Grumpy Puck

4. Michael

Chapter 4

Michael

F uuuuuuck.

She is kissing me.

And I’m kissing her back.

Everything fades away. I forget the predicament we’re in. I forget how I got here, or where I need to be. This kiss becomes everything, though in some distant periphery of my mind, I’m aware of noises and then of flashes of light.

Fucking fuck. Is it possible to get so hard that you induce a seizure? Is that what the lights in my vision are about?

All I know is that this shouldn’t be happening, but it is amazing. She’s perfectly soft and tastes like cotton candy. Her delicate feminine scent is maddening and hard to pinpoint—but there are definitely notes of something delicious in there, like roasted cashews dipped in honey.

After a particularly bright flash of light, she pulls away and stares at the doors behind me.

Whatever’s got her upset, the rat on her shoulder hisses at it.

I spin around.

The fucking doors are wide open. There are countless people staring at us, including my team and a bunch of firefighters, but my wrath is focused on the paparazzi who are standing there taking pictures.

Of course. Cameras. That’s what the flashes were about.

Leaping into action, I reach the closest guy holding a camera, snatch the device out of his hands, and shatter it against the ground.

Seeing this, the rest of the fuckers scatter like cockroaches, and when I try to chase one, Dante and Coach block my way.

“Killing a journalist isn’t good PR,” Coach warns.

“But I get the therapeutic benefits,” Dante adds, more sympathetically.

I glare at the phones in the hands of some of the firefighters. “Everyone took pictures,” I growl.

“Probably videos too,” Dante says. “What did you expect?”

I expect to break more cameras, and some bones. “Then let me pass.” I don’t bulldoze through them purely out of respect for Coach.

“Everything is in the cloud,” Coach says. “By breaking shit, all you’ll do is make the situation worse.”

He has a point. “Fucking cloud.”

I hate clouds, both the nerd kind in question and the puffs of water vapor in the sky.

“Besides.” Dante gestures to the doors. “Aren’t you forgetting something? Or someone?”

I turn just in time to see Calliope push her way through the crowd of gawkers.

“Go after her,” Dante says.

I frown. “What? Why?”

“I know you haven’t had a lot of experience with women,” Dante says, “so you may not know this, but women don’t like to be abandoned by their boyfriends… especially after coitus. Right, Coach?”

Coach regards me steadily. “My wife wouldn’t like that. And that’s a fact.”

I gape at them. “What the fuck? It’s not like that.”

Wife? Girlfriend? What’s in the water in this town? They know I’m never committing to a woman. It’s enough that my parents abandoned me; I’m not giving some random girl that kind of power over me. Unless these two are talking about a casual hookup? I have had those on a rare occasion, but even then, I wouldn’t choose someone like her.

Someone who’d want to cuddle after.

Someone I might be tempted to cuddle with… and I hate cuddles.

“Like what?” Dante grins, revealing blindingly white teeth with canines that aren’t as pointy as one would expect from someone with such a pale complexion.

I grit my teeth. “It was just a kiss. And a fluke at that.”

“Does she know that?” Coach asks.

Shit. He’s right. I might’ve given her the wrong idea. I need to correct it, pronto.

Leaving Coach and Dante to gossip like a pair of Catholic schoolgirls, I chase after Calliope—but by the time I get to the parking lot, her little Beetle is already pulling out.

I run out in front of it and slam my hands on the hood. “Fucking wait!”

Shit. She looks like she’s contemplating running me over, but then she rolls down her window and sticks out her head. “What?”

I step over to the side of the car. Now that I’m face to face with her, I find myself strangely at a loss for words. “I…” Fuck, what is wrong with me? I force myself to say something, anything. What comes out is, “What the fuck was that?”

“A huge mistake.” She punctuates her words by slamming on the gas, and with a screech of tires, her tiny Beetle whooshes out of the parking lot, nearly flattening my toes in the process.

Fucking fuck.

I stand there staring after her until a pale hand lands on my shoulder. “I take it the conversation didn’t go so well?” Dante asks when I turn around.

I shake my head.

“Want to get a drink, talk about it?” He gestures at the other side of the parking lot, where the rest of the team are getting on our private charter bus. “Everyone’s headed to the pub.”

“Fuck no.” I hate team-building exercises—almost as much as I hate the overabundant sunshine that blinds everyone, gives them skin cancer, and yet somehow fails to give Dante even a hint of a tan.

“Suit yourself.” Dante jogs over to the bus, and they leave.

Good fucking riddance.

Unfortunately, I’m still not out of the woods because Coach is heading my way, no doubt with words of encouragement and wisdom.

“I’ve got to go!” I yell over to him and beeline for my own car.