Alex (Cold Fury Hockey 1)

“I’m not a f**king alcoholic,” I grit out.

“I never said you were an alcoholic,” she assures me softly. “But yet you let alcohol interfere with something that was important. I don’t know you, Alex, but what I’ve seen so far…I’m worried. ”

Son of a bitch.

Her words cause anger to suffuse through me, and at the same time, a tiny thread of guilt filters in. It’s an emotion that I’ve felt plenty in my lifetime, my dad always making me feel terrible about myself. Rather than make me take stock of the fact that okay, maybe it wasn’t cool to cancel a meeting because I was hungover, it causes me to get even angrier. Because maybe the truth is hitting a little too close to home. If there’s one thing that will cause me to go apeshit, it’s making a comparison between me and my father. Suggest that we have anything in common, a tiny similarity, and I will tear you a new one.

“It is none of your f**king business what I do in my private time, as long as it’s not publicly hurting our work together. I went out with a teammate and I tied one on. I don’t do it often, but I won’t apologize for it and I won’t sit here and listen to you berate me for it. ”

“I wasn’t berating you,” she says quietly…apologetically. “I’m sorry if you felt that way. ”

Fucking great.

Her sympathetic words cause more guilt to pour through me, and now anger directed at myself because I let the baggage of my childhood mesh with my adulthood to create new baggage. My chest constricts painfully and I feel the sudden need to get some fresh air. Grabbing my coat, I slide out of the booth. Fishing in my wallet, I pull a fifty-dollar bill out and throw it on the table. “I have to get going. ”

“Alex, wait,” she says, but I’m already turning away.

“Please,” she calls out one more time and I almost stop…almost.

Then I’m pushing my way through the crowd and out the door.

By the time I arrive home, most of my anger is gone but I’m left with a sea of culpability churning in my stomach. I briefly consider calling Sutton to apologize, but it’s late so I don’t bother. Besides, I’m not sure exactly what I’d say. It’s not in my nature to apologize, having long ago convinced myself that all the wrongs in my world are not my fault. It was the only way I knew how to protect myself against the monstrosity that was my father—by laying all those wrongs on his doorstep.

I slowly walk up the steps to my second-floor apartment, my suit coat slung over my shoulder. When I reach the top, the hair rises on the back of my neck, knowing immediately that someone stands outside my door. My eyes lift and anger flushes through me hot again.

“I told you not to come here again uninvited,” I tell Cassie, noting the confident way she stands leaning up against my door.

She pushes away and saunters up to me. “You don’t mean that and please don’t make me prove you wrong. It won’t help your self-esteem. ”

I watch, almost in a daze as her hands reach toward my crotch, oddly disgusted by the long, red nails she sports. Sutton’s, I noticed, were short and clear, her hands looking as soft as satin.

Just before Cassie makes contact with my belt buckle, I snap out of it and push her hands away, taking a step back from her for good measure. “Get out of here, Cass. I’m not interested. ”

She laughs hoarsely, taking another step toward me, completely disbelieving every word I’ve said. I’m sure that’s because every other time she’s done this, I’ve capitulated and lost myself in an orgasmic stupor with her. “Let’s go inside, baby. I’ll make you feel good. You know I will. ”

Stepping past her, I walk up to my apartment door and unlock it. I push the door open and step inside, turning abruptly to stop her stride because I know she’s walking right behind me.

“We’re done,” I tell her simply, noticing just for the briefest of moments that her eyes go wide and uncertain. But that’s all I see because I close the door in her face and lock it.

Pressing my forehead against the cool wood, I stand there for a second but then she’s kicking at the door, yelling from the other side. “You son of a bitch! You can’t just cast me aside like that!”

I turn away and head back toward my bedroom. Cassie stays out there, banging on the door and cursing at me. I ignore her, taking my clothes off and crawling into bed. I hear one of my neighbors open his door and yell at her to shut up. It doesn’t even slow her down and she renews her efforts to kick and punch at my door.

Finally, I hear another neighbor yell, “I’m calling the cops!” and that seems to do the trick. She goes absolutely silent and then I don’t hear anything else. I assume she’s left but I in no way believe that’s the last I’ll hear from her. In fact, I’m sure I’ll get an earful from Kyle tomorrow at practice, but I’ll deal with that then.

I roll over on my side, staring out into the dark of my bedroom. I let my mind clear and think of Sutton. I wonder to myself, how can this woman cause my heart to squeeze in pleasure one moment, and become black with anger the next? Is she purposely playing my emotions, or is she truly able to see through to my demons and confront them?

She makes me uncomfortable…the clarity with which she seems to see me.

She makes me curious as to what else she might see.

She makes me want…something, but I’m not sure what.

Chapter 8

Sutton

Oh, Mara…please stay strong, girl.

That’s the mantra I keep repeating in my head as I type notes in her file. I just hung up the phone with her a few minutes ago, and she’s not doing well. Now that she’s past the fear of her overdose, she’s fixating on the rush she got from the crank. She talked to me, almost longingly, of how great the euphoria felt to her. It broke my heart when she told me that she knows it felt so good because her life is so painful. It was an escape from having parents so mired in their own drug addiction that they don’t have anything left to give to their only daughter.

