Breaking the Deal with My Hockey Bad Boy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Read Out Loud
At the team's season-opening party, Jase's girlfriend Zara reads Melina's steamy fan fiction aloud and hunts for the author, until rival Rhett takes the phone and claims the story is about him.
The first time anyone read my story out loud, it was in a living room full of hockey players.
I was holding a plastic cup of lukewarm punch and trying to look like I belonged.
The Larkfield Wolves threw a party every year the night before the season opened.
Every year I stood by the stat board in the corner and counted who drank what.
I was the assistant, the girl with the clipboard.
Nobody looked at me twice, and that was the only reason I could write what I wrote.
"Okay, everybody, quiet," Zara Holloway called from the middle of the room.
She stood on the coffee table in white boots, holding her phone up.
She was Jase's girlfriend of three weeks, and she had been in my grade at Dunmore High.
She had once passed around a rumor about me that lasted until graduation.
I knew that smile.
It was the smile she wore right before she hurt someone.
"I found something so funny online," she said. "It's a story about this team."
Jase sat on the arm of the couch with a beer, grinning at her.
He is my stepbrother, and he is the captain, and he was grinning.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
"'Off the Boards,'" Zara read. "Chapter thirty-one."
She cleared her throat in a breathy voice.
"'Captain Haverhill pressed the stat girl against the cold locker door and kissed her until she forgot the score.'"
The room went off like a goal horn.
Somebody whistled.
My face went hot all the way to my ears.
I knew every word, because I had typed them at three in the morning in my dorm bed.
"'His hand slid under her jersey, and she said his name like a prayer,'" Zara went on.
"'The scar over his left eyebrow caught the light, and she wanted it against her mouth.'"
The room howled.
Nobody looked at Jase's eyebrow yet.
I saw his hand drift up toward it, and I saw him stop.
"Okay, who is the stat girl?" Zara said, turning in a slow circle. "Somebody here is in love with the Captain."
"That's got to be one of the trainers," someone shouted.
"No, she's got to work for the team," Zara said. "Look at all this detail. The bench, the road trips, the spreadsheets."
She turned and her eyes landed on the stat board.
They landed on me.
My heart beat so hard the punch rippled in the cup.
"Melina," she said sweetly. "You do the spreadsheets, don't you?"
Every head in the room turned.
There was nowhere to go, because my only exit was the kitchen and Zara was between us.
I could have said no.
I could have laughed, shrugged, and walked out into the cold.
But my voice had stopped working, and so had my feet.
Jase was watching me with a strange look on his face.
It was not worry.
It looked closer to curiosity.
"Leave her alone, Zara," he said, but he said it too softly and with a smile.
Zara lifted the phone again.
"'She wanted him to take her right there on the bench, with the whole arena empty and loud.'"
The room hooted.
I felt tears, hot and stupid, behind my eyes.
Then a hand closed around the phone and took it out of her fingers.
Rhett Tremblay had been leaning against the wall by the door the entire time.
He was the Wolves' worst center, in the penalty box and in the papers, with a chipped front tooth and taped knuckles.
He and Jase hadn't spoken in six months.
Rhett looked at the phone, then at Zara, and then he looked at me.
His gray eyes were flat and unreadable.
"You know what's funny?" he said.
His voice cut through the noise like a skate blade.
"This part is about me."
The room went dead quiet.
Zara blinked at him. "You?"
"The Captain's a fake," Rhett said. "That's the Sinclair chapters. The dark rival in the penalty box? That's me, and everybody knows it."
He tucked the phone into her hand.
"She wrote it about me because she's been my girlfriend since August."
My mouth fell open.
Jase's smile slipped, just a quarter of an inch.
Rhett crossed the room in four long strides, and the crowd parted for him.
He stopped in front of me with his shoulder between me and Zara.
"Tell them, Stat Girl," he said quietly.
I had one second to choose.
I could tell the truth and lose everything, including the one person I wasn't allowed to lose.
Or I could lie.
I put my cup on the stat board, grabbed the front of his jersey, and kissed him.
It was supposed to be quick.
His mouth was warm and hard, and he kissed me back.
The room exploded again, but I barely heard it.
His thumb brushed my jaw, and he leaned in to my ear.
"Follow my lead," he murmured. "I know who it's really about."
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