P.S. It releases on November 20. If you haven't already pre-ordered it yet, you can do that at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo. It's also up on Goodreads and ready for you to add to your shelf. I'll wait while you do all of that. Got it? Okay, so here's the first chapter.
KEITH
“Burnzie!
Colesy!” the Storm’s head coach, Mattias Bergstrom, called out to me and one
of the new defensemen on the team, Cole Paxton, as the rest of the boys started
heading off the ice after a hard practice. “Jens and Ny—you too,” he added,
indicating two of our other defensemen, Andrew Jensen and Peter Nylund. “I need
a minute before you boys hit the showers.”
We were a
few months into the season now, and the guys were finally starting to settle in
to the new system Bergy had instituted for us when he took over the team. We’d
been playing a similar style under Scotty Thomas the last couple of seasons,
but the tweaks Bergy had insisted on had taken a few of us a while to adjust
to. Old habits die hard, or whatever
the saying was. Anyway, even though we were starting to really click with
Bergy’s changes now, he still hadn’t settled on the defensive pairings he
wanted. The forwards had been going through almost as many changes as we were.
I was starting to wonder if Bergy was ever going to settle on a combination he
liked. Every few games he tried out new partnerships, seeing who clicked with
whom and what arrangement seemed to be the most effective for the team as a
whole.
He was
always looking at charts and graphs and other data on the computer,
too—something Scotty would have never dreamed of doing. Scotty had trusted his
eyes and gut feelings and things like a guy’s plus-minus rating. Bergy, though?
He was far more interested in some of the newer stats that bloggers kept putting
up posts about—Fenwick and Corsi and all sorts of other things that went right
over my head. I didn’t have a clue what any of that shit meant, and I wasn’t
entirely sure I cared.
Anyway,
he’d been using these new stats to help him and his assistant coaches make
decisions about which defensemen he ought to pair together and which forwards
worked better on a particular line. I had a strong suspicion that some random
stat was behind him calling me and the boys over right now—either that or maybe
he wanted each of us to write down some new goals or something. He’d instituted
that practice back at the beginning of training camp. If you write your goals down, it’ll keep you accountable, he’d
said. He’d insisted on each of us making out goal cards for the entire season
on the first day of training camp, and every week since then we’d had a team
meeting where we would make up new goal cards for the upcoming week. Maybe he
thought we needed to update ours right now.
Colesy
gave me a look, one that clearly indicated he thought he was in trouble. The
guy was a good defenseman—really good, actually. But the coaches kept talking
to him about needing to improve his core strength, saying it would help him in
his transitions. That was what all his goals had been about lately—adding extra
reps in the gym on core-strengthening exercises, demonstrating improvement in
game situations, that sort of thing.
He’d had
a great practice today, though. He hadn’t had any problems making the switch
from offensive to defensive positioning, and the drills we’d run were seriously
challenging on that front. I doubted they were going to bring up his core
strength again right now. Besides, why would Bergy include me and these other
guys in that discussion if it was really just about Cole Paxton?
I shrugged,
as though that would help him shrug it off, too. “Don’t worry about it. He’s
not going to rip you a new one.” Not today, at least, and not this guy. Bergy
tended to reserve that special form of communication for Zee. Sometimes for me
and Soupy, too, since we were Zee’s assistant captains this year. He only
really slammed into the leadership group—those of us who had special weekly
meetings with him and the other coaches where we got to write down other
leadership-oriented goals. The rest of the guys tended to get the you-disappointed-me sort of speech more
than anything else. That was another way he was different than Scotty. Our
former head coach preferred to yell at everyone indiscriminately, and if he
wasn’t yelling at you, then you were really
in hot water.
We skated
to the boards near center ice, where Bergy and his assistant coaches, David
Weber and Adam Hancock, were waiting. Until last year, Webs had been one of the
boys, but he’d retired in the off-season. Handy was a longtime coach in the
league. He’d been the head coach of a few teams over the years—both at the AHL
and the NHL level—and he’d been an assistant coach more than just a few times,
too. I figured Jim Sutter, the Storm’s general manager, had brought him in to
give Bergy and Webs an experienced voice to help them make the adjustments smoothly
and successfully. Bergy had only been an assistant coach for a couple of years
before getting promoted. It wasn’t all that long ago that I’d played against
him.
