Winning It All (Hometown Players Book 4)

by Victoria Denault

  “I’ll find you another job.” He winks.

  Unfortunately, I’ve got to get in that shower because if I’m late again, Trey will lose his ever-loving mind. I leave Sebastian alone in my bed.

  Chapter 14

  Sebastian

  Her hair is still damp, and she’s twisted it up into one of those half-bun, half-ponytail things girls do that look messy and perfect at the same time. She’s in black capri yoga pants with a band of teal blue fabric around her tiny waist and a teal Lycra tank top. She’s carrying her workout bag and a bright pink hoodie.

  I stand by her front door and try not to get a hard-on as I check out her ass in those pants. Jordan was right: whoever created yoga pants is a genius. He should know, since his wife is a physical therapist and lives in them. Shayne heads to the small, round glass dining room table and pulls a banana and two shiny red apples out of the fruit bowl. I smirk. “Don’t eat that banana in the car. It’ll distract the fuck out of me.”

  She suppresses a giggle and smiles, tossing me one of the apples. “This banana is a piece of cake. I’ve had much bigger things in my mouth just this morning.”

  I fight a flush, and a wave of blood flies to my groin on that comment. She starts toward me. Just as she’s about to pass me and reach for the front door, I push her up against the wall and kiss her. She tastes like toothpaste and cherry lip gloss.

  She pulls back, tasting the toothpaste in my mouth too. “You used my toothbrush?”

  I nod and kiss her again. When I pull back, her pretty nose is scrunched up in mock disgust. “Gross, Frenchie! Get your own.”

  “I have my own.” I shrug and take her overstuffed bag off her shoulder before exiting the apartment. “Next time we’ll have to stay at my place so I can use it.”

  My eyes subtly dart toward her to judge her reaction to that. I see her pretty mouth start to move upward in a smile, but she pulls her lips into her mouth to stop it. I’ve dropped the “next time” bomb a couple times since last night, hoping she’ll take the hint. This isn’t a one-time—I mean two-time—thing. This is something I want more of—a lot more of. She hasn’t acknowledged the same, verbally, but her half smiles give me hope.

  She’s quiet on the car ride over, flipping stations on my Sirius XM satellite radio until she comes across some AC/DC and then she cranks it. I smile. “Back in Black” isn’t my idea of morning music, but she’s smiling and singing along, and that I like. I make a quick left into the Dunkin Donuts parking lot and get into the drive-thru line. She turns down the radio and looks at me. I ignore her and order two large coffees and a toasted blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese.

  “You need a coffee,” I tell her. “You barely got any sleep last night.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Are you my dad or my bed buddy?”

  Bed buddy?

  “Neither,” I say pointedly. “I want to be much more to you.”

  The amusement on her face disappears, and I want to say more, but the guy in front of me has moved on and it’s our turn at the window. The girl working is about eighteen or nineteen with long blond hair in a big ponytail sticking out the back of her hat and too much makeup. She glances up at us and starts to repeat the order, but stops.

  “Sebastian Deveau. Oh. My. God. You’re Sebastian Deveau!”

  “Hi.” I smile and give her a little awkward wave. She turns scarlet and smiles.

  “Oh my God. Seriously?!” She’s almost squealing. I laugh and glance at Shayne, who is watching the scene from behind her sunglasses, and even with half her face covered I can tell she’s confused. But she won’t be for long. Fuck. This is probably the worst way for her to find out what I do for a living, but I’m trapped. I can’t stop this from happening. So I take a deep breath and look back at the girl. She’s completely flustered.

  “Sorry! It’s just you’re my favorite player,” she gushes. “My brother wants to play for the Winterhawks one day. He’s at University of Washington on a hockey scholarship right now. We love watching you play.”

  “Thanks. You’re very sweet. Tell your brother I wish him luck. Umm…how much was my order again?”

  She shakes her head, further embarrassed. “Nothing. It’s on me.”

