Page 2 of Ruthless Game

I hadn’t stopped the puck once. I was trying, but every time the puck came flying, I just saw Emma: fumbling with a hockey stick in my gear and giggling while I tried to teach her how to shoot, arms arching perfectly in the water during a swim meet while I watched from a safe distance away, the soft look in her eyes turning ocean blue after I kissed her.

And the devastated look on her face on that fateful night when everything went to shit and she left me forever.

So no, I wasn’t playing like a zombie. I was playing like a dead man with no chance at resuscitation.

“Sorry, Coach,” I mumbled.

“Okay, practice is over,” he called to the rest of the team. “All of you in the showers; you stink. Except for you, Lawson. My office.”

I started to skate past my pissed- off team, trying to ignore their judgmental stares. But then Judah and his twin and fellow defenseman, Levi, shoved into me on both sides, squeezing me between them.

“Leave the agony for the wanking in the shower,” Judah advised. “It doesn’t belong in the goal with you.”

“Stop fucking around,” Levi said more simply.

“Fuck off, both of you,” I growled, ripping myself out from between them and skating toward the edge of the rink, where Coach and Asher, our other goalie, waited. He always had a distrusting glint in his eyes and a stiffness in his shoulders, like the world had fucked him over and he was biding his time to fuck it right back.

“I’m coming with you,” he told me as we took off our pads and skates.

I paused. “Why?”

“Because I want to see you get reamed out. And after what you did last year—or rather, didn’t do—I’ve earned it.”

He was right. I’d fucked him over hardcore last year, so I shrugged and followed Coach Philip, Asher right behind me. As we walked, I prepared myself for the worst: getting benched, getting kicked off the team, losing my spot on the Gehenom Beasts, where I’d already been drafted. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. My life felt precarious at best. I had nothing in my life but hockey, and it was my only way out of the shit pile I’d come from. I was a history major, and a bad one at that. Without hockey, I had no future to look forward to.

As we headed towards Coach’s office, I shoved away those thoughts, ready to argue—to beg, if necessary. His office was nearly bare, even though he’d been at Reina for months now. The only decoration was a photo of him with a smiling man—his husband, a journalism professor.

“Sit,” he said, not smiling now.

I sat.

Asher stood beside me, arms crossed like a bodyguard. But after his experiences with our previous coach, Asher had good reason not to trust hockey coaches.

Coach ignored Asher. “Lawson, son, we have a problem. Well, you have a problem, which means the team and I have a problem. You’ve been playing terribly since the end of last season, practices are weak, training camp was worse. You’re distracted, volatile—which is not your norm—and truthfully, I’m not sure I need you or this energy on the team. I could let Asher play most of the season and bench you, even though it would mean the Beasts would rethink their offer. The team comes first. But Asher here argued for you, and I’m of the mind that having you on this team benefits us—as long as you focus. Now, what the hell is going on?”

I swallowed. I had no interest in being talked to like a child or being called son by anyone. Even if it wasn’t followed by my father’s drunken fists. But losing hockey—who even was I— without it? What would keep me from washing up in the podunk town in Maine I’d grown up in, no better than my waste of a father?

I didn’t want to put a name to what was going on, even if I could see her blonde curls in my head.

You’re dead to me, she’d told me. One day, I’ll forget your name. Like she couldn’t wait until I was nothing to her.

She needed to be nothing to me. I had no idea how to get her out of my head, out of my system. I’d tried with other girls, but none of them kissed like her, smelled like her, felt like her. Worse, it brought me back to the worst night of my life, the night I’d been trying to forget for the past few years.

Dizzy from alcohol. Lips on my face, my neck, hands pulling down my zipper. Giggling that rang in my ears like a siren for the other team’s goal.

I shook off the memory. I was remembering that night wrong, I always did. Real men weren’t helpless. My father had taught me that, with his words and his fists. I refused to be helpless then, and I especially refused to be helpless now.

“Lawson. Lawson, what’s wrong, man?”

I turned to look at Asher, who was staring at me with sympathy I didn’t want to see on his face.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to believe it.

“You aren’t fine, son,” Coach said, sympathy on his face as well.

“Don’t call me son.” The words were ripped from my raw, wounded throat.

Coach put his hands up. “Won’t happen again, Lawson. As long as you tell me why you’re playing so badly.”