Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 83190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Blanc lightly chortles under his breath prior to poking, “You two want me to fuck off for a few or…?”
The faintest hint of red hits her cheeks on a headshake. “How about we talk about your team building activity ideas that need to fuck off for a bit more? Like a long ass hike? You tryin’ to give the boys a fucking heat stroke? It’s Texas!”
Blanc laughs a little louder and drops back onto the bench in tandem with Harlow.
I prepare to wheel the shit out of the way when Peck extends his glove covered fist my direction for a bump that he receives without hesitation. “Thanks, Bricks.”
“No prob, Peck.”
Another hour or so of me cleaning up shavings passes in what feels like a flash. Unlike Page who’s slow and spends more time running his fucking mouth than doing shit on his skates, Peck and Kondelik fucking push themselves to their limits. Breaking doesn’t seem to be a notion Peck’s willing to entertain and something about his relentlessness inspires the other player to match his intensity.
Fuck, it even has me more devoted to anticipating their needs versus him vocalizing them.
Towards the end of my clean up duty, Harlow instructs for me to meet her back out here, most likely on the bench where she probably won’t have moved considering she’s still studying draft predictions as though her life depends on it.
It doesn’t.
But her first season as GM just might.
Post my closing procedures, I return to the home team area where she’s still clearly lost in a bottle of her own thoughts and lean my frame against the edge rather than plop down beside her. “You wanna talk about what’s stressing you out?”
Harlow doesn’t tear her stare away from the space between her feet. “Nope.”
I respectfully nod prior to trying another route for conversation. “The draft?”
“Fuck no.”
“World War Wardrobe?”
The title successfully receives a grin and her gaze. “Absolutely. Fucking. Not.”
“At least I got you smiling.”
She tries to push the expression away at the same time she diverts her eyes to the opposite end of where she’s sitting. “Believe it or not this is where I first learned to walk.”
“Oh, I believe that hundo p.”
“According to Dad,” her smirk loses the battle of being seen as she points, “he parked me right there. Plopped me down and expected me to stay while he was chewing out a player—Nikola Diggs, a mouthy right wing—right here.” Harlow jabs her finger towards the space between her feet she had previously been staring at before looking up at me. “Mom was at rehearsal-”
“For?”
“She used to be a glamorous, world-famous ballerina.”
“And now?”
“Now, she merely just talks about when she used to be one while sucking money from men who are unafraid to help her remain in her cushioned lifestyle.”
The disdain she describes her mother with keeps me from asking any further questions.
“Any fucking way…,” her cheerfulness resumes, “she who would suck a bag of dicks for a new Prada bag was at rehearsal, my nanny Imogen was sick with the flu, and since both my grandparents were dead and both my parents were only children, Dad had no choice but to bring me to work that day. Why he thought sitting me way the fuck over there while he worked way the fuck over here was a top cheddar idea I’ll never know.”
Lightly chuckling gets her doing the same.
“I dropped down to my little chubby legs-”
“You were a chubby baby?”
“I was a chubby one year old.”
“Still pretty much a baby.”
“Me and my chubby little one year old legs used the edge of this bench—okay not this bench because it’s been replaced since then—and waddled my ass over here to take place in whatever conversation was happening.”
More chuckles bounce my entire frame as I shake my head. “You just been right underneath him from the jump, yeah?”
“Fuck yeah,” she giggles, pride pumping undeniably through her tone. “And the day I learned to walk was the day he put skates on me. No lie. Stelio Armstrong, a retired defenseman from that era, still tells that story every time he sees me.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Dad’s funeral.”
Sorrow swiftly shifts itself into the moment commanding stiff and uncomfortable silence that I don’t want to succumb to.
No.
I want Harlow fucking talking.
And smiling.
And fucking laughing at the shit I don’t know or with me about something I’ve said.
I don’t like her sad.
I don’t like her hurting and not being able to do dick to stop it.
She’s basically my goal and I’m the tender ready to do whatever, whenever to stop anything from harming her.
“You really love it here,” I quietly coo, hoping it coaxes her into speaking again.
“This place is fucking home, babe.”
It’s impossible to keep the pounding in my chest from increasing over a random term of endearment being used.