Page 25 of Pucked Up

Me: Tell me not to burn my entire future career to the ground.

Jonah: What did Coach Dipshit do today?

Me: He called me into a meeting.

Jonah: The horror. What a fucking bastard! I can’t believe your coach wants to have a meeting about your crappy plays. Set him on fire.

Me: This isn’t a joke. I don’t want to be here.

Jonah: Get your head out of your ass, Bode. Be a man, grab your balls and hold them in your hand, then talk with him.

Me: That is a horrific mental image.

Jonah: No eyes, can’t relate. Now stop fucking texting me about your identity crisis, tell your coach that you have a permit and can do whatever you want, then call it a day. We can go drink our sorrows away tomorrow night.

It didn’t sound like the worst idea, to be honest. Alcohol ravaged my body harder than others—as I was experiencing right now since I still hadn’t managed to shake the hangover. But drowning in my sorrows felt almost worth the pain.

Which reminded me. I needed to shout at Ford.

Me: Hey, dickhead. I still feel like shit.

Ford: Sucks to be you. I know you’re sitting in the parking lot. Go inside and talk to him. I’m putting you on ignore until you do.

I hated them all. All of my friends were fucking traitors. I was going to move out and buy some plot of land with a pond and a cave or something and just live there. I didn’t need any of these assholes in my life.

If they weren’t going to stand by my entirely irrational decisions, then what was the point.

Throwing open the door, I managed to put my chair together faster than I expected with my aching limbs. I was grateful for my joystick and the full battery on the motor as I headed inside and felt the familiar, icy breeze coming off the rink.

It was comforting—soothing. It was a piece of my childhood that I could keep that didn’t feel like it was suffocating me. It reminded me of a time before I realized how different I was from everyone else. Before I realized what a disappointment I was to my father for just existing.

Back then, we’d laughed a lot. He commissioned tiny sleds for me, taught himself how to play, then taught me. I lived on the mini rink he’d set up in his backyard. I dreamed of Stanley Cups and the Conn Smythe and the Hart trophies.

It took me a long while to realize those would never be mine.

There were others now. There was the Reid Martin, and the Basker trophies, and the Ryder Cup—our own version of the Stanley named after the first goalie in the PPHL to have three shutout games in a row.

I also had the gold medal hanging on my bedroom wall, which was proof I was worth, you know,something. But ditching my past mistakes wasn’t easy, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, Hugo was right. No one was going to take a risk on me if I continued to behave like this.

I had to figure out how to get out of my own way. I needed to find a way to vent this uncontrollable, angry energy that lived in my chest all the time.

Taking a breath, I swiped my badge and rolled into the hallway. Part of me wished I wasn’t in my chair, but I was also grateful that he wouldn’t have the reminder I was so much smaller than him standing on my feet. My upper body was strong and muscular, and with the shadowy beard across my chin, I didn’t look like I was twelve.

And okay, yes, I still got asked if my parents were home by dickhead sales people, and once when I was shopping by myself by a well-meaning dipshit at the supermarket, but I was confident Hugo would look at me like the man I was.

No matter how pissed off he was, he would at least respect that I was a grown adult.

My gaze flickered up to the name plaque on his door, and my stomach twisted, sending waves of strange, unfamiliar emotion through me.

He and I really hadn’t been alone since…well. Since he’d had me grunting and writhing like I was in fucking heat. His asshole had been so tight too, so wet from lube, and it had squeezed around me, milking me dry of every drop of come.

Crisse.

“Get it together,” I muttered to myself. “Stop thinking about his asshole.”

“Hello? Is someone there?” he called through the crack in the door.

I jolted so hard I almost toppled out of my chair. Shit. I was pretty sure I’d rather die than let him hear me waxing erotically poetic about that night. I cleared my throat, then grabbed the handle to open the door, poking my head in.

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