by Elise Faber
Which were long over.
Her mouth flattened out, the grin slipping away. Time to go, time to forget, to move on, to rebuild. “Thanks,” she said and extended a hand.
Then winced and dropped it when her ribs cried out in protest.
“You okay?” he asked, head tilting, eyes studying her.
“Fine.” And out popped her new smile. The fake one. Careful of her aching side, she shrugged into her backpack. “I’ve got to go.” She turned, ponytail flapping through the hair to land on her opposite shoulder.
“That—” He touched her arm. “Wait. I know I know you.”
She froze. That was the second time he’d said that, and now they were getting into dangerous territory. Recognition meant . . . no. She couldn’t.
There had been a time when everyone had known her. Her face on Wheaties boxes, her smile promoting toothpaste and credit cards alike.
That wasn’t her life any longer.
“Thanks again. Bye.” She started to hurry away.
“Wait.” A hand dropped on to her shoulder, thwarting her escape, and she hissed in pain.
“Sorry,” he said, but he didn’t release her. Instead, he shifted his grip from her aching shoulder down to her elbow and when she didn’t protest, he exerted gentle pressure until Sara was facing him again. “It’s just that know I know you.”
No. This wasn’t happening.
“You’re Sara Jetty.”
Her body went tense.
Oh God. This was so happening.
“It’s me.” He touched his chest like she didn’t know he was talking about himself, and even as she was finally recognizing the color of his eyes, the familiar curve of his lips and line of his jaw, he said the worst thing ever, “Mike Stewart.”
Oh shit.
—Get your copy at books2read.com/Backhand
Boarding
Gold Hockey Book #3
Get your copy at books2read.com/Boarding
Hockey players had the best asses.
No pancake bottoms, these men—and women—could fill out a pair of jeans. She wanted to squeeze it, to nibble it, bounce a dime—
Mandy dropped her chin to her chest, losing sight of the Sorting Hat cupcakes she’d been pondering.
Blane with his yummy ass had a unique way of distracting her.
No, it wasn’t even distraction, per se. He had always been able to get under her skin.
And that was very, very bad for her.
“Ugh,” she said, tossing her phone onto her desk and standing, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to sit still now.
Nope, she needed about forty laps in the pool and a good hard fu—
Run, her mind blurted, almost yelling at the mental voice of her inner devil. A good hard run.
Unfortunately, the cajoling tone wasn’t completely drowned out. Some sexy horizontal time with Blane would be more fun—
But the rest of the enticing words were lost as the roar of the crowd suddenly penetrated through the layers of concrete. Her stomach twisted. Mandy could tell, even before her eyes made it to the television, that it wasn’t in celebration of a goal or a good hit either.
This was fury, a collective of outrage.
She was on her feet the moment she saw the prone form lying so still face down on the ice.
Her gut twisted when she spotted the curving line of a numeral two on the back of the player’s jersey.
“Not him,” she said and the words were familiar, a sentiment she had whispered, had prayed a thousand times before. She needed the camera angle to shift, for her to be able to see more clearly who was hurt. “Not him.”
Then Dr. Carter was on the ice and the player moved slightly, rolling away from the camera, giving a full shot of his back and the matching twos adorning his jersey.
Fuck. Not him. Not Blane.
And that was when she saw the pool of blood.
—Get your copy at books2read.com/Boarding
Benched
Gold Hockey Book #4
Get your copy at books2read.com/Benched
CHAPTER ONE
Max
“Daaaaaad!” Brayden yelled, crashing through the door to his bedroom. “It’s time for school!”
Max opened his bleary eyes, wincing when the doorknob slammed into the wall. He’d already repaired a handle-shaped hole from that particular spot more than once. His son never moved in anything less than a sprint.
“Fuck,” he muttered, stretching his arms above his head and blinking against the sunlight streaming into his bedroom.
“Fuck is a bad word,” Brayden said, plunking onto the mattress and cuddling close to Max.
And that right there.
His baby boy burrowing into his side, bedhead on full display, bright blue eyes staring up at him made every single thing over the last seven years worth it.
“You’re right, bud,” he said. “Now, what’s this about school?” Max reached an arm for his nightstand. “My alarm hasn’t even gone off—”
Well, fuck.
It was time for school.
Okay, past time for school. As in, they were already late. But he’d set his alarm. Last night after stumbling into the house at a quarter past three—professional hockey players and flight delays upon returning from a five-game road trip did not make for a happy team—he remembered opening the clock app on his phone and setting the alarm for seven . . .
He glanced down at his phone screen.
“Fuck,” he muttered again.
Because seven P.M. was not going to get them to school on time.
Brayden opened his mouth. “That’s—”
“I know,” Max said. “Bad word. Bad Dad.” He clapped his hands together. “Okay, bud, so we’ve gotta move. You get your teeth brushed and shoes on. I’ll meet you in the kitchen with a yogurt and cereal in three minutes, yeah?”
Brayden nodded, a soldier ready for battle, then took off down the hall.
Flinching at the sound of another door crashing into another wall—Brayden’s bedroom this time—Max rolled out of bed, yanked on a pair of sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a hat. He took thirty precious seconds to brush his teeth before shoving his feet into a pair of shoes, pounding down the stairs, and hustling through the hall to the kitchen.
Another slam indicated Brayden had moved on to brushing his teeth.
