Game Breaker (Portland Storm Book 14)

by Catherine Gayle

“More jock than nerd.”

  “Maybe. Depends on who you ask. Koz is always telling me I spend too much time with my books and not enough time with the guys.”

  “Do you care that much what he thinks? I doubt Jezek would say the same.”

  “RJ knows why I’m doing it. He gets it. He knows my parents.”

  “Then I’d say that his opinion matters more, wouldn’t you?”

  “Hmm…” he said, but it sounded more like he agreed than wanted to argue.

  “What about me? Do I make you nervous?”

  “More excited than nervous. It’s like I’m always trying to figure out ways to be with you. To get you alone.” He squeezed my hand gently.

  “That hasn’t been easy lately.”

  “Not at all. Something tells me it won’t be easy for a while. But I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge, and I don’t get the impression you are, either.”

  The corners of my lips curled upward. “My father would certainly agree with that. Speaking of him, he wants you to come to his house for dinner some night. I pushed him off until next week, but…”

  “But he won’t be put off forever,” Nate finished for me.

  “He’ll like you,” I felt compelled to tell him. “He won’t give you a hard time. He’s never been like David Weber, trying to run guys away from me.”

  Nate turned and raised a brow. “Who’s Webs running off this time?”

  I’d said something I shouldn’t have. If I wasn’t careful, I’d give Cody Williams and his plan away before he’d ever had a chance to execute it. It wouldn’t matter if things turned out the way he hoped or not if I couldn’t manage to keep my mouth shut. “Never mind that,” I said, shaking my head. Then I remembered what Weber had said to Luke during that phone call. I made a mental note to be sure that part was included in the cut we aired. I figured I could use that to explain what I’d meant if Nate ever brought it up again.

  Not that I thought he would, but it was hard to be certain. I hadn’t exactly done a great job of explaining myself.

  We reached his car, and he spun me around until my back was against the passenger door. My eyes went wide, flashing across to meet his. They’d gone dark and hungry, much like they’d been last night when he’d started to kiss me…before the debacle that had followed.

  “I’m going to do this right this time,” he said, just before he inched his face closer to me.

  Nate’s lips were soft and full as they matched up with mine. He braced his hands on either side of me, not quite pressing his body weight against me but still leaning enough that I felt every inch of him. I raised my arms, unsure what to do with them. Finally, I settled my hands on his biceps, which flexed beneath my touch.

  He was all muscle, and still warm from so much exertion in the game even though he’d showered and changed into a suit. There wasn’t an ounce of tension in him, but as for me? I was taut from head to toe, wound up tight and ready to spring into him as soon as he released my trigger. He shifted his head, his nose brushing lightly against mine as he changed the angle, and the breath I’d been holding slipped free. It fluttered out as a sigh, and I closed my eyes to lose myself in him. His lips parted, and he glided his tongue along the seam between mine until I opened for him. My hands dug into his biceps, fisting of their own volition. I tried to inch closer to him when he took my lower lip between both of his and suckled, his breath mingling with mine. It was tender and sexy as all get out, and I couldn’t get enough.

  Then, almost as soon as I began to stop overthinking things and simply enjoy the moment, he pulled away with a cocky grin that melted my insides like a Bunsen burner had been placed in my gut and turned up to high. “That was much better.”

  That was putting it mildly. This kiss was so much better that my knees were weak.

  Nate backed up and nudged me away from the door so he could open it, but I wobbled to such a degree that he put an arm around my waist to steady me. “Your ankle?” he asked, his voice filled with concern.

  I shook my head. “Just a little light-headed.”

  “Are you getting sick? Should I take you home and make you some soup? You’re working yourself into an early grave.”

  Lovesick? Maybe. But there was no way around it… I had to stroke his ego and give him the truth. “I’m fine. It’s just because of how good that kiss was.”

  He chuckled and guided me into the passenger seat. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  I was counting on it.

