Puck Prince (Houston Scythes Hockey #1)

10. Owen

10

OWEN

“Jesus fucking Christ, Coach was skull-dragging today.” Heath rips his helmet off the second we pile into the locker room and chucks it into his cubby.

“Well, maybe if you weren’t dragging your balls on the ice, he wouldn’t have run us so hard.” Dax grumbles, shedding his gear.

“What can I say? My head was somewhere else.” Heath grins and we all know what he’s talking about.

I rip my mouth guard out. On second thought, maybe I should keep it in. I know where this is going, and I’m going to lose my shit if it gets too rowdy.

“Which head?” Miles asks.

“Both,” Heath admits and the guys erupt in laughter and childish fist bumps.

“Listen—” Kason is down to his boxers now. “I don’t give a flying fuck what Coach says; she can’t be completely off-limits.”

“Maybe in the workplace,” Lachlan says, mimicking Coach Coleman’s voice. “But after hours? Listen. Get a couple drinks up in me, and I’ll be getting up in her.”

Another group laugh. Like braying fucking alley dogs.

Meanwhile, my blood is boiling.

“You’re assuming you could get her to go out with you, Thatcher,” Miles jokes. “If I had to guess, Miss Coleman is more of a cocktail-and-a-cigar girl than your usual brand of BOGO pitcher of Pbr puck bunny.”

“Hey!” Heath jumps to his own defense. “I can be fancy when I want to. I’ve been told I clean up nice.”

“By who?” Dax asks.

“Your mother doesn’t count, Thatcher,” Kason jabs, and everyone laughs again.

“Fucking hell, don’t any of you guys think about anything else? It’s Coach’s niece, for fuck’s sake. That’s got ‘red flag’ written all over it,” I growl, stomping around the locker room like a bulldog.

“More like a yellow flag.” Lance, my best friend on the team, tosses a towel at me. “What Coach doesn't know won’t kill him.”

Et tu, Brute?

“Yeah, but it could get you kicked off the team.” I throw the towel back at him, hitting him in the chest.

“You sure are being a grumpy old man about all of this.” Kason squints at me. “Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, eh? You’ve been a dick all day.”

He’s not wrong. Ever since I saw that twat of a reporter outside, I’ve been annoyed. Running into Callie didn’t help. Literally running into her in the locker room really didn’t help. And now, knowing I have to avoid her not only at home, but also at work, all while trying to keep the rest of my life's secrets tidy…

Well, yeah. I’m agitated.

“I came here to play hockey, not play with my dick. Maybe I actually care that we are going head-to-head soon with a team that just might kick our asses, and I’m not about to let that happen.”

“Or maybe your corset is laced too tight,” someone mumbles. I turn around, scanning faces, ready to beat one into a pulp. I’m greeted with nothing but smirking mugs, though. No telling which one is the culprit.

Lance comes to my rescue. “Lay off, guys. Owen’s been on one hell of a roller coaster in the last year.”

“Is that why his Midol’s not working?” Dax asks.

I bolt for him. Lance steps between us just before I can throttle the guy.

“The press has been brutal on him,” Lance snaps at everyone as he loops an arm around my torso to keep me pinned back. “And we need to stick together. We are a team.”

That comment earns him some snickers, but I gotta admit, I appreciate him. He’s always got my back.

“Is that why you moved away from the rest of us downtown and up into that family-friendly apartment complex?” Heath asks. “Or were you just MILF hunting?”

“I mean, the paparazzi doesn’t exactly go sniffing around for hockey players in neighborhoods with splash pads and dog parks,” Lance answers for me.

“Maybe I just wanted to spend less time around you idiots,” I add, stepping away from Lance and heading for the showers. I crank it up to Hades-hot, and I’m about to hop in when Miles intercepts me.

“You know what you need, Sharpe?”

“For you to not start a conversation with me when I’m butt-ass naked?”

He ignores me. “You need to fall in love.”

I actually laugh at that, getting in the shower and yanking the curtain shut. “Get bent, Miles.”

“I mean it, bro.” He is standing right outside the curtain, because “privacy” is apparently a concept with which he is unfamiliar. “Settling down is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“You didn’t seem settled down at the strip club last weekend,” Heath calls out.

“I can look at the menu—I just can’t order anything.” Miles goes on, completely unbothered. “Listen, nothing says ‘boring’ to the press like a man happily in love. You’ll never hear your name again. I don’t even have to worry about the papz anymore. The second I got on one knee, it’s like I became invisible. No more hounding. No more watching what I do or say. They couldn’t care less.”

I have to admit: it sounds nice. The paparazzi-free existence, not the relationship part. That, I have no interest in whatsoever. Not after recent events, and definitely not after everything I’ve put up with in the last year.

If anything, life has taught me that the world is a fucked-up place. It needs fewer fucked-up people in it.

I’m enough of one as it is.

When my skin is raw and red, I shut off the shower, change, and head for the training area. The guys are all going out for lunch, but I’m not in the mood. I’d rather take my anger out on sore muscles. I need to clear my head and get my shit in order. No more talk about relationships or press or Cal?—

Oh, fucking hell.

I stop in my tracks when I walk in the room and see Callie working with someone. I turn on my heels to leave, but before I can slip back out of the door, she calls out to me. “I’m about done with him if you need something.”

