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  “So tense,” Cassie murmurs as she stands behind me and it kills me that her voice and touch are helping to calm me. I don’t want to depend on her—or anyone for that matter—to help me battle my demons. But especially not her. I will never see her as anything but a hot f**k and the more she tries to be otherwise, the more it pisses me off. We had an understanding about the way things were between us, but now she’s pushing past the boundaries I set and I’m not liking it one little bit.

  Taking another deep breath, I step forward and her hands fall away from my back. Turning to look at her, I try to make myself appreciate something—anything—about her that will let me see her as something more than just a diversion.

  I come up empty. It doesn’t matter how beautiful she is or how talented her mouth is, I see nothing within this woman that would do a damn thing for me other than to relieve sexual pressure.

  Cocking her head at me, she assesses my mood. “What’s wrong, Alexander? Not in the mood for me?”

  “I’m never in the mood for you,” I snarl, hoping to push her solidly away.

  She just laughs at me, smoky and deep, running a fingertip down my chest. “Now that’s a lie, Alex. You needed me on my knees just a few days ago. ”

  “Yeah, well…wasn’t going to say no to those services freely offered. But I would have paid you if that’s what it took. ”

  She flinches from my barb and rather than make me feel better, it makes me feel worse. It hits me suddenly that the reason I tolerate so much of Cassie is because her feelings have seemed indestructible to me in the past. The mere fact that she always takes the shit I dish out to her and keeps a smile on her face alleviates my conscience…makes it okay for us to f**k with no other strings attached and for me to be an ass about it.

  But now there is a flash of hurt on her face and it causes my gut to churn.

  “Look…I’ll catch up with you later,” I tell her, making my voice as gentle as humanly possible. It’s a tone she’s probably never heard from me so far in this f**ked-up existence we live in, and I immediately see I’ve made a huge mistake, because now hope fills her eyes and she gives me a radiant smile.

  Shit, I need to cut ties with this girl for good. It’s a pathetic mess of a relationship and neither one of us is getting what we truly want. She wants a hockey husband and I want…I want…

  I don’t know what in the hell I want but it’s clearly not a casual sex-only relationship with Cassie.

  Just then, an image comes slamming into my brain and I almost reel backward from the glorious nature of it.

  Sutton Price, with her copper hair flowing all around and her hazel eyes shining bright. She’s smiling at me and it causes warmth to swirl in my veins.

  Blinking hard, I banish her from my mind. That girl most definitely has no reason to be taking up any of my gray matter. Doesn’t matter that for the first time in like…ever, I had a natural conversation with a woman that felt relaxed and safe. Doesn’t matter that for the first time in definitely forever, I shared an intimate detail of my life with that woman, and she didn’t throw it in my face or try to exploit it. No, she looked at me with sympathy.

  No, pity.

  There’s a difference, and that is unacceptable to me.

  “Let’s leave this party,” Cassie says as she takes a step toward me. See—big mistake to have shown her even a hint of kindness.

  I take a step back, on the verge of reminding her just how nasty I can be, when someone thrusts a beer under my nose and says, “Here, man—looks like you could use one. ”

  My hand comes up and grabs the frosty bottle, turning to see my new linemate and right-winger, Garrett Samuelson. He just got traded to the Cold Fury and played in his first game with us last night. I hadn’t even had a chance to talk to him, other than to say “Good job” when he scored a goal off a pass from me.

  “Thanks,” I tell him and take a sip.

  “Mind if we talk?” he asks, just as he shoots an apologetic look to Cassie.

  “Sure,” I say hesitantly, because I have no clue why he wants to talk to me. My other teammates pretty much know to stay out of my way, because I’m a cranky bastard, but Garrett hasn’t had time to acclimate yet.

  So I’ll cut him some slack and lend him my ear for a bit, particularly because it gets me away from Cassie. I’m sure after five minutes, however, he’ll be scampering to get away from me. Turning to Cassie, I hand the birthday present to her. I have no clue what it is, nor do I care. She takes it from me without a word, and I’m confident she’ll get it to Leo’s kid. Turning my back on her, I follow Garrett across the backyard.

  He leads me over to a couple of empty chairs under a huge shade tree, away from the screaming kids and blaring music.

  “So,” he says as he sits down. “How lame is this party?”

  “Pretty f**king lame,” I concur and take a healthy pull on my beer as I eyeball my teammate.

  He surprises me by his words. Most team members are very supportive of one another, and even if they did think it was lame coming to a kid’s birthday party, they would never voice those thoughts out loud. It seems Mr. Samuelson may be a bit of a rebel.

  “Looked like you needed rescuing back there,” he says, nodding over to where Cassie now stands next to Allie, talking about God knows what. “But if not, my apologies, man, for messing up your game. ”

  I can’t help the laugh that bursts out of my mouth, shaking my head. “Nah…you did me a solid. She can be a little clingy. ”

  “Excellent. I’ve now ingratiated myself with you,” Garrett says with a laugh and clinks his beer bottle against mine. “Bros before hoes. ”

  “So, what’s your story?” I ask him, not really caring but feeling the need to fill the silence.