  She hands me a bag with the bagel and then the two coffees and for the first time she realizes there’s someone else in the car. Her eyes move up and down Shay and it’s easy to see she’s judging her. She might as well hold up a scorecard with a number out of ten on it. If it was me, Shayne would get a perfect ten, but something tells me this girl doesn’t see it that way.

  “I can’t let you pay,” I say with an easy grin.

  “No. I want to! You can get me back one day,” she suggests happily and lowers her eyes, batting her big mascara-covered lashes in an attempt to be flirty. I glance at Shayne, who is now staring at me openmouthed.

  “You’re a hockey player.” She whispers this so only I can hear, and it’s filled with confusion—and contempt? Yeah, this is going to go as badly as I thought it would. Fuck.

  “You can buy me a drink at the bar or something,” the cashier girl suggests excitedly. “My girlfriends and I have fake IDs and we like to go bar hopping. Do you ever go to Liberty or The Sunset? I heard you do.”

  Hell no, my brain screams. I glance at Shay, who is still staring at me; her hand holding the coffee I gave her is just hanging there, frozen, in midair. Her free hand rests on the console between us. I cover it with my own hand, immediately lacing our fingers together.

  “That’s so sweet of her, isn’t it, baby?” I ask Shay, and then reach up and pull her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. I turn back to the Dunkin girl. “Thanks. Do you want me to sign anything or something?”

  “Ahhh…” She’s been thrown off by the show of affection I just gave Shayne. Thrown off and probably heartbroken. Whatever. She’ll get over it. She leans over and gives me a pen and asks me to sign the receipt from my order. I ask her name and sign it. To Amy. Thanks for my morning coffee. Sebastian Deveau #8. Shay watches me sign and I swear I hear her whisper, “Oh God, no.”

  I hand it back to Amy and give her a big smile before covering Shayne’s hand with my own and driving away. As soon as we’re back on the street, Shay yanks her hand away.

  “What the hell, Frenchie!” she bellows. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a hockey player?”

  She’s mad, but worse than that, she looks betrayed. Damn. I start to scramble for a way to fix this or, at the very least, minimize the damage. “I was going to mention it at some point, I swear.”

  “Really? When?”

  “Soon,” I promise and then I can’t help but add, “I’m honestly surprised you didn’t know.”

  “How would I know?”

  “Because everyone knows,” I say with a shrug.

  “No. Not everyone knows,” she argues back. “Does Audrey know? Audrey can’t know.”

  “Audrey probably knows,” I counter and slow to a stop at a red light. “I mean Josh knows. He’s a huge fan and he works with my financial advisor. Also your boss, Trey, he probably knows. My team’s captain is his ‘stupid hockey player friend,’ as you put it the other night.”

  “I have to go,” she states flatly and starts to open the door to the car. The light has turned green and I’m letting the car roll forward, about to hit the gas. But when I realize she’s going to get out even if I’m moving, I quickly yank the car to a spot at the curb in front of a fire hydrant.

  “Shay, is it really that big of a deal?”

  “I can never come back to that Dunkin Donuts again! She’s going to spit in my coffee every time!”

  I laugh. “Not if you’re with me. I’ll just have to come with you every morning.”

  She has both feet out of the car now and she’s just reaching for her bag, about to jump out. I reach over and grab her arm. She flinches. “I’m not going to get coffee with you again because we aren’t going to be together again.”

  I blink. “Why?”

&n
bsp; Her face contorts with something dark. Something I really do not understand but that makes my stomach grow cold despite the hot coffee in it. “Well, for one thing, you lied to me, which I would have expected if you’d told me you were a hockey player. And I will not date a hockey player. I won’t. Ever. So bye.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I blurt out as she yanks her arm free and slips out of the car.

  “Nope. Not kidding,” she says firmly and shoves her sunglasses back into her hair. “So thanks for the memories…I guess…but forget my name, okay?”

  “Shayne!” I call out as she starts down the street.

  She ignores me completely and turns the corner up ahead, disappearing into the bustle of morning pedestrians. What the hell just happened?!?

