Page 161 of Hockey Halloween
“Because I didn’t see you when I bumped into you. And now you’re haunting me.”
She grins, and my cock presses against my jeans even harder. “I kind of like that.” She trails her nose against my scar and something inside me flexes. No one other than doctors have touched that partof me. I try not to touch it as much as possible. It disgusts me. And yet, she’s burying her nose in the rivulet and making herself at home.
“Why have you been extra scowly with me?” Her voice is small but not shaking, and she’s searching my eyes for an answer she can’t seem to find. “And then you kiss me like that? Talk about confusing.”
“You gasped when I took my mask off. I figured you saw me as a beast like everyone else.”
Her pale face slackens, her mouth falling open, and her eyes popping wide. It’s possible I misread the situation entirely because tears spring into her eyes. “No,” she whispers. “Are you serious?”
“Please don’t get upset and pity me. They call me The Beast because I’m grotesque, Lilith. Most people recoil in horror.”
She gives a watery laugh, somewhere between crying and amusement. “I gasped because of how hot you are. And I think they might call you Beast because you’re built like a brick shit house. I don’t think they’re being unkind or referring to your face.” She dots a line of tiny, painfully slow kisses along the jagged line on my cheek. “And if it upsets you so much, why don’t you simply tell them to stop?”
She says it as though it’s just that simple, and studies me for a long moment before pressing a chaste kiss onto my lips. “We should get back.” She stares at my lips for a long time like she wants to say something else, but she goes quiet, and lowers herself to the ground, using my shoulders to keep her balance.
“Thank you for defending my honor in front of my asshole ex-boyfriend.” She rocks back on her heels, staring at the ground between her feet. Again, she looks like she has more to say, but instead, she shakes her head and disappears around the outdoor merch hut in a blur of auburn waves and hips.
I don’t know what made her pull away from me and go back to the Halloween maze waiting around the corner from us, but Idoknow my body already misses her curves being pressed up against me.
And I definitely want to do it again.
Lilith
Against all odds, the hockey team pulled the maze together last night, and everything went off without a hitch. As expected, over one hundred kids came to be terrified by the burly hockey players, and their parents donated generously to the collection boxes.
My eyes almost fell out of my head when Apollo told us the total. Athena told me that she and her brothers match every fundraiser dollar for dollar raised. I’ve never known such altruistic people, never mind young people.
The woman herself nudges my leg. “Couldn’t get you into that costume three days ago, and now we can’t get you out of it.”
It’s their Halloween themed hockey night, and I haven’t had time to buy a second costume, so, for the third day in a row, I’m dressed like a demented clown. “I’ve always loved Halloween. And it’s so out there, not at all what I’d normally wear.” I lower my voice like I’m about to tell a secret. “I kind of like it.”
The blond woman on my left leans in front of me. “I betsomeonecould get her out of it. Or so Pollo leads me to believe.”
The smaller woman with pink hair to her left nods. “Yes, Ares says Mason is besotted with you, Lilith.”
“He’s single, you know,” all three women say at the same time, making me laugh.
After I fled from our kiss, it took a solid twenty minutes for my heart to slow to a regular rhythm, and to stop pulsing and squeezing in agony in my chest. Mason sees himself as a monster, which is somewhat ironic since my name literally means monster.
“He kissed me last night.”
They all gasp. The pink haired one—Eloise, I think her name is—squeaks. “He did not.” Her hands cover her heart. “Ares didn’t think he’d have the balls to make a move.”
I shake my head. “He took a play from someone else’s book.” I purse my lips. I’m not against being used as a prop to irritate my ex, but he’s happily with someone now. I can’t see how it would bother him.
“What do you mean?”
I don’t live under a rock. I heard aaaaall about the August Kade kissing Rowan Armistead—now Kade—and how Johnny reacted on the ice shortly after. Living in a small town surrounded by people with nothing much to do other than be nosy parkers about each other’s lives, I heard everything there was to know about Johnny White before I dated him.
And yet, I still fell for his manipulative love bombing, and the narrative that he was the only one who had something to give me, that he was the only one who could love someone like me.
“Do any of you remember when August Kade kissed Rowan at breakfast the night after a hockey Christmas party?”
Athena nods. “Sí. Someone saw the two of them together and told Johnny.” She smirks. “Did someone see The Beast kissing you?”
A shudder rolls up my spine. “He doesn’t like being called that.” My voice is sharper than I intended, and Athena flinches.
“He’s never said.” She’s not unkind, but, from the corner of my eye, Eloise nods.
