Page 20 of Pucked Up

And tomorrow, I wouldn’t fire until I saw the whites of his eyes.

CHAPTER

FIVE

BODEN

I didn’t like beingangry at my friends. It made me feel wildly unsettled. But Iwaspissed off. No, it wasn’t anger, really. It was betrayal. I knew Ford was following me home from the rink, and I knew that Tucker was going off to God only knew where. Maybe to Ford’s place to crash on his couch.

Maybe he would be staying with Amedeo—his pseudo husband, who had shown up in the last week to disturb the harmony of our home. I wanted to hate him for it too, but it was impossible to feel anything other than pity and empathy for the wild-haired man with his big doe-eyes and nervous stammer.

And if Tucker was fine with this outcome—a random stranger calling himself husband after their drunken night in Vegas—who was I to stand in the way of that? It wasn’t like I had my shit together. I’d fucked our coach, who no longer remembered me, and now I was on the verge of being thrown off the team entirely.

My only option was to apologize to Hugo and ask him to give me another chance. And frankly, I would have rather stuck a rusty pitchfork in my eye and be done with it all than prostrate myself in front of that man.

Never mind the idea of kneeling in front of him gave my dick all sorts of ideas. The fucking traitor.

The game had been a shit show. It was easy to forget that these guys hadn’t gotten into this kind of hockey to throw and take punches like I’d been dishing out. I was too consumed by my anger to realize I’d gone too far until I had Marser pulling back and giving me a look of total betrayal.

He was also someone I’d have to call and make up with. But not tonight.

Not now.

Right now, I wanted to know why my boys didn’t have my fucking back. Yes, I was acting like a child, but they’d promised, goddamn it. They promised to help me take Hugo down and make him regret ever accepting this job. Now they were implying it was a good hire?

Bile was sitting uncomfortably in the back of my throat as I pulled into my parking spot and got out. I left my chair in the back of the car and yanked my crutches out of the trunk, ignoring my hockey bag for the moment.

I could see Ford’s tentative approach, leaning on his cane, his face a mask of trepidation. But no matter what I said or did, he was going to follow me inside. We were going to have this out.

The apartment was a little too cold for my liking as I threw the door open, and I left it hanging there as I headed into my bedroom to change out of my post-game sweats. That was yet another mark of how much this life didn’t feel like it was mine.

I should have been in a suit. There should have been a presser. There should be a goddamn audience not made up entirely of players’ moms, partners, and kids. I deserved more. I wanted more. I craved it to the point I could taste it at the edges of my tongue.

But I knew I wasn’t helping myself with how I was handling this Hugo situation.

“So,” Ford started.

I shook my head, not turning toward the door where he was hovering. I was tempted to yank my hearing aids out, but he knew I could still hear him well enough in a quiet room like this. He wasn’t as easy to fool as everyone else.

“We’re doing this tonight,” he said.

“You don’t want to wait for your fucking partner in crime?” I asked, throwing a T-shirt over my head.

He scoffed. “Don’t be a jackass.”

My eyes stung, and I took several deep breaths before I turned to face him. “You were supposed to have my back.” Oh shit. My voice was cracking.

Ford looked shattered. “Bodie?—”

“Don’t fucking Bodie me. Youpromisedto have my back.”

“Yes, but you’re being unreasonable, and you know it! You’re going to lose everything all becauseyou don’t like that this guy walks comfortably on two legs.”

Everything in me screamed to tell him the truth. That he was someone who had made me see God in the ways I’d always craved, only to have that ripped away by circumstance. That he was a plant sent here by my dad because that fucker couldn’t just let me live my life. That he was proof that no one trusted I could do this on my own merits and that no one was willing to give me a chance.

Except…shit. Hugo had said as much tonight in the parking lot. He knew that Brian hadn’t done his job, and he made it very plain he wasn’t going to do my dad any favors for me unless I’d earned it.

“You have no idea what this is like,” I told him.

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