Anatomy of a Player (Taking Shots #2)

by Cindi Madsen

  What the hell’s wrong with me?

  I was falling for an obnoxious, cocky…sexy, funny… When all I could come up with were more complimentary adjectives to describe the hockey player I couldn’t stop thinking about, I cut myself off. Even when I knew better, my brain betrayed me. Or maybe it was my body—it was definitely in on it.

  Didn’t it remember how much the crash hurt? Hudson Decker was the exact type of guy I’d sworn off almost a month ago, and I’d done it for self-preservation.

  Finally, we made it to my car—luckily Lyla had ridden here with Beck, so she could ride home with me. As soon as we were safe inside, Lyla said, “Okay, spill.”

  So I did. The documentary watching and joking around, and the tingly butterflies I’d felt when he’d rested his knee against my leg. “I know he’s a bad idea. But right now my brain is full with that idea, and I want to conduct my own experiment.”

  Lyla laughed, and when I whipped my head toward her, she held up her hands. “Sorry. But the experiment thing—I must be wearing off on you.”

  “Yes. That and I suddenly want to have sex with a hockey player.” I pushed her shoulder. “You’re a bad influence.”

  I got the giggles and so did she, but when the laughter died down, the truth remained. I was softening toward Hudson. Not to mention lusting after him. I wasn’t sure which of those was worse, only that both of them would screw me in different ways—and not the good kind.

  Before we ended up trapped in the parking lot forever, I fired up my car and merged with the vehicles already lined up at the exit. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, trying to keep my mind off Hudson, but the harder I tried to not think about him, the more my brain fixated on him. Seriously, I’d never experienced abs like that in person. Was it so wrong to want to know what they felt like underneath my fingertips, just once?

  “Uh-oh,” Lyla said. “I’ve seen that face before. You’re starting to like him like him.”

  “No?” Of course it came out weak, because I was suddenly having trouble convincing myself of it. “Okay, yes. A little bit of like and a whole lot of lust. I like sex, okay? When’s the last time you went for even a few days without it?”

  Lyla opened her mouth and then shut it. Then she opened it again. “At the beginning of summer when Beck and I were apart, I had to go four long weeks. If you don’t count phone sex.”

  I gasped and nearly rammed my car into the blue rust bucket in front of us when it unexpectedly slammed on its brakes. “Lyla Wilder, I’m so proud.”

  She flushed crimson.

  “Jealous and proud—it’s a weird combination, honestly.” I eased my foot off the brake, but kept a few extra feet between me and the car I’d nearly rear-ended. “But my point is, don’t come at me with your barely-counts-as-going-without four weeks that happened, like, six months ago.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me, and I laughed again. At least I had her to help me get through this.

  “You know what I think the real problem is?” Lyla asked.

  “Besides the lack of sex?”

  “Well, that’s certainly contributing to the problem. But, you took out all the variables, until there weren’t any left. Now the equation has holes in it.”

  “I’m not following.” A common problem when she started talking in chemistry instead of English.

  “You crossed out all guys. I’m not saying you should jump into bed with the next one you’re interested in, but you need to go out and meet the nice, nerdy type of guys we said we were going to go for—I know I was a big liar when I agreed to it, but I’d already fallen in love with Beck.”

  “You’re saying to save myself while I can.”

  “Yes. I mean, no, because that sounds mean to Beck, but in a way, yes. Start with dating a bit. Of course a total shut-out is going to make you want to cling to the closest guy, especially if he looks like Hudson and has all that sexy hockey gear on.”

  I could tell by the way her voice lilted, she was picturing Beck in his hockey gear. She shook her head slightly, her eyes slowly refocusing, and then said, “But he probably thinks he deserves to have sex with you, and the only guy who really does is the guy who thinks he doesn’t.”

  I followed the Lyla logic, spinning it around in my head. Then I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

  My heart was barely getting back to normal, and I was way too close to setting it on another crash course. Someday it was going to give out from being broken too many times.

  This time I was going to do the breaking—I was breaking the cycle.

  Cars parted and then we were at the exit, which was pretty much like the heavens opening, so I took it as a sign and vowed to do whatever it took to resist Hudson Decker and his tempting anatomy.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Whitney

  Avoiding Hudson for the rest of the week had been fairly easy. We didn’t have the same classes, and I spent a great deal of time at the newspaper office or the library, my research for my article blurring into my studies until I was living, breathing, and eating journalism in one way or another.

  The survey had caught fire over the past few days, to the point where I could hardly keep up and the comments had become so scathing I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Athletes had come in droves to post their opinions. Big surprise—they thought they deserved special treatment.

  Not surprising—the fact that 72 percent of the people who took the survey thought that athletes received special treatment. Only 34 percent thought they deserved it, and while I couldn’t prove it, I’d bet at least 90 percent of people who answered that way were athletes.

  Lindsay had congratulated me on the success of the survey and told me she couldn’t wait for the full story. My overly dramatic thought about Professor Jessup being right about me got tossed to the curb, along with the news anchor haircut I’d feared was in my future.

