by Elise Faber
He wasn’t going to stand in her way.
They might be pursuing the chemistry that threatened to flay him to the core, but he hadn’t laid claim to her.
Which sounded positively barbaric, stupidly alpha male.
Brit would certainly kick his ass for even having had the thought. And yet, he almost didn’t care, would take the verbal chewing with enthusiasm . . . if it meant she could be his.
But—
What?
It was complicated? Hell, yes it was. It was a risk? Definitely. He felt more with Brit since—well—ever.
It was new.
That was the notion that gave Stefan the most pause.
And the reason he was sitting five rows behind her, admiring the golden tint of her hair, the slender slope of her neck, the confidence in her hands as she gestured wildly.
She’d been strong when she’d first come to the Gold—it would have been impossible to get there any other way—but in the almost six weeks since she’d first walked into the Gold’s arena, he’d witnessed her strength grow, mature into granite laced with . . . caring, maybe?
But instead of weakening the stone, the undertone of affection for her teammates tempered its core, made it even more solid.
She didn’t just care for him, though he was egotistical enough to think that was part of her transformation.
It was more than that.
Brit was committed to the team with her whole heart. Even her staunchest critic could see that, and they were only five games into the regular season.
A season in which she’d played maybe ten minutes total, but a season during which she’d been to every practice—optional or otherwise—had been engaged and cheering for their team even while on the bench.
Hence, the so-painful-his-spine-itched distance between them.
But because the draw between them was so new, he wouldn’t do anything to risk her career.
Not even when his heart ached to be beside her.
“That bad?” Max asked from his seat next to him. His D-partner always took the window seat, leaving Stefan and his nervous energy free to get up and move around.
Or Max had every time after their first flight together, after Stefan had crawled over him a half-dozen times to pace the aisle.
Further that, Stefan didn’t pretend to misunderstand what Max was saying. They’d known each other far too long to play those kinds of games.
And last year’s horrible season had created bonds too deep to sever.
“Bad,” he agreed. “Really fucking bad. I’ve never felt like this before.”
Max sighed, leaned back in his seat, and took out his ear buds. “It’s a really bad time . . .” He hesitated then said, “ . . .for both of you.”
“I know.”
“Might be better if you let her go.”
Fury made his fists tighten. He banged one on his thigh. “It’s not that easy.”
“Why?”
Only three letters, but enough to give Stefan pause.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve tried to ignore this thing—whatever it is—between us, but I can’t. She’s in every thought, every fucking heartbeat.”
He bit off the rest of the words before they came. Part of it was because he wanted to save them for Brit. The other part was that if he said it—gave voice to the feelings that threatened to unnerve him—he would be even more vulnerable.
“So then what? You continue with this relationship? What has management said?” Max fixed him with a look. “You know, after Gordaine and Rhonda,” he said, referring to the rape scandal and resulting investigation that had ended up with the Gold’s former captain being banned from the NHL altogether, “management enacted strict rules against fraternizing with staff.”
“Brit’s not staff.”
“She’s close enough, and sooner or later someone is going to mention something. Hell, I’m surprised the media hasn’t pounced on it already.”
That was true enough. The media hadn’t zoned in on the similarities between him and Brit and Gordaine and Rhonda, and for the first time he wondered why that was.
“My name’s cleaner than Gordaine’s ever was.”
“It’s not pristine, though.”
“No one’s ever accused me of rape.”
“No one’s ever accused you of getting close enough to try.”
“It hasn’t been that long. My playboy past is still out there.”
Max rolled his eyes. “Playboy? Dude. You’ve hardly even gone out. In the last two seasons we’ve played together, I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been out past midnight, and two of those times have been with Brit in the last month.”
“You and I go out,” he said, trying not to focus on the fact that he sounded like a defensive teenager. “We’ve gone out.”
His friend snorted. “Yeah. For one beer, and then you’re safely abed by eleven.”
“It’s not that simple.” Part of it had been his fatigue with the party scene.
The rest of it . . . he sighed. It was hard to be in a partying mood when someone he cared about was sick. And his mom hadn’t been well for a long time—two bouts with cancer in four years would do that to someone.
To that end, it was just as easy to settle the ragged edges with a beer or two at his own house.
No media. No women. Just quiet solitude and distance to keep his emotions safely boxed away.
Until Brit had broken the seal, and all sorts of feels had inundated him.
Feels?
Yup. He was losing it, and most of him didn’t even give a damn.
“Yeah,” Max said. “That’s what I figured.”
His friend was quiet for a moment, as though waiting for Stefan to spill his guts. But the thing was, Stefan just didn’t have it in him.
After a minute, Max sighed. “Okay then.”
Stefan nodded. “Okay.”
“What are you going to do about Brit?”
“I’m going to win the girl.” He shot Max a solemn look. “Just carefully. Very, very carefully.”