“So
here’s the deal,” Bergy said once the four of us came to a stop. “I’m going to
change things up again with you four, starting with Thursday night’s game. I
want to see Jens and Ny together, and Burnzie, I want you with Colesy.”
“That’ll
give both pairs a bit of snarl and risk-taking, along with a bit of safety,”
Handy said. He was the assistant coach that was supposed to be overseeing the
defense, but Bergy seemed to have a hard time letting go of that particular
responsibility. Bergy had been a defenseman himself, and he’d been in charge of
us for the two years he’d been an assistant coach.
I had no
doubt that I was supposed to be the snarl of my pair. Jens and I had been
partnered together almost all last season and part of this season. We both
played a pretty similar style, though—physical, hard-hitting, in-your-face
hockey. My snarl might be a little nastier than Jens’s, but it really depended
on the day of the week and what side of bed we had each rolled out of, and I
liked to shoot the puck more than he did. Jens was more about making a good
first pass and letting the forwards deal with the offensive side of things, at
least most of the time.
Before Jens
had come to the Storm and throughout quite a bit of this year, I’d played
alongside Ny. He was your prototypical Swedish defenseman, right down to doing
everything like a machine. He skated well, had a decent shot and a lot of
skill, and he played a sound positional game. Coaches liked to put him out on a
power play unit because his pass was as good as his shot from the point and he
had excellent on-ice vision. He could be a power play quarterback.
I hadn’t
been paired up with Colesy at all, though, other than a random shift or two. His
style was closer to Ny’s, only he was less offensively skilled and more
defensively minded than the other three of us. Most people in the hockey world
would call him a stay-at-home defenseman, but that wasn’t really accurate. He
tended to sit back and let the game come to him, so he rarely got caught out of
position.
Now he
was going to be my partner—at least for the next game or two. It was anyone’s
guess how long we’d stay together. I’d spent time playing alongside every other
defenseman on the team in the first two and a half months of the season. Changing
things up that often didn’t make it easy to form good communication or
chemistry—both of which were imperative.
Which
Bergy knew. He’d played defense in the NHL for over two decades. That was what
confused me about why he was switching up the pairings and forward lines so
often. We’d barely be starting to figure our partners out when he’d throw
another wrench in things and we’d have to start all over again.
Bergy
cleared his throat. “Everyone good with that?”
It wasn’t
like we had much say in the matter.
“Yeah,” I
replied for the lot of us. “Whatever you want.”
“Good
deal,” Webs said. “So starting with practice tomorrow, that’s how we want you
paired up for five-on-five work. Jens and Ny will be the 1-A pairing; Burnzie
and Colesy will be 1-B. Burnzie, you’ll be on the first power play unit with
four forwards, just like you’ve been doing lately. Jens and Ny will handle the
second unit.”
Handy scanned
a page on his clipboard and squinted. “And for penalty kill situations, I want
to try Burnzie and Colesy as the first pairing. Jens, you’ll work with Luka for
that,” he added. Luka was Slava Lukashenko, another veteran defenseman who was
apparently being moved down to the third pairing now since Colesy was going to
work with me.
“Everyone
clear?” Bergy asked.
“Yeah,”
we said. “Got it.”
“Get out
of here then.” Bergy picked his own clipboard up off the boards and started
flipping pages, so we skated off in the other direction. “Colesy! I need one
more minute,” he shouted before we got off the ice.
Colesy
groaned and turned back the other direction.
Damn. I’d
been hoping they’d leave the guy alone. I shot a glance over my shoulder, but
it didn’t look like Bergy was pissed off or anything. They wouldn’t yell at
him, as I’d said earlier, but I still worried about him.
He was a
guy I’d taken under my wing, so to speak, when he’d signed here as a free agent
over the summer. Out of all the guys involved in the team leadership, I had
always been the one planning parties and making sure the new guys knew they
were invited along to shit, making everyone feel welcome…until this year. I’d
passed that responsibility on to Soupy. Mainly it was because Bergy seemed to
think that Soupy needed to branch out and get to know all the guys on the team
as a whole, while he thought the opposite was more true for me: I needed to get
to know one or two on a really good individual level.
