Neutral Zone (Carolina Comets)

“Yo, Fitzy Baby! Come here!”

I suppress the groan crawling its way from my throat. The last thing I want to do is go talk to Greer. In fact, I don’t want to talk to fucking anybody. It’s been days since I’ve seen Rosie, and all I want to do is get out on the ice and beat New York so I can get back on the plane and home to her because I need to fix things.

I’ve gone to the donut truck every day since the party. I’ve been attached to my phone and computer, waiting for her to get on her stream. I’ve even tried messaging her on MyFans, but nothing. Not a damn thing from her. It’s killing me, tearing me completely apart. I haven’t even had a strawberry since Saturday morning because I can’t stand the fucking sight or smell of them. All it does is remind me of Rosie.

I shove my phone into my pocket and spin on my heel, backtracking across the parking garage toward Greer, who is standing beside the bus we just got off.

“What’s up?” I ask him.

“Over here. Got something I want to show you,” he says, motioning for me to follow him around the other side of the bus.

I have no clue what’s going on and don’t really have the patience for this, but I follow him anyway. I regret it the second I round the vehicle because all of a sudden I’m being slammed against the big rig and there’s a forearm pressed heavily against my throat.

“W-What the…” I manage to sputter out. “Get the fuck off me.”

“Not a damn chance.” He shoves me harder, sneering. “What the fuck, man? What’d I tell you?”

“What?” I cough, slowly losing my ability to breathe. “What are you talking about?”

“Rosie, you fucking asshole. That’s what I’m talking about. I just got off the phone with Stevie, and I swear to god, if you don’t tell me what the hell crawled up your ass, you’ll be walking back out there with a black eye, which I’m sure you’ll have great fun explaining to the press and Coach.”

“Fuck,” I mutter, dropping my head back against the bus. It hurts, but I welcome the sting.

“Yeah, fuck is right. What the hell, man? What’d you do?”

“Can you let me go?”

He laughs, and it’s downright fucking scary. “Not a chance.”

I sigh. Since he’s not going to let me go until I explain things, I tell him. Everything.

Only when I’m finished does he finally let me go, and I drop back to the flats of my feet and reach for my throat, massaging it. It’s aching and I’m definitely going to be hoarse, but honestly, I deserve it. Hell, I deserve worse.

“What the hell, man?” he asks again. “Why?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.” But that’s not true. I do know. “I just…couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be close to her. No…I needed to be close to her, and this felt like the only way.”

“You couldn’t have, I don’t fucking know, just asked her out?”

“I…” I drag a hand through my hair. “I didn’t think she’d be into me, you know? I’m not exactly smooth with the ladies.” I show off my missing tooth. “And then there’s this ugly fucking thing.”

“Your missing tooth?” He rolls his eyes. “You’re kidding, right? That’s basically real-life porn to women, especially the ones who love hockey. Rosie loves your damn missing tooth. Hell, I’ve seen her swoon over it before. I don’t know how your stupid ass has missed it, but she’s totally into you.”

“Well, I know that now.”

He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “You’re an idiot.”

“I know.”

“Like Miller-level idiot.”

I half expect the man in question to come out of nowhere and yell at us in protest, but he doesn’t.

“Yeah, I know,” I tell Greer. “But I’m going to fix it.”

“Good. You fucking better.”

I glare at him. “I will.”

He eyes me hard, possibly harder than he ever has before. “You really like her, huh?”

I nod. “So much. I have for a while, before I even found her stream, but I’ve been so focused on hockey I didn’t let myself really think much of it, you know? I know this season means a lot to Coach, and I want to focus on it for him and for the team. Then I found her stream and I thought, this is it. It was my way to be close to her without worrying about screwing with my game. It felt like it was meant to be…but I couldn’t stay away.”

With how things played out, a huge part of me wishes I could have kept my distance, but now that I know how good she tastes, how good she feels…I was doomed from the start.

And dammit if I’m not okay with being doomed.

“I get it, man. I do. I didn’t want to get involved with Stevie, but…” He shrugs. “Here I am, completely fucked for that woman.”

I grin, because it’s still so weird to hear him say that. “You’re totally whipped, man.”

He lifts a brow. “Like you’re not screwed when it comes to Rosie?”

I wince, because I am. I’m completely screwed, and now I have to fix it before she realizes how much better than me she can do.

“That’s what I thought.” He shakes his head. “Damn, man. We have some dumb people on this team who have done some really dumb things, but this…” He whistles. “You’ve been lying to her for months, pretending to be someone else.”

“I know,” I say, shoving off the bus. “I fucking know. I’m going to fix it.”

He gives me another hard stare, then nods once. “All right. I’m giving you a chance, but if you don’t—”

“You’ll beat me to a pulp—yeah, I got it.”

What he doesn’t know is I’d let him. I’d certainly have it coming. I just hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope I can fix things with Rosie.

I have to.

“I’ll fix it,” I promise, but I’m not sure if I’m talking to Greer or myself.

Either way, I hope it’s a promise I can keep.