  “No story. Love playing hockey, love f**king women, love spending my money. I’m a pretty simple guy. ”

  I had heard some rumors about Samuelson when word came that he’d be joining the team. He’s supposedly quite the ladies’ man, and I mean the ladies adore him. Apparently not just because of his good looks, celebrity status and money—he supposedly is a modern-day romance book hero. But he never has the same woman on his arm more than one, maybe two nights in a row, and while he supposedly treats them like gold, he gets bored easily. Seems the rumors must be true.

  “Hey, man—wanna get out of here, go grab some beers somewhere and play pool or something?” Garrett asks.

  My eyes slide back over to Cassie and she’s watching me with thinly disguised hunger. Not sexual hunger…relationship hunger, and it gives me the willies.

  Turning back to Garrett, I say, “Sure. I’m ready to blow this joint. ”

  Chapter 6

  Sutton

  I enter section 110 of the Cold Fury’s hockey arena and my first sight of the interior momentarily stuns me. The ice sits far below me, the steps leading down to it seem to stretch forever. All of the players are out on the ice skating around, and it looks like they’re taking practice shots at the nets on each end. I did a bit of research online before I came to the game tonight, and one of the first things I learned was that the team’s colors are black and silver. More precisely, their jerseys are black with a swirling, snowy tornado of silver moving across the front. The word Carolina is above the tornado, and the words Cold Fury below, in black outlined in silver and white piping.

  To look like a fan, I went ahead and wore a simple black turtleneck with large silver hoop earrings and a chunky sterling silver necklace. I looked the part, but I didn’t feel it. I don’t know a damn thing about hockey and I have to wonder why I’m here.

  Oh yeah, I know why. Because that jerk Alex Crossman cancelled our meeting this morning without any good excuse, but then later sent over a ticket to tonight’s game along with a note that we would meet after. I had half a mind not to come, but three things swayed me. First, I promised Glenn I’d get him an autograph and I figure the best chance of that is
to be nice to the prickly bastard. Second, I kind of, sort of, okay…I really would like to learn about this game. Glenn loves the Cold Fury so much, and some of my friends watch hockey, so it’s probably time I got on the bandwagon. Finally, I’m dying to push our outreach program forward, and I can’t do it without Alex’s involvement.

  Looking down at my ticket, I see my seat is in Row A—number five to be exact. Glancing at the row of seats next to me at the top of section 110, I note they start at ZZ, so it appears I’m going to have to make the long descent down toward the ice. I wonder if it will be cold down there and hope the black leather blazer I put on over my turtleneck will be sufficient.

  Before making my descent, I pull out my phone and check in using Facebook. I take a quick picture of the arena and post At my first hockey game…damn, it’s cold in here!

  I guarantee that by the time I reach my seat, Shelley will have seen this and responded. Probably with some dirty comment about my ni**les getting hard, which causes me to laugh to myself. God I miss having her here and don’t know what I’d do without the ability to talk to her daily through digital means.

  As I make my way down to Row A, I can’t help but get excited by the energy buzzing around me. The stands are packed and I think I read online that this arena seats nineteen thousand and is the loudest arena in the league. Loud rock music blares over the speakers and fans are screaming, holding signs and waving flags as the players warm up. It takes me only a moment to realize that my seat is almost directly behind the goalie net—and yes, I also learned that was a goalie net online—and that the Cold Fury are warming up on this end.

  I enter my row, sliding past a family of four…mom and dad and two little boys, all decked out in Cold Fury jerseys. My seat is next, and to the left of it sits a young woman who looks to be about my age. She’s also wearing a Cold Fury jersey, although hers is white with the same tornado logo and black lettering. She has a beer in one hand and a pom-pom of silver and black in the other.

  When I sit down, the girl—a blonde with gorgeous, curly, long hair—offers me a warm smile and then screams out at one of the players as they skate by, not three feet from our seats on the other side of the glass.

  “Oh, my God,” she exclaims as she bumps me in the shoulder hard with her own and a little beer from her cup spills onto the concrete floor. “That was Garrett Samuelson. He is so f**king hot. ”

  Glancing to the ice, I see the player she’s talking about and he is indeed hot. None of the players have their helmets on right now; he has dark brown hair that flows down to just past his chiseled jawline and I can see his green eyes glowing brightly. The girl screams louder out to the ice, “Marry me, Garrett!” and I start to roll my eyes at such a pathetic attempt to get his attention.

  Much to my surprise, though, Garrett’s eyes follow the trail of her scream and light upon her. He gives her a flash of white teeth and blows her a kiss, and I swear, she almost falls to the floor in a dead faint.

  “Oh, my f**king God…did you see that? He blew a kiss at me,” she squeals, and I have to resist the urge to stick my fingers in my ears to muffle the terrible noise she’s making.

  The hot hockey player skates away and the girl turns to me. “Hey, I’m Monica. I’m so glad we got another Cold Fury fan in that seat. More times than not we’re stuck with a fan from the other team and that just sucks. ”

  “Uh…hi,” I say lamely. “I’m Sutton. ”

  “Sutton? Oh, I love that name. So, who is your favorite player?”

  “Um…honestly, I don’t know. This is my first game. ”

  Monica’s face drops for a second and she stares at me with her jaw hanging low. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. In fact, I really don’t know anything about hockey. ”