 by Kandi Steiner.jpg)
Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
After one steamy night in Austin, I’m all too aware of the hot, broody defenseman with icy blue eyes and ink sprawling his muscular arms. He was the one my brother assigned to keep me safe — and I had far too much fun tempting him to be the one to put me in danger.
It was just one night of tip-toeing the line, of teasing and flirting and messing around knowing nothing would ever come of it.
But when the universe throws me back into his lap two weeks later and we end up on a secret road trip together, all bets are off.
I can’t help but touch him. I can’t help but pray for him to touch me. And I can’t resist the temptation to test him at every turn.
Jaxson is smart and doesn’t have a death wish. So, like a gentleman, he keeps his hands to himself… the jerk.
But the closer we get on the road and the farther we get from reality, the less those warning signs from my brother seem to deter him.
When we started this road trip, we set a boundary. We promised to keep all arms and legs safely in the friend zone.
Now, miles and miles away from all the reasons we shouldn’t, all I can hear is my heart thumping out the resounding reason we should.
And the way those heated blue eyes watch me, I know I’m not the only one.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
To the weirdos.
Keep that shit up.
We Ride at Dusk
Jaxson
My whole life, I’d been walking in a fog, in a dense and heavy cloud that I thought would stay with me forever.
But one night with her had brought in the sun.
From the time I was born, I knew the plan for my life. That plan revolved around hockey. I had a stick in my hands at the age of three. I was playing on a team by the time I was five. My parents sacrificed family vacations for hockey camps, Christmas presents for hockey gear, and board game or puzzle nights for evenings watching video of every team we could study.
I was meant to live out the dream my father had. The dream that was stolen from him.
And that’s what I did.
Don’t get me wrong — hockey was my dream, too. Nothing filled my soul the way being on the ice did.
But no matter how I performed, I had a lashing waiting at the end of every game from the man whose approval I desired most.
It was impossible for that not to chip away at someone’s spirit.
Before I even realized what was happening, I woke up in the middle of a life that felt like it was being lived by someone else. I was a professional hockey player — a defensemen who made my father passively okay with my performance twenty percent of the time and angry as hell the other eighty. He always felt I could do better. He was always pushing me to do more.
I survived the pressure through numbing myself with whatever substance I had available — mostly, alcohol and women. Fortunately, I’d also found a family in my teammates, especially in the last year.
Most days, they were the only thing keeping my head above water. They gave me a reason to play — not just for my dad, or for me, but for them.
One of my teammates who was like a brother was Vince Tanev, our new winger who’d stepped in like the leader he was born to be.
Which was exactly why I was trying to ignore the fact that I hadn’t thought of much other than his sister since the night he won NHL rookie of the year.
I was at his house now, waiting on our goalie to meet up with us so we could play a round of golf. I hadn’t seen them since our weekend out in Austin two weeks ago, everyone settling into the off-season. But now that I was in Vince’s space, I couldn’t help but think about his sister.
Which was a real fucking problem.
I’d spent the better half of the last fourteen days doing my level best to erase her and that night from my mind. Because it didn’t matter how easily the conversation came, how heartily she’d made me laugh, or how my body had hummed to life with her hips in my hands as we danced in a crowded club.
Grace Tanev was off limits.
She was in a relationship. She was eight years younger than me.
She was my teammate’s little sister.
That was a hurdle not even I could jump.
I didn’t understand why I even wanted to jump it, but she had done something to me. If my life were going according to plan, then she was the nuclear bomb that blew it all to bits.
It was like she’d shaken me from a deep slumber, and now I was wide awake, looking around with a new perspective on life and absolutely zero desire to go back to bed.
I’d done a somewhat decent job of letting the idea of her go. I had resisted the urge to look her up on social media, had ignored the fact that she’d given me her number, that she’d put it in my phone before we said our goodbye.
Because that was exactly what it was — a goodbye.
Until it wasn’t.
“You really want to lose your money that badly, Fabio?” Vince asked Carter with a whistle, shaking his head. We were at his new place on the beach, half of it still littered with boxes, waiting for Will Perry to show up so we could hit our tee time. “You know my game puts yours to shame.”
Carter Fabbri, or Fabio as we called him, had been a rookie this past season, too. Unfortunately, he’d also been sent down to the AHL in March to help them during playoffs. That happened sometimes, if the NHL team could spare a player and the AHL team needed some help. But it always stung like a bitch when you were called down, because it meant one thing was clear: you were expendable.
Still, everything reset after playoffs. Carter had moved to Tampa to show his dedication to the team, and he’d be at camp with the rest of us come September. I wasn’t sure where he’d end up after that, but I hoped he’d be with us.