  It was what I’d always wanted—to feel like a hotshot investigative reporter. But every time I read or transcribed a barbed jab about the athletes, I’d experience a tiny twinge.

  Which was why Saturday morning, before pulling up the survey, I steeled myself for what I’d find. I scrolled through the comments, to where I’d left off last night, and began reading the most recent responses.

  Are you fucking kidding me? We work just as hard, hell, even harder than normal students. We have training and games to deal with that you don’t!

  Gotta love how he calls us normal and makes it clear that he’s superior.

  The next one—obviously from another athlete—said the rest of us were “lasy” in comparison, which I took to mean lazy. Funny enough, he also mentioned he maintained a 4.0. Something’s not quite adding up there, buddy.

  In fact, the athletes’ three-to-six times higher educational price tag hadn’t prevented bad grammar and a lot of misspelled words. I’d give them a few for autocorrect and typos, but some I could hardly read—they sure did know how to swear, though. Sad when simply typing “STFU” seemed friendly in comparison.

  To be fair, there were a handful of better-constructed comments—they were just far and few in between.

  As for “you people,” the “normal” students, or whatever you wanted to call us, we weren’t much nicer. Many comments called out the university scandals I’d studied, and several even made good points in a non-confrontational way. But then there were comments similar to the new one that’d just popped up.

  You STFU, you ignorant meathead! Stop crying about your free ride because you have to do some cardio and PLAY a game, like you have it real hard. If you actually go to your classes and you’re still that stupid, you’re doing it wrong. Why don’t you go to a third-world country and see how pointless your sport is in the grand scheme of things. It’s a FUCKING SPORT, not life or death in Uganda.

  Twinge, twinge, twinge, until my chest burned with the spewed hatred. Rational arguments had long since been abandoned by both sides, turning it into a contest over who c
ould say the harshest thing about the other group, and the division between the “normal” students and the athletes had gone from a wide valley to the Grand Canyon.

  Seriously, how could people be so hateful? Earlier this week I’d been angry over the athletes’ air of superiority in their comments, too, but I’d never wanted it to turn into this. I’d wanted opinions, not for everyone to attack each other.

  Maybe we felt a little too safe behind our screens.

  By the time I stepped into the hockey arena for Saturday night’s game, my insides were knotted, and the twinges I’d felt reading angry comments had grown and seized my entire chest, eclipsing the desire for justice and equality I’d been overflowing with when I’d first started my assignment.

  I’d been in the locker room with the hockey players a couple of times since then; we’d played drinking games together. A few of those mean comments might belong to the players on the ice, but they were more than the sum of those words. Hot topics tended to bring out the worst in everyone, athlete or not.

  Ugh, how am I going to go into the locker room and act normal? I worried they’d take one look at me and somehow know I was responsible for the survey.

  That should probably be my biggest worry, but Number Nineteen, who’d just scored our first goal, earned that top spot. Despite knowing it was for the best, shutting him out wasn’t going to be easy, not with his hulking presence taking up all the space and cutting off oxygen to my brain.

  I smiled as the rest of the guys barreled into him. It seemed like more of a punishment than a celebration, but I could feel the happy vibes from here, and after a few days without any, I wanted to lean closer and soak them in.

  Lyla glanced at me.

  “I’m strong,” I said, even though it’d been a lot easier to feel that way with more space between Hudson and me. Considering there were still several rows of seats, a glass wall, and thirty to forty feet of ice separating us, I worried how I’d manage to be in the same room and remain resolute. “I’m going to break the cycle.”

  “I was going to ask if you were okay.”

  How did she always know when I was close to cracking? And why did my first response have to involve tears? I blinked them back, inwardly scolding them for trying to form in the first place.

  Lyla shifted in her seat and placed her hand on my forearm. “I don’t want you to get hurt, but…I hope I didn’t give you bad advice.”

  “You didn’t. I know this is for the best.” I sucked in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Nice nerdy guys deserve a chance, and I do, too.”

  After the closest game yet, I made my way down to the locker room. My shoes felt like they’d been filled with lead—they may as well have been, as boring as they were.

  Despite how hard I’d worked to make my write-ups of the game more interesting, this part of my job now felt like a total lie, and even the frigid air conditioning of the locker room couldn’t combat the nerves that had sent my sweat glands into overdrive.

  To compensate, I wrote down every word the guys said with meticulous precision, deciding I’d talk up the team in my recap and brag about how well they worked together.

  My pulse spiked every time I sensed Hudson, his hulking presence ten times worse now that we were in the same room.

  Three solid quotes later, I decided the best way to deal with Hudson was to not deal with him at all. Not every player needed an interview and I needed space—a chance to get my head straight so it wouldn’t be so hard to be around him. I was sure that once I met a guy who fit my new dating requirements, it’d be much easier. Then maybe my body, heart, and brain wouldn’t be at war, making and breaking different alliances.

  Flipping my notebook closed, I headed toward the door, my eyes on the green exit sign.

  “Hey, Reporter Girl,” I heard from behind me, and my heartbeats tripped over themselves. Instead of turning around, I took long strides for the door.