Colesy had
been my primary focus on that score. He was different than most of the guys, so
I’d been making an effort to include him, even if I left everyone else to Soupy.
He was kind of standoffish in a way. Had been since he’d first shown up in
Portland. He was a good player, took care of his shit, never caused any
problems, but he tended to keep to himself. I had started making extra effort
with him once I noticed he wasn’t always coming along to hang out off-ice with
the boys. I sometimes took him out to lunch, one-on-one, to get to know him
better. Was he just shy or introverted, or did he feel like he didn’t fit in
for whatever reason? I knew all too well the harm that could cause—feeling like
you didn’t belong—thanks to my brothers. At least once we’d gotten a little
older.
Being on
a team, though, there’s no room for a guy to feel left out or as if he doesn’t
fit. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Colesy.
That was
how I started to figure out that he was gay. It was little things, but I
recognized them. I mean, he wasn’t wearing bright pink and getting manicures
and talking like a girl or anything like that. He wasn’t obvious about it; by
all appearances, he was trying to keep it a secret. What gave him away was more
how he would smile at the bartender at Kells when we’d have lunch there
sometimes, or how he would force his gaze away from a couple of the guys we
would see around town when we were out, as though he didn’t want to get caught
staring at a guy he thought was hot.
I never
said anything to him about it because he never said anything to me about it. It
was his secret—his to reveal or keep hidden. But at the same time, I wanted him
to feel comfortable enough around me that he would know he could tell me if he
wanted to.
There
wasn’t a single out guy in the whole
NHL. Not one. There no way Colesy was the only one keeping it hidden, though.
There had to be at least 800 guys playing in the league. I didn’t get the
feeling that he was ready to be the ambassador, to wear that mantle and hope
others got the courage to follow him, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was
going to do a fucking thing to make him feel ashamed of who he was.
I’d
already done enough of that for one lifetime, and it had cost me more than I’d
had to give.
Colesy
was only a couple of minutes behind the rest of us getting to the locker room.
I took my time undressing and heading for the showers, allowing him a chance to
catch up with me.
“Coming
to Amani’s?” Soupy asked when I was almost done getting dressed.
Amani’s
Family-Style Italian Restaurant was a favorite hang-out for the guys. The menu
was full of things that made for great pre-game fuel, and we tended to go there
a lot more often than just game days. It wasn’t my favorite, though. And I wanted to take Colesy out and talk to
him, see what the coaches had wanted with him, that sort of thing. I shook my
head. “Can’t do it today. My favorite waitress is expecting me at Kells.”
“Favorite
hookup, you mean?” He had one brow lifted in question.
“Yeah,
fine. Whatever.”
“Mmm-hmm.
Whatever,” he repeated, rolling his eyes.
The guys
all acted like I was taking a different girl home with me every night lately.
Probably because I hadn’t been hanging with them as much as they were used to,
so they were trying to figure out what was up with me. The truth was, ever
since that night after Zee’s and Soupy’s weddings, when I’d been with Allison,
I hadn’t really wanted to be with any other woman. I’d been pretty fucked up
since then—thinking about finding the one.
And some insane part of me kept wondering if Allison had been the one.
Not that
I’d ever see her again. Even though we’d stayed up into the wee hours of the
morning, talking between intermittent bouts of sex, sharing what bits of
ourselves we could without delving too far into the truth of who we were, she’d
left the next morning. Somehow she’d slipped out of my hotel room without me waking
up. No note. No phone number. Not even her real name. It was as if she’d never
existed, if not for the scent left behind all over me, the slight indentation
of the pillow she’d used, and the pieces of her soul she’d inadvertently
revealed more through body language than through anything specific she’d said.
She had
definitely existed. She’d been as real as they come.
I could
only hope that the night we’d shared had given her the boost in confidence
she’d needed. I supposed I would never know.
Colesy
came back into the locker room half dressed, still pulling a clean T-shirt on
over his head while he was walking. I caught his eye and angled my head so he’d
come over to talk to me.
Soupy
started backing away. “I’m going up to kiss my wife before we head out.” He’d
married Jim Sutter’s assistant, Rachel, so he was always running upstairs to
sneak in a quick make out session whenever we were at the practice facility.
