32. Weston

I can’t wait for this week to be over. I’ve had enough of preseason drills, enough of games that don’t count—and I’ve sure as hell had enough of the slump I’m in.

I haven’t had a good practice in days. And it’s no small matter that Renee is ignoring me.

She’s a master of her craft, too. Princess Polyester elevates the silent treatment to an art form. Hardcore, next-level shit. Even when we happen to make eye contact, she looks straight through me like I’m a ghost.

It doesn’t help that, while she’s ignoring me, she’s looking like a walking wet dream. Every look is her best look yet. Hair shiny and curled, or long and straight, or pulled up and back from her face so I can see the golden flecks in her brown eyes, so I can see the shiny, cherry-flavored lip gloss that makes me want to taste her mouth.

I could write a book about what her perfume is doing to my concentration. I can smell her in the elevator, in the hallway, in the tunnel on the way to the locker room. I can even fucking smell it when I’m on the ice or on the bench amongst a bunch of sweaty hockey players reeking of B.O.

So yeah, no shit that my focus is wavering. And it’s her fault. Or at least, that’s the story I’m sticking to.

Worst of all is that I can even smell her in my place. That part is Hunter’s fault.

Oddly enough, I haven’t seen him since that night he invited her over. Good thing, too, because every time I think about how close he sat to her, how he took every opportunity to touch her, my blood boils.

It doesn’t matter that I know he only did it to fuck with me. I’m furious at the memory nonetheless.

I need a break from thinking of her, from alternating between pissed-off and so horny I can’t breathe all the time. I have to go somewhere that is Renee-free.

There are always kids at the park looking for pickup games. I was being a dick on purpose when I told Renee in that meeting that her street hockey idea was stupid. Until her idea, I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed playing with nothing at stake but pride.

No contract on the line. No trade rumors. No fans in the stands.

Just love of the game, pure and simple.

It’s an off day, so I decide to go down to the park and hop in a game to clear my head. But when I open my closet to grab some old gear, I freeze.

My stick is missing.

I’ve got dozens of them, of course, but this is the stick. An old Bauer I’ve had since college, signed by Joe Sakic when he visited campus one year. It meant a lot to me—my first brush with fame. The first legit, big-time true-blue star who told me to my face that I had what it takes to be a pro.

And it’s gone.

For the life of me, I can’t remember the last time I saw it. Maybe it just got mixed up when I moved into this place a few years ago. That’s gotta be it. It can’t be that it was stolen when?—

Nope. No. Cut that shit out, man. You need to be getting in a good headspace, not getting all fucking paranoid again.

I grimace and shove the thoughts aside. It was just an old stick and Sakic was just an old, washed-up fogey. We move on.

I grab one of my other sticks, throw the rest of my shit into a backpack, and head out for the park.

If I did nothing but sit in the park for an entire Saturday afternoon, I would likely see somewhere around five hundred people. Today, I think they’ve all come at the same time. This place is packed.

But sure enough, there are games aplenty to be had. I join a group of high school kids on the tarmac. And for a little while, I can finally breathe.

Out here, Renee doesn’t exist. The Firebirds don’t exist. The invisible thief who keeps taking shit from my apartment sure as hell doesn’t exist.

It’s just a ball and a stick and my teammates, and goddamn, I forgot just how freeing that shit is. I’m pinging passes left and right, deking these high schoolers out of their shoes, and laughing all the way like a fucking loon.

And I love it.

They don’t treat me any different, either. Maybe they recognize me, maybe they don’t—I keep my hat pulled down low just in case. But to them, I’m just West, just another guy on the team.

We win the first game, the second, the third and the fourth and the fifth. I’m soaked with sweat and grinning ear to ear by the time kids start getting calls that they need to go home. It’s a school night, after all. They’ve got lives to get back to. So do I.

But I don’t want to go back to The Palais quite yet. I sprawl out on the grass as the sun starts to set behind the city. Everything is golden and green, beautiful like only L.A. really can be.

Then I look down and catch sight of exactly what I was trying to escape.

And she looks beautiful, too.

Like only Renee DuBois really can be.

She’s fluttering around the park, taking pictures, talking to anyone and everyone who will talk back. And smiling. So much damn smiling.

It’s that cursed smile that undoes all the resolve I have inside of me to let her have her way, to pretend we aren’t acquainted, aren’t neighbors, that I haven’t tasted her sweetness and am dying for more.

The sun is going down now. Soon, the park isn’t going to be safe. Especially not for a petite, lone female walking around with what’s probably a couple thousand bucks’ worth of camera and lens equipment.

I’m doing this for her safety. Not out of my own selfish interest. Definitely not out of that.

She’s got her camera held up to her eye and she’s swiveling around in a slow circle like a toybox ballerina. Even with the camera there, I can still see the edges of her smile.

Until she finishes her pirouette with the lens pointed at me—and that smile disappears at once.

She lowers the camera and sighs. “Who’s stalking who now?”

“I was playing hockey with the kids.” I nod toward the concrete pad where I was playing with the boys.

“How noble of you. Did the paparazzi get your good angles?”

I roll my eyes. “I wasn’t doing it for good press. I was doing it because I enjoyed it.”

But Renee is not listening anymore. She’s back to taking pictures with her back aimed at me. Part of me is pissed. Another part of me enjoys this view of her.

Around us, the park is slowly emptying. Gone are the moms with strollers, the kids playing Frisbee, the smarmy tennis prick who’s always waiting around for a partner to show up—preferably one in a short skirt. The sun in the distance looks like a red, runny egg yolk smeared on the horizon.

“It’s getting late, Renee.”

“Oh my goodness! Is it past my curfew, Daddy?” She cocks a sarcastic eyebrow.

