Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kon
I was distracted when I got to practice, thinking about seeing Lucy again tonight. Something had shifted between us that night at her house, and I knew she felt it too or she wouldn’t have invited me back. I didn’t know what to do about it since I wasn’t interested in anything beyond sex and she was leaving town anyway, but the pull was too strong to ignore. There was something there, and the way her body had fit against mine made me remember what it was like to have a woman in my life.
I’d never been one of those guys who got distracted by women. Back in Russia, my life had been rough so I ran with an even tougher crowd. Both male and female. Some of the girls in my inner circle had been prostitutes because spreading their legs was the only way they could earn enough money to eat. It wasn’t like it was here in the US, where you could get a job at McDonald’s and sleep on your friend’s couch. Where I came from, there were no McDonald’s and barely enough couches for the people who lived there, much less anyone else.
There was no shame in admitting I’d slept with those girls. We’d all needed kindness in our lives, and sometimes that was the only way to get it. There had been no money in those exchanges. It had been about survival. And finding tiny moments of pleasure wherever and however you could get it. We’d understood each other. Been there for each other. Helped each other. Eventually, one of those women had saved me.
Svetlana.
Sweet, beautiful, and horribly abused, she’d risked everything to save my life one night. Then it had been up to me to take care of her. And I had. I’d made her my girlfriend and eventually brought her to America with me. We’d had a good life even if we hadn’t been in love the way we should have been. In retrospect, I understood how unhealthy our relationship had been. Instead of a bond that grew from love and respect, ours had been forged from mutual history, need, and pain. We’d understood that we were probably too broken to love anyone but each other and had settled into what I’d thought was something good. The money I made and the life we’d been building here in the US would give us a strong, comfortable future.
Something neither of us had ever dared to imagine for ourselves.
That she would throw it away for a prick like Keegan Miller was beyond me.
Even now that she was long gone, I couldn’t understand why she’d picked him. If she’d fallen for almost any other of my teammates, I would’ve been hurt but it would make sense. Nash and Boone and most of the others were stellar human beings who would have made her happy, probably taken even better care of her than I had. Except, of course, those guys would never have fooled around with a teammate’s girlfriend.
Irony at its finest.
I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on around me and as I got to my locker to change, I spotted Boone sitting on a bench, not moving. He looked…upset? I wasn’t sure, because aside from something serious like death, we didn’t bring personal problems to practice. Ever. That was how we rolled in hockey, and it had been no different in Russia or the other team I’d played for here in North America.
I walked over and kicked his shoe. “What is wrong with you?”
He didn’t move. I was about to give him a playful shove when he whispered, “She said no.”
His voice was so quiet, it took a second for his words to register. “What?”
He motioned with his hand, as if shooing me away. “Just let me brood. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
I wanted to say something, but I wasn’t sure what. “You dodged a bullet” didn’t seem prudent so I merely nodded and walked to my locker and opened it.
Nash caught my eye and gave me a questioning look. I didn’t want to say anything, so I held up my left hand, pointed to my ring finger, and then made a slashing motion across my throat with my other hand. His eyebrows rose in surprise, and he glanced at Boone. He seemed to respect Boone’s need for silence, though, and gave me a curt nod before beginning to undress.
More guys came in, chattering away, and Boone finally got up and started pulling off his street clothes.
Christ. I wasn’t the touchy-feely type. That was Wes’s job most of the time. But Wes didn’t know what had happened and Boone was one of my best friends. I didn’t do emotions, but I had to suck it up and at the very least do friendship. He’d been there for me when Svetlana had blown up my life.