Page 4 of Hot Ice, Tennessee

“That the puck looksdelicious.”

He looked at me like he was waiting for a punchline. “I have heard a lot of takes on hockey, but that is new.”

“You can’t tell me that those pucks don't look like little chocolate Hostess cakes.”

“That’s what you think of when you watch hockey, huh?”

“I don’t watch it. Don’t even know the rules. But when I’ve seen clips, to me, it’s a bunch of hot, angry men fighting over a Hostess cake. Think about it, next time you’re on the ice.”

He nodded. “Touché, cowboy.”

He was looking at the bar top again, his dark lashes pointed down. I was starting to get a sense that there was something weighing on him.

Maybe it was the first time he’d come to a bar alone in a while. Or, sure, maybe he was an anti-social, standoffish prick.

But… maybe he was just sad.

“It’s okay if you’re a designated driver, by the way,” I told him. “I could buy you an iced tea or a Coke or ten plates of nachos. The offer still stands.”

If he was bothered, it didn’t show. “You sure are offering a lot of people free drinks tonight,” he said. “When you don't have your ass up in the air, that is.”

“And you’re doing a lot of brooding tonight, when you’re not glaring at me outside like a scolding teacher.”

His guarded expression disappeared, like I’d finally said something that got him interested.

“Is that how you feel? Scolded?” he asked. “Just because you didn’t get all my attention like everybody else out there?”

I furrowed my brow. “Do you hate fun, or something?”

“I don't hate fun.” He looked me over, now, glancing down at the open buttons at the top of my shirt. “I can be a lot of fun, actually. Don’t have to chug cocktails upside-down for it, though.”

Fuck.

I’d been expecting… well, I’d expected him to be brooding and cold, not to get cocky and a little flirty.

“Then what do you do for fun?”

He smiled, and a dimple appeared on one side of his mouth. “I take a long wooden stick and smack it all over ice, trying to chase a hard little Hostess cupcake.”

“And gettingallthe attention from hordes of cheering TNU hockey fans in the audience, I assume,” I said. “You might not get upside-down, but you like the attention too.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Guess we’re both attention whores.”

“Hey, I’m not an attention whore, I’m just a…funwhore, I guess?”

“That just sounds wrong.”

“It really does. Shit.”

He held up a hand. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

Well. I need to have fun, because if I don’t, I feel like my world is collapsing around me. I fill my life with fun so that I can forget.

To give myself something that all the self-help books in the world can’t do.

And… yeah. Maybe my friends are right. Maybe it’s not healthy.

I sure as fuck wasn’t going to say any of that to this super hot, super young stranger, though. Hockey jokes made for good banter, but my own life didn’t.

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