I ignore the stiffening in my pants that comes when she calls me “Daddy” and focus on my real mission here: keeping her safe. “Parks are dangerous after dark.”

“It’s not dark yet.”

“It will be before you get back to the penthouse. I’ll walk you back.”

“Is the big, bad caveman gonna protect me with his big, bad stick?”

I refrain from telling her that my stick is getting bigger and badder by the minute. Why does her attitude turn me on so much? Why does her infuriating back-sass make me want to throw her on the grass and rip that sundress off her with my bare hands?

“Caveman” might not be so far off, actually.

But before I indulge instincts I shouldn’t even be acknowledging, Renee sighs. “Fine. Let’s go.”

I fall into step beside her. I can smell her perfume, which is terrible, because the scent is going to stay with me all night. It’s the price I pay for being a gentleman, I guess: one night with a stubborn boner that won’t go away.

“I saw you, you know,” she blurts suddenly after a few minutes of silent trudging. “In the park. Playing with the kids, I mean.” She looks up at me, and for one second, I’m captured in a gaze that’s both admiring and sweet. Then it clears and she glances away. It’s like she just remembered that she hates me.

“I do that sometimes.”

She nods. “It’s how I came up with the idea for the photo shoot. I came here and saw some kids playing. One scored a goal and he was so happy.” There’s a note of wistfulness in her voice, a kind of nostalgia for a past she never had. “Like, just-won-the-Stanley-Cup happy. And he was just a kid playing a game in the park.”

I remember how happy we used to be out there. Hunter and me playing from sunup to sundown. This was long before high school or college, back when we were just kids playing in the park. Nobodies. Hopers. Dreamers.

And look at us now. What are we?

Broken, says a voice in my head. Ruined.

“It was a good idea,” I rumble.

She lights up like I just told her she’s won the lottery. “Did you, Weston Scott, just compliment me?” She clutches her heart and hitches her bag higher on her opposite shoulder. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Don’t be smug. It was a good idea. I was just being… spiteful. We can leave it at that.”

She rolls her eyes again, but the smile stays simmering pleasantly on her face. “Thanks.”

There’s more I want to say—I’m sorry and I shouldn’t have been an ass and If I don’t taste your pussy on my lips again this fucking second I’m getting increasingly concerned that I’ll explode—but I refrain.

The ground we’re standing on is already tenuous. I’m not ready to shake that up yet.

But hell… maybe doing things I’m not quite ready for is exactly what I ought to try.

We walk another few blocks quietly before I muster up the courage to start at the top of that list. “Renee, I… I don’t generally apologize. It’s weakness.” I sigh. “But I’ve been an asshole and… I’m sorry. I should’ve never treated you the way I did in the meeting.”

“It’s alright,” she mumbles, her eyes trained on the sidewalk in front of her feet.

“We both know it isn’t. There’s a difference between being rude and being a bully and I don’t want to be a bully.”

She slows, then stops. A few long seconds pass before she looks up at me and smiles. “But you’re okay with being rude?”

I shrug. “I never meant to hurt your feelings. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

She exhales and combs her hair out of her face. “I know you didn’t. I appreciate the apology. I know you aren’t really the kind who apologizes, so… I accept.”

“‘Aren’t the kind’ is putting it nicely. I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘I’m sorry’ in my life to someone I wasn’t blood-related to. And Hunter.”

“People you care about.” She smiles cryptically like she’s opened some big secret to my psyche.

My face burns. “Sure. Something like that.”

She resumes walking and once again, I fall in beside her. We walk a half a block more in silence. “I’m sorry I pissed you off over Hunter,” she blurts suddenly.

My chest does a strange, squiggly clench-and-unclench. “He’s always been kind of a live wire,” I say. “I suppose, to someone who doesn’t know him, it could look like he’s high.”

Her mouth twists weirdly as she looks up at me. “Well, you know him better than I do.”

“Yeah, I do. But I appreciate that you were looking out.” I look up to see we’ve arrived back at the building. I hold the door open for her, then follow her in as we make our way to the elevator.

Her smell is even stronger in the closed car on the ride up. Her presence, too. Warm and sweet and fragrant and soft in this way that runs so completely counter to everything I’ve ever taught myself to be—cold and cruel and unyielding and relentless.

She’s the best of me.

I’m the worst of her.

What a fucking combo.

When we step out upstairs, she turns to me at the door to her apartment. “Thanks for walking me home.”

I nod. My throat is tight, but there’s more I need to say. I’m never going to get her out of my head until I have her in my bed.

Once.It’s only going to take once.

I’m so desperate for that that I’m ready to beg. But even as cock-eyed as I am, I can see the need for a little restraint in my approach. “Can we start over again, Renee?”

She looks at me for a second, then drops her hand away from the keypad on her door. I’m on pins and needles waiting for an answer until, finally…

“No.”

Fuck. My heart plummets into my stomach acid and my head throbs with a sudden migraine.

“I can forgive, but I can’t just forget the things you’ve done and said. But we can go clean slate from this day forward. As long as you don’t act like a dick anymore.”

I wouldn’t say those words “bring me back to life,” exactly. But they minimize the pain of her harsh “no.”

“So we have a truce?”

“I didn’t know we were at war.” But she grins. “You know what they say about war?”

“It’s hell?”

“Well, yes, I think. But they also say all is fair. In love and war, all is fair.”

I pretend as if I don’t understand because if I talk, I’m gonna have to tell her that there’s no way in hell love has anything to do with this. Lust is the most I’m willing to cop to. Love? Out of the fucking question.

“Alright,” I say with a nod. “I’ll play fair.”

“Make sure you do. Goodnight, Weston Scott.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand in hers, just once. But the touch lingers long after she’s stepped inside and closed her door behind her. Five points of sweet jasmine and cool citrus sizzling on my skin.

A truce. I can live with that.