by Teagan Kade
Table of Contents
Title Page
COPYRIGHT
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Also by Teagan Kade:
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
Note From Harper:
Cold As Ice
Winter Miracle
Blaze
Teagan Kade
* * * * *
Published by Teagan Kade
Edited by Sennah Tate
Copyright © 2018 by Teagan Kade
COPYRIGHT
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Also by Teagan Kade:
FERAL
WINTER MIRACLE
ADAGIO
BRUTE
BLAZE
HUSTLE
LAWLESS
LONG GAME
DIRTY DEBT
LOADED
AMPED
DRILLED
DIRTY BRAWLER
WRECKED
SLAMMED
STROKER
STRIKER
THROTTLE
ROYALLY WRONG
HITCHED
CHASING STORM
DEDICATION
To Belle, for finally kicking my ass into gear and getting Colton’s story out.
CHAPTER ONE
HARPER
“Cold?” laughs James, his eyes rolling around like he has a pinball machine for a head. “You’re a fucking refrigerator. My balls are shriveling up into raisins here.”
Proportionally correct, if you ask me.
I lean against the back of the sofa with my arms crossed and hands clenched. My boyfriend thinks I’m frigid. I think he’s being an asshole.
He’s speaking, raving on about how he has ‘needs,’ something about wandering around in a desert without water. He’s talking up his friends’ girlfriends, all of who apparently act like Playboy bunnies behind closed doors complete with mouths like Hoovers and lingerie drawers made up entirely of dental floss. ‘Why are you even discussing your sex life with your friends?’ I want to ask, but I remain silent… as always.
This has been coming for a while. It’s no big loss. Whatever we had once, that spark, is all but ash. I’m hunting around in blackened muck for an ember, but all I’m getting are the remnants of something long since extinguished.
He has his hands on his heads now. “Are you going to sit there like a statue or actually contribute to this conversation?”
I want to contribute something alright—my foot, up his ass. I go with, “It’s over,” instead, adding, “I think we’re adult enough to admit that.”
“Good, fine.” He nods, looking around for his car keys. “Guess now I can go out and find a girl who’s actually going to put out more than once a month.”
Ouch. Once upon a time I’d be looking for the burn ointment after lines like that, but these days I’m too tired to care. “They’re behind the fruit bowl.”
At least this is my apartment. I don’t think I could handle the whole ‘wandering around packing his things’ situation. I can barely look at him anymore. When I do, all I see is an immature, childish, pin-dick of a human being who’s become nothing but toxic. Sorry, Britney, but a poison paradise this man is not. He’s not even a cheap Hawaiian cruise with fishbowl cocktails and diarrhea served daily. He’s bottom of the freakin’ barrel, which is saying a lot given the playing field here in Branton.
The worst part? He’s never even gotten me off, not once. Twenty-six years old and here I am running through every trick in the book trying to please him (Read: dog-eared Cosmos I inherited from my mother), and do I get anything in return? No. Not. A. Single. Orgasm. Not even the tiniest of deaths. I’m starting to think I’m not even capable of one, doomed to live out life as a forever grumpy spinster. Even finger painting in my own ménage a moi, I can’t get it happening.
James pulls the front door open and stands there like a lost little boy. For a moment I actually think he might apologize, but alas, it’s not to be. “I pity the next guy’s prick who falls for you, Harper. I really do.” He pauses again. “Oh, and you better not tell anyone about this relationship.”
“Because you’re tenured and I’m not, right?”
He points his finger at me. “Bingo,” he says, before slamming the door closed, the framed family picture beside dancing on the wall.
“Sorry, Mom, Dad,” I tell it.
I breathe out, concentrate on the sensation of air leaving my lungs. Contrary to the cliché, no great weight is lifted from my shoulders now I’m single. If anything, it’s dragging me down even further into the abyss, AKA DTBSFS—Doomed To Be Single Forever Syndrome.
But if I’m honest, this breakup is no big deal. He’s a colleague, a professor—women’s studies for irony, like he’d have a cold clue in hell of what a woman wants, feels, or needs.
Strangely, there’s a part of me that wants to run after him because maybe, just maybe, he’s as good as I’m ever going to get. I don’t know if I deserve any better. I don’t know if there is better, that the perfect man isn’t a construct of mainstream media, crappy romance novels and boy-band rejects.
Can you even hear yourself? my head interjects.
“Loud and clear,” I reply, speaking to the closed door and quite aware my last lifeline to sanity is being severed.
I retrieve my medicine from the fridge—five squares of Pacari seventy-percent chocolate—and slump onto the sofa with my laptop.
There’s the usual flutter of nervousness as I open up my inbox.
Come on. Come on. Come on.
