Bad Intentions: A Dark Hockey Bully Romance (Hellions of Hade Harbor Book 1)
Bad Intentions: Chapter 18

The ice felt good under my blades. The rink was busy, but not as busy as it would be if we were playing a tougher team. Tonight we were playing a lesser team, and I had no doubt we’d beat them easily. Still, it was good to play and do something with the excess energy that had been building up through the week.

I’d buried my black mood in the party after Lily had run off. I’d ended up drinking too much—a vice I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to indulge after leaving Uncle Jack’s influence—and slept in the pool house at Beckett’s. Thankfully, no puck bunnies had realized I was there and hung around to bother me.

On Sunday, Lily was out at her part-time job all day and then stayed at Eve’s house overnight. Asher and Eve’s mom was sick, and they were busy taking care of her.

Monday had passed in a blur of boring classes and anticipation for tonight’s game, and now, it was finally here.

We were warming up, and I had my eyes trained on the place where Lily and her mom would sit. This was the last home game for a week. The next game we’d play would be a much tougher one, against a team from Portland.

My muscles warmed, my focus honed, I skated alongside Marcus as we lapped the rink.

“So, did you make progress with Selena at the party?” I wondered, uncaring either way, but small talk was something I was trying out.

Marcus shook his head. “Naw, I’m not into it after all. She looks like she’d be a boring lay. And after pushing Bug into the pool, let’s just say I’m not turned on by jealous bitches.”

I kept my mouth shut about the pool incident. I could only guess the reason why Lily was avoiding me was because she knew I’d pushed her. There was only one person, besides Eve, who would have told her. Josh had put his name on my shit list the second he’d kissed her in that ridiculous game on Friday night. And he’d moved himself to the top when he’d driven her home and held her fucking hand. He had it coming and tonight, I’d finally get the chance to make my feelings known.

Sure, I’d pushed Lily into the pool, but the sight of her kissing Josh had snapped something inside me. Besides that, she was proving better at keeping away from me than I liked. It was time to escalate things.

Marcus went off to do his stretches by the goals while I circled the rink. I saw Lily the moment she entered. Her head was bent over her phone, and her red hair gleamed under the lights. S~ᴇaʀᴄh the (F)indNƟvᴇl.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

There she was. My girl.

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment I’d started to think of her that way, but there was no denying that it was a sealed deal. She was my girl; she just didn’t know it yet.

She strode down the stairs in a jersey. The sight of it stopped my heart. My jersey. It definitely wasn’t the retro one of her dad’s that she’d worn to the first game. Something eased in my chest at the sight of it. A warming feeling in the cold, hollow place inside me.

Her eyes met mine, even across the distance. She pushed her hair back, the coppery strands magnificent as they cascaded across my black-and-purple colors. A smile that was nearly sweet touched her lips. I came to a stop, frozen to the spot by that look. It was the single most precious expression I’d ever seen. A willing, beguiling smile from the girl I was obsessed with. I felt unworthy and lucky as hell.

Then, she turned around, and that warmth in my chest burned to ashes.

It wasn’t my jersey. It was Josh’s.

I closed in on a tight scrimmage between a red jersey and a black and smashed through. The red player spun away while I continued, driving the Hellion against the boards with just enough strength to hurt. Josh bounced off the board and groaned. I held out my hand to him.

“Shit, you all right, man?”

He nodded, skating slowly away from the board where his body had made a new dent. Little Josh Samuels had no idea that this game was about to get much worse for him. We were ten minutes in, two up, and the only thing I cared about at this point was grinding Josh to dust.

Play started again, and once more, I found a way to make sure Josh was on the receiving end of a hard charge.

“Hey, ease up, you know the black ones are on our team, right?” Beckett muttered to me.

“If he can’t take it, he shouldn’t be on the team,” I ground out in response.

Beckett nodded. “Right, and this has nothing to do with what Lillian Williams is wearing?”

“Mind your own business,” I warned him.

“The team is my business, and Josh isn’t a bad junior player. Stop trying to cripple him.”

“If I wanted to cripple him, it’d be done already. This is just a friendly warning to keep his jersey, and his intentions, to himself.”

“Cade,” Beckett started.

But I skated off, not interested in his words of fucking wisdom. The red veil that had descended over my eyes when I’d seen Lily’s jersey hadn’t lifted. The only thing that eased it was the sound of Josh pummeling the boards. He was just lucky I hadn’t found a way to slice his fingers off with my skate.

We were headed toward the intermission, and I couldn’t fucking wait. Lily was about to answer for her little games. I flew across the ice and checked Josh out of the way to snatch the puck from a red player.

He went down this time, and I continued on to shoot, scoring another easy goal. Fans screamed and clapped as Josh got up and came at me.

“Look, man, I’m not trying to be sensitive, but it feels like you’re doing that on purpose,” he accused.

I turned to him and put a finger to his chest. “Stay out of my face if you know what’s good for you.”

“What the hell?” Josh made the mistake of pushing me back.

I saw red. I lunged forward, and only Beckett’s huge body colliding with mine stopped my forehead from meeting Josh’s highly breakable-looking nose.

“Hey! You want Coach to come down on you like a ton of bricks? Fight with the other team if you want to blow off steam, not a Hellion, or go and take it out on Bug.”

Beckett’s advice reached through the fog, just as Intermission started. Go and take it out on Bug.

What a great idea.

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