  Chapter 15

  Shayne

  It’s amazing I’ve made it through most of the day. This morning I had two nutrition classes to lead and then I covered a shift at the juice bar. I was like a zombie throughout all of it. My brain was all Frenchie, all the time, and the bomb a horny drive-thru girl dropped on me this morning. He is a fucking hockey player. One who hides it so he can get in my pants. And he got in my pants. How the hell did I not know? The Winterhawks players are treated like celebrities around Seattle. He’s probably on the news and in newspapers all the time. How did I not recognize him?

  I bet Trey knows he’s a hockey player. And if Josh knows that, then Audrey probably knows it and didn’t tell me. And if that’s true, then a potential boyfriend isn’t all I’ve lost. Because Audrey knows exactly why I feel the way I feel about hockey players. She is supposed to understand and support me and my decisions. Instead she stood there and let me hook up with him. Twice. Oh my God, I slept with a hockey player, not once but twice. I had four hockey-related orgasms. I hate myself.

  There’s more than one reason I promised myself from a young age I would stay away from professional athletes, and hockey players in particular. Even now, in my twenties, I still feel they’re valid reasons. That sport alone has ruined my life and the lives of people I love. And it, like most professional sports, breeds a self-entitled, arrogant, insensitive type of man who is incapable of loving anyone but himself and his equally dickish teammates. I know how unreasonable that sounds to people who don’t know me—and haven’t lived my life. When I first explained my all-encompassing hate to Audrey, she didn’t understand it either. But then, our first year of college, she came home with me for a weekend and came to one of Trey’s hockey games with me and met my parents. She’s understood ever since. Or so I thought.

  Maybe none of this matters anyway. I mean, he is a hockey player. And despite his little hints that he wanted to see me again, he’s already had me—twice—so he’s bound to be at least halfway over it—over us. My firsthand experience tells me hockey players don’t have long attention spans when it comes to females.

  On my break I head to the garage where I had the car towed. They tell me they still don’t know what’s wrong with it. Just the news I need to put the crappy icing on a craptastic day. The whole seven-block walk there and back I do nothing but think of Sebastian. Why did the sex have to be so good? Why did he have to make me come? Why did he have to be so perfectly flirty? Why does he have to wear skates for a living? When I get back to work, I head to the large staff lounge. There’s a wall with a sink, cupboards, fridge and microwave to the left. In the center of the room there’s a table with chairs. At the back of the room on the left is a couch and a chair facing a flat screen on the wall. Next to that are two small workstations with laptops. I head there to do some research on green power foods to bulk up my next presentation. Somehow, though, I start googling Sebastian Deveau.

  He’s been with the Winterhawks his entire career. He was drafted in the first round. He was a superstar in juniors. He had the most penalty minutes and the most short-handed goals in the league his first year. A defenseman. If there are levels of hockey hate in my heart, the deepest one I have is for defensemen, so of course that’s what he plays. Just like my father. Of fucking course. He went through a contract negotiation last year and now makes three and a half million dollars a year. There’s the fuel that sparks the fire of greed, belligerence and insensitivity: the money. Hockey players make so damn much that they don’t have to be accountable for anything. They can just buy their way out of—or into—anything they want. I know because my father made the highest salary of any NHL defenseman when he was playing ten years ago.

  I read a few new articles with playoff predictions, since the season ends next week and apparently the Winterhawks have already secured a playoff spot. Sebastian is mentioned a lot. One article is about how he fought too much in the conference final last year and spent too much time in the penalty box. I frown. Another says Sebastian leads the league in points by a defenseman this year and is poised to set a new Winterhawks record. Beating the old one set by…Glenn Beckford. There is some sick joy in knowing my dad’s record, which he still boasts about, will be erased, but it’s matched by the horror I feel knowing that it’ll be broken by a man I’ve seen naked.

  I find a blog that talks about how he used to live with Jordan Garrison when Jordan first joined the team and how it was like a frat house. I can’t imagine the women that have traipsed through there. Then again, I can. I wonder if I should get tested. I mean, yes, we were safe, but…

  My eyes wander to the menu at the top and my hand, as if acting on behalf of my hormones, clicks the images button. Hundreds of photos of him on and off the ice fill the screen. Man, he’s pretty.