I’ve got several applications out for better teaching positions, but I doubt anyone’s going to save me from all this, from the gosh-darn mundane drabness that is my life. If I were a book, no one would get past the first page.
I whisper to my empty inbox, flirting with it, my fondness for speaking to inanimate objects starting to concern me just a touch. “And what do you think? What do I need?”
“You. Need. A. Proper. Man.” I reply like the Lost in Space robot, my arms flapping wildly.
Do I? I hardly think a rebound man (boy?) with a big dick and big
ger ego is going to give me more than five minutes of fun, and probably no better than James given the way he hammered away at me like I was a block of ice. A two-pump chump with personalized condoms and CK undies won’t do it.
That’s if you could find a man in the first place…
Damn, you are depressing, Head.
I snap the laptop closed and toss it aside. Enough of this gloom.
I take out my cell and dial Mindy, my high-school bud, my emergency contact and forever bubbly bestie, not to mention my flat mate. If she can’t dredge me out of Misery Creek, no one can. But it’s going to take more chocolate—a lot more.
She answers on the first ring. “Mindy’s mule barn. Head ass speaking.”
I’m smiling already. “Hey, I’d kill for an ass like yours.”
“Oh? Because all my ass does is mope around the backyard twenty-four seven with a giant hard-on.”
I laugh. “You talkin’ about your ass or the gym junkie in number twenty-four?”
“Mmm,” she purrs, “why do the best bodies always come with the smallest brains?”
“More room for muscle, clearly,” I suggest.
“Honey, if Mr. Twenty-Four had any more muscle, he’d be a sasquatch… or Dwayne Johnson.”
“I really don’t want to hear about your weird bigfoot fetish.”
“Hey!” she stammers, outraged. “Don’t talk about my ex like that.”
“He did have big feet.”
“And that was where the ‘big’ ended, I’m afraid.”
We laugh together. I’ve been on the line with Mindy for less than thirty seconds and already the shackles are starting to slip off.
I breathe in. “I broke up with James. Or, he broke up with me. I’m not sure, but end result’s the same—he’s out.”
“About fucking time,” Mindy replies. “I was starting to think you were leaving your brain at campus staying the way you stuck with that fossil.”
“You didn’t think to tell me your opinion of him while we were dating?”
“I know you, Harpie, but answer me this: Would you really have listened?”
She’s got a point. You can give me all the advice in the world, but acting on it? That’s a different beast entirely.
“You’re probably right.”
“Sooo,” says Mindy, drawing out the ‘o’, “who’s next?”
“What do you mean?” Because I literally have no idea.
“I mean who’s your next catch, fuck, bum-buddy, partner in slime, whatever. Who are you hitting on now?”
“I’m not hitting on anyone or anything, thank you very much. I was actually considering joining a nunnery.”
She really laughs at that, basically hyperventilating down the line. “I’d be taking a vow of celibacy too after, what was his name?”
James and I have been dating for a year, but Mindy’s never been great with names, or faces. In what is surely the crime of the century, she mistook Gerard Butler for Clive Owen last week. “James,” I reply, face-palming, “Junior.”
“Ah, yes, the ol’ ‘ name-your-son-after-yourself’ routine. I think that’s half the problem right there.”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I could use a drink, and I’m not talking about a Shirley Temple.”
I can practically see her nodding her approval. “Leave it me, honey. Leave it to Ms. Mindy.”
CHAPTER TWO
COLTON
I’m blowing into my hands. I’m surprised they’re not frozen solid.
I’ve forgotten how cold it is up here in Canada, otherwise known as the ass end of the world. I’m a hot-blooded guy. Give me Spring Break and Bloody Marys on the beach—not a freeze-your-sack-off wasteland where everyone finishes sentences with ‘eh.’ It’s like Deliverance in the fucking Antarctic.
My anger is momentarily directed at my father, for destroying the good Beckett name, for being such an A-grade asshole not a single college in the States would touch me. And thus Branton, Canada, the complete opposite of Abbotsleigh in every way, right down to the shitty décor and 1990s fashion sense. The entire town’s stuck in a time warp. It’s just a jump to the left… right into a frozen lake.
But this is my only shot, my sole chance at redemption. My brother Cayden managed to tee up an ice hockey try-out with a local scout who thinks he can get me into the local shitshow of a college.
Cayden—Mr. Perfect, Giants quarterback. At least he is doing something to restore the Becketts to their former glory.
It could have you been you too if you didn’t piss away your future at Abbotsleigh, I think, which is entirely true, of course. I’m twenty-two and still trying to get my life together. But what does it really matter? Everything I touch turns to shit eventually. I’ve got fucking Hulk hands.
I’m standing outside the Branton Ice Hockey ‘Palace’ waiting, jumping from foot to foot to fight off the cold that’s no doubt sweeping in from the admittedly rather scenic mountain range that rings the town.
