Puck Princess (Houston Scythes Hockey #2)

46. Owen

46

OWEN

Kennedy sobs into the phone. She is blubbering and gasping between words, and I can’t make anything out other than Callie and attacked .

But Callie is at home. She’s in my apartment. No one would attack her there.

“Where are you?” I ask, shoving away from my barstool at Pour Boys.

This night out was supposed to be my celebration, but I’m one of the last sober men standing. Me and Lance have only had a few beers because someone needed to be able to drive the rest of the guys home tonight. Plus, I didn’t really feel like getting hammered. I’m still buzzing from the day. From finding out Callie and I are having a daughter. And knowing, when I head home, I’ll find Callie warm in my bed.

But as Kennedy tries and fails to form coherent thoughts, I’m suddenly not sure what the fuck I’m going to find when I get home. And I’m beyond glad I’m sober.

“At home. Your apartment,” she manages. “I called 911.”

The guys are laughing, drinking, fucking around as usual, but Lance has caught on to something being wrong and stands up with me, questioning me with his eyes.

“Is Callie okay?”

That’s the only question that matters. The only thing in the world that means anything to me right now.

Lance leans in closer, looking as panicked as I feel. My heart is thundering in my chest.

“No— Yes.” Kennedy sobs again, and I want to shake the answer out of her. “She’s not hurt, but… the blood.”

Blood.

“I’m coming.” I push through the crowd without even seeing them. Lance follows right behind me as I sprint out the door.

“What happened?” he calls.

“I don’t… I don’t know. Kennedy wasn’t making any sense. I think Callie was attacked.”

The words don’t feel real. I hear myself saying them, but they can’t be true.

Suddenly, Lance pulls my keys out of my hand and motions for me to get in the passenger seat. “Where?”

I want to fight him on it. I want to fly across town and get to her as quickly as possible. But my hands are shaking.

He climbs into the driver’s seat and starts Heath’s SUV. He’s looking over, waiting for me.

I climb up, buckling in. “Our apartment.”

Then he screeches away from the curb, and we tear off to find Callie.

“Whose fucking blood is that?” I ask for the fifth time.

I practically rolled out of the SUV while it was still moving, charging through the crowd of officers posted up outside my building.

There were more officers outside the elevator and standing by my door.

But no Callie.

All the worst possible scenarios were flickering through my head, and that was before I pushed my way inside and saw the blood. A puddle of it on the carpet. A smear of it on the tile. Another smudge along the door frame.

“The assailant’s,” the officer explains.

“Who?” She was attacked. She was actually attacked. “It isn’t from Callie? She isn’t—” Hurt? Gone? Dead?

I keep checking my phone, but Kennedy hasn’t said anything since she called me at Pour Boys. Where are they?

“Not from what we’ve been told. The neighbor?—”

“Her cousin.” I’m not correcting him, just giving him the facts. I don’t know what will be important later.

“Her cousin told us she was attacked. I guess he came through the balcony and threatened her. There was a struggle, and she stabbed him. That’s their story, anyway.”

He . I know who did this. I know exactly who it was without even asking. Even though the man is gone and the police are investigating, I know exactly what happened here. But every time I see the blood on the floor, my mind flips back to the beginning. I start the whole process over again. Where is Callie? Is she safe?

I drag my hands through my hair, trying to put all the pieces together in my head. But with the police swarming my apartment, the lights and chaos, and the blood on my floor, I’m having a hard time processing. My brain feels like an Etch A Sketch, forming pictures of what's happening only to be shaken up moments later.

Because I was just with her.

We were at a party, and Callie was dancing and spinning in a dress that drove me wild. She was smiling, overflowing with joy that she was carrying my daughter.

My whole world is wrapped up in the essence of her, and someone tried to take it all away from me.

I fist my hands at my sides again as I look at the bright red blood. At the butcher knife I use to cut fruits and vegetables being bagged for evidence.

“Where did they— Which—” I don’t even know what I’m asking. I only know I want to see her. “Where is she?”

“The ambulance took them to LBJ Hospital.”

I nod at the officer, but it isn’t until I feel Lance’s hand on my shoulder that I realize I haven’t moved. That my chest is rising and falling too fast. That my head is overflowing with all the things I need to do.

Get to Callie.

Make sure she’s okay.

Find Spencer.

Make sure he’s never okay again.

“Kennedy texted, and they’re at the hospital. Let’s get some air, okay?” He leads me towards the door, past the officers in the hall and down the stairs. “Callie is okay.”

No, she isn’t. If she was okay, she’d be in my bed.

If she was okay, there wouldn’t be a puddle of blood on my floor.

As soon as we make it to the curb, I lean against the SUV, just out of view of the flashing red and blue lights on the other side of the building.

“We were just with her, Lance.”

“I know.”

“I shouldn’t have gone. I should’ve stayed with her. I should’ve?—”

“This isn't your fault. None of this is your fault.”