And yet he was giving me a hard time about my sex life. He
might as well have reverted to being sixteen years old with the way he’d been
acting over the past several months.
“Later,”
I called over my shoulder. Then I turned to Colesy. “Wanna grab a bite with me
away from the rest of the guys?”
He gave
me the side eye. “You don’t have to hang out with me all the time, you know.
You can keep going with your life as usual.”
“I know.
I want to grab some lunch with you, though.”
Plopping
down on the seat in front of his stall, he glanced at his watch and then set to
work putting on his shoes. “Yeah, I’ve got time for that, I suppose.”
“You
suppose? Hot date after lunch?” I said it jokingly, trying to keep things light,
but I was actually curious. Not that I expected him to answer me honestly.
“Not
exactly.”
“Then
what, exactly?”
He
scanned the locker room, as though he was checking to see who all was still
around and how close-by they were. It was nearly deserted. Other than the two
of us, only Viktor Ellstrom and Liam Kallen were still here, and they were
holed up in the opposite corner, having a conversation in Swedish. They were
oblivious to anything around them.
“Bergy
encouraged me to take some dance classes to work on my core,” he said finally.
“I’ve been going to ballet lessons and ballroom dance, and I don’t want the
boys to know and give me a hard time about it.”
As soon
as he mentioned dance, something clicked in me. I got choked up and had to
fight the old, familiar gut-wrenching ache back down. I swallowed hard to keep
the bile at bay. “Yeah? Dance lessons, huh?”
“They’re
helping. Clearly.” He got up and shoved his laundry into his duffel to take
home with him. “But you know how the boys can be about these things.”
I
definitely knew how guys could be about other guys who danced. And I knew what being
bullied about something like that could do to a person. I’d done it, right
along with everyone else, caving in to the peer pressure that kids put on one
another. I’d done it to my own fucking brother. I’d picked on him, teased him
relentlessly, called him gay and queer and faggot and pussy and sissy and a thousand other things I’d
never meant and could never take back.
And he’d
killed himself.
“Right,”
I said slowly, trying to rein all my thoughts back in before I lost my shit in
the middle of the locker room. I nodded. “I do know. Why don’t I come with
you?” There wasn’t a better way I could think of to deal with all the fucking
things running through my head than to confront it head-on.
“Yeah?” Colesy
said.
“Yeah.
Absolutely.”
I was going to take some
fucking dance lessons. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe then I’d be able to put Garrett
to rest.BRIE
“Your
frame has improved,” I said appreciatively to Charlie Winston, one of
my students in a class full of retirees. “Markedly,” I added under my breath,
in the hope that it might hide the shock in my voice.
Only a
week ago, he was barely keeping either hand in its proper position, his arms
hadn’t even been an afterthought, and his footwork? He could have hardly been
worse at stepping if he’d been trying
to do poorly. That had meant that Madge, his wife and dance partner, had been
forced to essentially lead herself around the dance floor. I’d rarely seen such
improvement in someone his age, particularly in such a short amount of time.
“Been
practicing, Miss Hayden!” he called out as he twirled Madge under his arm
before taking her back into a proper closed hold.
“Brianna,”
I corrected him. It was fine for my school-aged students to call me Miss
Hayden, but it felt weird to have a man who was old enough to be my grandfather
do that. “Or Brie, if you want.”
“Oh, he
wants, all right,” Madge said, rolling her eyes, and all the other ladies in
the class tittered right along with her. “Why do you think he’s been practicing
so hard all of a sudden? Lord knows he’s not trying to impress me.”
Charlie
flashed me a smile so wide he nearly spit out his dentures. He pulled his lips
down over them, drawing them back into place, never missing a step.
I could
only shake my head. A few years ago, men close to my twenty-six years were the
ones hitting on me. These days, it was rare to come from anyone other than a
man like Charlie—men who were far too old for me, married, and completely
harmless in the long run.
Was it
awful that I secretly wished someone less than harmless would hit on me every
now and then? I mean, I didn’t want anything horrible to happen, but it would’ve
been really nice to have a bad-boy-type flirt with me every now and then.
