Pucks & Penalties: Pucked Series Deleted Scenes and Outtakes Version 2.0 (The Pucked Series)

by Helena Hunting

  I’m about halfway in when Violet says, “You know what? I changed my mind.”

  I hold my position. “What?”

  “This feels too much like a birthing position. It’s messing with my head. Maybe I should be on top.”

  I’m relieved that she hasn’t changed her mind about sex entirely because finishing myself off by hand isn’t as appealing as finishing inside my wife. Also, I’m highly aware that once this baby comes I won’t be allowed inside her for a while. Weeks probably. And I don’t think she’s going to be interested in giving me consolation blow jobs either. “Sure. Okay. Do you want me to sit on the couch, or I can lie down?”

  “Sitting up is probably best, right? Then you can love on my boobs, too.”

  We switch positions. It takes a bit for Violet to get comfortable. At first, her knees keep sliding between the cushions. Eventually, we get everything lined up and I get back inside her.

  I nuzzle her boobs and hold onto her ass while she rides me. “I can’t wait until we can have headboard banging sex again,” she moans. I know she’s about to come again when she starts chanting her cock love.

  When it’s my turn, I hold her hips and move her over me, faster, but not harder, until I come, too.

  Violet eventually lifts her head from my shoulder. “I don’t think it worked.”

  “You don’t think what worked?”

  “The sex. I don’t think it triggered labor.” She sighs. “Maybe we need to have it again.”

  “Sure, baby. I’m more than happy to keep trying until it works.” What can I say, I’m a selfless giver.

  Violet

  I wake up for the five billionth time because I have to pee. It’s three in the morning and Alex is passed out beside me. Sleeping peacefully. Not having to pee. I throw the covers off and roll out of bed. I’m halfway to the bathroom when a rush of warmth hits my underwear and then starts dripping down my thighs.

  At first, I think I’ve peed myself, until I remember that I’m super overdue and that I’ve been waiting for this moment, because it means my water has broken. I watch as an impressive puddle forms at my feet. It’s good that we have hardwood floors. Otherwise, this would be gross to clean up. I imagine fluid that’s been hanging out in my uterus for forty weeks isn’t particularly appealing.

  “Alex!”

  He bolts upright in bed. “I can be hard in thirty seconds. Just let me hold your boobs.”

  “I don’t want sex. The baby’s coming.”

  He leans over and fumbles around with the lamp on the nightstand, nearly knocking everything else off in the process. He blinds himself when he finally manages to turn it on and blinks a bunch of times before finally focusing on me. “What? Really? Like now?”

  “Like now,” I confirm.

  Shit. This is really happening. I’m having this baby. I’m going to push something significantly larger than my husband’s huge peen out of my vagina. What the hell was I thinking when I said we could have a baby?

  The first real contraction happens then. It’s like I’m Kegeling and having period cramps at the same time. “Oh!” I put both hands on my belly.

  Alex goes from half-asleep to complete panic in about four seconds flat. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? I need to get the bag. We have to get to the hospital now!”

  He rushes over to me, excited and freaking out, but his expression shifts to confusion as he grabs my shoulders and looks down. “Why is the floor wet?”

  “My water broke. You’re standing in baby juice.”

  We both make a face, because that sounds horrible. Thankfully, he ignores it and pulls me into a hug. “We’re going to meet our baby! The one we made. Together.”

  “Because we like to get our fuck on a lot,” I add.

  He kisses me, without tongue, and then hugs me again. “We should go, shouldn’t we?”

  “Uh, I think we’re supposed to wait until the contractions are like four minutes apart, or something, aren’t we? And we both need to get dressed. I’m thinking maybe I’d like to have a shower and wash all the baby water off me. And we should clean up the floor so no one slips.”

  “Right. Okay. You stay here and I’ll get a towel.” Alex rushes to the bathroom and returns five seconds later with a towel.

  Once the slipping hazard is cleaned up, he helps me to the bathroom and turns on the shower. I have two contractions while I’m taking my last shower as a pregnant woman. They’re not that bad. I can totally deal with labor if this is what it’s like.

