Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 53212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
I’m not saying I won’t try to find a time to have dinner with her or something soon, but I definitely can’t nail anything down before reading the room with my boss, Martin. He’s pretty chill nine out of twelve months of the year, but as of two Fridays ago, he’s smack-dab in the middle of an existential crisis.
Pretty sure it’s not going to be as simple as me saying “my gammy needs me” while my boss is balls deep in IRS returns. There’s going to have to be sugarcoating and coddling and working through returns at the speed of light to be able to leave the office with enough time to make the forty-five-minute drive to my grandma’s house, have dinner, and be back again before midnight at any point over the next two and a half weeks.
I tuck my phone into my leggings and push off again, forcing my focus back onto the ice. I glide into motion, ready to get back to work on my toe jumps. For some reason, they’re always my sloppiest, and I find starting with them when my energy is highest is the most productive.
I turn and burn around the outside of the rink, spinning around and skating backward for half the loop before spinning forward again.
But still, I’m not alone.
Across the rink, Holland and a few of the Fighting Fangs lean against the plexiglass, out of their gear and watching me without remorse. A quick glance confirms that the trio of Slater brothers has made its way to the locker room, and shockingly, in their absence, my tension over being watched only amplifies.
I try to concentrate on my form instead of on the ogling men, but the vulnerability won’t leave. I’m in a sports bra and leggings, and the weight of all these eyes makes me feel like I’m in a fishbowl.
Like I’m being measured and judged and calculated somehow. I don’t understand it, but it doesn’t feel good.
It’s probably ridiculous. I’m probably being ridiculous. I mean, this is a public rink in a sleepy town, and these are a bunch of hockey dudes locking in on the only woman they can.
But…the unease won’t leave.
Ugh.
Why are these men so damn starved for female viewing? Don’t they know there’s free porn on the internet?
Rook
“You’re real subtle tonight, Rook,” my younger brother Kane says. “Real calm, too.”
“Oh yeah,” Calloway, the baby brother of our macho brood, chimes in. “Very zen. Nothing says inner peace like skating like you want to murder the ice every time she’s in the building. Though, I do wonder if there’s a slightly better approach you could utilize. Maybe a little…wooing, perhaps?”
I groan. “Shut the hell up.”
Kane laughs his ass off, thrilled to have gotten a reaction, and I yank the guards over my blades, shoving them into my bag harder than necessary.
“It’s not like that,” I continue. “And you know it.”
“Oh, we know,” Calloway says, peeling off his pads. He’s always the calmest one out of the three of us. Where Kane is the jokester and I’m what they’d probably call the asshole, Cal is the closest to Buddha a vampire will ever get. “You watch her like a fucking hawk whenever she’s near, bro. Kind of makes your…circumstances…hard to ignore.”
I’m the oldest of the Slater brothers, but the way these bastards are calling me out, you’d think the sibling hierarchy doesn’t exist. Still, I find myself giving in to their nosiness.
“It doesn’t fucking matter anyway. She loathes me,” I snap. “Every time I open my mouth, she looks like she’s bracing for impact.”
“That’s because you look like you’re preparing to commit a felony,” Kane says. “You ever try a smile? A wink, perhaps? Anything other than a sneer would do.”
I zip my bag and stand. My muscles are tight as shit from all the adrenaline of the game and the awkward as fuck interaction with the female topic of the hour, and it’s making my blood feel a thousand degrees hotter than it should even be capable of feeling.
Unfortunately, Kane isn’t wrong. I look miserable because I am miserable.
One day, I was fine—I was a regular guy with a regular job and a regular set of annoying-as-fuck brothers with a special, but rarely inconvenient, biological makeup—and the next, I was a prisoner in my own body.
The second Kylie Moon stepped onto the ice a week ago—the day after I turned twenty-eight—a visceral, bone-deep reaction that locked all my senses in on her snapped into place and hasn’t left since. As if her presence has the power to control me. I thought the lore I’d read about us and our ancestry and the way our love works was bullshit—that if I hated the idea of it, it wouldn’t apply to me.
Turns out, it’s not bullshit, and no matter how much I’ve tried to convince myself that I’d be different or exempt, I’m not.