  WHEN HARRY WALKED into the locker room late in the morning after our Game Two loss to the Blackhawks—a loss that came in overtime during one of the craziest thunderstorms I’d ever experienced, no less—Burnzie wanted answers. It didn’t matter that we were all busy getting ready to leave for Chicago, either. He wanted them now.

  “Why the fuck haven’t you brought Jasinda around at all?” he demanded, tossing a towel in Harry’s direction to get his attention.

  Jasinda? I didn’t have a clue who that was or what was going on. No doubt it had something to do with the latest episode of Eye of the Storm. It had been scheduled to go live on the Internet shortly before the game last night, but I hadn’t found time to watch it yet. I’d had better things to do—like taking Anne out for a late-night dinner at a twenty-four-hour diner again, even though the storm had still been raging, plus longer and longer study sessions with finals just around the corner.

  “Didn’t feel like letting all you fucking buffoons give her a hard time,” Harry responded. He tossed the towel back at Burnzie and kept heading for his stall.

  “You’re with a girl long enough that you’re comfortable letting the whole world know she’s your girlfriend on that show, but you’re not comfortable bringing her around your teammates?” Burnzie actually sounded pissed off, which wasn’t something that happened often. He typically let things roll off his back. Not this time, though. “What the fuck do you think that says about how you feel about us? You should bring her to the games. Introduce her to the other WAGs.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be part of all this,” Harry replied sheepishly.

  “You have a girlfriend?” I asked, but no one was paying any attention to me.

  “If she’s going to be part of your life, she’s going to be part of all this,” Hammer pointed out, always a voice of reason and experience. “Whether she wants to be or not. And whether you want her to be or not. That’s just how it works. Might as well get her used to it now.”

  Mitch “Q” Quincey walked through the middle of the room before taking a seat on the bench to tape up a stick. “If it’s too much for her to take in at once, maybe introduce her to one or two of them, just so she’s got someone to lean on. Not trying to fit in on her own. Mia could help with that. She wouldn’t mind.”

  “It’s not—” Harry let out a sound of pure frustration.

  “Hell, you could hook her up with Ghost’s girl,” Hammer suggested. “They could stick together.”

  “My girl? Anne already knows everyone,” I spluttered. And besides, was she my girlfriend? I mean, yeah, I wanted her to be, but we hadn’t exactly put it in so many words as of yet. “She’s hanging out—”

  “She’s working,” Q said, raising a brow. “She’s doing a job. That’s not the same as hanging out, even if she knows who the WAGs are. It’s not like they’re getting a chance to know her. And she’s not taking part in all the fundraisers they do.”

  “Katie would love some more help with the fundraisers,” Babs put in.

  “At least I’m not trying to hide her,” I pointed out, hoping to shift the focus back onto Harry instead of me. I’d had more than my fair share lately. Time to dump some of it on someone else.

  They went back to ragging on Harry again, so it seemed to do the trick.

  RJ came in, looking like death warmed over. His stall was immediately next to mine. He plopped down on the bench, more so than taking a seat, and raked a hand through his hair.

  “Rough nig
ht?” I asked, keeping my voice down so it could be just between the two of us.

  “Lola is apparently terrified of thunder.”

  “Apparently? You didn’t already know this?”

  “We haven’t had many thunderstorms since I’ve had the dogs, have we?”

  Come to think of it, he was right.

  “Anyway, when she gets scared, it gets Max riled up. You ever try sleeping with three hundred seventy pounds of so-scared-they’re-shaking dog trying to crawl in your lap?”

  “You should have shoved one of them off onto Amanda, at least.”

  “She wasn’t even home to help me with them last night. Went out for one of her girlfriends’ birthdays. She was too drunk to drive home, so she spent the night there. It was just me and the dogs.”

  No wonder he looked like shit. Didn’t mean I needed to take it easy on him, though. “Yeah, she says she was too drunk to come home. She’s probably secretly bisexual, and she wanted a hot night with a chick.”

