AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Already?” I ask. “I thought you had a couple of weeks yet.” Damn, I don’t want to turn all soft here, but I thought I had a couple of weeks left with Carter. Losing my team was rough but having this one-on-one time to practice with someone I respected, well, I hate to admit that I have kind of been enjoying the torture.
Carter passes me a puck, and I pass it right back to him. “Yeah, well, the Renegades have a summer camp. They called me up early. Sylvia, she was ready, so that’s it. We’re out.”
Just like that. I wonder if Sylvia mentioned it to Gia. Damn. Astria’s losing a friend too. We’re all losing somebody here, and it sucks.
“Who will berate me every morning before breakfast? I might develop a complex.” I rub my chest over my pads and smile like it doesn’t bother me, but fuck if I’m not a little sad about it.
Tolar stops skating. He taps his stick on the ice. “Listen, there’s chatter about Henegan.”
“Logan Henegan?”
Logan Henegan is the goaltender for the Renegades, and a damn good one. I’ve studied him for years. I think I have one of his jerseys back home somewhere at moms with some of my old stuff.
“Yeah, he’s favoring his left knee.”
“The one he injured last season?”
Henegan went down for two games last season. Rumor was that he’d injured his knee, but he came back without needing surgery and played out the remainder of the season, helping to lead the Renegades to the cup. They didn’t win, but they came damn close.
“One and the same. He’s pushing thirty.” He says it like thirty is old, and I guess it is in hockey years.
“He’s still young.” Hell, I feel older than thirty most days. Between the shit we put our bodies through for the sport and the pressure of raising a family. Life has a way of aging you.
“I’m just saying. When I get there. I might slip your socials to a few people.”
My social media accounts. I smile to myself. I didn’t even have a Facebook page two months ago. Gia’s idea was genius. She’s made it her mission to get me in front of the scouts one way or another. If I can’t play for them, she’ll force them to see me.
I’m tweeting and tocking and booking and probably ten more things I don’t know anything about. She’s running it all, updating my accounts multiple times a day with photos and videos of me practicing. She does it in between building her own business, raising our daughter, and still attending classes of her own. I don’t know how she has time to do it all.
She even had my mom send some old clips she had of me back in high school. She swears it’s working. She gets excited to tell me about interactions we’re getting and new followers we’re gaining every day. I don’t understand half of it, and I’m still not entirely sure how it’s going to help my hockey career, but I trust her. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement when I see how excited she is about all of it.
She’s back behind her camera again daily. She’s in her element and she’s thriving.
“I knew you were sweet on me, Tolar.” I lift my chin in his direction and smile at him.
“That’s what your mom said.” He adds with a grunt, and skates around me, leaving me to clean up the remaining pucks.
“Fucking asshole, you’d be lucky to have my mom,” I yell after him as he heads off the ice.
He turns just as he steps off the ice and yells back at me. “Don’t give up. Okay? You’re the best damn goalie I’ve ever played with, and you’ve been given a shit hand. Don’t give up, and don’t get yourself killed in the process.”
Right. Just don’t fucking die. Easy enough.
∞∞∞
Gia climbs over me on the bed and straddles my chest. “Damien, oh my God, Damien look at this.” She shoves her phone in my face, but I have a hard time seeing anything other than the miles and miles of chocolate brown skin framing either side of my hips as her silky sleep shorts ride up her thighs and leave very little to the imagination.
“What am I looking at babe?” I try to focus on her phone, I truly do, but it’s hard to concentrate when she’s riding my chest like a fucking pony at the county fair. Are these shorts new?
“You’re going viral!” She hops up and down on my bare chest with her phone in her hand, and my cock immediately hardens. Bam, zero to sixty just like that.
“Gia, baby, fuck. You’ve got to stop bouncing like that and give me a second.” I take her hips in my hands and still her movements. It does nothing for my hard-on, but it does allow me to see the screen of her phone without all the bouncing and jerking around.
“Oh, whoops,” she blushes, and her cheeks darken with warmth. She’s so damn cute sometimes it hurts.
I study the screen in her hand. “Okay, tell me what it is that I’m looking at exactly.” I take the phone from her and watch what appears to be my entire hockey career consolidated into a three-minute video. Hell, I’ll be the first to admit it’s pretty cool. I look damn good.
“So, your mom sent me those videos of you from high school. I snagged some video footage from the Ram’s YouTube channel. Then, I took some of the footage I recorded during one of your practices last week. I mashed them all up together using this new program I’ve been trying out, and I put that video to a trending sound then shazam you’re blowing up.” She rambles, her words running together, in all of her excitement.
