Guess he did know I was here.
The game action had paused for one reason or another, and Sasha stood on the opposite side of the glass separating us. But his gaze wasn’t on me. It was on the fucker who thought he could intimidate me because I dared to call him out for a lack of brains and manners.
Sasha removed his glove, turned his head to the side, and used a finger to point at his helmet.
Eyes tracking the move, my jaw dropped open. I’d been too far away to get a good look at the artwork on his mask until now.There, in vivid jewel tones, was a collection of cut gems, along with my name written in script.
My douchebag seat partner whipped his head to me in surprise. “You’reGemma?”
Who needs to wear this man’s jersey when he’s got you claimed for all the world to see every time he takes the ice?
Feeling lightheaded with how fast my heart was beating, I managed a breathless reply. “Yeah.”
The idiot stumbled all over himself when he realized my connection to Sasha. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Let me get you some napkins. I didn’t realize.”
He was gone before I could formulate a retort that it was too little, too late, and the sudden one-eighty wouldn’t do a damn thing to erase his dickish behavior.
Turning my attention back to my boyfriend—I mean, what else did you call a guy who had your name painted on his helmet, you shared a dog with, and who spent every night sleeping in your bed?—on the other side of the glass, I made sure to give him an exaggerated eye roll. He knew better than anyone that I could fight my own battles. I didn’t need his help.
Granted, my solution of kneeing the moron in the balls would have likely had me carted out of the arena by security, but it was a risk I was willing to take to teach him a valuable lesson.
Sasha only grinned behind his mask, offering me a wink before skating back to the net, ready to resume play.
Maybe one of these days, we’d have an outing without incident.
In the second period, Sasha switched to the net at the far end of the ice, but when the third period began, he was right in front of me again.
He was trying his damnedest not to peek at me every time he removed his helmet for a water break, but every once in a while, he’d let his eyes stray, and that undivided attention he gave me in a crowd of thousands made my cheeks heat.
Not for the first time, I wondered what made me so special. Why had he singled me out and dug his heels in when I’d begged him to leave me alone?
It wasn’t like he didn’t have options. I’d have been blind not to notice the skinny, pretty women—the complete opposite of me—holding up signs begging him for a date, publicly offering up their phone numbers in their desperation to be with him. There was even one that said,Marry Me, Goose!
All the while, I sat there, knowing I was the recipient of his complete devotion and had turned down his offer of marriage.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Do you really wanna pull at that thread? You know exactly why you’re so fucked up that you had no idea what to do when the man confessed his love.
I wanted nothing more than to return to our little bubble inside my townhouse. We could shut out the world and pretend nothing else existed.
Inside those walls, I allowed myself to be happy with Sasha and the little life we were creating together. There were too many variables out here in the real world, and I didn’t want anything to disrupt the fragile balance we’d found—namely, my own insecurities.
The Speed were up by a score of one-to-zero on the Sailors, and the clock was ticking down. Less than a minute remained.
In disbelief, I watched the Sailors’ goalie leave his net, skating hard toward the bench as another skater jumped over theboards. The action occurred in the zone closest to us, where Sasha was working hard to defend the goal he guarded.
The names on the back of the Speed jerseys helped me identify the players as they skated around, trying to get the puck away from their opponents. Jenner charged forward, lifting the stick of the Sailor player opposite him, stealing the puck and chipping it over the blue line.
A helpful fan behind me had explained that if the puck went to the opposite side of the blue line, the team whose offensive zone that was would have to exit, and upon re-entry, the puck would have to precede them, or the play would be blown dead as offside.
Like they’d done it a million times, the Sailors retreated, gathering the puck further toward their own net and charging forward again.
Braxton came flying at the man with the puck, and he must’ve panicked, throwing it down the ice toward Sasha instead of making a clean pass to a teammate.
With no one around, Sasha gathered the puck from behind the net with his stick.
I expected him to do the same as Jenner had done, chipping it out of the zone and forcing the Sailors to try again. With time ticking down below thirty seconds, their chances of scoring a tying goal were getting smaller.