Max opened the fridge then scrambled to grab Brayden’s Minecraft lunchbox—he needed to give his nanny a raise for having made it the night before—and snagged a yogurt pouch. Two seconds to snip the top of the yogurt tube, ten more to grab a cup and fill it with Cheerios, then a few more frustrating ones as he fought with the zipper on his son’s overpriced Jurassic Park backpack before managing to stow his lunch inside.
He was breathing harder than after a shift on the ice by the time Brayden came in, shoes on, hair miraculously tamed, and smile wide.
“Anna”—their nanny—“taught me how to do my hair.”
Max’s heart clenched. With guilt for not being the one to teach his son, with anger that his ex hadn’t been there to show Brayden either, with fury that she’d bailed and left them both with a giant hole that he had no clue how to fill.
Stuck in his head, in the memories of his ex-wife, Max had taken too long to reply to Brayden’s statement.
His wide smile started to fade, the brightness in his eyes dimming.
Max hurried across the kitchen and scooped Brayden up. “It looks awesome, dude. Can you do mine like that when you get home from school?”
Brayden grinned and threw his arms around Max’s neck. “Yup.”
“Good.” Max set him down. “You breakfast. Me backpack. Us car.”
A giggle, but Brayden grabbed the makeshift breakfast and pushed through the door leading out to the garage. Max snagged the ridiculously expensive backpack—fine, he was still salty about spending over fifty bucks on a cheap-looking plastic covered bag with a zipper that rarely worked—but Brayden had loved it and his son rarely asked for any
thing.
Which meant that any time he did ask, Max caved like a chocoholic at a Hershey’s convention.
Luckily, he only lived about ten minutes from Brayden’s school, in a little suburb south of San Francisco, where his team, the Gold, was headquartered. They practiced and played in the city, but Max had wanted something a little quieter for his son, especially after the huge media storm that had resulted from his and Suzanne’s separation.
He thanked social media for that one.
Namely, his wife’s—ex-wife’s—uncanny ability to relay every personal, painful, juicy, and often exaggerated detail of their lives . . . as well as including plenty of flat-out falsehoods on the Twitter-verse.
Fuck, if there were a person in the world he could hate, it was Suzanne.
But he couldn’t, because she’d given him Brayden.
The rest of it, though, the lies, the scheming, the always-cry-wolf, those he could never forgive.
He started up the car, listening and chiming in at the right places as Brayden talked all things video game.
But his mind was unfortunately stuck on Suzanne and the fact that women were not to be trusted.
He snorted. Brit—the Gold’s goalie and the first female in the NHL—and Mandy—the team’s head trainer—would smack him around for that sentiment, so he silently amended it to: most women were not to be trusted.
There. Better, see?
Somehow, he didn’t think they’d see.
He parked in the school’s lot, walked Brayden in, and received the appropriate amount of scorn from the secretary for being thirty minutes late to school, then bent to hug Brayden.
“I’ll pick you up today,” he said.
Brayden smiled and hugged him tightly. Then he whispered something in his ear that hit Max harder than a two-by-four to the temple.
“If you got me a new mom, we wouldn’t be late for school.”
“Wh-what?” Max stammered.
“Please, Dad? Can you?”
And with that mind fuck of an ask, Brayden gave him one more squeeze and pushed through the door to the playground, calling, “Love you!” over his shoulder.
Then he was gone, and Max was standing in the office of his son’s school struggling to comprehend if he had actually just heard what he’d heard.
A new mom?
Fuck his life.
—Get your copy at books2read.com/Benched
Gold Hockey Series
Blocked
Backhand
Boarding
Benched
Breakaway
Breakout
Also by Elise Faber
(see a full listing and descriptions at www.elisefaber.com)
Roosevelt Ranch Series (all stand alone)
Disaster at Roosevelt Ranch
Heartbreak at Roosevelt Ranch
Collision at Roosevelt Ranch
Regret at Roosevelt Ranch
Desire at Roosevelt Ranch (November 3rd, 2019)
Billionaire’s Club (all stand alone)
Bad Night Stand
Bad Breakup
Bad Husband
Bad Hookup
Bad Divorce July 7th, 2019
Bad Boyfriend (Oct 6th 2019)
Gold Hockey (all stand alone)
Blocked
Backhand
Boarding
Benched
Breakaway
Breakout (December 15th, 2019)
Life Sucks Series (all stand alone)
Train Wreck
Phoenix Series (rereleasing October 21st, 2019)
Phoenix Rising
Dark Phoenix
Phoenix Freed
Phoenix: LexTal Chronicles (rereleasing soon, stand alone, Phoenix world)
From Ashes
KTS Series
Fire and Ice (Hurt Anthology, stand alone)
Acknowledgments
Thank you so much to my fabulous editors, Julie, Kay, and Christine for helping me bring this story to life. I can’t tell you how much I rely on you guys! Thanks to Heather, for taking the publicity of my books off my hands so I can write more of the stories bouncing around in my head. You’re awesome! <3
Hubs, thanks for supporting me when I talk your ear off about sentence structure, plot points, and copious new story ideas. Thanks to my fan group, the Fabinators for being so supporting and loving my books and just generally making my day better.
And thanks especially to you, my fabulous reader. I hope you all enjoy the Gold family as much as I do. I’ve always found my real life hockey teams to be a second family and the fictional one of the Gold has become one as well. Friends, hockey, and the occasional drink out is just about nirvana to me and the guys and gals of the team.
Love you guys!
—XOXO,
E
