MOLLIE
me
goodnight Indie
indie
DON'T YOU DARE GHOST ME
I put my phone face down on my thigh. Alex glances over.
"Indie?"
"Indie."
His lips curve up. He looks back at the road and squeezes my hand once without saying anything. Outside the window, Seattle goes about its Friday night, bars filling up, people spilling onto sidewalks, the city doing what the city does.
Meanwhile, I sit in the passenger seat of Alex Thorne's truck thinking about how I look like a girl who just got finger fucked through a Godzilla film and then accidentally acquired a boyfriend. Which is exactly what I am.
Chapter Nineteen
Thorne
Mollie and I exist in a perfect bubble. Stolen kisses during the day, ducking into supply closets and the all-gender restroom for steamy makeout sessions, sneaking to the outer limits of town to go on dates and have public PDA.
And at night, we figure each other out, stripping, kissing, laughing. Lots of fingering and blowjobs. A nearly endless supply of me going down on Mollie in the shower and her gasping my name as she buries her hands in my hair.
But the bubble we are drifting along in snags, and nearly pops, when the Seattle Havoc has its first preseason away game against the Vancouver Vipers. We have to fly in the late afternoon to be ready for the first late-night game.
And stepping onto the plane without Mollie in tow feels… weird. I know that she’s getting on with her whole gaggle of workmates. I can even hear them laughing while they stand in the back of the line.
Lucky for me, Hunter and Silas already crossed the employee-player line. Hunter isn’t just married to Juliet; she’s the only person he likes, I think. And don’t get me started on how Silas dotes on Scout. The brothers usually sit with their women, preferably with them on their laps, though Juliet does put up a fight sometimes.
So it’s not weird that I snag the seat across from Jessa and Mollie. Jessa arches a brow at me as I settle in, but otherwise doesn’t say anything. Which is perfectly sensible, given how Silas seems to be huffing Scout’s neck like a weirdo.
Actually, come to think of it, Mollie’s nape does smell intensely of her citrus vanilla scent. I could huff it. Would huff it if Beck hadn’t just claimed the seat in front of me. Scowling, I put on my over-ear headphones and try to focus on the game ahead.
Konstantin passes us, heading to the back of the plane to sit by himself. Once there, he pulls his hood up and, to all appearances, goes to sleep. Or maybe he just pretends to. That seems right. I don’t think the man ever relaxes, even a little bit. He’s a shark. If he lets his guard down, he’ll die.
I catch another faint whiff of Mollie. Just enough to torment me. Great, now I’m turned on. I spend the rest of the quick flight fighting half an erection.
No one wants that right now.
Cross puts Konstantin and me on the same line for the first game. No announcement, no explanation, not so much as a heads-up in the locker room. I find out the same way everyone else does, reading the whiteboard twenty minutes before warmups.
This right here? I've been dreading this since Jimbo's meeting. Cross pairing us makes sense on paper. Kuznetsov is one of the best utility forwards in the league, has numbers that would make any coach drool, and the Sharks' decision to trade him had nothing to do with his performance on the ice. It had todo with Dabrowski. With whatever happened between them.
The question I keep turning over is whether it matters here. Whether whatever Dabrowski said or did was specific enough that it won't happen again. Or maybe Kuznetsov is simply the kind of man who will eventually put someone in the hospital, regardless of where you put him.
Standing here in front of the whiteboard, I realize I'm about to find out.
Konstantin reads it beside me, his expression giving away exactly nothing. That gets under my skin.
We have a mad dog on the team already. Hunter Huxley looks like what he is, big and brooding, packed with muscle and a problematic hair-trigger.
But you always know where you stand with Hunter, even when where you stand is directly in his path. Kuznetsov, on the other hand, just looks faintly amused, like the whole situation is a mildly entertaining problem he'll solve when he gets around to it.
Konstantin grunts. “Cross is testing us.”
