Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(72)

Still, he couldn’t stop. He’d been trying since he’d left Tess’s house for one single, solitary moment of baking stress relief, and all he’d had was days of shit cooking that had depleted his flour and his liquor without offering any release. He wasn’t giving up, though; this had always worked. It would this time. He just had to go at it harder.

The timer went off, and he pulled open the oven door. The cold oven door. Cole closed his eyes and groaned. He hadn’t turned it on. He grabbed the towel over his shoulder and whipped it across the kitchen. It landed in the sink on top of the pile of unwashed, crusty dishes.

“Fuck. This.” His yell of frustration filled the room but not enough to banish Tess’s ghost.

She was everywhere. He looked at the couch and saw her snuggled up under his Ice Knights blanket. He walked by the guest room and could still smell her flowery perfume. He lay down in his bed at night, closed his eyes, and the weight of her not being in bed with him nearly flattened him. Then he woke up in the morning and did it all over again. Added to that hell was the fact that he had another two days in a row off, and he was ready to hurl the muffin tin across the disaster zone of a kitchen.

Fury—at himself, at her, at the world in general—ate at him, poisoning everything he looked at or touched until he couldn’t take it anymore. He stormed out onto his patio. Every fucking lounge chair was turned so it faced the pool, each one exactly two feet from the other. Just like they’d always been. Just like they were supposed to be. Just like he motherfucking hated seeing them.

He marched over to the closest one, grabbed it, and spun in around so it faced the house. As he let out a laugh that was more than likely at least 50 percent completely unhinged, some of the pent-up shittiness stringing him tight unraveled—not much, but more than enough to power him forward. He tore through the area around his pool, his muscles unwinding with each step forward. He turned the next chair so it, too, faced the lawn, then the one past that he rearranged so it wasn’t aimed at anything, and then he took the last one on the west side of the pool and flung it away like a shot put, the explosion of energy still doing nothing to sate his anger.

“Hell yeah,” he yelled as he surveyed the disarray.

Holy shit. He felt good. Sucking in the cold winter air in harsh, quick breaths that burned his lungs, he sprinted to the other side of the pool and went to town creating chaos where there had only been rigid order. God, he was on fire, he was—

“Fucking A, Phillips,” Petrov said, his voice cutting through the euphoria of the moment. “Please tell me you haven’t cracked, because I am not equipped to talk your ass down.”

Cole whirled around, adrenaline rushing through him, making it feel like he had lightning in his veins. Petrov stood in the open french doors leading into the kitchen, his arms crossed and a wary expression on his face. Christensen stood behind him, his mouth hanging open and his eyes as big as hockey pucks. They were looking at him like he’d lost it. Well, maybe he had, and maybe that was exactly what he needed.

“You two are just the people I’m looking for,” he said as he shoved a chair with his foot so it was cockeyed.

Christensen looked over at Petrov and raised his eyebrows before turning back to Cole. “That doesn’t sound creepy at all, considering how your house looks.”

“We’re not going in there.” And he wasn’t thinking about how gross his kitchen was at the moment. “Come on.”

He took off around the house, jogging toward the wide curved driveway. It wasn’t rink size, but he’d make it work. By the time he got out front, Christensen and Petrov had backtracked through the house and were on his porch.

Cole jerked his chin toward the middle of the drive. “Let’s work on those new plays. We’re going to do it again and again until I finally have it. She’s not right.”

“Who’s not right?” Christensen asked, his head cocked to one side. “Tess?”

“Tess, Coach, whoever the fuck else has been bitching about me,” Cole snarled. “Let’s do this.”

Petrov snorted and rolled his eyes. “You hate those plays. Plus, we’re in your driveway and we don’t even have roller blades.”

“Loosen the fuck up, Petrov.” Cole acted out a deke to the left and then sprinted to the center of the driveway. “Live a little.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Cole Phillips?” Christensen asked.

“I broke him.” Yeah, as if he could make a transformation like this on his own. “No. She broke him.” Closer but still not quite right. “Correction. Tess leaving broke me, but I figured it out.” That was it; that was exactly why he had this energy revving him up, opening his field of vision, letting him see the world in a whole new way. “Just run the plays with me,” Cole said. “I am going to make this work. I’m not stuck. I’m not moving in circles. I’m going forward.”

And he would. He had to.

“Enthusiastic” was pretty much the farthest thing from a descriptor of Christensen and Petrov, but they rallied and set up with him as if it was puck drop. “Fluid” wasn’t the right word for it. He was definitely choppy, a little stiff, still holding onto the old way, but then on the fifth run-through, when he was on the edge of thinking all of this had just been a pipe dream, it happened.