This is the last thing I need right now, that’s for damn certain. But her tone is weirdly off and curiosity gets the best of me. Plus, bolting now makes me look like a coward. I was here first, goddammit. This is my team. My organization.

And she’s not going to have me pussy-footing around my own arena.

“Yeah, I uh… I have a knot.”

She smiles and says something to the other guy—one of the new group of rookies, I can’t remember his name—who smiles back and walks out. I wait, but she doesn’t look at me. She just wipes everything down and points at the chair. “Have a seat.”

“Right.” I saunter over.

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t appreciate you tangoing with me in front of the team.”

Callie’s face sours. “I meant with your body. Where’s the knot?”

Oh. Right. “Uh, my… calves are tight.”

It’s quiet for a beat while I lay back and she begins massaging right above my ankle. The first touch of her fingers on my skin nearly makes me hiss, but I bite it back before she can hear.

For a five-foot-nothing girl, she sure can get to it.

“Sore?” she asks. While I can’t see her face, I hear the salt in her smile.

“Coach ran us hard today.”

“You stretch often?”

She’s dousing the fire with gasoline right now. “Of course I fucking stretch, I’m an ath— fuck me.” She digs deeper, and I realize I’m going to have to put a muzzle on it if I want to be able to walk out of here with my pride intact.

“By the way,” she says as she works her way up my calf, “you were the one blocking me in the locker room. I was just there to meet the team and get to work. You were standing in front of the door.”

I open my mouth to say something but decide against it. There really is a knot where she’s working, and I’m going to be like a cat on the ceiling if she goes any deeper.

“You really should get these legs of yours loosened up more often,” she advises after a beat. “They’re tighter than?—”

You? I want to finish for her. But I don’t. I can’t. I won’t. I shouldn’t.

…I want to.

“I guess I might have neglected it a little in the past. But in my defense, the last PT was an ancient old bastard with rough hands and a rattlesnake personality.”

“I can be rougher, if you want.”

“Let’s not.” I hold up a hand and somehow, I know she’s smiling. Goddammit, I’m smiling, too. I gotta cut that shit out. “The rattlesnake personality part is the same, though.”

She shrugs and digs in.

I earned it.

It was worth it.

“For real, though.” I get serious. “We need to be more careful. People are going to suspect.”

“Suspect what?” she asks innocently. Meanwhile her hands are working their way up to my thigh.

I prop myself up on my elbows, shooting her a look.

“What?” she asks, hands kneading higher and higher. “There’s nothing going on between us.”

“Obviously. But we did fuck around.”

“Yeah. We did. And I regret it. Especially since you—” She stops.

“Since I what?” I ask, grabbing her hand. It’s distracting.

“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “But you can’t peg all this on me. Yes, you helped me get back in my house. Yes, we got… sidetracked. But I don’t intend to get sidetracked again.”

“Is that why you were pressed up against me in the locker room, not once, but twice in the same day?”

“You put your hands on me, not the other way around!”

I laugh in her face. “You practically groped me!”

“I was trying to get away from you!”

“And nut checking me is the way to do that?”

“You think I wanted to touch you?” she whisper-yells.

“I mean, I asked you to rub out my calves, and you’ve somehow taken a detour to my upper, inner thighs.”

Callie narrows her eyes. “They’re tight. I’m doing my job.”

I suddenly realize my pants are tight, too. One inch higher and I’m gonna need another kind of “job.” I lean back again, and she makes her way down to the other ankle to start on my left leg.

“All I’m saying,” I grit through my teeth because now she’s mad, and holy hell, does she have hand strength, “is that we need to avoid each other.”

I realize how ridiculous that sounds as she’s literally massaging me. “As much as possible,” I add.

“Oh, don’t worry, Owen Sharpe. Never—” She digs in. “—have I ever—” Harder. Harder. “—wanted to steer clear of someone so badly in my life.”

I sit up, ripping my legs from her grasp before she can reduce them to flesh-colored jelly. “Good. Then we are on the same page.”

“Same sentence, even.”

“No more hanging out on the same balcony.”

“Or the locker room.”

“Definitely not the locker room,” I agree. “That’s my territory, not yours.”

“The team is my territory, too, Sharpe. But yes. I’d prefer to stay out of that cesspool as much as possible.”

“I come to you when I need to get rubbed out.”

Her eyes widen.

“—my muscles,” I hurry to correct. “Jesus. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

She sets her jaw tight, eyes flashing, hair falling in front of her face in a way that’s unbearably fucking cute. “And I come to you when… well, I have no reason to come to you.”

I can’t help from muttering, “No, but you have come for me.”

The way she swings around, I expect to be decked. I instinctively duck. “Kidding. Jesus. You know, we could at least try getting along?”

Callie sticks a warning finger in my face. “I am your PT, but I am not your friend. Keep it in your pants. And stretch more, so I see you less.”

“Done and done.” I stand and start to march out of the training area. Or try to. As I feared, I can barely walk. I swallow the pain and turn back around. “I wish we’d never met.”

She looks up at me from across the room. “I’m sorry; do I know you?”

I wait a beat before saluting her. “Perfect.”

As I make my way back to the locker room, I smile. At least we are in agreement on one thing: it never happened. We don’t know each other. Coach Coleman stays happy—at least as far as I am concerned. I can focus on the game and getting my name cleared.

Everything is as it should be.

Callie who?