Page 50 of Puck Me Twice

“You need to be getting along with the team, not causing more drama,” he barks.

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“I fucking can’t with you, bud,” he says. “Don’t you want this?”

“I do.”

I wince at those two little words… fuck.

I scared her. I want her, I’m committed to this, and she’s nowhere near ready. Dropping that conversational bomb—on the freaking plane, where others could hear it—really was not my smartest move.

“Fucking act like it,” Brad says. “Stop messing around with some puck bunny and⁠—”

“She’s not a puck bunny.”

“They all are.” He scoffs. “Just be glad the last one walked away before you signed over half your assets.”

“This conversation has ceased to be productive,” I announce. “I’m hanging up now.”

He starts to speak.

I stab at my phone until it hangs up the call.

Shit. I haven’t thought about Marika in years. Not since I ended things. Last I heard, she was married to another player and living back home in Sweden.

Brad wasn’t wrong; it was a good thing Marika and I ended things before the wedding. She didn’t put up a fight. She just… left.

Not for the first time, I catalog all the similarities between her and Vanessa. They’re both blonde and blue-eyed, and Marika was tall and willowy, but she didn’t have Vanessa’s spark. She was… flat. She was a perfectly fine person and would have made an excellent hockey wife. I was content to settle with her—until Vanessa walked back into my life.

And the girlfriend before her?

Anja was—well, she was blonde when I met her, and she had light eyes. She pursued me. It didn’t last long, maybe a few months at most. Once she dyed her hair to her natural auburn color, I realized I’d been comparing her to Vanessa the whole time. It was hard to stay interested after that.

With Janie, it was all hormones. We only spoke in bed—and we didn’t say much. It took six weeks to figure out that physical chemistry aside, I didn’t actually like her, and she didn’t particularly care for me. She kept calling me Steven, like that would erase my Swedish heritage.

Hookups and casual sex don’t do it for me. The lack of emotional intimacy makes the physical intimacy unfulfilling. I’ve tried a few times to make it work and I always walk away feeling worse for it. Most of the time, I’d rather take care of my own needs by myself than pretend to be interested in anyone else. Then I’d just be lying and manipulating them into sex, and I don’t think I could live with myself if that were the case.

I don’t like liars.

I didn’t lie to Vanessa. I just… didn’t tell her the whole truth. Honestly, if she knew I broke off my engagement because I wanted to be with her, she’d probably run away screaming about stalkers.

Until she came back into my life, I was perfectly content to marry Marika. Maybe not enthusiastic, but it was expected. We were… fine.

And then Vanessa started at the training facility. I made it three days before I told Marika it was over.

It was better to be alone than with the wrong person. I just couldn’t see that Marika was the wrong person until the right person showed up right in front of me.

And now I might lose her forever.

Since I have to be at the training facility soon, I might as well get up. After checking on Rupert and my sourdough starter, I pour two travel mugs of coffee, using the last of Brigitte’s Oreo creamer in the second cup.

I don’t have enough time to bake, so I hit up the cafe on the corner and pick up an assortment of pastries. We’ve only had two breakfasts together. There aren’t enough data points to know what she likes yet. I get two of everything.

She’s not at her desk when I get to the back office. Depositing the coffee and the box of pastries on her desk, I head to the locker room, change, and then hit the weights.

The day passes by achingly slow. I can’t have my phone on me when I’m on the ice—that’s just a recipe for disaster. After my session with the massage therapist, I’m feeling achy and ready to crash. So of course it’s when I’m about to head out that Coach calls me into his office.

“You made a spectacle out of that girl,” he says when I shut the door.