Page 21 of Hard to Handle

But his words don’t come.

Not when he leans back and gives me that lopsided smile that makes my heart melt.

Not when I walk toward the door, my heart screaming to tell him the truth.

Not when I turn back one more time and look at him.

There’s something in his eyes I can’t make out, something I wish I could read, but I know I’m staring through jaded eyes. Eyes that want to believe he doesn’t want me to leave for more reasons than the incredible sex. Eyes that want to believe he has feelings for me too.

Isn’t that the irony though? I want him to feel about me how I feel about him, but if he did, if he professed how he wanted more, I’d run the other way.

I learned about love the hard way.

I learned how you could love someone more than the whole world but that doesn’t save them from death. It won’t save you from being alone.

My soul knows that love always ends in pain and loneliness.

CHAPTER NINE

HUNTER

THE PUCK HITS THE PLEXIGLASS that separates the crowd from the ice with a crack. The arena is a ghost town at this godawful time in the morning, so the sound ricochets off the walls and echoes back to us.

“You losing your touch, Maddox?”

I swing my stick back and then let my arms jerk forward without responding. The puck hits the upper left corner of the net, and I glare at Maysen.

“Does that look like I’m losing my touch?” I ask.

One after another, I land puck after puck into the back of the net, but nothing abates the anger and restlessness I feel. Nothing diminishes the feeling that I’m a hamster on a wheel. Nothing eases the goddamn ache Dekker left me with last night but that I refuse to admit.

But walking away was the right thing. Putting her in her place so she doesn’t think I’m naïve about why she’s here, or that I’d fall right back into how things were when she’s the one who walked away.

Was that the whole point of last night then? A subtle stab at revenge? I can’t make sense of it—my need to talk to her in the bar, to remind her I was there, and then leave her hanging in the elevator.

Shit. I’d be lying if I denied it wouldn’t have been a hardship to fall right between her thighs.

Groaning at my own stupidity, I go back to my practice shots. Trying to work myself into a frenzy so my head can go to that silent place where I don’t think and just do.

There’s a rhythm. Grunt with the swing. Smack the stick to the puck. Thud as the puck hits the net.

Grunt. Smack. Thud.

Maysen lifts the bottle of beer to his lips, and my eyebrows lift.

“Hair of the dog?” I ask.

Grunt. Smack. Thud.

“Shit, if it were the hair of the dog, I’d be sliding back between Sadie’s . . . or was it Sandy? Maybe Shelby. Fuck if I remember what her name was, but if that’s the case, I’d be all up in her because she straight wore me out. I need this shit,” he says and lifts the bottle of beer in the air, “to simply get me through the morning.”

Fucking Maysen.

Normally I love the asshole. Right now, not so much.

Perhaps it’s because he got some and I didn’t.

Then again, after seeing Dekker last night—after tasting her—just any ole puck bunny wouldn’t have satisfied me. Not that they’ve satisfied me for a long time.