Someone
kind of like that guy, Jacob. He’d done a heck of a lot better than simply
flirting with me. We’d had an amazing night, and then I’d left just as I’d
planned to do before I had shown up at his hotel.
I didn’t
know why he came to mind right now, when I was nearly laughing over the idea of
Charlie flirting with me. I shook Jacob clear of my mind, yet again, and closed
the distance to Dan and Sharon, one of the other couples in my class.
“Chin
up,” I said, gently putting a finger under Sharon’s chin and easing it into the
proper position. She’d been staring at her feet again, which she tended to do right
before losing her footing. She didn’t trust her feet to do their job even
though they weren’t the problem. It was all in her mind. Actually, it was
probably Dan, more than anything else, that she had a hard time trusting. She
didn’t seem to think he could lead her properly despite the fact that she was
the one who tended to stumble.
Once they
were situated, I worked my way through the other pairs, correcting the
occasional hand placement or counting time for a couple that was rhythmically
challenged.
My
seniors were one of my favorite groups to teach. They weren’t technically the
best dancers—far from it—but they were here because they really wanted to
learn. They enjoyed themselves. They weren’t here because someone else was
pushing them into it, and they weren’t here because of some intrinsic drive to
be the best. They were here to have fun. To enjoy one another. To keep
themselves fit as their bodies started to give out on them.
Like mine
had.
At least
they had the excuse of age. I was twenty-six—way too young for my body to be
the problem, and yet it was.
I glanced
up at the clock over the entry to the Rose City Ballroom Dance Academy, the
school that had brought me across the country to join their staff a couple of
months ago. We’d run a little over today, probably because I was enjoying
myself with them a bit too much. “Time’s up, folks,” I called out. “Don’t forget
to stretch, and I’ll see you next week.”
“You
might see Charlie sooner than that if you’re not careful,” Madge said.
I could
only shake my head, but there was no hiding my smile. “Don’t forget to keep
practicing your box step and under-arm turn. I expect to see improvement when I
see you all again.” I grabbed my bottle of water and headed up to the front
office to prepare for my next class.
The
receptionist, Tanya Dennison, looked up when I came through the door. “Four of
your ladies for the next class called to say they were sick and not coming.”
“You mean
I might actually have enough men this time?” It was a beginner ballroom dance
class for the average adult, and most days I had about twice as many women as
men. That wouldn’t be such a big deal in some other forms of dance, but
everything in ballroom required a partner. I’d been forced to teach some of the
women to lead in recent weeks, which only made it harder for them to follow
whenever they did have a male lead
since it was all so new to them.
“You
might have too many men today,” Tanya
said with a grin. “Cole Paxton brought a friend—Keith Burns. Big guy. Fit.”
Tanya paused dramatically, waggling her eyebrows at me. “Hot.”
“That’ll
be a nice change of pace.” I might even be able to take one of the men as my
own partner today and use him to demonstrate for the others.
“Honey, you
have no idea how nice. Keith Burns is like sex on a stick. I wanna lick him up.”
I did my
best not to get too excited about having another good-looking man in my class.
He wouldn’t be looking at me, after all. He’d undoubtedly do the same thing
most of the other men in the class always did and trip all over himself trying
to get paired up with Alexis or Jenni, two college-aged girls who came dressed
to impress each week. “He’s already here?”
“Getting
changed with Cole.” She let out a dreamy sigh and leaned back in her seat. Her
eyes took on a wistful expression. “You do realize I’m going to be a jealous
witch all day now, right? Because you’ll be in there dancing with those amazingly
hot guys, and I’m going to be stuck out here answering the phones.”
As if on
cue, the phone rang and Tanya had to get back to work. I rolled my eyes at her
on my way out the door.
Charlie,
Madge, and the other retirees were making their way out of the dance studio
when I returned. Charlie stopped to place a kiss on my cheek while his wife
planted her hands on her hips and laughed. “He never gives up once he’s got his
mind set on something, Brie,” she said. “And I think he’s got his mind set on
charming you.”
“But it’s
you I go home with,” he said, linking his arm with hers.
“For
forty-six years and counting.” Madge was beaming at him as they sauntered out
the door, grinning at me over her shoulder as they left.
