4. Weston

Cue the montage.

One shot leads to two and two leads to eight and before I know it, I’m loaded. People come and go throughout the night—promoters trying to convince us to come check out their nightclub or strip club or speakeasy, diehard fans begging for an autograph, that sort of thing.

Also, girls.

Lots and lots of girls.

It’s a never-ending flood of them here at The Black Cat. Blonde or brunette, petite or curvy, take your pick—they’re all here, they’re all legal, and they’re all very, very willing.

Amar, being the horny devil that he is, jumps on the first grenade lobbed his way and scampers out the door with a fawning redhead on his arm. “Hasta ma?ana, pendejos!” he tells us all on his way out. We give him an honorary middle-finger salute just like we did for Decker.

“Down to three,” Orion announces once Amar is gone.

“We don’t need the countdown,” I drawl, lobbing a cube of ice at his head. “I’m pretty sure even Jonah here can count to three.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Orion says. “I swear I saw him try to eat a urinal cake once. He’s not that bright, that’s all I’m saying.”

Jonah promptly engulfs Orion in a tackle and the two of them go tumbling to the floor in a play-wrestling match.

“Idiots, the both of you,” I say, though I’m grinning.

They may be idiots, but they’re my idiots. My brothers-in-arms.

People who aren’t in the life always say that we take hockey too seriously. “It’s just a sport. Who cares?” But it’s not just a sport. It’s war, and these are the men I go to battle with and for every single day.

We’re fighting for the normal shit, of course. For points and trophies and our spot in the NHL pecking order. But we’re also fighting for each other. All of us overcame the longest odds in the world to get here.

Orion was a doorstep baby born to drug addict parents. Amar fled war-torn Chechnya when he was just a little boy. Decker came back from two successive ACL surgeries to captain us to the conference finals last year—the list goes on and on.

My story isn’t better or worse than anyone else’s, but it’s the one I know. The one I’ve lived.

A hand on my shoulder startles me from my reverie. I look up to see, in order: a gaudy belt buckle with the bedazzled logo of our team, the Los Angeles Firebirds; a pair of enormous but very shapely plastic-enhanced tits; and the dazzling smile of a cute little blonde who looks extremely excited to see me.

“You not gonna join in the wrestling match?” she teases in a classic Cali girl accent, blue eyes flashing.

She doesn’t have to say a word for me to understand her whole deal. We’ve got a word in the business for chicks like her: puck bunnies. They come to The Black Cat for one thing and one thing only. Lucky for her, that thing is a service I’m happy to provide.

All. Night. Long.

But come morning time, she better be gone. Those are the rules I’ve stuck to, ever since I learned the error of doing it any other way. They’ve served me well thus far.

“No,” I tell her, leaning back and stretching an arm over the booth. “I fight too dirty.”

Her eyes gleam even brighter. She sucks her plump bottom lip between her teeth and says, “Oh, yeah? How dirty?”

Cut to thirty minutes later, and I’m tasting her lip gloss in the back hallway of The Black Cat. She’s pawing my dick over my jeans and moaning like she’s already on the verge of coming. If I’m being honest, it’s a little off-putting, although nothing new. Half the puck bunnies who enter the premises think they have to scream like porn stars from the second foreplay begins.

I swallow her moans with my mouth and press her back against the grimy, sweat-soaked wall. But this one is insistent—she rips away from me, nuzzles my neck, and starts breathing something in my ear about wanting me inside of her.

Truth be told, I can barely hear her over the thumping music. I’m less concerned with that than I am with two other things, though.

The first of those things is that my dick is apparently lifeless tonight. I’ve got an eager woman rubbing all over me, promising a series of increasingly filthy acts of debauchery yet to come, but there’s not even so much as a twitch below my belt. Soft. Limp. Non-responsive.

The second thing on my mind is the weird sense of familiarity. It takes a second to place it—and when I do, I realize why.

It’s because of the taste of her lip gloss.

Cherries.

And just like that, my mind drifts off somewhere way far away from this bar, from this girl, from this par-for-the-course dry hump sesh.

To the apartment two doors down from mine, and a brown-eyed she-devil who looked at me like I was Hades.

As soon as Princess Polyester pops into my head, my dick jumps into action. I’m achingly hard, just like that.

Weird. Really fucking weird.

The girl—whose name I have long since forgotten if she ever even told me it in the first place—peels herself off of me. “I’m gonna step in the girls’ room and freshen up,” she purrs.

“Yeah. Sure.”

She winks, bites her lip, and sashays away, glancing back over her shoulder as she goes to make sure I’m watching her ass. I nod and smirk.

As soon as she pushes through the bathroom door, though, the smile dies on my face. I reach into my pocket and rub my thumb over the soft cotton material I never quite managed to throw away.

Cherries. Who knew they were an aphrodisiac?

I sigh and lean against the wall. I’m being really fucking stupid, I know that. I should just take this girl to the hotel room I booked in advance for tonight, bang out my annoyingly repetitive thoughts, and then go sleep it off at home.

So why is that idea suddenly so unappealing?

“Yo,” I say down to my dick, “what’s going on with you? Why are you not playing along?”

Shockingly, no response from my genitals. I might be a little drunk.

I sigh once again and check my watch so I can start mapping out my evening. If we’re at the hotel in eleven minutes, naked two minutes later, then wrap the whole thing up in another half an hour or so, I can be home by…

My thoughts get a little hazy as the light catches the surface of my watch. I can see the edges of my tan line beneath it. The tan lines from a different watch. One I’m never, ever going to get back.

It’s been more than two years since that shit was taken from me.

Since everything was almost taken from me.

After that night, I locked my life down. That’s why I have the hotel room fuck-pad pre-booked for tonight’s one-night stand. That’s why I got so pissed when I saw the stalkery housesitter girl traipsing all over the hallway on my floor.

Because my home is my fortress now—and I’m never going to let in anyone ever again.

The permitted guest list is exactly three people long: my mom, my sister Molly, and my best friend Hunter. No one else steps foot in my condo. I don’t care if they have a federal fucking warrant.

I sigh for the third time in as many minutes and let my hand fall by my side. I’m suddenly not in the mood for any of this shit. Not this bar, not this girl, none of it.

I turn and walk out of the dank back hallway. I bump into someone as I turn for the exit and promptly get a beer splashed down my front. Growling in my chest, I stumble backwards, ready to throw hands.

But then I realize it’s just Orion. He’s three sheets to the wind and I can already tell that he’s going to be turning his stomach inside out at practice tomorrow. Decker will make sure of that.

“H-headed out already?” he burps. “You’re fuckin’ lame, Weston Sc-Scott.” He bumps a clumsy finger into my chest and laughs.

“Yeah, I’m out. Not feeling it anymore.”

He arches an eyebrow. “That chick was sure feelin’ you, though, eh? Eh? Eh?”

“Unfortunately for her, I’m not into desperate.”

That’s true. But it’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is that I’ve got my hand fisted around a pair of cherry-printed panties in my pocket and my mind is floating off to a condo very close to mine. To a girl who doesn’t want anything from me, who’s not interested in my fame or my money or the sheer thrill of sleeping with a hockey star.

“Speak for yourself,” Orion burps. “I like ‘em in all forms.”

I toss him the keycard to my hotel room. “Then I guess it’s your lucky day, amigo. Go have fun. I doubt she’ll even know the difference between us.”

His grin stretches from ear to ear. “You’re a king amongst men, Weston Scott!” he calls after me as I make for the exit.

“You’re right about that!” I yell back over the din of the crowd.

What I don’t add is that this king is rock-hard for a princess in cherry-printed panties.