Hooked: A Hockey Romance

by June Winters

  “Fuckin' worthless zebra!” I yelled at him.

  Don't retaliate, don't retaliate, I had to repeat to myself.

  But since I was late to get back into the defensive zone, the Bears found an opening in the center. A quick pass into the slot, a one-timer, and the puck sailed over Leif's blocker and into the net. Bears took the lead 2-0, and our playoff hopes were looking grim.

  Cunningham dropped his stick from my waist and joined the celebration with his teammates. I went and argued with the ref.

  “You saw him hooking me. What more do you want?” I shouted. “What's it gonna take for you guys to call a penalty on him?”

  “Keep yelling at me, Rockwell, and you'll get two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct,” the ref answered.

  Steaming, I glided back to the bench.

  And Cunningham caught up and skated by my side.

  “Pst. Hey Rocky.”

  I didn't reply.

  “Heard about you and that ice girl. What's her name again? Honesty? Weird name but hey, whatever, I can't wait to see those pics! Man, they sound hot—”

  I threw my gloves down and grabbed him by the collar of his jersey. “The fuck are you talking about?”

  Cunningham went full rag doll: his arms shot into the air and flailed, his head whipped back like he'd been shot by a sniper, and his body fell limp to the ice.

  I let him drop and raised my hands into the air innocently. But the ref blew his whistle and grabbed me by the arm.

  “Alright, Rockwell, I warned you. Two minutes for roughing.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled, my voice booming across the ice.

  “Keep it up and I'll make it four minutes!”

  The ref stuffed me into the penalty box, and Cunningham skated by laughing his ass off.

  “Oh, oh shit,” he said, gasping for air. “That's too rich. I almost feel bad for you. Look the pics up yourself though, Rocky. I hear they're on some site called GutterSports.”

  The ref pushed Cunningham away, warning him, “That's enough from you, too.”

  I turned to the score-keeper in the box as he typed numbers into his laptop. “Excuse me, sir. You got internet on that thing?”

  I reached for his laptop. He tried to stop me, but I wrestled it from him.

  “Really. It'll only take a second. I'm sorry but I gotta check something.”

  I typed in GutterSports. I'd never heard of it before. Apparently it was some kind of sports gossip blog.

  I scrolled down and, there she was, front page, sexy pose in her panties and all. Honor.

  Oh fuck. How the hell did they hack my cell phone?

  No fucking wonder she blocked my phone number! I gave the score keeper his laptop back and rose. “Thanks! But I gotta go.”

  “Where do you think you're going?” he asked as I threw the penalty box door open and rushed to leave the ice.

  “Hey!” coach yelled at me from the bench. “The hell are you doing, Rockwell?”

  “I'm injured!” I lied. “Gotta go see the trainers!”

  Chapter 23:

  Hacked

  Honor

  I stood at the bus stop. All I could do was watch the blur of traffic fly down the street, feeling hopelessly … numb.

  Numb to the sharp stabbing of the knife that Hunter had plunged and twisted in my back.

  Numb to the embarrassment of standing in front of those girls.

  Numb to the non-stop buzzing of my phone in my purse.

  It was Derek. He'd been trying to reach me for the past ten minutes. Madison had gone the extra mile and posted that GutterSports link on my Facebook. I'd deleted it as fast as I could, but not before Derek had seen it.

  Great. Hunter Rockwell, you've ruined my life.

  Finally, after a thirty minute wait, the bus arrived. It pulled up to the curb and I waited at the end of the line as people started to climb on.

  I read a text from Derek while I waited for my turn: “Sis, answer your phone. I'm on your side, here. I'm just trying to let you know that Mom and Dad saw it too and they're freaking out. Tell me where this Rockwell piece of shit lives and I swear I'll come to Denver just to fuck him up. I TOLD YOU not to do anything with hockey players all along.....you see why now??”

  Ugh, I thought to myself. Great. The whole fam' knows. And where does Hunter Rockwell live, you ask? He lives in a fucking hotel because he's a child who needs someone to clean up after him. A child who cashes a multi-million dollar paycheck.

