AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I just didn’t realize how much.
Before I could take one step forward in her direction, my teammate and my left wing saw what I had my sight fixed on, and he dropped the bomb.
“You know who that is, right?” he asked.
“Mine,” I said with a cocky smirk.
He laughed and took a sip of his beer.
“What? Don’t fucking tell me you’ve already touched her,” I said, knowing that you don’t touch a teammate's ex-girl.
It’s a line you don’t cross. Though for this girl, I might have been willing to break the rules this once.
“Fuck no. I like my starting position on your left,” he said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“That’s Penelope Roberts. Our coach’s daughter transferred here from Michigan to study. She's really smart, too. I hear she tutors students in science and math. She’s also one hundred percent off limits… unless you’d like to watch your senior year from the bench.”
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, but he hears it.
“Yep, that chick’s a goddamn land mine to your NHL career. I bet you $100 dollars that one of the idiots on our team trips the wire,” he chuckles.
Yeah, fucker, and that idiot is probably going to be me.
Ultimately, I didn't introduce myself to Penelope that night because I knew my teammate was right. Getting with Penelope would cost me my starting position on Coach Robert's team—a price that no girl before her was ever worth paying. But when I quickly realized several days later that I couldn't think much of anything else besides her, I got her tutoring email from a professor in the science department. I reached out to Penelope under the guise of a senior college student needing tutoring before he lost his financial aid due to poor grades.
It's not that I needed a tutor. As a pre-med student, I was on track to graduate with honors. My dad had me memorizing biology, anatomy, and chemistry flash cards every morning since I could walk. His dreams of me following in his footsteps as a cardiac surgeon dashed when I got a full ride on a hockey scholarship to the University of Washington instead of his alma mater.
And I wasn't in jeopardy of losing my financial aid since I was on a full-ride scholarship for hockey. However, my family's trust would have flipped the bill if I hadn't. I would have been forced to go to an Ivy League if the family money was paying for it.
I just wanted to get to know her and doing it as Slade Matthews was out of the question. I was hoping I would find out the under that layer of beautiful ivory skin, platinum blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, she was just as much of a waste of time as any other girl I've met in my life.
But the more I got to know her, the deeper entangled I got.
From: WinTheDay067
To:SkatrGirlPen
Hi SkatrGirlPen,
I got your email from my biology professor. I could use some tutoring in my science courses. I can’t flunk out or I’ll lose my financial aid and won't graduate. Are you available?
That's when one harmless email to Penelope turned into six months of opening up to someone like I never had before in my twenty-two years of life.
To Penelope, I was just WinTheDay067, a C-point-average student who might lose his college funding if he doesn’t bring up his grades.
But to me… she became my lifeline. Those regular emails turned from weekly homework and test scores to in-depth emails about our day. I told her things I had never told anyone else.
I had never fallen for someone so fast. Actually, I had never fallen for anyone at all. She was compassionate, good-humored, and selfless—qualities I rarely witnessed in my upbringing.
And then the day came.
It was the day I should have seen coming—the day I'd have to walk away from the best thing I've ever had besides hockey.
I made a choice to step in and protect her, but I didn't anticipate that the repercussions would cost me the one thing worth saving.
Her.
