I think she thought I would grow out of it. Instead, I grew to love it even more.
Now I’m here, at an East Coast Ivy League college, playing hockey for a team that’s won three national championships—consecutively. But I have a feeling there won’t be a fourth, not the way we’re playing lately.
“What, you’ve forgotten how to talk?”
I look over and find Dean watching me with a wary expression. What? Oh, right, he wants to know what I was up to this weekend.
“Just hanging with some friends,” I say vaguely.
“What friends? All your friends are here—” He waves a hand around the rink. “And I know for a fact you weren’t with any of them.”
I shrug. “You don’t know these friends.” Then I shift my gaze back to the ice as Dean grumbles beside me.
“Jesus fuck, you’re worse than Antoine and Marie-Thérèse.”
My head swings back. “Excuse me?”
“Forget it,” he mutters.
Who the fuck are Antoine and Marie-Thérèse? Just like Dean knows all my friends, I know all of his, and I’m pretty sure we don’t know anyone with those names. But whatever. I don’t want him pushing me for answers, so I’m not about to push him.
“Fuck yeah!” a voice yells from the other end of the bench.
I refocus on the ice in time to see Garrett slap a bullet past Patrick, our senior goalie. It’s the first and only goal of the scrimmage, and all the guys on the bench thump their gloves against the wall in celebration.
Coach blows his whistle and dismisses us, so we end the practice on a good note. Sort of. The d-men are asked to stay behind as usual, and I don’t miss the frustration in Dean’s and Logan’s eyes. O’Shea’s gonna need to lighten up if he wants to win the respect of this team.
In the locker room, I strip out of my sweaty jersey and pads and drop my hockey pants on the gleaming floor. We’ve got a state-of-the-art facility here. The room is huge, the lockers are padded leather, and the ventilation system is top-notch. It only slightly smells like old socks in here.
Garrett comes up beside me and whips off his helmet. His dark hair is damp with sweat and sticking to his forehead. As he reaches up to smooth his hair away, I glance at the badass flames tattooed on his biceps. It always makes me think I want to get inked myself, but then I remember the travesty on Hollis’ leg that he got after our first Frozen Four win. Three years later, and he still wears long socks to cover it up most of the time.
“Think we’ll ever remember how to play hockey again?” he says wryly.
I snort. “Season’s just started. We’ll be fine.”
He doesn’t seem convinced. Neither does Hunter Davenport, who lumbers over with a sour look.
“We keep getting worse,” the freshman growls, and then, in eighteen-year-old fashion, hurls one glove against the wall.
I quickly glance around and sigh in relief when I don’t spot Coach. The man would shit a brick if he saw one of us throwing a temper tantrum in the locker room.
“Chillax, kid,” Mike Hollis, a junior, tells Hunter. He’s bare-chested and in the process of undoing his pants. “Who cares if we lose a scrimmage in practice?”
“It’s not about the scrimmage,” Hunter snaps. “It’s that we suck.”
Hollis tips his head. “You got laid last night, didn’t ya?”
The dark-haired freshman furrows his brow. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything. We embarrassed ourselves in that game, got our asses kicked, and you still had chicks lining up to suck on your knob. Doesn’t matter if we win or lose—we’re still hockey players. We rule this school, dude.”
“Spoken like a man without ambition,” Garrett says, his lips twitching.
Hollis shrugs. “Hey, not all of us have a hard-on for the pros like you do. Some of us are happy doing this for the pussy.”
A heavy sigh sounds from the end of the long bench spanning our lockers. Colin “Fitzy” Fitzgerald, an enormous junior with scruffy hair and more tats than a biker, saunters over and smacks Hollis on the ass.
“Do you ever not talk about pussy?” Fitzy asks.
“Why would I talk about anything else? Pussy’s great.”
He’s right about that. Unfortunately, I won’t get to experience any great pussy for at least…oh, a month? Two? I’m not sure how long it’ll take my cock to forget about Sabrina James. If I hooked up with anyone else right now, I’d only be comparing her to Sabrina, and that’s not fair to anyone involved.