Page 7 of Pucking My Bad Boy Enemy

I felt something I had absolutely no right to feel about a girl moving away from home. I felt regret but I also felt something close to happy.

Like if I couldn't have her, I could at least have this. She looks so happy starting her new life and I wish I was going with her.

I framed her photo and told myself that was a normal thing a friend does. It's been on the mantle ever since, in my apartment I never let anybody into.

I had no idea she got a job at my team. Nobody here knows she's Cade's sister.

She walked into this building as Margot from ops and nothing else, and I've guarded that secret, because somewhere along the way it became mine.

If the guys knew, they'd chirp her to dust. If they knew the rest, that I've been gone for my best friend's kid sister since before I had the decency to be ashamed of it, they'd dig my grave next to my career and let me climb in.

The truth I don't say out loud, not to my teammates and definitely not to her brother: half the trouble I find lands me in her office, and being with her is the best twenty minutes of my day.

She thinks I'm a wreck who can't stop swinging. Fair. I'm also a man who worked out that a two-minute minor buys me a lecture from the one person alive who looks at me more than a headline worth selling. She sees me. The real Jax Hunter.

When Margot moved to the city, Cade called me. Keep an eye on her, man. She doesn't know anybody, don't let this place eat her alive. I said yes, of course I’ll watch over her.

Best job I've ever had. Also the cruelest, because watching over Margot Callahan and keeping my hands to myself are two full-time positions, and I’m failing badly at one of them.

My phone buzzes. Sol, my agent, who calls about money or catastrophe's, and lately the two share a birthday.

No hello. "Tell me my client is not a meme scored to Puccini."

"It's a good meme. Shows range."

"Well your sponsor, Meridian is getting cold feet." The name lands heavier than anything I took to the boards last night.

Nine figures a year, my face on a watch ad in every airport, the kind of money that means I never become the broke ex-athlete they make documentaries about.

"They want clean, Jax. A man with a girlfriend and a golden retriever and zero videos set to opera. I was told the team's putting somebody on your image. It's good timing. Play nice or the offer walks. And we both know this is real money. This will set you up for life."

Somebody on my image. Every muscle in me goes still. I was told the news. But I don't know who my handler will be. But the call this morning. Margot was talking to Denise. Is it her?

Papers shuffle on his end. "Denise says you have a meeting set up for tonight. Whoever's assigned you're hers now."

You're hers now. My heart starts pounding, I can feel it pounding in my brain.

If Sol heard the sound my heart is making, he'd call an ambulance.

Derek stalks in from the training room, six-foot-six of foul weather, a fresh row of butterfly stitches over one eyebrow and a scowl that could frost the practice glass.

Ryker never misses a thing he isn't supposed to see. "How's Dr. Carter? Did she kiss it and make it better?"

"She threatened to sedate me." Derek lowers himself onto the bench like a drawbridge coming down. "For the season."

Mason doesn't look up from the stick he's taped in a weird sequence, his dirty lucky socks on display, stinking up the locker room.

Our goalies routine is sacred, the universe in his neat little box. And we keep to ourselves. "He took a puck to the face and skated straight to the med room grinning like a kid at recess."

"I wasn't grinning."

"You were absolutely grinning."

Derek says nothing. Every man in this room knows he's been gone for our team’s doctor for a solid year and would sooner eat his own blocker than say it where she might hear.

Takes one to know one. I turn to the photo. Looking at Margot.

I shut my locker and stand, and Ryker clocks whatever crosses my face.