Alexa threw her head back and laughed. “I remember reading about that. Boy, I would love to see that security camera footage. That man is scorching hot, and I’m assuming his southern hemisphere is pretty heavily populated, if you know what I mean,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows up and down.

I picked up a fortune cookie and threw it at her. “You’re not helping.”

“Why do you need a good role model anyway? You’re a grown woman,” she teased, cracking the fortune cookie open.

“You know what I mean, Lex. I’ve got the girls to think about too. Anyone that comes into my life comes into theirs. I have to make good decisions.”

“And I get that, but you’re not dead, Kacie. You’re young, you’re hot, and you have a lot of life left. Those girls are going to grow up and move out one day. Then what? No one is saying you have to marry him, but lighten the fuck up. Have some fun.” She paused, looking down. Her face swept back up, looking at me impassively and she chuckled. “Here, I think this belongs to you.” She reached over and handed me the small strip of paper from the fortune cookie.

HEY BRODY, IT’S KACIE. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE JERSEY AND THE FLOWERS, ESPECIALLY THE FLOWERS. THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL. IT WAS VERY THOUGHTFUL OF YOU. :)

I stared down at my phone, my mind a blank slate. Six days ago I met her, four days ago I left her my favorite jersey, yesterday I sent her flowers, today she was finally answering me, and now the noodles of my brain didn’t want to connect enough to form a coherent sentence. I felt like an awkward fifteen-year-old kid trying hard not to fuck it up.

Smiley face. She put a smiley face—I might have a shot. I would have felt better about my odds if it were one of those winky faces, but I’d take what I could get.

Here goes nothing…

YOU’RE WELCOME, I’M GLAD YOU LIKE THEM. MAYBE NEXT TIME I GIVE YOU FLOWERS, I CAN DELIVER THEM IN PERSON WHEN I’M PICKING YOU UP FOR DINNER?

My heart pounded in my chest. I had never asked a girl out via text before, and it definitely wasn’t my preferred method, but at this point, I’d take what I could get from her. It was forty-five minutes before my phone beeped again. Okay, it was really only two, but it felt like forty-five.

K: ABOUT THAT … IT WOULD BE FUN TO HAVE DINNER, I’M JUST REALLY BUSY RIGHT NOW WITH SCHOOL AND THE GIRLS.

Bullshit.

SO, YOU DON’T EAT DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR? THANK GOD IT’S SUMMER.

K: OF COURSE I EAT, I’M JUST KINDA TOO BUSY RIGHT NOW FOR DATING.

DATING IN GENERAL OR DATING ME?

Please say dating in general, please say dating in general.

K: I KNOW THIS IS GOING TO SOUND REALLY BAD, BUT I HAVE TO BE HONEST. YOU ARE GREAT. I REALLY LIKE YOU. I JUST DON’T HAVE THE TIME TO INVEST IN SOMETHING THAT WILL LEAD ME DOWN A DEAD-END ROAD. DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

Ouch.

That was the first time a girl had ever referred to my advances as a dead-end road and it was a kick in the balls. Why was I so damn determined to get this girl to go out with me? She clearly had some deep scars and should be easy to walk away from, but instead of running the other direction I wanted to scoop her up, clean her off and make her world good again. I felt defeated.

YEAH, I GET IT. FRIENDS?

K: OF COURSE! MAYBE THE GIRLS AND I CAN COME SEE A GAME SOMETIME. :)

Fuck you, smiley face.

I was annoyed. She closed the door before I even got to it, and then locked it … twice. She knew nothing about me. How could she decide that quickly what should and shouldn’t be? That day at the inn outside in the rain, there was a moment when we were hovering over a puddle, her arms around my neck and it was there. She felt it; I felt it, even if I was the only one willing to admit it. I saw it in her eyes. Now here she was, less than a week later feeding me a line of bull about why it wouldn’t work. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince me, or herself.

The stale air in my condo was suffocating and I needed to get out, work off some of this frustration. I snatched my cell phone from the coffee table. “Hey, you busy? Wanna meet me at The House in twenty minutes? Okay, see ya then.”

One of the perks of being a professional hockey player is having a state of the art fitness center and an ice rink available to me just about any time I wanted. In the locker room a few seasons ago, one of the guys referred to the stadium as “The House” and the nickname had stuck ever since. I pulled my truck into the parking lot and made a sharp left, stopping next to Viper, who was sitting in his truck on the phone, his driver’s side door wide open.

“Fine, do whatever the fuck you want!” Viper threw the phone across the cab of his truck, watching as it shattered when it bounced off the other side. “Fuck!” he yelled, running his hand through his shoulder length blonde hair and slamming his door.

“What’s up, Murphy?” He shook my right hand and grabbed my shoulder with his left.

“Um, well…” I nodded toward his truck. “You’re going to need a new phone.”

“Yeah, second time this month I’ve broken one.”

“What’s going on?” I asked as we walked toward the stadium.

Viper sighed. “Same old shit. Kat thinks I’m cheating, so she’s moving out. What else is new? I don’t care anymore, she can go.”

“Are you cheating … again?”

A shit-eating grin spread across his unshaven face as he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe.”

I reached around and smacked the back of his head. “You really live up to your name sometimes, Viper.”

“Hey, I got that nickname because of the smooth way I slither on the ice. It’s just fitting in my personal life too.” He laughed.

Viper had been my teammate for three years now, and in that time, we’d grown pretty close. He always had my back, no questions asked and I had his; however, I didn’t always agree with his actions. He was too out of control, even for me. Lord knows I’ve done some stupid shit, but he was just plain old reckless. And he tore through women like a kid opened birthday presents, then tossed them aside when he was done the same way. Kat had been around for several months, the longest one yet, as far as I knew. I stayed as far away from their drama as possible. I didn’t understand their relationship. He cheated on her constantly, yet she kept coming back.

“Okay, Viper, I need you to kick my ass in the gym today. I want to be so sore my brain won’t function after this workout.”

“Sweet!”

After an hour and a half of dead lifts, shoulder presses, bicep curls and about a thousand crunches, I cried mercy.

“Had enough?” Viper laughed.

I lay on the gym floor, chest heaving, arms and legs spread out like a snow angel, staring at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. “Yes, no more arms, but I’m not nearly done. Let’s hit the rink, Fabio.”

“You’re on.”

I put my goalie pads on and prepared for Viper to shoot 90 mph slap shots, snap shots and wrist shots at me. When I was in the net, my brain went somewhere else. I was in the zone and that’s exactly where I wanted to be right now, far away from reality. My eyes zeroed in, focused solely on keeping that three-inch piece of vulcanized rubber from getting past me, by any means necessary.

Two hundred shots or so later, Viper skated over to me and spit his mouth guard into his glove. “How ya feeling? You good?”