  “She would’ve invited me along if that’s what she was doing.”

  “You sure about that?” Because I sure as hell wasn’t. In fact, I probably should’ve picked something else to poke at him with. It was too late to take the words back, though.

  “Sure enough.” He grabbed a roll of tape and started working on one of his sticks. “You look at Twitter lately?” he asked, sounding far too casual. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  “You know I haven’t. Why? Who’s posting shit about me now?”

  “Not you,” he said darkly.

  “Anne?” I didn’t need to hear his answer to know it had to be. “What kind of things?”

  Before he could answer, she walked into the locker room along with a couple of her cameramen and started pointing out where she wanted them to go, effectively putting an end to the conversation. We weren’t going to talk about that shit if it might be caught on film, that was for sure.

  She caught my eye and smiled. I winked to let her know I’d seen her, and then she went back to ordering her guys around like a sexy-as-hell drill sergeant.

  Most of the guys headed out to the ice for a short practice, but I went to the trainers’ room along with Soupy, Hammer, and a couple of the other guys to get treatment on our various ailments. While I iced my knee and let Archie work on it, I took out my phone and decided to set up an account on Twitter, after all. It wasn’t my idea of a good time, but it seemed necessary if I wanted to know what was going on.

  Once I’d set up my profile, I found RJ and a few of the other guys so I could scroll through the people they followed. That seemed as good a way as any to find Anne.

  Sure enough, I stumbled onto her profile in no time. Nothing bad was there. In fact, she hadn’t posted to her profile in almost a month. I seemed to recall that she’d sworn off social media recently, so this made sense to me.

  It took me a couple of minutes to figure out how to search for what people had been posting about her, but that was when I understood RJ’s concerns.

  No wonder @AnnePDennison got the @EyeoftheStormShow job. She’s fucking everyone she can to get it and keep it. #slut #whenisitmyturn

  A picture of the two of us about to kiss on the dinner cruise the other night was included with the tweet. And that was just one of what had to be dozens of similar messages posted within the last few days. Some had pictures of us together, like the one that had been posted on (and subsequently deleted from) RJ’s account. Others had links to gossip sites that went on and on about her supposedly selling herself to everyone from me to her boss to Jim Sutter, and even Mr. Engels, the team owner.

  It made me sick to my stomach.

  I wanted to punch something.

  More than anything, I wished I’d listened to my gut and backed off once I realized all the possible implications a relationship between the two of us would have on her career. Getting involved with Anne wasn’t problematic for me—but there seemed to be no end to the type and number of problems she was facing because of it.

  There wasn’t any way to convince myself otherwise anymore: if I didn’t put an end to this, I would be one selfish son of a bitch.

  Anne deserved better than that.

  NATE HAD WINKED as he’d walked past me in the aisle, heading toward the back of the plane with Jezek instead of taking the open seat next to me.

  While more than simply disappointed, I hadn’t thought too much of it at the time. He was still part of this team, after all, and he had responsibilities to fulfill and friends to spend time with. Those things hadn’t changed just because we’d gone out on a few dates. Besides, we’d never officially said anything about being a couple. There wasn’t any reason he should drop everything in order to hang out with me, especially if we would just end up spending the flight like we so often did—me working and him studying.

  It still stung, though. I couldn’t deny that.

  It stung even worse now that we’d arrived in Chicago for Game Three. In fact, it now felt as if he was actively avoiding me.

  Once we got to the hotel, he’d disappeared with Jezek and a few of the other guys while I was still giving instructions to my crew about when and where I needed them next. After I got settled in my room, I had texted him to see if he wanted to grab dinner somewhere. No response. I ended up poring through the footage Bill had sent over while we’d been in the air over room service, since the guys on my crew had all broken up and tagged along with various groups of players and team executives, as I’d instructed them to do, filming everything they could.