It is. Because I should’ve killed him the first time I saw him with his hands on my future wife.

“Spencer tried to kill her!” I scream.

I’m not screaming at Lance. I’m screaming because I’m sick and fucking tired of being fucked with. Of men coming after the woman I love.

Lance nods like he knows. Like he understands. “What do you want to do?”

“Find him.”

Lance pulls out his phone and starts tapping out messages. Meanwhile, I am pacing. I am seething. I have so much hot adrenaline pounding through my veins, I feel like a dragon brewing up a storm in its lungs just before an annihilating exhale.

I knew Spencer was bad. I knew he wanted to hurt her—to hurt us. I knew he was a rich asshole who would stop at nothing to win, even if it meant smirking down from the top of a tall pile of collateral damage.

But I didn’t think he’d go this far.

And now, there’s no lengths I won’t go to take care of him. No matter what.

Lance’s phone buzzes, and he curses under his breath. “I found him. One of the rookies said he just saw him at a brewery off Fulton and Burnett.”

I hold out my hand for the keys. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

This might be the ugliest night of my life. There’s no telling how things unfold. If Lance doesn't want to be a part of this, I wouldn’t blame him.

But without any hesitation, he opens the door. “He messed with people I love, O. Now, he dies.”

I give him a grateful nod and we take off.

“How is this piece of shit at a bar if he was stabbed?” Lance asks as we pull up.

I’m wondering the same damn thing.

“It’s like the motherfucker won’t die,” he adds.

“We’ll see about that.” I rip my seatbelt off and climb out of the car.

I’m expecting to have to sort through a crowd of drunken bargoers. I’m expecting to get inside and learn that Spencer wised up and, after donning a fake mustache and hat, fled for the border to escape me.

Instead, as Lance and I head for the front doors, we hear a commotion off to the side.

And there, bent over a metal trash can vomiting, is Spencer Santos.

He’s wearing a Scythes hoodie, but there’s a brownish red stain seeping through the dark blue fabric. He’s gripping his side, his face twisted in pain.

And he’s alone.

I don’t think as I cut across the sidewalk, snatch him up by the back of his hoodie, and yank him into the dark alley.

“Get the fuck away from m—” His sentence ends when my fist collides with his jaw.

I let him hit the ground. I watch him scrape himself off the pavement and roll over to look up at us.

“Please.” He actually has the balls to cough out the word. To beg me for mercy.

I feel nothing for him.

“Begging looks good on you, Santos.” It isn’t even rage coursing through me. It’s a bone-deep need to wipe him from existence.

“Pain looks even better,” Lance adds, kicking him in the stomach.

Spencer cries out, coiling up into the fetal position. “Fuck…” he cries. He is actually crying.

Callie must’ve cut him deep. Good girl.

Lance rears back to kick him again, but I hold my hand out.

I crouch down, my forearms resting on my knees as I stare down at him.

“Look at me,” I order.

Spencer is coughing, gripping his sides. His hoodie is soaking with blood. There’s blood running from his mouth and nose. His eyes are squeezed shut in pain.

“I said, look at me ,” I grit through my teeth.

Spencer’s eyes peel open to meet mine.

And there’s nothing in them. No shame. No regret. Not even fear.

I thought once I had him pinned to the ground, begging for mercy, that I would feel better. I thought it might satiate some dark part of me that has wanted to wring his neck from the moment I met him.

But there’s nothing.

I should feel something , shouldn’t I?

I grab him by his hoodie and stand up, pulling me with him. I slam his spine against the brick wall and hit him again. He starts to slide down it, but I hold him back up and step aside.

It’s Lance’s turn.

We go back and forth, treating Spencer as a punching bag.

My ears are ringing. My head is raging. My heart is throbbing in my chest to the point I think it might stop.

With each hit, I can see the blood hemorrhaging from what I think might only be a flesh wound. His eyes roll back in his head.

When Lance draws back to hit him again, I stop him. “Wait.”

Lance turns to me, his jaw clenched. “We can finish him, O. I’ll make it look like an accident. Like he got shitfaced and jumped from the roof and?—”

“No.” I shake my head, letting Spencer slide down the wall in a half-conscious lump. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

If I kill him and get caught, I’ll be thrown in prison. I’ll lose out on a lifetime with Callie and our daughter.

Spencer Santos isn’t worth all of that.

But it’s more than that, too.

“He doesn’t deserve to die,” I say. “We could let him bleed out right here and now, but that lets him off the hook. I want him to pay. I want his dad to pay. I want their lives to be ruined. I want him to rot in a cell, not a grave.”

Lance takes in a deep breath and lets it out hard.

I know I’m right. I’m also not a murderer. Even if Spencer did try to kill my family, I am not him.

I am not Spencer Santos or Miles Solomon.

I am not my father or any of the other men who slinked in and out of my home.

I am better than all of them.

And I’m going to save Spencer Santos’s life.