Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 57866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
“You’ll find out what it feels like to not be the golden boy anymore someday,” Colby grumbled. “I just hope I’m there to see it.”
He’d had a really bad game tonight, and Coach had put his foot so far up Colby’s ass it would be sore for days. Unlike me, Colby wasn’t a player who could easily reset himself after a loss.
“Mountain Top?” I asked, proposing a trip to our favorite after-game bar.
He gave me a wry grin. “Yeah. I’ll buy since I’m being such an asshole.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re always an asshole. It’s part of your charm.”
He got in the passenger side of my Range Rover, as usual. We both knew he’d be in no condition to drive by the end of the night and he’d either Uber home or crash at my place.
It was a fifteen-minute drive from the arena to the bar, which I probably could have done with my eyes closed since I’d grown up near Denver. I was lucky to be drafted by my hometown team nine years ago, and I hoped I never played anywhere else.
“We should get in a camping trip before it gets any colder,” Colby said as I drove.
He was from Indiana, and he was still enthralled with the mountains here. In the two years since he’d been traded to Denver, we’d taken around ten backpacking trips. Some were just a couple of nights, but one we’d done in the off-season had been two weeks.
“Yeah, we should take McCall,” I said.
Rowan McCall was our newest teammate, and he and his girlfriend had broken up when he got traded from Tampa. He was entirely focused on hockey, and he needed to get out and live a little.
I parked about a block away from Mountain Top, and on the walk to the bar, snowflakes started swirling in the air around us.
“Bro, it’s October,” Colby said, shaking his head. “Are we skipping fall?”
“I trick or treated in snow boots all the time as a kid.”
We were close to the bar’s entrance when a small group of women came up to us, all of them dressed nicely.
“Hey, it’s the hockey players,” one of them said. “Are you guys going to Mountain Top, too?”
They made it so unbelievably easy. I’d seen these women here before, and it was clear that tonight they weren’t taking any chances on other women getting our attention inside the bar by waiting for us out here.
“We are,” Colby said, his shit mood apparently forgotten. He smiled at one of the women, extended a hand and said, “Hi, I’m Colby Harrison.”
Prick. He’d called dibs on the most attractive woman in the bunch, who told him her name was Lexi. We walked in as a group, and a redhead took my arm, her industrial strength perfume smelling like a freshly scrubbed toilet. Why did women think that shit was sexy?
Everyone knew the Colorado Coyotes players hung out at Mountain Top after games, and every game we played was shown live on the big screens here. After our shit performance tonight, there was no applause for Colby and me when we walked in, apparently the first players to arrive tonight.
“You suck, Harrison!” someone called from the other side of the rustic-themed bar.
I held back a smile as Colby glowered. Our team captain, Dalton, always told us if we walked into Mountain Top after a game, we’d better be prepared to hear about every fuckup we made that night. If we weren’t up for it, there were lots of other places we could go where we wouldn’t be recognized.
“Let’s get some drinks,” Colby muttered, scooting past Lexi much closer than needed.
“Beau!” a female voice called from nearby. “Over here!”
I looked over to find Tiffany, the unofficial leader of the Foxes, waving me down from a nearby table. Making sure to only sigh inwardly, I waved back.
It was cool having a fan club, I reminded myself. The Foxes were a group of about ten female season ticket holders, ranging in age from thirty to maybe seventy, who brought signs to every home game. Some had my face on them, and others had pictures of socks. Shortly after I started playing for the Coyotes, the Foxes had formed and named themselves based on my name—Beau Fox. They chanted “Fox Rocks Our Socks” at games and had started a thing where every time I scored a goal, they each threw a sock onto the ice. It had caught on quickly, and now when I scored, the arena crew had to come out and sweep up hundreds of socks.
“You’ll get ‘em next time!” Tiffany said as I approached their table.
She immediately passed me a Sharpie and pulled down on the collar of her V-neck T-shirt, baring half of her breast. This was their tradition—having me sign their breasts after games.