Max grinned. “That’s my boy. Smart wins over—”
“Stupid every day of the week,” Stefan finished.
They bumped fists. “Hope it works out for you, buddy.”
Brit laughed again, and they both looked forward.
“Me too. Me too.”
CHAPTER FORTY
They played in Vancouver the next night and the game went horribly.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault in particular, just that everyone seemed flat, and nothing was clicking on the ice. In a rare show of temper, Bernard chewed their asses in the locker room between the second and third periods—a misguided but fairly common attempt at motivating professional players to do better.
Stefan never understood that.
Yelling didn’t make him play better. It made him worse. Suddenly his hands were a little shaky, and he was jumpy with the puck.
Calm and relaxed was when he played the best.
Some guys played well angry. That just wasn’t him, for any sustained length anyway, and it wasn’t most of the guys on the team.
Thankfully, Bernard didn’t lose his shit too often. Further that, it was hard to argue his sentiments of lazy play and uninspired offense.
Especially after they let in a fourth goal all of twenty-three seconds into the third—making Stefan a minus three for the night.
Two seconds later, Bernard pulled Julian, and Brit took over. It wasn’t even that Julian was playing poorly. The move was typical for NHL teams, a way to stall their opponent’s momentum and shake their own team into action.
The swap worked.
Not only did Brit play magnificently, practically standing on her head as she was peppered with shots from her first seconds in the game, but her presence actually changed the tenor of the game.
So much so that the Gold finally started playing.
Unfor
tunately, not soon enough.
The forwards managed to sneak three goals in on the Canucks’ goalie but couldn’t quite snag the tie.
The locker room was silent after they’d filed in to get undressed. Nineteen men and one woman, sitting on wooden benches as they peeled off their sweaty gear.
Bernard hadn’t let the media in yet, and he wasn’t in the room proper.
Stefan knew it was a sign for him to step up, to say something.
Trouble was, he didn’t know what.
Brit did, though, and her simple words a few minutes into the silence made him fall for her even more.
“We can do better.”
That was it. One sentence that was both truth and motivation.
It was also enough to loosen Stefan’s tongue.
He tossed his jersey into the dirty pile in the center of the room. “No more,” he said. “No more flat performances. Brit played her ass off—”
“Julian too,” Brit interrupted, with a serious expression. “Jules gave it everything he had.”
At her words, most of the guys glanced up, and many nodded in agreement. They knew the game was on them, knew they had to do better.
“Yes, Jules played well too,” Stefan said, making sure he met Julian’s eyes, that the goaltender understood he meant the words. “But we can’t rely on our goalies to save us. We need to do more.”
“Barie’s right,” Blane chimed in. “I know we’re better than this.”
“Agreed,” said Max.
A lot of the guys gave their support, some with words, some without. But everyone was positive.
Except Stewart.
“Everyone has an off night,” he said.
Excuses. The man was full-to-the-brim of lame-ass excuses.
“We’re professional athletes,” Stefan told him. “We don’t have the luxury of an off night. We get our shit together, or we won’t be around for another season.”
Stefan let the room absorb that for a moment. Those that were on the team last year understood how precarious their position was. Half of the team had been cut, most of them—the son of a bitch Gordaine, notwithstanding—without real reason.
It was easy to blame losses on poor coaching, on a lack of support from management, or a young roster.
That wasn’t this year.
Management had given them every perk imaginable. They had a good coach who rarely—mid-game verbal assault aside—made mistakes. Their team was beyond talented.
They had plenty of ice time, a decent schedule, state-of-the-art training equipment.
So this sad attempt at hockey wasn’t on the higher ups, wasn’t on Bernard.
Nope.
It was all on them.
“Stefan’s right,” Brit eventually said, breaking the terse silence. “There are so many waiting in the wings, ready to pounce on every opportunity. I know. Blue knows.”
She nodded at the rookie, who softly replied, “Yeah.”
“If they want it more, we’re already screwed.” The emotion in her tone was fierce, then her lips quirked, and it was pushed aside by the amusement dancing across her blue eyes. “Now this may be my second X chromosome talking, but I’m happy to be here with you guys. I believe we have the talent to do well this season. I believe in us.” A beat of quiet. “So do you think you all can get your shit together?”
The guys laughed and continued undressing.
“That your idea of a motivational speech?” Henry, one of the fourth-line wingers called.
“What, Henry? You want me to get my pom-poms out?” Brit called back, before blowing on her fingernails and rubbing them on the strap of her plain black sports bra, in a job-well-done sort of way. Her chest protector and jersey had already been discarded, and she knelt to begin taking off her pads. “I just call ‘em as I see ‘em.”
Henry wolf-whistled in response, and Brit laughed, that wonderful, full-bodied mirth that lightened a room of testosterone-laden jocks.
“You can put it in your spank bank,” she said, “but I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Burn, Plantain,” one of the guys called.
