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)
At which time, she will, once again, deadline-crunch at the last minute. Some cycles really are predictable.
“That’s great! Want to come to the rink with me to celebrate? I’m brain-dead too, and I need to skate off some of this anxiety or I’m afraid I’ll wake up melted tomorrow.”
“Hell no.” She groans. “I plan to sit here and rot.”
“I’ll buy you dinner after. Whatever you want. Even if it’s that horrible taco joint you love so much.”
“Sorry, no sale.” She points to a grocery bag filled with more junk food at her feet. “I plan to rot with snacks.”
“Oh, come on, Alyssa!” I call over my shoulder as I head into my bedroom to change out of my work clothes. “It’d be nice to have a little female companionship there tonight. The hockey guys were particularly feral on Saturday.”
“They always are!” she yells back to me. “They see one woman on ice and forget how to act.”
I toss on a sports bra, leggings, and a hoodie before slipping on my favorite pair of runners. When I walk back into the living room, Alyssa still hasn’t budged an inch, other than to move from cheeseballs to Pringles.
“You don’t feel…weird when you’re at the rink around those guys?” I question. “I mean, they stare. A lot.”
“No.” She shakes her head, but then a beat later, she smiles. “I mostly feel horny. Maybe a little jealous. Rook Slater always looks at you like he wants to chain you to his bedpost and have his wicked way with you, and I’d like to have my wicked way with him. Or his brothers. Any of the Iron Knights will do, really.”
A laugh bursts from my lungs. “He looks at me like he wants to kill me, Al.”
“With orgasms, maybe.” She snorts. “A death I’d happily accept if I were in your position. It’s been a long ass time since I’ve gotten my kitty licked.”
I pick up a pillow and throw it at her. “You’re foul.”
Alyssa laughs her ass off. “More like, I’m sexually repressed because school is turning me into a hermit. I’m definitely going to need to go out this weekend and get some play. Even stray kitties need love.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “That’s exactly what you said two weekends ago after you met a deadline. And the deadline before that. And the deadline before that.”
She shrugs and pops another chip into her mouth. “Patterned desires are indicative of an underlying need, Ky. It’s scientific.”
Alyssa loves hooking up. I, on the other hand, take a more chaste—some might even say picky—approach to sex. Sure, I’ve messed around with guys, but at twenty-four years old, I’ve yet to find the right guy to have actual sex with. Alyssa thinks I’m batshit crazy for holding out this long, but I’ve never second-guessed it. For some reason, I’ve always felt really confident that I’ll know when the time is right.
“You really don’t get skeeved out by them?” I ask again, the thought looping back as a shiver runs down my spine.
“They’re harmless, Ky.” She waves a hand. “Just a bunch of macho cavemen.”
I shrug. I guess she’s right. It’s not as if any of them has ever crossed a line before, and it’s a little unfair of me to project my assumptions onto them without proof.
I grab my duffel from the hallway closet. “Okay, I’m out. I’ll see you later.”
“Have fun!” she calls toward my retreating back. “I’ll just be here, rotting into the couch!”
I snort and head out the door, making the short drive to the rink with my head in the clouds. My mind races with client folders from work and ways to let Gammy down gently and hockey guys and their wandering eyes.
It’s not long before I’m pulling into the parking lot of the rink and cutting the engine, and a horrible sense of not even knowing how I got here snaps me back into focus.
I’ve got to shed some of this stress, or I’m going to be a hunchback by the time I’m thirty.
The sky is pitch black, and the winter air hovers as I lock my car and walk inside, scanning the parking lot as a precaution. When the rink door shuts and locks behind me, restricting access to people with a membership fob of their own, I relax a little.
The rink smells like ice and rubber and sweat in a familiar and grounding way that settles a calm into my bones and reminds me why I dragged my tired ass here in the first place.
I lace up my skates and take off my hoodie, reveling in the relief that hits me as soon as my skates hit the ice.
The rink is blissfully empty, and my heart instantaneously full. There are no hockey guys finishing up a game, no shouts or bodies being violently slammed into the glass, and no expectations or deadlines to be met. There’s just the low hum of the lights overhead and the clean bite of cold air against my lungs as I free myself through the movement from one end of the rink to the other.