A group of ice hockey players passes me and heads inside, the last of them pausing and nodding in my direction.
I nod back.
He’s probably fucking his sister, I muse.
“Colton Beckett?”
I turn to face a burly looking guy wearing little more than a Maple Leafs shirt. “Yes.”
He shakes my hand vigorously. If he’s cold, he’s not showing it. He looks down, noticing how my eyes are drawn to the T-shirt. “They breed us tough up here, son. Your brother tells me you’ve got quite the talent on the ice.”
Good ol’ big brother’s really been laying it on thick. In truth, I haven’t placed ice hockey in years, too busy balls deep in lacrosse and ladies. I used to, though, back in NYC with my brothers. We’d hit the rink every Monday night. Besides, I figure there’s enough crossover between the two sports to make it work. I’ve still got the speed, the stamina… These Canadian pussies won’t know what hit them when I take to the ice.
“I do,” I nod, oozing that famous Beckett confidence that strips away inhibition, underwear, self-restraint…
“Call me Noah,” says the scout, clapping me on the shoulder with a hand so cold this guy may as well be a white walker. “Let’s head in and get you suited up.”
The nineties rerun continues inside the ‘palace,’ though the smell of wet ice and even wetter carpet does bring back a gut-heaving wave of nostalgia.
Most of the players I saw walking in are already kitted up and on the ice, the slap, slap of sticks colliding echoing off the domed ceiling.
Noah wolf-whistles to the sister fucker I saw earlier. He’s coming out of the locker rooms, changing his trajectory to meet us. Soon Noah has a hand on each of our shoulders.
“Colton, meet the star of the Branton Bears—Ricky Lake. Ricky, meet Colton Beckett.”
“Ricky Lake, like the old talk show host?” I query.
The expression that comes over Sister Fucker’s face tells me it’s the wrong question. He smiles, every inch of it seething. “Something like that.”
Noah looks to me. “Ricky will get you geared up. Scoot out there in five and we’ll have ourselves a bit of a game, see where you’re at.”
“Okay,” I nod.
Noah slaps me on the back. “Good. Great. Fantastic.”
At least they’re not short on adjectives… I could think of a few to describe the surroundings.
Ricky leads me to the locker rooms, opening a locker and gesturing inside. “Wayne’s out all season. You can use his stuff, though I’d leave his gotch alone there. Spare sticks are in the corner.”
“Thanks,” I offer, no idea what ‘gotch’ means and too afraid to ask.
He goes to walk away before stopping and shifting close to my ear. “Oh, and don’t get too comfortable.”
Here we go. “Why’s that?”
“Because American assholes who think running around a field with a cock cup is a sport don’t last long around here.”
“I don’t think you know much about lacross
e, or Americans for that matter.”
He laughs, slathering on that same shitshow grin so popular around these parts. “You’re about to learn some Canadians aren’t that polite.” He shoulder checks me. “See you on the ice, Beckett.”
“Is this ice hockey or fucking Mighty Ducks?” I shout after him.
I’m smiling simply because I’m surprised my celebrity’s spread all the way out here to Nowheresville, Canada. But fuck him. Fuck them all. I might have taken it easy, but if he wants to throw down a challenge I’ll happily serve up my big fat American balls for him to feast on.
It’s good to feel the blood rushing in my veins again as I suit up, selecting a stick from the pile, testing its weight.
I head out, a quick prayer to the Powers That Be to deliver me this one, premier ass-kicking.
The future my privilege promised me might have been robbed, yes, but I’m not about to let these winter hillbillies have the last laugh.
I spot Noah behind the glass, arms crossed and expression scout serious.
Another man in a puffer jacket skates over wearing a trucker cap. The fact that he looks like he’s weathered every World War tells me he’s the coach. He skates to a stop just as I’m about to come onto the ice. “You the American?”
“I am.”
He hands me a red armband, pointing down to the far end of the rink. “Get your ass down to the red team.”
Fucking ice. It’s slipperier than I remember, but I manage to correct myself and skate down to the end of the rink where a group of seven or so guys are waiting, all with red armbands like this is some kind of gang throw down. Not a single one introduces themselves, and that’s A-Okay by me.
I look down to the other end, pleased to see Rick ‘The Dick’ Lake is warming up with the blue team.
I slap my stick against the ice, everything starting to come back to me.
It’s like lacrosse, just with ice, I tell myself. Slippery fucking ice.
I take in the competition. For Canadians, these guys are seriously built. Must be all that poutine, pie and lack of pussy.
The whistle blows. It’s on.
Immediately, I’m slammed forward from behind. There’s enough power in it to drive me to the ice, but I correct and skate forward.