We beat New York, no fucking thanks to me and all the asinine penalties I took. Stupid stuff, stuff I know I shouldn’t be doing but did anyway. Too many crosschecks right in front of the linesman. Straight-up tripping someone and not even trying to hide it. Slashing.

And that was all in the first period.

I played so awful Coach benched me for the last ten minutes of the game, and I don’t blame him. He refused to talk to me afterward, so I’m dreading going to practice this morning because I know I’m going to get my ass reamed for my behavior. My list of people I need to fix things with just keeps growing, and it’s really starting to feel like a bad omen.

I lift my head, watching the robin’s-egg blue truck get closer and closer as my feet pound heavily against the pavement.

Please let her be here. Please let her be here. Please let her be here.

I repeat it with every step I take until I skid to a stop in the parking lot. The closed sign is still up on the counter, but the window is open, and I hold my breath, welcoming the ache in my lungs as I wait to get my first glimpse of her in days.

I don’t have to wait long because not even fifteen seconds later, she’s there. There’s a giant box in her hands. I can’t make out from here what’s in it, but it looks heavy, and I want so fucking badly to waltz into the truck and take it from her like some knight in shining armor so I can prove to her I’m more than just some asshole.

Even from here, she looks beautiful. Maybe a little tired, but still gorgeous. Always fucking gorgeous. Her hair is tossed up in her usual bun and her trusty apron is tied around her waist, covering all those curves I know she has, those same curves I committed to memory the other night at the party and really fucking want to touch again.

As if she can feel my eyes on her, she lifts her head and looks directly at me.

And I…wave.

I lift my damn hand and wave.

God, what a moron.

Both of her brows rise and I swear I see her lips mutter idiot, but that’s all that happens. She doesn’t run away. She doesn’t try to hide from me.

No. She does something worse.

She pretends I’m not even here.

Rosie returns her attention to the task at hand, and it hurts more than if she were to march out of the truck and tell me off. I press my palm to my chest, an ache forming that I wish I could never feel again because I hate it so much. Is this how Greer felt when he screwed everything up with Stevie? This blows, and I need to make it go away. Now.

I pull my headphones from my ears and tuck them into my pockets, then cross the lot to the truck. Rosie lifts her head when she hears the gravel crunching beneath my feet, but she doesn’t tell me to fuck off. I take that as a good sign and keep moving forward.

In fact, I don’t stop until I’m at the end of the truck. The doors are open wide, and I peer inside. She’s standing there, just staring at me. Watching. Waiting.

I take a step in.

When she doesn’t protest, I take another. Then another.

I reach over to grab the bar that’s holding the window open and give it a tug. It folds in on itself easily, trapping us inside under the low interior lights. Rosie still doesn’t say anything, and part of me wishes she would. I wish she would yell or call me names or tell me to get lost. Something. Anything. God knows I deserve it.

But she doesn’t. She just stands there, her arms folded over her chest, her brows lifted high as she takes me in, sweaty state and all.

I grab a plastic cup from the stack, retrieve the pitcher of water I know they keep in the fridge, and I pour myself a glass. I chug it in five seconds flat, then refill it just to do it all over again.

I drag my hand over my mouth and meet Rosie’s hard stare. “I—”

“Oh, no. You don’t get to talk first, Fitz.”

Fitz.

She’s called me that before. Hell, except for the one time, it’s all she’s ever called me. Nobody ever calls me by my first name; they haven’t since middle school. It’s always been Fitz or Fitzgerald, never Ivan…until her.

I want to be Ivan again.

“You’re a dick.”

I swallow the lump that seems to be superglued inside my throat. “I know.”

“Like a major, massive dick that’s covered in warts and moles and all kinds of other awful things I can’t think of right this moment because I’m so damn mad at you.”

“I know.”

If it’s even possible, her stare hardens further. “You hurt me.”

“I—”

“You led me on. You pretended to be someone else. You manipulated me into letting you apologize for ditching me at Slapshots. You lied to me, Fitz, and it fucking hurt.”

I just nod, not because I don’t have things to say, but because I know she doesn’t want to hear them.

“I thought you were different. I thought you were better than that. I thought…” She looks away a moment, then rolls her tongue over her lips. “I thought I knew you.”

I take a step toward her, unable to help myself. To my surprise, she doesn’t move back.

“You do know me, Rosie. You do. I’m still the same guy. I just…” I drag my hand through my hair. “I just fucked up. You’re so…” I gesture toward her. “Well, you. You’re comfortable with who you are, in your body. It’s kind of intimidating sometimes. I didn’t think… I never thought someone like you could be into someone like me.”

“What’s so wrong with you that you thought that?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I mean…” I flash her my smile. “This, for starters.”

“That? Are you kidding? I wanted to throw my panties at you the first time you smiled at me, and about ninety percent of that was because of your missing tooth. It’s cute, Fitz.”

“It bothers me.”

“So get it fixed.”

I give an Are you serious? look.

“Oh. Right. Hockey.”

I nod. “Hockey. Sure, I could do flippers or something, but why bother while I’m still playing? At first, I was cool with it, you know? It felt like a badge of honor or something. But then some comments…the stares I’d get…I don’t know. It just all added up to me feeling incredibly self-conscious about it.”

