Lucky Score (The Hawkeyes Hockey Series Book 6)

I wake to the sound of one of our phones pinging with messages and Brynn peacefully asleep in the crook of my arm with only a pair of cotton panties on. She convinced me that she can’t sleep completely naked, though that would be my preference. If I can keep her naked for the rest of the time she’s in Mexico, I have every intention of making it happen.

At a quick glance, the clock in her room says that it’s five in the morning. We’ve been asleep for about an hour, but fully sated and and feeling little raw after our night last night.

I never could get her to tell me her top number but the look on her face after we hit five this morning, told me that I was somewhere in the ballpark.

Her phone dings, and though I’m not one to look at other people’s phones, it’s bright and captures my attention.

Fiancé… reads as the incoming text.

Fiancé: I’m sorry for how I reacted today…

And then another one hits.

Fiancé: I miss you. Maybe I should fly out…

What the fuck?

She has a fiancé?

Brynn’s sleepy eyes open as she looks behind her at her phone sitting on the bedside table where she put it before we fell asleep last night.

I can see the moment her eyes widen and then her eyes flash back over at me.

She knows I just read her text.

I watch as the blood drains from her face. She’s now the ghostly gray color she was when I opened the door to find her trying to access my house four days ago, instead of the flush cheeks she just had after the orgasms I just gave her.

‘You have a fiancé?’ I ask, demanding the answer.

‘It’s not what it looks like,’ she says in a panic.

She sits up quickly to grab at her phone. I take the opportunity to pull my arm back from her and step out of bed in my boxers. Turns out that putting on underwear wasn’t as bad of an idea as I thought.

Now I’m hovering over the queen-sized guest bed, wondering how the hell I didn’t see this coming.

‘Who the hell is that? When were you planning on telling me? Over pancakes and eggs the morning after I fucked you all night?’

My hands pinch at my hips, trying to keep myself calm.

‘Seven, I’m sorry…’ she starts.

Jesus, that’s not a good start.

‘It’s sort of complicated,’ she says.

Is that the best excuse she’s got?

‘It’s complicated? Your ‘fiancé’ is texting you while you’re naked in bed with me. What’s so complicated about that?’

Not that any excuse right now would make a difference. I’ve heard them all from Josslin and my family. They thought they could reason with me about why I should have been okay with Josslin and Eli’s betrayal.

‘I’m not cheating on him. We’re allowed to see other people,’ she says, naked and scrambling to get closer to me.

I take another step back away from the bed and she reads the situation perfectly now.

Don’t come near me.

‘Maybe I was wrong to step in between you and that asshole groom and his friends? Maybe that’s closer to your type. I’m sorry if I got in the way.’

I usually go silent when bad shit happens.

I’d rather internalize it all until I suffocate it to death so it has no air to survive, and then I move on. If you tell people about your problems, they can live somewhere else and come back whenever they choose to bite you in the ass again, but I can’t stay silent this time.

‘We’re not engaged anymore. I swear I’m not a cheater. He’s sleeping with someone in an apartment in Australia right now. Please believe me.’

It would be easier if he wasn’t in her phone– listed as fiancé.

‘I’d believe you if you were telling me the truth, but that explanation doesn’t sound complicated at all. And by the looks of your contact information, you’re still engaged. So what part of the story are you leaving out?’

She lets out a sigh and slumps back into the bed, pulling the blanket up to her chest to cover herself.

‘Daniel and I agreed to take a break while he went to Australia to help open a new law firm. He thinks that going on this trip will help him make partner, and we thought that doing long distance would be too stressful on our relationship. The agreement is that we get back together when he gets home after eight months apart, which is three weeks from now,’ she turns to look at me again. ‘But we’re not together right now, and he’s been dating this entire time.’

She’s right; this shit is complicated and sounds like the kind of unnecessary drama I try to stay miles away from. Unfortunately, a little over an hour ago, I had my cock buried deep inside of her and my tongue down her throat. I’m a little more invested in this situation than I’d like to be.

‘And what about you? Have you been with anyone else since your break?’ I ask, not sure what I want her answer to be.

Does it matter?

Either way we’re done before we ever started.

‘No, you’re the first and I swear I didn’t think anything was going to happen between us but then you kissed me in the parking lot and things just escalated. You’ve been avoiding me ever since I got here. It’s not like you’ve put in an effort to get to know me over breakfast. I never thought we’d end up here,’ she says, motioning to the bed.

She’s right—we don’t know anything about each other. I can’t blame her for not telling me before the kiss. My intentions from the moment she showed up on my porch were to not  get to know her. She didn’t owe me her life story. But she had time between the kiss outside of Scallywag’s and the drive back to my place, where we spent the night together.

‘You could have said something when I pinned you against the building and asked you how far I could go.’

She nods slowly.