  By the time I get out, Alex is already dressed, my bag is ready, and my delivery outfit is laid out on the bed for me.

  Alex is too antsy to wait for my contractions to be four minutes apart, so once I’m dressed, we head to the hospital. Turns out, the timing is actually pretty good, because things speed up once I’m in the car, and by the time we get to the hospital, the contractions are significantly closer together and a hell of a lot more painful.

  Alex is like a very concerned, but annoying mother bird, fluttering around me, asking if he can do anything to help.

  “Maybe never jizz inside me again,” I groan as another contraction forces me to grip the railing and try to breathe through the pain.

  “I’m sorry it hurts. Maybe you should practice your breathing. That’s supposed to help, isn’t it?” Alex starts doing the Lamaze breathing exercises. Normally, I’d think this is sweet, but right now I’m in too much pain to be nice.

  When I can’t take more than five steps without having a contraction, Alex takes me back to the room, apologizing a thousand times until I snap at him for that, too, which makes me feel bad, so I start crying.

  Turns out, tears and labor get a lot of attention, as does Alex, being who he is, so a flock of nurses swarm the room.

  “I’d like the epidural now, please,” I tell the one who looks like Betty from The Golden Girls.

  “We’ll just check to see how dilated you are first.” She pats my hand and then moves into position at the end of the bed so she and all her nurse teammates can check out the state of my cooch. “Oh, you’re ready to go! Let’s get the doctor in here.” She looks up from my vagina and smiles. “You’re going to have your baby now.”

  “But what about the epidural?” My voice is so shrill it probably sounds like a dog whistle.

  “Oh, honey, you’re too far along for that. Don’t you worry, you’ll be just fine.”

  “Fine? No, no, no. I’m not going to be fine. I hate pain and this—” the next contraction steals my ability to speak for as long as it lasts, “—really fucking hurts!”

  I look over at Alex, whose hand I’m gripping, but his eyes are not on my face. They’re homed in between my legs, wide with shock. I squeeze even harder on his hand and he flinches, gaze flipping up to mine. “You got this, baby,” he croaks.

  Another horrible contraction hits me and I groan and try to breathe through it. “My mom is such a liar,” I say through gritted teeth. “Labor pains are not like period cramps. It feels like The Hulk is trying to burst out of my body.”

  Alex smooths my hair off my face. I’m sure he’s ready to issue another apology, but the doctor arrives, all smiles, looking happy as a pig in shit. He claps his hands enthusiastically. “Looks like it’s time to have a baby!”

  I would like to say I’m quiet about my pain, and that I’m a badass when it comes to giving birth, but I’m not. I yell and grunt and tell Alex he’s never allowed near me with Super MC again. “I hope you enjoy the feel of your hand for the rest of your goddamn life,” I growl at him between pushes.

  And like the sweet, patient Canadian he is, he tells me how sorry he is. He also puts on his team captain hat and tells me I’m doing a great job and that he’s so proud of me. I appreciate it as much as I’m able, considering how freaking much giving birth hurts.

  Finally, I’m given the “one big push” order by the doctor, who also asks Alex if he’d like to see the baby’s head come out.

  I squeeze his hand. “Do not look
at my beaver right now, Alex. I don’t want you to end up with vag destruction PTSD. I just want you to remember how pretty it was before I pushed something abnormally large out of it.”

  Thankfully, he listens to me and not the doctor. I push one last time and finally the head appears, and then everything is a hell of a lot easier, but still really damn painful as baby Robbie finally bursts out.

  I flop back on the bed, really damn tired because pushing a baby out is hard work. Alex kisses me on the forehead. “You did so good, Vi. I’m so proud of you.”

  The nurses are gathered around the doctor. My legs are still open, demoed lady bits on display. A tiny cry fills the room as baby Robbie (they better not have made a mistake about it being a boy) takes his first breath.

  “Wow, that’s just . . .” one of the nurses mutters.