  But, with one foot on the bus stairs, the throaty roar of a sports engine growing nearer gave me pause. Tires screeched, horn blaring, as a sleek black car fish-tailed in front of the bus, wedging itself in front, so the bus couldn't leave.

  What the hell?

  It was a familiar car. A Maserati.

  No. No way.

  “Honor! Honor!” the driver, Hunter, yelled as he stamped his horn again and again.

  The bus driver honked back, yelling, “Get out of the road, you crazy drunk!”

  A stand-off. I knew Hunter wouldn't let the bus go until he'd talked to me.

  “Oh, for God's sake,” I mumbled. I stepped away from the bus and neared Hunter's car, ready to tear into him for the final time.

  His tinted window rolled down as I started yelling, “Hunter Rockwell, you're a fucking—”

  Hockey player?

  Hunter was completely dressed in his gear. Jersey, shoulder pads and all. He even had his hockey pants and leg pads on, and sweat trickled from the ends of his drenched hair.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Hunter?”

  “Honor!” he panted. “Get in.”

  “No! After you embarrassed me in front of my coworkers? And the rest of the entire world? Why the hell would I?”

  “I didn't do that, Honor! I was hacked!”

  “Hacked,” I repeated with a cynical laugh. “Really, you expect me to believe that?”

  The bus' horn bellowed impatiently behind us like a foghorn.

  “Just get out of that poor bus driver's way already! Sheesh, Hunter.”

  “Get in and I will.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I jerked the passenger door open and begrudgingly climbed in.

  Hunter pulled forward, and the enraged bus driver hurried around us. “Honor, I swear I didn't share those pictures. You've gotta believe me, here!”

  “I don't believe you, after the texts you sent me today.”

  “What texts?” Hunter asked.

  And, pitiful me, I wanted to believe the confusion on his face was genuine. But by now, I knew what happened when I trusted Hunter.

  As mad as I was, though, I had to laugh—because Hunter looked so ridiculous, driving a sports car in his hockey uniform. I peeked down at his legs. He still had on his hockey pants, shin pads and socks. Hell, he still had his skates on! Melting ice dripped from his blade protectors and pooled on the car's floor mats. How he managed to drive a stick-shift wearing those, I have no idea.

  “Did you seriously leave your game just to track me down, Hunter?”

  “Yes!”

  “For God's sake, why?”

  “Well, calling you doesn't work—since you blocked my number, apparently,” he said, his tone both hurt and accusatory.

  I tutted. “You blocked me first.”

  “The hell? No I didn't.”

  “That's what you said when you sent me those awful texts today.”

  “I haven't sent you a single thing today, Honor. I told you, my phone got hacked!”

  “Wait.” I paused. “So you're saying … you didn't text me all that nasty shit today?”

  “No! What nasty shit?”

  I pulled my phone from my purse, dragged up our conversation from earlier, and showed it to him. Hunter read, gritted his teeth and punched his steering wheel.

  “Motherfucker,” he growled. He turned his pleading eyes to mine. “Honor, I swear to you, I didn't send these.”

  I blinked. “Then … who?”

  A brief pau
se, lasting long enough for us to reach the same conclusion.

  The two of us growled in unison: “Madison.”

  Hunter pointed his finger at my phone's glowing screen. “Look at the time-stamp on these. Sent right around 11:00 AM, which is when I had just taken the ice for our morning skate. I even saw her in the hall before we took the ice—she must have been waiting to break into our dressing room so she could go through my phone! Fuck, that bitch is crazy.”

  “Then … she's the one who leaked the pictures.” I shook my head. “Wow. Wow.”

  Hunter took my hand between his and gave a comforting squeeze. “I never should've taken those. I'm so sorry, Honor. I'll—I'll try to fix this. I'll call my lawyer and have him send a cease and desist letter. And … I dunno how else to make it up to you. But I'll try.”

  “Hunter, just worry about it later. You've gotta get back to your game.”

  “Come with me,” he said. “I need you there.”

  I didn't want to see Madison and the ice girls again, but how could I turn him down?