‘I’m sorry. You took me off guard. I thought I was nothing more than a nuisance to you until you kissed me out front. Then everything happened so fast and being in your arms felt so good. I should have found a way to tell you before we took it any further tonight. But it’s been over eight years since I’ve had an orgasm—’

She stops immediately when she realizes what she just admitted. She and I both look at each other with equal looks of shock on our faces.

‘Did you just say that you haven’t had an orgasm in eight years? How is that physically possible?’

She looks down at her hands and folds them together nervously in her lap.

‘I shouldn’t have told you that. It’s not relevant to our situation, but my agent booked me on this trip to finish my manuscript and to find someone to have a fling with during my breakup to see if maybe…’

‘If maybe your incompetent ex-fiancé is the reason why you’re not getting off,’ I say, finishing her sentence.

Or at least finish it the way it should have ended.

How in the hell does a man you’ve been with for eight years not know how to give you an orgasm?

The better question is, why would she have agreed to marry someone like that in the first place?

‘It’s not his fault. I had a traumatic experience years ago during a tornado that ripped through our college campus, and ever since then, I haven’t been able to get off without sex aids,’ she covers her face after she blurts it out. ‘I didn’t mean to tell you that either.’

What the hell is happening to me? I’ve never given any other woman this much time to explain her situation to me but the more she tells me, the more complicated her situation is becoming.

She pulls her phone up and opens it.

I look to find her almost in tears.

‘See. I swear I’m not lying to you.’

She turns her phone around for me to see the illuminated screen.

Fiancé: The woman here means nothing to me but it’s too late to kick her out of the apartment and she’s already asleep. It would be an asshole thing to do.

Fiance: And you can’t be mad at me; we agreed to sleep with other people. And you know that I need this. I need reassurance that it’s not my fault that you can’t orgasm during sex. And now that I know I’m not the one to blame, and I can commit to a lifetime with you.

I just about grab her phone and huck it out my bedroom window, but this isn’t my relationship; it’s hers. I’ve already had a manipulative ex who dumped me. Thankfully she did it before it was too late and I was locked in for life. Josslin did me a favor in the end. However, it cost me my entire family in the process.

Brynn’s ex has a firm enough pull on her to convince her to let him fuck his way through Australia and keep her on the hook until he gets home. And that the asshole is blaming her for something that should be a team effort. I’m not sure how to feel about this situation anymore.

Then, my stomach turns uncomfortably when a question comes to mind.

‘I need you to be honest,’ I ask her.

‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know as long as you keep talking to me.’

I can’t promise that I’ll keep talking. It’s not my strong suit, but I haven’t walked away yet.

‘Did you fake it?’

‘With him?’ she asks, her eyebrows drawn together.

‘No,’ I say. I don’t give a shit about her worthless ex-fiancé. ‘Just now. With me.’

All five times…

She rolls her eyes.

‘Oh God… not you too.’

If she thinks that my ego is that delicate, then we have a problem.

‘I just want to know if you were faking all those orgasms to appease me. Because if you didn’t fake it, then maybe your agent is right. Maybe the guy isn’t right for you,’ I say, bending over to pick up a t-shirt off the floor.

She watches me pull my shirt over my head and pull it down my torso.

‘Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I didn’t fake it with you. Then what? Daniel and I break up after being together for eight years just because I don’t get off from sex with him? How do you throw all those years away? Sex isn’t everything, right? What if there’s still love there?’

Even after everything that she just told me, hearing her say that she still loves him makes my stomach turn. Maybe because his texts prove that he doesn’t care about her like she thinks he does, or maybe because there’s a flicker of jealousy in me that I wish wasn’t there.

If I had a choice, I’d feel nothing at all.

What did I actually think was going to happen between us after tonight?

‘I don’t know. I guess this is something you two will have to work out,’ I turn and head for my bedroom door. ‘I’m going to take a shower and wash off. It would be better if you weren’t in my room when I get out,’ I say, making sure that she knows this is where our conversation ends.

I’m not interested in helping her work out her sex life with another man. That’s something she needs to figure out herself.

I keep walking towards the bathroom, and then I hear her jump off the bed and run to the door frame.

‘I didn’t fake it,’ she blurts out right before I enter the bathroom.

I turn to look over my shoulder.

She’s standing there, wrapped in my sheet, her hair is a tangled mess from our night together and as painfully beautiful as ever.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘I didn’t fake it tonight… with you. I just thought you should know.’

I should be relieved that I gave her more than her fiancé has in eight years, but instead, I feel like an idiot. I gave into something I knew I shouldn’t and it turned out the way that I knew it would.

I’ve spent the last nineteen years trying to avoid complications like this, and until Brynn, I was doing a damn good job.

‘Then maybe you should find someone else to explore that further with before your fiancé gets back,’ I say.

‘Someone other than me.’

Then I walk into the bathroom and shut the door.