  “Good God!” the other one says, then lowers her voice to whisper something to the doctor.

  “It’s like a kick stand,” the second nurse chimes in.

  What the hell are they talking about?

  “Is everything okay? Is our baby okay?” I struggle to sit up, wanting to see whatever it is they’re seeing.

  One of the nurses glances over at us and smiles. Her cheeks are bright pink. “Oh yes! Everything is just fine. You have a perfectly healthy baby boy. Some woman is going to be very lucky one day.”

  Alex and I exchange a look, because neither of us knows what the hell the nurse is talking about. And honestly, he’s just been born. I don’t want to start thinking about the day he starts dating and we have to have the sex talk. My mom gave me a vibrator and told me I should learn how to give myself an orgasm before I let anyone else try it. Not bad advice, really, but still so awkward.

  The nurse who’s busy cleaning off our baby holds him up so we can see what’s causing all the commotion at the end of the birthing bed.

  “Oh, thank God.” I squeeze Alex’s hand, and he grimaces, probably because I’ve been using it like a stress ball for my entire delivery. “He’s got your peen.” I address the nurse who’s now swaddling our baby in a blue blanket. “I was so worried he wasn’t going to take after his dad since my biological father apparently had a smaller than average peen. So this is great news. Here’s hoping the Waters’ genetics win out in all the other important areas.”

  Interestingly enough, no one comments on that.

  I notice a bunch of things I probably shouldn’t as she passes me our son. I cradle him in my arms and stroke the short dark hair on his tiny cone-shaped head. “Is his head going to stay like this? He looks kind of like a gnome, or maybe an alien. Look at how puffy his eyes are. It’s like he’s been smoking the green demon while he was waiting to be born.”

  The nurse assures me that his head will round out, which is a relief, and that his eyes won’t be so puffy in a couple of days and he’ll look more human and a lot less like he’s been smoking reefer.

  “He’s perfect,” Alex says. “We made something beautiful, didn’t we?”

  I think he has daddy blinders on, but I have to agree, that despite the cone head and the reefer eyes, he’s pretty damn adorable.

  “Do you have a name picked out?” one of the nurses asks.

  Alex leans over and kisses his tiny little forehead, and then he kisses my sweaty one. “Robert Sidney Waters, but we’ll call him Robbie.”

  NOTE: A LOT of readers have asked for Violet giving birth, because it’s Violet and everything she does is insane, so I felt this year everyone deserved to see what it would be like for her to shoot a baby out of her beaver. It’s not pretty and she’s not graceful about it. This is Violet and Alex. And honestly, labor is not a walk in a meadow on a sunny day. It’s a lot of work and your vagina is angry for a while afterwards.

  Lance and Poppy

  Valentine’s Day Love Letter

  WHY DID I write this? Every year I write love letters on Valentine’s Day, so the year after I released Pucked Off, I felt like everyone needed to see that these two were doing okay, because let’s face it, Lance was a mess and he’s lucky as hell that he found Poppy.

  PRETTY POPPY,

  I should’ve felt bad when I stole your first kiss all those years ago, but I didn’t then, not the way I should have, and I definitely don’t feel bad about it now. Not when you’re my brightest star and my warmest sun. You’re everything good and right in this world and I’m constantly amazed that you’re mine.

  You did some stealing of your own that night, without either of us knowing it. You took my heart with you and I didn’t know it was missing until I found you again. You can keep it forever, though. I don’t mind since you take such good care of it. You put my soul back together with your sweetness and your kindness and your strength.

  You’ll always be my first and only love.

  XO Lance

  Poppy & Lance

  (the deleted scenes)

  WHY DID I write/inculde this? I debated whether or not to include this. It’s more than 5000 words of deleted scenes from Pucked Off. I’ve said this many times in conversation and I believe in written response, but when I wrote Pucked Off, it was very much a compulsion. Sometimes I would have scenes in my head that I just needed to get down, and they wouldn’t always come in order.