  “Whatchya doing?”

  I jump and quickly close the laptop, spinning in the chair to face Audrey, who is standing by the door.

  “You know I thought you were dead or something,” she tells me, stepping into the room. “He’s athletic. When you didn’t call me this morning I thought maybe he had accidentally fucked you to death.”

  “Classy, Audrey.” I roll my eyes. “Remember this wasn’t my first naked Sebastian rodeo.”

  She laughs and flops down on the couch. “Oh, I remember. You walked around for a week with that goofy smile on your face.”

  “Like you said, he’s athletic, which makes him fun to be naked with. But do you know why he’s so muscly?” She averts her eyes. She knows! “Audrey! How could you let me do that?”

  She leans toward me from her position on the couch, her eyes pleading. “I didn’t always know, I promise! I found out the other night. But the first time I had no idea. I thought he was a weight-lifting accountant, just like you did.”

  “But when you knew, you didn’t tell me!” I’m honestly upset.

  My best friend gets off the couch and walks over to me, pulling me up from the chair I’m sitting in and hugging me. “I’m sorry. I should have. It’s just…you already liked him.”

  “I don’t even know him,” I argue, but I’m hugging her back.

  “Well, biblically you know him,” she counters, and I know she’s smiling over my shoulder. “And you liked him. He made you come, Shayne, and no man has ever—”

  “I know, but that’s not reason to risk repeating my mistakes,” I reply. “You of all people should know the risk is high.”

  She pulls back, putting her hands on my shoulders and staring at me like a mom would to a daughter whom she’s lecturing. “I know. I still regret dating Tyler and setting you up with his teammate. God, they were both such dirtbags, but they hid it so well at first. Fuckers.”

  I think back to how charming Tyler, the captain of the Syracuse hockey team, was when he and Audrey started dating. He brought her flowers and took her on romantic dates. He was funny and sweet and went out of his way to be nice to her friends. He was so captivating, and Audrey was so happy, he had me willing to go on a date with his teammate Dustin, who was interested in me, apparently.

  Dustin was equally charming—and so I decided to waive my “no hockey players” rule, which I implemented thanks to dear old Dad. And for about a year I thought it was the best
decision I’d ever made. Even after Audrey found out Tyler had “accidentally” slept with someone else and they broke up, I stayed with Dustin. He was different—even Audrey, with her broken heart, thought so. And then one day there was a knock on my dorm room door, and a girl I’d never met before told me she’d gotten chlamydia from my boyfriend last week, and I should get tested.

  He swore she was some kind of crazy puck bunny stalker and was lying. But when the test results came back positive—and he accused me of giving it to him even though I’d been a virgin when we hooked up—I never spoke to him, or any hockey player, ever again.

  “But Sebastian isn’t Dustin or Tyler,” Audrey declares.

  “He’s not? Let’s see…They were hockey players, they were charming, they were handsome…” I give her a hard stare. “Sounds pretty similar to me. Oh, and he’s a Winterhawk, just like the biggest cheating hockey player out there, my dad.”

  “But you like him,” she argues firmly.

  “I liked him when I thought he was an accountant or a stockbroker or…a trust fund baby.” I sigh, pulling my hair out of its ponytail and giving it a shake. “I can’t like him now. Liking him now would mean…”

  “Being like your mother?” she finishes for me, and I nod slightly. She frowns but pulls me into a hug. “He’s not your father. And despite what Tyler and Dustin did, I still say not all hockey players are cheating bags of dick.”

  I huff out an awkward laugh at that. “Haven’t met one that isn’t.”

  “Maybe that’s about to change,” she replies firmly, but I shake my head.

  “Look, it’s not just that. It’s the lifestyle. It’s hard—on them and the people they date,” I explain, and I mean it. “They’re gone for weeks at a time. And their careers can end at any minute with a precarious body check. There’s torn ligaments, broken bones and concussion syndrome. He could end up addicted to painkillers, like Trey did before he could even have a career.”