  “What the hell,” I said with a shake of my head. “Let's go.”

  Hunter stepped on the gas, darting into and weaving through traffic, and went roaring for the arena. He tuned the radio into the game … and it didn't sound good.

  “And that ends the second period, the Bears now with a 4-0 lead over the hometown Blizzard. Without captain Hunter Rockwell, who left the game with an undisclosed injury, the Blizzard look lost.”

  Hunter scowled, grinding his teeth. “Fuck.”

  I patted my hand on his thigh.

  Chapter 24:

  Coming Clean

  Rockwell

  I rushed back into the arena, sprinting through the halls, hand in hand with Honor. I shoved the dressing room door open and we stormed in. But our entrance was met by a room full of slumped shoulders, heavy stares, and dejected expressions.

  “Oh, look,” Vinny said cynically, “the captain's back.”

  “Where the hell did you run off to, Rockwell?” Coach barked at me. “We're in a 4-0 hole now thanks to your disappearing act!”

  “Uh.” I cleared my throat and tried to explain. “I think Madison went through my cell phone earlier at the morning skate, and …”

  The stares around the room only grew odder, angrier.

  “… and she shared some, er, pictures of mine, of a personal nature … Honor, here, was dragged into it, and I had to catch her before it was too late.”

  Eyes began to roll.

  “Guys—”

  Coach cut me off. “Christ, Rockwell. You know the team policy: if you leave the ice without permission for any reason, you're suspended—unless you have a damned good reason for it. So let me get your excuse straight. You're trying to tell us that you two got busted taking naughty pics, girly here was embarrassed and ran off, and that's why you quit on your team? And I do mean your team, 'captain.' Is that seriously your excuse?”

  “Well. When you put it like that.” I paused, and lowered my voice, “Yeah, it sounds pretty bad.”

  “It doesn't sound bad, Rockwell, it is bad. Our season's on the line here. One period left. And you chose to leave your team just to chase down a—a—”

  Coach turned to speak to Honor directly. “Very pretty and I'm sure wonderful young lady, although you should know to never let these idiots, or hell, any idiot, take pictures of you without your clothes on.”

  Honor's cheeks turned cherry red. “Um. Great. Thanks.”

  Coach turned back to me. “But seriously, Rockwell? You left our most important game of the year, for a woman?”

  I didn't know what to say. I guess I thought they'd understand. I stared back at all those faces, those faces that clearly didn't understand how important this was to me.

  “She's … the first girl I've cared about,” I muttered. “In a long time.”

  The team grumbled more grievances, and Coach smacked his forehead.

  Honor, her hand still in mine, squeezed me. She stood on her tip-toes and whispered to me. “Tell them about your history with Cunningham.”

  “What? Are you crazy?” I whispered back. “I can't do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It's embarrassing. They'll think I'm weak.”

  “Remember how you said you felt a thousand pounds lighter when you told me?”

  “Yeah, but that's …”

  Coach grew impatient and interrupted us. “Would you two please take your lover's quarrel outside? I've got a team to coach out of a miserable fuckin' hole.”

  I groaned. “Okay. Look. Me and Cunningham. You guys wanna hear what went down? Why I was traded here in the first place? Everyone heard the rumors that we got into a fist fight at practice, but no one knows the reason why—not even my old Boston teammates over there know. I'll tell you. Cunningham fucked my fiance. Months before our wedding. Actually, I only found out months before the wedding—but he'd been fucking her for an entire year before that.”

  All the jaws in the room dropped.

  “Yeah, that was my reaction, too. I'd always thought it was strange how, at team parties, those two always ended up chatting with each other in some private corner like they were secret besties. Or how they had all these inside jokes that made each other crack up, and I'd just stare at them both, with no idea what the hell was so funny.” I paused. “You know how many optional skates I missed that year? Zero. You know how many optional skates Cunningham missed? All of 'em. I don't think I have to tell you what he was doing.”

  Iggy pounded his fist into his palm and ground it like a mortar and pestle. “That motherfucker.”

  “I've been all fucked up about it ever since. Couldn't trust a woman, I thought, because at the end of the day she had no loyalty. All a woman cared about was money. All a woman was good for was fuckin'.”