  This outtake is one of those scenes in which I had an idea for what would be a confrontation with Tash and Lance’s implosion, but when I was tying the story together, it didn’t fit and Tash was her own drama. We didn’t necessarily need more of her, so this scene hit the cutting room floor.

  I think had I included this scene you may have seen a very different side of Lance, one that would have been a lot harder to manage, because he is a very damaged man, and a lot of Poppy’s fears are real and honest. Lance is a victim who doesn’t know how to escape the cycle of abuse, and while I feel like the way I told his story and Poppy’s stayed true to my vision, writing this scene helped me see him for exactly who he was, and exactly how strong a heroine Poppy had to be to love him as much as she did, with such conviction.

  Everyone deserves to be loved without conditions or pain.

  The Party

  POPPY

  I’M STILL SITTING in my car down the block from Lance’s place when headlights start to flicker on around me. A swarm of people come from the direction of Lance’s house, taking up the entire sidewalk. I roll down my window a crack and catch some of the conversation as they pass.

  “I don’t know what happened . . .”

  “I’ve heard he loses it like that sometimes.”

  “Sucks that he kicked everyone out—”

  “—Hope we get invited back again.”

  Car doors open, numbers are exchanged, and people make plans to head to local bars. Engines rev to life and cars pass me as I sit there, until the street is virtually empty. I guess the party is over, and I have to wonder what exactly was the impetus for that. I’m not egotistical enough to think it’s me, but I’m suddenly starting to regret the way I reacted to this entire situation.

  I have no idea what his history is with that woman, but I assume whatever it is, it can’t be good, or simple, because nothing about Lance is. Well, there are good parts, but nothing is really simple based on my experience so far.

  I sit in my car for another minute or two before I decide that maybe I should reconsider whether or not I want to leave. Despite everything that’s happened, I know that none of it was intentional up to this point. Not the night at the bar, not what happened with Kristi. I wasn’t honest with him from the beginning, so it’s not fair for me to put this all on him.

  What I’m having the most difficulty with is the knowledge that so many of the rumors I’ve heard over the years appear to be true. I don’t know what to do with that, because I’ve seen that side of him that made me fall in love with the idea of a boy so many years ago. I know he’s in there. I just don’t know what happened to turn him into this man with two sides, one I’m not sure I want to manage.

  I stay there for a few more seconds, debat
ing my options. I could go home and never talk to him again. It wouldn’t be hard. Or I could go back there and see if there’s something worth staying for. Eventually, I turn off the engine and get out of the car. It’s cold out, so I pull the edges of my sweater closed and rush along the sidewalk, back to his house.

  It isn’t Lance who answers the door. It’s Randy. I hate the look of pity on his face.

  “Can I talk to him?”

  Randy sighs. “He’s not in good form right now, Poppy.”

  “I was just here fifteen minutes ago, and he seemed fine then.” This isn’t quite true. He didn’t seem fine at all, but I still want to see him, because I feel like I’m part of the reason for him not being okay.

  “It’s really not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Who the fuck is here? Is it Tash? Tell her to fuck off. I’m done with her shit.” There’s a distinct slur in Lance’s voice.

  “You should really go, Poppy. He wouldn’t want you to see him like this.”

  “Like what?” I push past Randy and he steps away from the door, allowing me into the house.

  The table that usually holds a vase of flowers—something I found strange, considering a hockey player lives here alone—is surrounded with broken fragments of glass.

  “What happened?” I ask, moving farther into the house as I go in search of Lance. He can’t be too far away.

  The sound of glass breaking startles me and Randy runs a hand over his face. He grabs my arm as I turn in the direction of the noise. “You really don’t want to see this, Poppy.”

  I wrench my arm out of his grip and head for the living room. What I find is a lot more than a broken glass. The coffee table has been overturned, the glass top shattered all over the floor. And that’s just the beginning of the damage. It looks like the place has been ransacked from a break-in. But it’s clear that isn’t what happened, because in the middle of the ruin is the man I’m here to see.