blush creeping into her cheeks. “I— This—” She shook her head.
“It’s a lot,” Anna supplied. “But you guys deserve it. Hush, you,” she added when Angie shook her head again and opened her mouth, presumably to argue. “You deserve your happy ending, you and Max and Brayden.”
Angie blinked. “Damn you!” she exclaimed. “How did I get so lucky to have you all in my life? So . . . just damn you.”
Anna grinned, blinking herself. “Damn, yourself,” she teased, squeezing Angie one more time. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For making them happy.”
Angie kissed her cheek. “You make us happy, too. Don’t forget that, okay?”
A nod. “Okay.”
“Good. Now”—a wide smile spread the other woman’s lips—“I get to go dance with my husband.”
Anna’s own lips were curved as she watched Angie drag Max onto the dance floor. At least they were before she turned around and saw who was standing behind her.
“Can we talk, sweetheart?” Blue asked, voice almost gentle.
Her heart skipped a beat at the endearment before she could lock it down. Get it together, Hayes. Ignore the charm. Stifle the feelings. Move it right along. “I think we’ve talked enough.” She brushed by him. “And I’m not your fucking sweetheart, so just leave me alone, Blue.”
There, she thought since he didn’t try to stop her from walking away. It’s done.
Peace was what she felt in that moment. Definitely. Just relief that she could tuck away the anomaly of Blue and all the feelings he brought along with him. Not disappointment that things couldn’t be different.
But, dammit, she had too much self-respect to continue feeling like this every time they met.
Everything was fine when she didn’t see him, but that wasn’t reality. Their social circles overlapped and so, if she wanted to see Brayden and Max, Angie, Brit, and Diane, if she wanted to talk to Stefan, there would always be the chance of Blue being somewhere in the picture.
She needed to deal or let them all go.
And since she couldn’t let go of the little family she’d begun to call her own, her only option was to shut up and deal.
