AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why are you so afraid of being happy?”
Is that what I am? What? Afraid? “I’m not.”
She waits again. Damn her patience.
“I don’t think fear is the right emotion,” I say.
“Then what?”
I’m not sure how to make her understand. I’ve never felt like I deserved happiness. Or peace, for that matter. Guilt has taken up permanent residence and I’m so used to it being there, I have no idea how to get it to leave. Until Carter, I never even considered overcoming the guilt and kicking it to the curb. But that still doesn’t mean I deserve to be happy. Or even know how to be.
“Have you talked to him about this?” She asks when she realizes I have no answer to her question.
“Carter?” I shake my head. “I don’t really think there is a point in doing that. We just need to figure out how to coexist.”
She’s not buying that. “You know, if I had let my assumptions about Levi win out without finding out the truth, we wouldn’t be together.”
I sigh and look at her. She’s right. She assumed Levi had slept with Brittany while he was rehabbing his arm. She based that assumption on Brittany’s reputation and one brief moment she couldn’t let go of. Brittany made her believe it. Made her believe the worst about a man she knew in her gut wouldn’t do that to her. Even though he had pushed her away and they had never even been on a date.
“Besides, Carter is a very good man. If you care about him, if he is the one man who can make you feel things, then he is worth fighting for… or at the very least talking to,” she says. “Plus, he’s really hot,” she leans forward and whispers. “Maybe you both just need a reminder of that really awesome sex.”
Oh Devyn. I can’t contain my laugh. It was that. Best sex of my life. Sex I can’t erase from my memory, nor do I want to. But that memory is growing increasingly distant, and that frustrates the hell out of me. Does Carter even remember the details at all? He was drunk. Was it as good for him as it was for me?
“And then, of course, you need to talk.” She winks at me.
Chapter eleven
“Better watch out, your boy is going to break all your records,” I quip at Levi as he exits the practice facility. I pull my briefcase out of my car and shove the door shut with my hip. Ilya has been playing out-of-his mind fantastic. He had a pair of shutouts during the 4-game, 4-win, road trip we’d just returned from. More than once Brady and I looked at the ice and wondered if it was young Levi in the net.
Levi laughs and walks toward me. “He can have them, but he’s the only one allowed to have them.” He stops next to me and smiles with pride. “He looks really good, doesn’t he?”
I nod. Ilya Sokolov is the whole reason we brought Levi to Denver from Calgary a few years ago. To mentor him, watch over him, groom him. Groom him to take over his job. Levi performed those duties to perfection. The man is a class act.
“Well, he can have the shutout record. I’d like to hang onto the minutes for a dozen more years,” he laughs. And in all likelihood, he will. Possibly forever. That consecutive shutout minutes streak stood for seventeen years before Levi smashed it all to bits. As the game continues to evolve, goal scorers continue to improve, it’s getting harder and harder for goalies to get shutouts these days, much less to have a string of them that lasts for weeks and weeks. Of course, the goal scorers out there will tell you the goaltending and equipment for goalies has made it harder for them.
I hear the beeping of a large truck backing up and I glance across the street. I see the cement truck, but that isn’t what sets my pulse racing. Carter’s Bronco pulls into our lot as well. He parks it on the far side, though. He isn’t going to come near me. This is his version of coexisting—avoidance.
“The building looks amazing,” I say, and I mean it. It’s incredible.
“Carter’s ideas are fantastic,” Levi says. He doesn’t say it as a dig at me, just as genuine admiration for Carter’s work.
“Levi,” I say. He turns his attention from the building we’re admiring and places it fully upon me. I exhale and swallow. “Thank you,” I choke out. “For your… discretion.”
He smiles. “Regardless of what you might think of me, Davis,” he winks. “I—”
“What I think of you,” I interject. “Is that you are the best thing that has ever happened to Devyn and Brady… and possibly this organization.”
His eyes widen.
“Don’t you dare tell Brady I said that,” I grin at him. I’m feeling very relaxed with him these days. He is the first person I told absolutely everything, and it’s just such a relief to have someone else taking this weight off my shoulders. I never would have imagined he would be the one helping me find some peace with all of this, and yet here we are. Are we friends now?
He narrows his eyes at me a bit and his lips quirk into a little grin, exposing that dimple. “You are a hard man to read.”
Thank God for that, I think. He smiles and pats my shoulder before heading across the lot toward Carter. Levi Holt in worn out jeans. I revel in the view of that gloriously famous ass — it has its own Instagram account — walking away from me with no small amount of admiration until he reaches another equally magnificent denim-clad ass.
Carter never looks fully my way. He beams at Levi, and they stroll off toward the cement truck and the shiny new addition to our complex they are responsible for.
He hasn’t looked my way because he is working. He is busy. He has other things to focus on. That should be a good thing. I’d made it through the road trip without falling asleep with my dick in my hand and his face in my head every night. I’d been able to focus on work. On our team. On this burgeoning mish-mash of young talent and one aging defenseman who, for the first time, is exhibiting some chinks in his armor. Nic’s game is struggling for the first time since he came to Denver years ago, and he is in complete denial. The man is nearly 40…he’s also been the face of this organization and hockey in Colorado for years. Getting him to step away will not be an easy conversation…nor one I need to have with him or Brady today.