I urged her to come in to talk to me but she refused, and there’s not much I can do at this point. My talks with her are confidential, so I can’t reach out to anyone else for help. I certainly can’t reach out to her parents, who are the root cause of her issues. All I can do, and this is what is frustrating about my job, is talk to her, support her and pray to God she stays strong. I’m always terrified I’ll say the wrong thing. Even with all my training, and having lived through this stuff myself, I’m always painfully weighing my words and trying to gauge if I’m going too far, or maybe not far enough. It’s a constant battle with myself, wondering if I’m doing right by my kids, or could potentially say the wrong thing that will launch them into a spiral. I have many sleepless nights because I can never let it go when I get home.

Tonight will be one of those nights, I can tell.

Pushing back from my computer, I lean back in my squeaky chair and rub the bridge of my nose. I’m almost thankful for the distraction Mara provided me this morning, because I had been obsessing about Alex since that disaster of a meeting last night. Not for the first time in my professional career, I question myself. I’m thinking maybe I went a little too far with him last night, voicing a concern that maybe shouldn’t have been a concern at all.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a hangover. God knows I’ve had my share. And based on Alex’s reaction to me last night, I get the feeling that the subject of alcoholism or addiction in some form may be hitting close to home. It’s just a guess—a gut instinct; maybe I’m even recognizing something in him that I see in myself or in the kids I counsel. There’s definitely something there.

But, if I’m completely honest with myself, I may not have been so much worried about Alex’s use of alcohol as I had been a bit angry that he blew me off because he had a hangover. So that took this whole screwed-up scenario in my head and moved it from a professional consideration to a personal one, and I have no business thinking about Alex in a personal light at all.

/> Which is easier said than done, because there is something about him that absolutely fascinates and appeals to me as a woman. Which makes me want to lean forward and bang my head on my desk to chase those thoughts away, because it is absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong to look at him like that.

First, Alex and I are working together on a professional matter—a matter that is extremely important to me—and I need to maintain focus. On top of that, I was chosen for this project by my boss and I need to do a good job so that it boosts my career.

Pushing up out of my chair, I walk to the window that overlooks the small parking lot at the rear of our building. Resting my hands on the ledge, I lean my forehead against the cool glass and think about the most important reason I need to put Alex Crossman far from my mind.

It’s because I may have a chance to rekindle something with Brandon. We’re going to meet for dinner tonight, and this came on the heels of a text from Brandon saying he wanted to have “a serious discussion about our future together. ” That text should have made me sigh with happiness but, sadly, I just felt a little “meh. ”

The fact that I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other concerning Brandon has me perplexed. I keep expecting the four years of happiness we had will come washing back over me. Instead, it feels like such a distant memory that it makes me question if what we had was really all that great. I’m sure it was—I mean great for that time in my life. Young, in college, experiencing first love. But in just the short year we were apart, I’ve become different.

I’ve started my career, working long hours with little monetary reward, having nothing to show for my efforts, other than a few kids I’m able to bring back from the brink of destruction. Yet I live for those moments and they fuel me. I’ve learned to take care of myself. I’ve bought a home and I’ve completed many renovations to it all on my own. And it turns out I’m a pretty decent money manager, because after I pay all of my bills I even manage to put away some money into my savings account.

In other words, I’ve grown up a lot since Brandon and I broke up and I find that the security he once offered me no longer has the same allure.

All of these things rage through my mind, and because I’m so different, I have to wonder what it is exactly that Brandon can offer me. I have to wonder, why am I not feeling a strong pull to him? To the man I once loved?

I don’t think he broke me, because I never felt broken after we were over. I don’t think I’m bitter or angry with him. Again, fond feelings abound.

The feeling I’m getting is that maybe he’s just not enough for me right now, and that saddens me, because Brandon is truly a good man.

The more I think about it, Brandon has spent the past year living large and making the most of his single life. He’s probably been with countless women and enjoyed, to some extent, having no responsibilities to a committed relationship. I don’t begrudge him that. He was honest with me as to what he needed, and I have to give him points for not cheating on me.

But it makes me wonder…have I been missing something?

So yeah, I’m really questioning this whole Brandon thing and whether it’s smart to open myself back up to him. Shelley and I talked about it last night, and she’s never been a Brandon fan after he dumped me. She’s obviously pushing me to stay far away from him.

I also made the mistake of telling her about Alex last night after I got home and called her, and she now has it in her head that I need to be concentrating my efforts there. That, of course, was after she Googled him and saw his picture since, like me, she knows nothing about hockey.

Holy shit. Look at this pic I found of Alex, she had texted me just this morning along with a photo of him taken while he was running outside. It looked like a professional shot because the lighting was perfect and he was staring straight into the camera with his blue eyes shimmering in the sun. He was wearing only a pair of running shorts that came to mid-thigh, and his chest was bare but slicked with sweat. He was carrying his iPod in one hand and had his earbuds in. Slightly damp with sweat, his hair was sticking to his forehead and temples while the longer black locks bounced with his stride.