Delayed Penalty (Crossing the Line, #1)(63)

There would never be anything but this, right here.

Eventually our movements stopped; we couldn't go further and we knew it.

I smiled with closed eyes, kissing her one last time, twice, three times, before pulling away. "I love you," I whispered again, tenderly worshiping this girl, exhaling against her skin.

I dropped the gloves. I finally told a girl I loved her, and f*ck if I wasn't ready to dance.





Delayed penalty – When a penalty is called, the referee will raise his or her arm to indicate that one is being called, but, if the team who committed the infraction is not in control of the puck, no whistle will be blown until a player from the offending team controls the puck.



Conference Finals (Game 1) San Jose Sharks

Sunday, May 16, 2010




My mind was wandering as it usually did, taping my stick—trying not to focus on anything in particular and definitely not the situation with Ami and me. So much about our relationship, still technically undefined, was complicated. We had a strong friendship and both understood that it was so much more than that and had been since the very beginning. Ami and I had a bond. And in hockey, a bond was what you needed. As weird as it sounded, I could see myself with Ami forever.

I also knew it wouldn't be much longer before we finally had sex. The thought was both comforting and terrifying.

Dave Keller, our old teammate, stepped inside the locker room, the same high that always surrounded him present. No one knew the reason why he was traded, and if you asked him, he didn't know either. He never got along with O'Brien, though, so it was understandable for the most part.

"What's up, Mase?" I gave Dave a nod, my focus on my stick.

"So what's with you and Natalie the other night?" Leo asked Dave, knowing he'd taken out the pediatrician from Northwestern. Pretty much all of us had bagged her at one time or another. "She let you take a dip?"

"Fuck yeah, she wanted it." Remy chuckled beside me. Dave was always bragging. I smiled too, missing the banter between all of us. "Oh yeah, she was f*cking pretty, eh? She liked it rough, too."

For a moment, those words meant nothing from Dave. He always said shit like that. Then, though, the words really meant something to me.

Until my mind went back to what Ami remembered about that night.

"You want it, don't you? I bet you like it rough."





A flash of remembrance came to mind as I looked into his dark eyes. Dave stared back at me. He was still talking, his mouth was moving, but I couldn't hear anything else.

We exchanged a look. I never noticed how black his eyes were. Maybe it was my mind trying to place him as the guy?

Feelings of dread washed over me and left me shaking. What if he was the guy?

That was when moments from the past came back, things he said, the way Ami reacted to him the first time she met him. It was nothing she said, just a confused look. I didn't even think she was conscious of it. Then there was his appearance before we left for Nashville, right after Ami's attack. He had scratches he hadn't gotten in the game.

The phrase jolted me like an electric current.

"How are you and the ballerina doin'?"

I ran out of the locker room and into the hall, half-dressed, gasping for breath. When I got near the wall, my hands splayed out supporting me as my head hung, staring at the floor.

I tried to breathe and swallow and…just f*cking breathe...but it hurt. "Come on, man…" I told myself, shaking my head. "Get it together. You don't know that it's him."

But I did know. I felt it.

I heard my voice break apart when I spoke, the pain, the guilt, breaking me apart. I gripped my hands tighter, struggling, straining every raw nerve ending just to hold on.

And then I thought of Ami, sweet Ami and those starry blue eyes and innocent smile, and my f*cking heart skipped a beat, and I felt her in every beat.

He was my f*cking friend, and he did this.

A thousand different memories and visions flashed before my eyes, from the moment I found her to right before the game; the doctors doing the rape kit on her, taking pictures of every cut, scratch and bruise; the look of her lying in that bed, unconscious, supported by a machine; the look on her face when I first officially met her; our first kiss; watching her at my first game.

All these memories, all these visions of what our life had been like for five months. What this girl went through and what she overcame in five short months.

But the thing was, the part that made me physically ill was that none of that shit would have happened if he hadn't done this to her.

Suddenly, I could barely breathe.

I didn't want to believe it was Dave.

"Dude..." Leo came into the hall when I vomited into the trash can. "You pregnant or something?"

I didn't have time to answer him before I was throwing up again. I was a f*cking mess.





When I was finally on the ice for warm-up, my skates felt constraining, like they were shackles. Leo kept asking me what was wrong, but every time my voice caught in my throat, the fight in me raging. Two sides of me warred against each other, each one with their own distinct voice.

There was the moral side, the one my parents raised to do the right thing, and then there was the less noble side. The side that saw firsthand what he had done to her and the side that wanted to kill that motherf*cker for ever laying a hand on her.