  I briefly checked in on Facebook, but wished I hadn’t. There was something going on between a group of black teenagers and the police in some suburb of Chicago. I set aside my work and turned on the news to learn as much as I could. I’d been watching for a few hours when my phone buzzed on the desk.

  Nate. Calling me. The clock read 9:48, so it had sure taken him long enough.

  I dropped everything and answered. “Hey. I was starting to get the feeling you’d been avoiding me.”

  “You were, were you?” he asked, sounding distant. And he didn’t immediately try to put my mind at ease by telling me it had all been in my head or explaining why he hadn’t bothered to at least respond to my earlier message.

  This couldn’t be good.

  “Yeah…” I said, drawing the word out as I racked my brain to figure out what to do and how to respond. Because, while I may be inexperienced when it came to being with seriously hot guys who seemed way too good to be true, this sure felt a lot like he was dumping me.

  Could he dump me if we weren’t officially a couple? I mean, we’d only kissed a few times and gone out on a couple of dates. There wasn’t anything more official than that.

  “I just…” He let out a ragged sigh, which more than confirmed my fears.

  My gut started churning. I shouldn’t have ordered pizza for my dinner. Really bad choice, in more ways than I could count. And I should have stopped eating it a long time ago instead of continuing to graze on it long after the point it should have been tossed in the garbage. Now I was going to have to pay the price for my poor decision-making.

  “Where are you?” Nate asked after a protracted silence.

  “In my room.”

  “Can I come up and talk to you?”

  If he intended to dump me, I’d rather have him do it over the phone. Because I didn’t want him to see me fall apart. I wasn’t a pretty crier. I didn’t cry often, but when I did, it was all ugly crying. Worse yet, I could already feel the beginnings of it starting. If we could get it over with right now, then I could cry my eyes out all alone, and I could curse him and throw things and bury my emotions in the cheesecake that I’d popped into the mini-fridge for later. And then by the time I saw him tomorrow, I could pull myself together again and act like he hadn’t completely crushed me.

  Because that’s exactly what it would be. An act. A show. It would be me putting on a front for all the world to see so he wouldn’t know how deeply he’d hurt me.
>
  Which meant I already cared about him more than I’d realized before now. I might have fallen for him just a bit. Stupid move, really, but it was too late to stop it from happening.

  “Anne?” he said, because I hadn’t responded to him yet. I’d been too busy dumping myself in my head.

  I swallowed hard, hoping that would be enough to keep my voice from cracking when I spoke. “Can it wait?” I finally asked. Wait? Why, other than the fact that I was a glutton for punishment? Waiting would be the worst idea ever, because then I’d only obsess over it all night long. I wouldn’t get a lick of work done, and there wasn’t a chance I’d be able to sleep. But now that I’d started down that path, I figured I might as well keep going. “I’ve got a lot on my pla—”

  “It really can’t wait,” he said. “I know you’re busy. I should’ve done this earlier, but I couldn’t figure out how to say what I need to say. It won’t take long, but please, can I come up?”

  No, it wouldn’t take long for him to tell me he didn’t want to be with me. We might as well get it over with. I still wouldn’t sleep tonight, but it would be for a different reason entirely.

  “Sure,” I forced myself to say, even as I felt my throat closing. “Room 2318.”

  “Be right there.” Then the line went dead.

  I turned off the news, tossed the remainder of my pizza in the trash can, and raced around to tidy up. At the last second, I realized I’d already changed into my pj’s—a ratty T-shirt with holes I hadn’t realized were in it when I’d packed, and a pair of men’s boxer shorts that I’d bought as soon as I’d moved out for college and which had seen better days. No bra. I threw open the dresser drawer and grabbed the first bra I could get my hands on. I ripped the shirt off and squirreled my way into the bra, but then he was already knocking on my door. Flinging open the door of the closet, I somehow knocked the ironing board off its hooks. It smacked me in the head before clattering to the floor, barely missing my toes.

  I let out a stream of curses.

  “Anne?” Nate called from the hallway. “You okay?”