Page 14 of Lovefool

Me? Rash decisions? Oh, please.

I scoff, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit offended by the implication. “What are you talking about?”

Tamara fluffs up the bottom of her big, 1980s-style ringlets, wafting me a trace of her floral-scented perfume. “You know, keep your priorities straight.”

“Priorities?” I echo dumbly.

With a groan like I’m the one speaking in cryptic riddles, her feline eyes narrow into unamused slits. “I know you and Sutton are on a friendly basis. Use your relationship with him to get closer to the team.”

“That seems kind of deceitful, don’t you think?”

“It comes with the territory.”

Fuck. Of course I want to get closer to Sutton, but not because I have some ulterior motive. I want to ride his big nose like a bridesmaid five drinks deep on a mechanical bull without feeling any guilt whatsoever.

Seeing as I can’t exactly refuse, I simply nod, hating the way shame crouches low in my already nauseated belly.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll make sure I get the inside scoop.”

As I watch Tamara walk away to probably go terrorize some underclassman, I pull out my phone, open Instagram, and navigate to Sutton’s direct messages.

ME

Hey. I never got your number. Hoping we could talk soon.

6

FAMILIAR FACES

SUTTON

Lake stood me up. And since then, she’s dropped off the face of the earth entirely.

I haven’t spoken to her recently, so I have no idea what would make her dip out on me like that. Maybe she got cold feet because of the Buford situation? I don’t really do the whole dating thing—and not because I adhere to a fuckboy philosophy like a lot of my teammates. I’m just picky.

It’s going to sound cliché, but I found that it was easier to be myself when I didn’t have to live up to someone’s inflated expectations of my hockey alter ego. I adore the Mustangs’ diehard fans, though there’s a line where I feel like more of a show horse than a human being. Lake didn’t care about my reputation. Hell, she didn’t even know who I was.

And, despite the…slightly illegal…circumstances I met her under, her fearlessness was a breath of fresh air. I’ve grown up most of my life heeding caution instead of heralding chaos. I never approach a problem without a solution. Acting on impulse, ironically, is the one thing that isn’t written into the helix of my DNA. My animal instinct actually supplicates that I de-escalate in highly charged situations—which my therapist says is a result of my people-pleasing tendencies.

It’s been me and my dad since I was three. I never needed a mom, nor extended family. My father is my one and only rock, and I wouldn’t be anywhere without him. I try to see him on the weekends, but since I don’t live at home anymore and he works full time, it’s been hard to align our schedules.

It’s taken me years to accept the fact that his job is dangerous, and that one day, I might get the call he’ll never come back home again.

His affinity for making calculated yet reckless decisions has impacted me a lot more than I realized at first. I’ve seen how they’ve played out—I’ve been the brunt of his one-man show for a long time.

I’ll never forget the time he barreled into a burning house without backup because there was a child trapped beneath a fallen beam, and I genuinely thought that was the last time I would ever see him. He was off duty when he came across it. None of his colleagues were in the immediate area. He knew the risks—asphyxiation, structural collapse, flashover—but he also knew that there was a reason he stumbled upon the scene first. He was the only person who could’ve saved that little girl, and if he hadn’t acted when he did, she wouldn’t be with us today.

Every time my father gets a callout, I have to wrestle with the possibility that something might go wrong. That’s just the nature of his job. I have to lead with caution because I’m familiar with the detrimental effects of half-assed decisions. One misstep and all my dad’s hard work to provide a future for me goes up in an inferno of fire and ash.

I bear the worry, I bear the overthinking, I bear the insomnia that stirs quietly in the silence of the night when I don’t hear from him. I’d never tell him any of this, obviously, because I know it would affect his performance.

My whole life has been a drag path of fear, and I think I was so drawn to Lake in the first place because she emits this aura that’s unapologetically her. She’s completely exorcised of self-doubt and unconcerned with contorting herself to fit society’s expectations. I was already sucked into her orbit when she drank me in with her cerulean eyes and refused to let me go.

I’ve been conditioned to bite my tongue; Lake revels in the taste of blood. Maybe a neglected part of me yearns to be as carelessly free as she is, because I’ve restructured my whole life around my father’s occupation. So, it’s pretty on par for me to worry about something I can’t control—like whether or not she’s still interested in me.

Disappointment fires through my chest like a close-range bullet, shattering bone and brutalizing delicate tissue in a bloody, ruthless trail. Though it doesn’t compare to the sudden physical pain of something hitting me over the helmet and jarring awake some of my on-leave brain cells.

“Dude, Foster sped right past you!” Axel—the other defenseman on the team—hisses, gesturing to the dwindling silhouette of my opponent careening across the ice.