I headed
over to the sound system to change the music for the class of younger students
about to come in. A couple of deep, rumbling male voices echoed in the studio a
minute later, and I looked up. Cole had come in with his friend. They were
facing the far wall, setting their gym bags down where they’d be out of the
way. The new guy—Keith—had the same muscular build as Cole, and his tight jeans
and form-fitting T-shirt only emphasized it. Big, firm butt, massive thighs,
trim waist.
He was
probably a hockey player, too, then, or at least a skater of some sort. Cole
had told me they were all built that way, that anyone who spent that much time
on the ice would have the same big thighs and bum. Speed skaters, figure
skaters, all of them. That had started me thinking about Jacob, too, because
he’d been built the same way. He’d said he worked out a lot, but I had a
feeling it went beyond that.
In one of
the early classes Cole had come to, I’d asked him how he’d come to develop such
muscle in those specific areas because it caused him problems in keeping his
posture correct for ballroom dance. I was constantly having to remind him to
tuck his bottom under, telling him it shouldn’t be sticking out, and then he
would joke that there wasn’t anywhere else for it to go unless someone was
going to cut it off. His posture was definitely improving, though. He had been
working hard at it.
I started
crossing over to meet my new student, but I nearly stumbled halfway there when
he turned around and I saw Jacob staring back at me.
The Jacob.
The
one-night stand guy.
The man
who had made me feel desirable again—sexy and feminine and beautiful—even if it
had only been for one night. The man I wasn’t supposed to ever see again. The
man I’d been trying to forget for months because thinking about him only made
me long for things I could never have.
I’d
convinced myself he was part of a fairy tale, and fairy tales don’t come true.
At least they never did for me. My life had consisted of a series of setbacks
and disappointments, at least lately, and even though my heart was pounding and
my breath felt fluttery, the fact that he was here right now could only mean I
was being set up for an even bigger disappointment than ever before.
Guys like
him didn’t happen to me.
“I hope
it’s all right that I brought someone with me,” Cole said, closing the distance
between us. Jacob—no, Keith—came with him, the gold flecks in his amber-brown
eyes blazing like fire and practically burning a hole through my flesh. “You
always tell us that they’re open classes, though, that anyone can come as long
as they pay, so I figured it would be okay. Brie, this is Keith Burns, one of
my teammates. Burnzie, this is Brie Hayden. She’s my ballroom instructor.”
I
struggled to keep my tongue in my mouth where it belonged because I kept
thinking back to that night, to the way his hands had felt on my skin, the rich,
salty taste of his skin, the way he’d looked at me—all of me—as though I was
worth looking at. In fact, he was looking at me in exactly that same way right
now, searing me. If I wasn’t careful, I might melt into the floor from the heat
in his eyes.
He held
out his hand. “Brie, huh? That’s odd. You look more like an Allison to me.”
That left
no doubt, no possible chance, that he was merely a look-alike for my Jacob.
He’d never said he was a professional hockey player. He’d only told me he
worked out a lot. Granted, that was because I’d asked him for half-truths. I’d
told him I was a teacher—which I was—but I wasn’t the kind of teacher I knew
he’d been imagining.
Vibrating
like a tattoo gun, I reached for his hand. His fingers closed around my wrist.
His hand was as big and strong and hot as I remembered everything about him
being.
“That is
odd. I’ve been Brie my whole life.”
“Maybe
you should try Allison on sometime and see how it feels. I think it would suit
you.” His grip on my hand was loose, yet I couldn’t move it to save my life. He
grinned, a Cheshire cat sort of expression. “I’ve always wondered what it might
be like to go by Jacob. Just for kicks. We could try it out together.”
The
studio door opened and half the class streamed in, and I jerked my hand away
from him as fast as if he had scalded me.
“Excuse
me. I have to teach a class,” I mumbled, rushing to put some distance between
us so I could shove all my marbles back into my head where they belonged.
Somehow, some way, I was going to have to hold it together well enough to teach
a class with him in it. I couldn’t fathom how I would manage it, though.
I greeted the other
students coming in, smiling and making small talk and all the things I usually
did at the beginning of a session. But the whole time I felt Keith Burns’s gaze
branding my body with his mark.
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