Pucked Up (Pucked 2)

She holds up the phone so I can see her profile. Her avatar is mostly her boobs. Below is a picture of her sitting in Lance’s lap. Up until this point I kinda liked her, in a player-to-fan way. Now she’s just another bunny making chairs out of us.CHAPTER FOUR

FLASHITY FLASH WATCH YO ASSTwenty minutes later, I’ve abandoned the beer, and I’m nursing a mineral water, flipping burgers on the BBQ. This seems to be the safest place to hang out, away from the bunnies in the pool who are buzzed enough to stop protecting their hair. Randy comes over with my phone. “I think you need to check this.”

“Is it working again? I got nothing an hour ago.”

He drops the device in my palm. “Yeah, man, I turned it on, and it’s good to go. You got a shitton of messages. You might want to look at your flight details—you know, to make sure you got the time right.”

That was probably the one thing I forgot to do—turn it on—but I keep this to myself because I don’t need to look like an idiot. Usually I can count on Amber, my Personal Assistant to send me a million messages—most of them audio—so I don’t forget important things like flights and dates and events. But since she’s away on some portaging trip in the middle of nowhere for the next two weeks, I can’t count on her managing my life, which means I have to do it myself.

“That’s a good idea.” I don’t like the look on his face as I pass him the flipper. I key in my code; he’s right about the messages. A lot of them are from Sunny. Some are from Violet. And there are voice mails. Several of them.

“I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Take your time. I’ve got this. ’Sides, I need a break from the bunnies. It’s like mating season.”

I pat him on the back, bypass the kitchen where some of the bunnies are hanging out, and head for the stairs. I hit the spare bedroom on the second floor and lock myself in.

I start with the voice mails. They don’t require reading so they’re easiest to deal with. The first message is from Vi. I hold the phone a foot away from my ear, and I can still hear her screaming. She’s loud when she’s angry.“You’re a fucking asshole! What the shit is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how much shit you’re in? Alex is going to rip your balls off, not that it matters since they’re the size of raisins, and your dick can only be seen by a microscope. You better call me as soon as you get this. You’re fucked. Get ready for the ass-kicking of a century, you yeti bastard!”I have no idea why I’m in so much trouble, but I figure it’s in my best interest to listen to a few more of the messages before I call her back. The time stamp on that one is from early this morning—either two or five. I’m too worried about what’s made her this mad to absorb the numbers.

The next message is from Sunny. It looks like it’s from about an hour ago, if I’m right about it being after two in the afternoon now. I can’t understand a thing she says because it’s garbled. The only words I make out are pictures and bunnies.

Shit. This can’t be good. It has to be a misunderstanding. God knows there’ve been enough of them in the past few months. I can’t seem to stop messing things up with her, no matter how hard I try. That’s been the biggest roadblock to progress with Sunny. People post pictures all the time. Sometimes they don’t even ask before they snap their shots. It’s crazy.

There are two voice mails from my PA, but they can wait. This drama needs to be taken care of first. I flip to the text messages. These are way more of a challenge to go through. I’ve always been a slow reader. The only As I got in high school were in construction and gym.

It wasn’t that I didn’t get what was going on, it just took me seven million times longer to read the same thing everyone else did. It made me look stupid. People assumed because I was a jock I couldn’t be smart, too. So I stopped trying. Since my dad was a scout for the NHL and I had no mom—she died before I was old enough to really know her—teachers tended to be lenient.

I got tutors once I hit sophomore year, especially after I got my teeth knocked out and missed a bunch of classes. Once the new teeth were in and the bite problem fixed, tutors were more than willing to help me. More often than not, there’d be an “exchange” of services. They’d help write my essays, and I’d work on perfecting the art of orgasm by fingers. By senior year there were a lot of girls looking to help me manage my school work. My grades weren’t awesome—they weren’t even moderately decent—but I still managed to secure a hockey scholarship for college, which was all that mattered since that was the only thing I ever wanted to do.