  Honor jabbed her elbow into my side.

  “But … Honor.” I pulled her in tight. “This girl, I'm crazy about. For once, I was actually excited about dating a girl and getting to know her. And then Madison came along and fucked it all up. But, yeah, maybe it was dumb of me to run off like that. Yeah, okay, you'd say that makes me a shitty captain, and I wouldn't disagree. But Honor is the reason I've been able to find my game again lately. So if I let her run off, I'm not going to play with my heart in the game, because guess what, it won't be—it'll be crushed.”

  I turned to look at Honor. “And now I'm really kicking myself for being too afraid to ask you what I wanted to ask you earlier.” I took a deep breath. “Would you be my girlfriend, Honor?”

  Her face lit right up and she threw herself into my arms. “Hunter! Yes!”

  And the boys all made half-serious puppy-dog noises, “AAAAAAAAW.”

  “Never thought I'd see the day when Rockwell settled down, eh boys?” Vinny opined.

  “Yeah, but now we know why their little kissing scene was so hot yesterday,” Iggy said.

  Coach addressed the room. “Team vote. All in favor of letting Rockwell play the third?”

  Every hand in the room shot up.

  Coach shrugged. “Alright, captain, looks like you're back for the third. Lead the way.” Then he turned to Honor. “And you, come with me.”

  Honor shot me a worried look, but I gave her a gentle push. “He'll help. You can trust him.”

  Honor gave me a kiss goodbye, wished me luck in the third, and Coach whisked her away.

  I stood at the door and rallied everyone. “Alright, boys. One period to go. I don't care that it's 4-0. Let's put up one goal and build from there.”

  Iggy pounded his fist again. “Cunningham is dead.”

  I stood at the door and bumped fists with my teammates as they filed out the door. Seemed like everyone had a sarcastic ribbing ready for me.

  “Jeez, Rockwell, never knew you were such a sap!”

  “That girl's got the magic pussy, eh?”

  Chapter 25:

  Dirty Little Secret

  Honor

  Hunter's coach led
me on a frenzied tour through the arena's halls.

  “He's a good kid, Hunter,” the coach told me. “You know, I've always felt bad for him. He's gotten a bad rap from fans and the media here all along—they think he's a greedy, selfish player. But people don't realize how bad this team would be without him. Every year, he's put this team on his back and tried to take them as far as he could. Is he guilty of trying to do too much by himself? Sure, I guess. Always told him he needs to learn to trust his teammates. He'll get it in time.” He winked at me. “You might be able to help him with that, too, given the shit he just told us about. Trust issues. You know?”

  Coach knocked on a door and ushered me in. “Just tell these guys what you and Hunter think happened. They'll check it out and if you're right, they'll take care of it.”

  ***

  After telling my story to a Blizzard executive, I was ferried down to the security room.

  “What time did you say?” the security guy asked.

  “Right after the morning practice, 11:00 AM or so.”

  He rewound the camera recording from earlier. Hockey players darted to-and-fro in the dressing room, moving backwards and comically fast. And then the security guy zeroed in on the 11:00 footage.

  There was Rockwell, and all his teammates, marching out the dressing room.

  Not even a minute after they'd left, the door opened again, and a girl's head popped in to check if the coast was clear.

  No doubt it was her: Madison.

  She sneaked through the room like a cat burglar and headed right for Hunter's stall. She rifled through his belongings, nervously peeking over her shoulder, before she found his cell phone in his pants pocket. Then she sat on the bench and stared into it. For the next 15 minutes, Madison had her grubby mitts all over Hunter's phone. That's when she texted me, stole my pictures, and blocked my phone number.

  The security guy sniffed calmly and said, “Well, you were right. There she is, plain as day.”

  “So now what?” I asked.

  “That girl,” he pointed at the screen, “is toast. That room is absolutely off-limits to non-player personnel. Entering that room alone is a fire-able offense. Going through a player's personal possessions, stealing Hunter's digital property? She'll be lucky if Hunter doesn't press charges.”