Gametime: A Moo U Hockey Romance by Jami Davenport (shoe dog free ebook txt) 📗

survival mechanism that became destructive. After a few years of counseling, I’d learned to deal with pain and adversity rather than denying them. Here I was falling back into that mode. If I ignored our problems, they’d go away.

We both dropped the subject of our future for the next half hour, talking about classes, finals coming up, and Christmas break plans.

After drinking a few beers and gorging on wings, Paxton paid the bill.

“Do you want to come back to the dorm with me?” I asked hopefully.

He considered my invitation for way too long, and I rubbed my upset stomach under the table, then he nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’d like that. It might be a while before we can get together again with everything we have going on.”

We fucked that night with hungry desperation, as if somehow we knew deep down we might never be together again. A dark cloud hung over us. Paxton didn’t stay the night but left by midnight, claiming again that he was tired. He’d never been tired before when it’d come to us, and I knew he wasn’t now.

I wasn’t able to shake the sense of this being the beginning of the end.

I hadn’t known until this moment how much Paxton meant to me. How much I truly loved him. How torn apart I’d be without him. Some part of me had assumed he’d always be a part of my life, and there’d be time for us to explore a relationship. Even when I’d thought I preferred his brother, somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d felt time was on our side.

I was wrong. Time wasn’t on our side, and I was running out of the most precious commodity a person had.

32

Comforting Arms

Naomi

On Wednesday, my dad called. He’d be on campus briefly for an alumni hockey meeting that evening and thought we might grab dinner.

I hadn’t seen Paxton since Sunday night, not even in the dining hall. We texted throughout the day, but our texts were superficial, none of the playfulness and sexy teasing I’d come to expect. I talked to him last night, and he was in a hurry to get to the rink for a late-night practice session with Coach Garf. I hoped to run into him while waiting for my dad, but so far, he hadn’t surfaced.

My dad’s meeting ran late, and I had a study group in a half hour. Dinner might not happen, but I didn’t dare leave without at least saying hi to him. People catered to my dad, and the guilt he’d dump on me if I left before seeing him forced me to stick around.

Patrick strolled out of the weight room. He broke into a welcoming smile when he saw me.

“Hey, Omi, how’s it going?”

The dam broke. I’d been holding my emotions in check since Sunday night, and they refused to be held back any longer. All my fears and frustration bubbled to the surface and overwhelmed my tenuous hold on sanity. A tear slid down my cheek, followed by another and another until the faucet was cranked wide open. A heart-wrenching sob tore itself from my chest, where it’d been lodged most of the day.

“Over here.” Patrick tugged gently on my arm and guided me to a more private location off the main hallway. “Did my bastard brother do something to hurt you?”

“Not really,” I blubbered.

“Then why are you crying?” He put his arms around me, and I fell into them. I needed comfort from someone who would understand, and who understood his brother more than Patrick? Sobs racked my body, rendering me incapable of coherent speech. Patrick held on to me, rubbing my back like my mother once had. Getting a handle on myself, I lifted my tear-stained face to his.

“What’s going on?” he asked softly.

“It’s Pax. He’s drawing away. Stuff started falling apart after the Sockeyes spoke to him. It’s been downhill from there. He’s going to break up with me, he just hasn’t done it yet.”

“He’s prolonging the agony?”

“You could say that.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know you guys were that serious.” Guilt laced Patrick’s voice, and I momentarily wondered what he had to be guilty about, but my misery overrode my curiosity. I discounted what I thought I heard from my overactive imagination.

“Shit happened so fast. I didn’t even realize how deeply I was involved until things started going sideways.”

Patrick patted my back and kissed my forehead. “Oh, baby, I’m so very sorry for you. Pax is going through some things right now. We all are. He’s struggling and perhaps this wasn’t a good time for him to start a serious relationship with anyone.”

“I know. I know!” I wailed and buried my head in his chest to muffle the noise. I’d be mortified if anyone else saw us. He stroked my hair, playing the part of the big brother I’d never had.

“Naomi, you do realize how fond I am of you?”

I looked up at him, gripping fistfuls of his now tear-stained shirt and nodded. “I am of you, too.”

“I hate to see either one of you get hurt, but it’s probably inevitable that Pax will back off. His focus needs to be on hockey. Neither of us can afford the distractions. I understand where he’s coming from. His game finally got back to normal on Saturday night.”

“You like how he played Saturday night?” I bristled and pushed away from Patrick.

“Well, yeah, we were a team again, instead of him trying to be the lone ranger.”

“Is that how you see it?” Anger rolled through me. Indignance replaced my sorrow as I sought to defend Pax. Patrick didn’t get it.

“Yeah.” Patrick regarded me warily.

“Just because he’s not passing the puck so you can have all the glory rather than taking his shots when he sees them?”

“Hey, calm down. Things are rocky between us. Lots of changes coming are making us both nervous.” Patrick clearly didn’t want to discuss his brother’s play with me or get in an argument. He