Page 1 of Hot Shot Rock Star
Prologue
Ben
Playing in the NHL is supposed to be my heaven on earth.
Five lousy minutes. My first game in the NHL ends with me playing exactly five fucking minutes. The airhorn blows and I’m almost embarrassed as I skate toward the gate. I’ve hardly worked up a sweat. Kodi Stark, a.k.a. The Shark, the team’s goalie, taps my pads and gives me a nod of encouragement. I step off the ice dead last.
It’s a start, damnit. Fuck my competitive nature, I need to be grateful. Being on the ice in a pro game for any amount of time after college is awake me up because I must be dreamingmoment. Right?
But when I look past the gate and see Jazzy I almost get dizzy with the jolt of adrenaline. Playing hockey doesn’t compare to the heaven waiting for me after the game.Jazzy’s here. I spot her in the crowd pushing past security as I head off the ice. My heart rate bumps higher than it did for the game. She’s in a rush to meet me and that sends a rush through me. Watching her barge in where she doesn’t belong, I hurry my pace. This isn’t a college game, and the NHL is more serious about security protocols, but she doesn’t care. Security doesn’t succeed in holding her back. My grin pops and my cup gets tight. I try to weave past the other guys to get to her. The damn cup is too tight.
Jazzy bounces to see me over the mass of players between us. Our eyes connect and she’s breathless and shouting something about a big call. She runs for me, headlong into the guys coming off the ice, passing them in the hall to the locker rooms. They laugh at her, but she’s lasered on me as. Her face is white with fear and excitement creasing her brow.
What the hell?Then I know. I reach my arms out to catch her. “You heard from someone? Tell me who? What is it? They’re giving you a record deal? A concert tour?”
She launches herself into me, crying and smiling in the way I’m now familiar with, though it still sends a pang of fear through my belly until I wrap my arms around her, and she’s laughing, not sobbing.
“I got the call, Ben. Lion Bold wants me, but I don’t know. They want me all in, like a million percent committed, and I can’t do it without you.”
My hands quake as I wrap them around her. Her words send shocks of excitement and loss through me at the prospect of sharing her with the world at large.
“Don’t worry, Jaz, we’ll work it out. Everything will be fine.” As I touch her hair, let her jasmine scent soothe me, I feel the certainty that it will, that we’ll be together ultimately. And when she’s whole and ready for me, ready for us, we’ll have a family someday. For now, I smile down at her, at the tearless grin on her face to see her joy, separate from me, a joy in herself, another step toward her wholeness.
If I thought I was happy before, the sheer bliss of sharing her moment of triumph, of getting to the next hill of her battle, tells me I was wrong.Thisis what I live for. Seeing her succeed, move forward in steps small and large, fills my heart and soul.
“I love you so much, Jaz,” I whisper into her ear. I feel the shiver that runs through her at my words, the stunned look on her face, the same as the first time I told her and every time since, like she’s not sure if she should believe me.
“I hope you don’t mind if I love you too, but it’s too bad if you do, because it’s true.”
I laugh at her words. They’re from the last song she wrote about us, the one she recorded and sent to Lion Bold Records. The one that got her the deal. Her musician friends in Brooklyn recommended she submit there. Lion Bold acts like an artist manager and helps their musicians develop their careers, but they’re notoriously demanding.
Even though every fiber in me wants to, I’m not sure if I can take her song seriously, how much her words are made of passion or how deep her feelings go, whether they’re real. Sometimes she doesn’t feel real, like she lives in an alternate universe, and I’m not sure how much is because of her music and poetry and how much of it is to keep the shadow of her demons at bay.
Then she leans closer, stares into my eyes, all intense and present, and my heart races ahead of my mind. She whispers, all serious.
“I do love you, Bennie. As much as I possibly can.”
Boom.
I swear I feel a thunderous crack in my soul. My heart breaks open and my soul sings hallelujah because I know it’s real this time. I can feel her being open with me. Her energy, always vibrant, suffuses me with the unmistakable gift of true love, the kind that never leaves, that exists on its own forever.
And even though we’re surrounded by fans and press and players lingering after the game as we stand in the hallway outside the dressing rooms, I take her face in my hands and kiss her like the memory of it has to last forever, holding her as if she might disappear in a puff of fairy dust or ashes. And I know I love her more because she’ll let me. And it’s enough.For now . ..
