Beckett:
I can’t wait.
Chapter seventeen
PIERCE
IsBeckettgoingtobe pissed?
Maybe.
Do I care?
Absolutely not.
I didn’t even know our phones were set up for location sharing until Liam mentioned it. But I double-check all our locations anyway as I walk into the rink, the cold hitting my face like a challenge. I’m a little surprised he’s at the Scorpion’s practice venue right now. The team schedule has them at the arena across town.
Whatever.
I don’t give a shit about the rest of the team. All I care about is Beckett.
It took me a solid half-hour to get out of the security office at the hotel. Who knew Beckett had some petty bitch in him? I had to show my license, then pull up the pack registration toprove Beckett and I are packmates, and that this wasn’t some psycho-stalker situation.
Well, okay. I am technically stalking Beckett, seeing as I’m currently pounding my way through the guts of this little ice rink, moping around the locker room after tracking his phone, but that’s beside the point.
He’ll be pissed, but that is the least of my fucking problems.
The locker room is empty and eerie. Places like this should be full of people, and when they’re not, the slightest sound can make you jump.
I lean my back against the cool row of lockers and bang my head a couple times. The urge to rip open his little cubby hole and bury my face in his sweaty jerseys is almost overwhelming. The man smells so fucking good all the time. I resist, barely. I also resist the urge to hang over the edge of the rink with my tongue hanging out in the boy aquarium to watch him work out, but, again, barely. No need to fully lean into my psycho-stalker era.
You’d think hockey would be the least sexy sport. Rugby? Sure. The little shorts, the jockstraps, the massive thighs. But hockey? You can’t get a lick of knowledge about what’s underneath all that gear. The pads, the protectors, the gloves, the big, boxy shorts over cute little leggings. Can’t even see Beckett’s ass when he’s all kitted out. But that doesn’t make hockey any less sexy.
Growing up in Florida, hockey was the last thing I thought I’d ever be into. Then I met Beckett. Everything changed with Beckett.
I look down at my hands. After all these years, I still half expect to see blood caked under my nails. I bang my head harder against the locker, and let the dull pain echo through my skull. I force myself to conjure up my favorite Beckett memory.
The first time I saw him. He’d walked out of that shitty rink in Florida, hair still wet from the shower and slicked back, hoodie in his hands. He was dressed like it was October somewhere normal,not Florida with its disgusting swamp-ass heat. He towered over Reed as they walked up to my truck, and that was, somehow, fucking hot. Reed licked his lips and winked at me, and the second Beckett slid into my passenger seat with all that perverse shy confidence and his scent, I knew it. I knew right then he was part of our pack. I played it casual when we dropped Beckett at the airport days later, but I had been this close to dropping to my knees and begging him not to go.
Or take us with him.
And then when I… when Reed…
I look at my hands again, curling them into fists.
It had been Liam’s idea to go to Beckett after I… after Reed…
I barely remembered anything from that week.
We had been out drinking. Liam was hustling the bar owner. Reed was working a concert producer to score us a bouncing gig. I was supposed to be sweet-talking the omega of a pack that owned a string of Airbnbs, to get them to let us do their property management.
We needed another 10K before we could grab the kid and get the fuck out of Florida. Reed was not going to leave without his baby sister, and security deposits on a place big enough for all of us were killing us.
We almost had everything set. Liam had fake companies and IDs lined up, a plan to disappear us, no matter how hard their asshole father came after us.
The tricky part was getting Lynn into school. Her father had pulled her out ages ago. If we were going to kidnap Reed’s baby sister, we were sure as hell going to give her a normal life. That meant public schools. That meant clothes and school supplies and bicycles, and whatever else a twelve-year-old needed. That meant first and last month’s rent, a security deposit on a real house, not the busted double-wides and rickety shitholes we were raised in.
But I couldn’t even do my part. I was tossing back shots, scrolling through the group chat with Beckett, rereading every word he’d written since we dropped him at the airport.
