Page 29 of Off The Ice

“No, actually,” I said, eyes still locked on Liam’s intrusive neighbor. “I’m locked out of your brother’s apartment, and his neighbor thinks I’m breaking in.”

“What?” Maggie snorted before bursting into laughter that filled the hall. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, the woman listening in with interest. “But you’re on speakerphone. Can you tell her that I’m supposed to be here and I’m not some crazy fan?”

The sound of Maggie’s laughter mixed in with her words, making her somewhat unintelligible, but she still tried her best to assure the woman that I was, in fact, staying with her brother, NHL star Liam Brynn, and no, I was not a deranged stalker, but thanks for looking out for him.

The woman tsked as if she still wasn’t fully convinced, but she turned on her heel and left without further comment.

“Thanks, Mags. She’s gone.” I sighed, dropping to the floor with my back against Liam’s door. “But how am I supposed to get in?”

“Oh, no problem,” she said airily. “Liam keeps a spare key under the doormat.”

“I used that one to get in.” I groaned.

“No, Liam made you your own key,” she said by way of explanation. “The spare key should still be there.”

My heart jumped. Maybe I hadn’t screwed myself over. I reached down, flipping the mat, finding nothing but the floor beneath.

“Nope.” I shook my head. “No luck.”

“What?” she asked incredulously. “Look again. It’s been there for as long as he’s lived there.”

In case I’d missed something because I didn’t always trust myself, I looked again. Hard. Even looking at the mat itself in case it somehow melded into the fabric. But there was absolutely nothing metallic as far as I could see.

“It’s not here, Mags.” I sighed. “I can’t believe I did this. Your brother’s gonna hate me.”

“Give me two seconds. I’ll call and ask where he moved it,” she said before hanging up.

Just two inches of wood separated me from the cold, dimly lit hallway and the warm, inviting apartment where all the ingredients for a mouth-watering dinner were waiting for me. Yet, here I sat, alone with my thoughts, contemplating the way I managed to screw every aspect of my life up, big and small.

I liked to keep busy, to keep my thoughts at bay. When I was forced to sit down in the moments of lull that life always had, it was harder to turn my brain off. The floodgates opened, and the bad feelings came, and all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and hide.

Surprisingly, I thought of Liam. The way he made me feel… okay. I wasn’t so overwhelmed during the brief moments I’d spent with him. It was almost like his presence was so colossal that it distracted me from my own life. He gave me something else to think about. That something beinghim.

Stop,I mentally ordered myself.You’re no better than his fangirls, after all.

I shook him out of my head, relieved when my phone dinged once more, only to have that relief snatched away by the words written on the screen.

MAGGIE:Looks like you’ll have to go to the rink to get his key. Sorry.

Great.

Chapter Twelve

Liam

Nothing like hockey to get your brain jostled up nice and good inside your head.

I’d been distracted for asecond.One measly second. That’s all it took for my teammate to slam me up against the glass, laughing the whole time.

“Ha!” Ryan called, skating away speedily because he knew what was good for him. “I got Brynn.”

“Yeah, well, don’t think it’ll happen again.” I scowled, pursuing him on the ice, just until I saw the fear light in his eyes.

As an NHL player, Ryan Thomas was big in his own right, but he was no match for me. At 6'4", I had an inch or three over most of the guys on the team. And while I was on the leaner side compared to some of them, my height definitely gave me an advantage more often than not.

Height and speed. That’s what I had going for me, and I wasn’t about to let Ryan forget it. Following after him, I feigned left, darted right, and cut him off mid-ice, sending him scrambling to keep control of the puck.

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