  Just before I could make my escape, a large hand wrapped around my wrist. I knew without turning around it was Hudson. “That’s the second time you’ve left without a good-bye,” he said.

  “Can’t say good-bye when you never said hello.” I’d meant for it to come out sharp, but when I dared to glance back at him, his confident grin was still in place, so apparently not sharp enough.

  He ran his thumb over the pulse point in my wrist, and my blood rushed to the spot, wanting more. “Then you owe me both.”

  I became all too aware of the fact that he was only wearing his hockey pants, leaving his chest gloriously bare. My fingers twitched at my side.

  “Hudson,” I said under my breath, with as much power as I could. “You’re being inappropriate.”

  His free hand curled around my hip, and he leaned his lips so close to my ear that they brushed it when he spoke. “If you think this is inappropriate, wait till you see what I’ve got planned for later tonight. Meet me at my truck.”

  I attempted to swallow, but my throat had stopped working. “We can’t do this anymore,” I whispered. “I’m done playing games. In fact, I don’t want to play at all.”

  With a ridiculously easy tug, he spun me to face him. I’d known his physical presence would make following through more difficult, but I was unprepared for the powerful surge of want that fired through me.

  But then I noticed people in the background. A couple of his teammates were watching us extra closely.

  I’d already made a huge mess of things, and I was about to ruin my credibility, not only at my job, but with myself. I’d promised to take better care of my heart, and I intended to do just that. Break the cycle, break the cycle.

  I jerked my arm out of his grasp and took a step backward. “Mr. Decker, I’m happy to get your comments on the game, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t handle me like I’m one of your puck bunnies.”

  Those words obviously had an impact; his grin was nowhere in sight anymore. The muscles around his jaw hardened, and the twinges I’d felt before all returned with a vengeance, until my entire chest throbbed with the sharp pain of them.

  All eyes were on us now. I didn’t know what else to do, but I’d made my stand, so I clung to it. I lifted my notebook and said, “In the last period, they caught up, and until there at the end, it looked like we might have our first tie game. What do you think you guys need to do to keep that last minute scramble from happening as the competition heats up and you face off with higher-ranked teams?”

  Hudson stared, his eyes so cold now that I repressed a shudder. “We’ll do what we always do. Train hard and change up our defense when we need to. Our true fans, even the ones some condescendingly refer to as ‘puck bunnies’—know that we take each game, win or lose, and learn from our mistakes.”

  My hand shook as I wrote down the words. It was especially hard to write “mistakes” since I swore his eyes had bored into me when he’d said it, like he was telling me that I was one of them. The puck bunny reprimand stung, too, heaping on another solid brick of guilt.

  “There’s a reason we’re on top, and we plan to stay that way,” he said. Before I could force out a “Thank you for your comments,” under the guise of only doing my job, he walked away.

  The rest of the players turned around, like they hadn’t been watching the interaction, and the air of the locker room turned thick and suffocating. I made my escape, but the arena air wasn’t much better.

  Probably because it wasn’t actually the air. I’d vowed to be strong enough to keep myself from slipping and falling for Hudson, but now that he was clearly done with me, it didn’t feel like some big win.

  It felt like I’d just lost something that I didn’t know I had.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Hudson

  Nothing was worse than not being able to be there for your team, which was why I wasn’t even entertaining the idea of telling Coach I’d fucked up my ankle. I’d put on a good show at practice last night, jumping right back up after Ox and I had collided, ignoring the fact that every mov
ement brought on a wave of nausea.

  This morning my left ankle was an impressive shade of purple, and so swollen that it’d taken a lot of cramming and swearing to get my foot into my shoe.

  As I walked into McGuinn Hall, I gritted my teeth against the sharp pain that shot up my leg with every step. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and the bacon and Eggo Waffles I’d scarfed for breakfast threatened to make a reappearance. I just had to make it through my classes and then I’d be on a plane to Colorado so we could check into a hotel and get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s game. That’d give my ankle the rest it needed, and I was sure that by game time it’d be fine.

  I settled into a desk in my most-hated class and sighed in relief. I dug out a few more ibuprofen and swallowed them dry. The taste lingered and I wished I’d risked the extra steps to the drinking fountain down the hall, throbbing ankle or not.

  Professor Hummel began her lecture, and I forced myself to jot down what she said, even though it mostly sounded like a foreign language. Here I’d thought this class was going to end up benching me—as did McCaffrey, who’d been asking for a regular report and hounding me to get more tutoring help so that didn’t happen—but at least that gave me till December, when grades came out.

  Except I wasn’t going to let it come to that, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let a minor ankle injury take me down.

  If I hadn’t been favoring my right leg, this never would’ve happened. My old MCL injury had been flaring up recently, so I’d been trying to keep my weight off my right knee as much as possible in practice. Because—get this—I didn’t want to be injured before our game against Denver. Rumor had it they’d recruited some major players. They were also 4 and 0, just like we were. I wanted to make sure that at the end of the game, they were the one to report a loss.

  I readjusted my leg and rested my foot on the bottom rung of the chair in front of me so that my ankle would be elevated. The guy in front of me turned, looking like he was ready to say something.