The team laughed and began exchanging a series of increasingly bad jokes and innuendos . . . which grew even louder when Henry blushed.
They ribbed the forward then each other until Bernard came in and announced, “Players meeting, eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Plane leaves at ten, and afternoon practice right after we land.”
Normally this would have made the team groan—an extra meeting and practice on a game day, interspersed with the team’s scheduled flight to Chicago.
But not one person, not even Stewart—who appeared unusually subdued—made a face.
In that moment, Stefan felt like he finally understood his role as captain.
It wasn’t that he needed to be the best on the ice or come up with the most original motivational speech, a la Herb Brooks in Miracle on Ice.
He just needed to support those who were the best at the moment, who could capture the essence of the room with a well-timed insight.
Sometimes, he thought it might be the best player both on and off the ice, as Brit had been today with her impressive goaltending and no-fluff words.
Sometimes, it might be those that could loosen a room full of stressed-out players, like Henry had done.
Sometimes, it would have to be him.
But that was okay.
Just knowing he could sometimes share the burden made the task that much less daunting.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Brit
Stefan’s eyes met hers. “Thank you,” he said and took off for the showers.
Brit shook her head.
Sometimes the man really didn’t get it. A thank you wasn’t necessary.
In fact, when someone thanked her for doing something she should be doing anyway, Brit almost felt less responsible for her actions.
Especially when she got gratitude for something that really should be expected. Some things were optional, and those deserved a thanks. Some—like pushing her teammates and herself to do their honest best—did not.
Maybe it was totally screwed up, but that was the way her mind worked.
If the expectation was there that the team would support each other, would encourage, would deliver a much-needed kick to the ass when necessary, then the road to the playoffs was already half-paved.
“His heart is in the right place,” a masculine voice to her right said.
She glanced over at Julian, something inside her settling at the even tone.
There was always a moment of awkward when she relieved a starting goalie. Yes, of course, she wanted to eventually be in Jules’ position, but having to actually see him when she’d basically taken the position—even for a limited time—from him was uncomfortable.
He sighed when she looked back down at her pads and continued undoing the straps. “You’re not going to make this weird, are you?”
She wanted to say “Who me?” but she’d already made things strange enough with her awkward staring. Instead, she shrugged.
“Hey,” he said and waited until she looked up. Another sigh. “Yup. You’re going to make things weird.”
“I’m—” Brit blew out a breath. “Fine. Okay. I am making it weird. It’s just . . . I’ve always been a backup, and now to have this chance to maybe work my way into starting. And with an NHL team . . .”
Jules was quiet for a moment, his hair only slightly damp from the early crack he’d got at the showers, but when he spoke, the words surprised her. “I was a backup too.”
“You were?”
“Yup. Never thought I’d be more.” He shrugged. “Then the starting goalie got injured two weeks after the trade deadline, and it was on me.”
She set her pads to one side then turned to face him fully. “What happened?”
“That year we won the whole damn thing.”
The mix of pride and revere
nce in his voice made her ache. She wanted that, so badly. Wanted her name immortalized on that silver cup.
“What did it feel like?”
“Everything and nothing.” That made her jaw drop open, and he grinned. “Don’t look so shocked. It’s like any big event. Tons of buildup, so much pressure and working, working, working. Then you’ve done it, and . . . it’s just over.” Jules gestured at her equipment, stacked next to the bench. “You get undressed. You celebrate. You move onto the next season. Only it seems even further from reach, because you’ve already tasted it and know how hard it is to grasp.”
Brit was still digesting that long after Julian had gone, and when Mandy came over to pull her into the modified therapy room, she was more than ready for a distraction.
“Shoulder?” Mandy asked, all but shoving her onto the padded table.
“It’s fine.”
Mandy glared. “You said it was fine when the damn thing was swollen and you had reduced range of motion.” She narrowed her eyes. “Tell me the truth.”
“It’s a little sore. But in a tired way, not injured way.”
“You’ll tell me if that changes.” Her gaze bored into Brit, fierce and intense as hell.
Brit raised her hands in surrender. “Promise.”
In a blink, the sternness in Mandy’s expression faded away, and the other woman smiled brightly. “Good.” A nod toward Brit’s raised arms. “And good range of motion. Keep up those exercises.”
She nudged Brit to lie face down on the table and began massaging the tight muscles in her shoulders. “So tell me about Stefan,” she said. “He is, without a doubt, the hottest guy on the team. That chest . . . those arms . . .” Mandy sighed. “Damn, girl. I’m jealous. Half the time, I want to pull him in for treatment he doesn’t need, just so I can touch him.”
A wave of cold fear had swept over Brit at Mandy’s initial words—the fear of discovery, fear of someone finding out the truth about her and Stefan—but all that quickly, the fear was replaced with jealousy, surging hot and unhindered.