“I like it.”

“I know. I mean, now—I know that now. But still.”

She gives me a sad smile. “What else? Why do you think you’re not good enough to just ask me out?”

“Well, there’s the watching thing. The…voyeurism.” It’s the first time I’ve said the word out loud. Sure, I’ve googled it countless times, but I’ve never acknowledged that I might have a kink like that.

“What about it?”

“It doesn’t…bother you?”

“Um, hello.” She waves both hands. “I’m basically a cam girl over here. I think you know I like being watched.”

Images of what it was like the last time I watched her flash through my mind. Heat creeps up my neck and into my cheeks just thinking about how beautiful she looked as she fell apart in front of me.

“Did someone tell you it’s not okay?”

That fucking lump returns, and I try to swallow around it.

“Please tell me you told them they’re completely in the wrong.”

“She wasn’t really wrong. It is weird, right? I get off on watching someone have sex more than I like having sex. That’s fucked up, no?”

“It’s not fucked up, Fitz. It’s just who you are, and that’s okay. Would you tell me I’m fucked up for liking being watched?”

“No! No. Never.”

“Okay.” She shrugs. “Then you’re not fucked up either.”

When she says it all out loud like this, it sounds…reasonable. It sounds okay. It sounds like something that could work…like we could work.

“Rosie, I…” I swipe my tongue over my lips, then take another step toward her because I need to be close to her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I tricked you. I’m sorry I didn’t come clean from the beginning. Hell, I’m sorry I kept watching your videos even when I knew it was you. I just…I really like you. Like, a lot. And I’d really, really like it if you gave me another chance. I’d like a chance to be real and honest with you.”

Her green eyes bore into me, her teeth clamping tightly on her bottom lip as she considers my words—my plea.

That’s what this is. I’m a desperate man in a desperate moment. I need her to believe me, to give me another chance. Because there is no chance in hell I’m going to be able to stay away from her. Not now. Not after everything.

“How?” she says softly.

“Sorry?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“Oh.” I take another step forward, lifting my hand. I pause just a moment before I touch her, making sure it’s okay. She doesn’t move or tell me no, so I reach out, cupping the side of her face and running my thumb over her cheek. “Your eyes. I knew because of your eyes.”

Her brows pinch together. “Lots of people have green eyes. I—”

“No.” I shake my head, lifting my other hand to her face, using my thumb to trace the freckle that sits just below her eye. “Not like yours. They don’t have green eyes like yours, Ro. I’d know them anywhere.”

She swallows harshly. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

She’s back to nibbling on her lips, and all I can do is watch as she works through everything in her mind.

Please give me a chance. Please, please, please.

After what feels like hours of us standing here, of her just chewing on her lip, she drags her eyes back to mine. Her jaw drops, and I worry for a moment she can hear my heart beating in my chest because I swear it’s moving harder and faster than it ever has before.

“I—”

“What the hell?” A muffled voice breaks the moment, and I turn around just in time to see the back door being ripped open.

“What in the actual fu—oh.”

Scout, the owner of the truck, is standing at the back door. She has one foot inside, her eyes wide and her face full of shock.

“Scout, hi,” Rosie says, stepping out from behind me.

“Um, hi,” Scout says tentatively, her gaze flitting from me to Rosie and back again. Her brows slide together. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything is—”

“I wasn’t asking you,” Scout says tersely, cutting me off. She looks at her head baker, checking in with her directly. I love it. I love how protective she is. “Rosie, is everything okay?”

I peek back at Rosie, who sends Scout a soft smile.

“Yeah, everything is okay,” she tells her. “I’m sorry. We were talking and I—”

Scout holds her hand up. “Is everything ready to go?”

“Yes. All the donuts are prepped, coffee is made, and the drawer’s been counted in. We’re good.”

“All right. We open in ten minutes, so whatever this”—she waves her hand between the two of us—“is, just wrap it up.”

Rosie nods. “We will. Thank you.”

“Of course.” Scout looks at me, her eyes still hard. “I have a feeling you’re being dumb, aren’t you?”

I grimace and nod.

Scout rolls her eyes and mutters, “Fucking hockey players.” She walks out of the truck, shaking her head and pulling the door shut behind her, bathing us in the low light once more.

The moment she’s gone, I turn back to Rosie.

“You know, I’m really starting to think that whole people believing hockey players are stupid thing is true.”

Rosie arches one brow. “Sometimes it is.”

I nod. “I deserved that.”

“You did.”

Silence falls between us again, and I hold my breath once more, waiting for her answer, hoping and praying she’ll tell me what I want to hear.

“You’re kind of killing me here, Ro,” I say after several minutes. “And we are on a time crunch.”

She glowers, and I can’t help the smirk that curls up one side of my mouth. She’s being sassy with me; I like it when she’s sassy with me.

Then finally, after another minute of silence, she utters a single word.

“Okay.”

My heart stutters in my chest. Did she just say what I think she did?

“Okay?” I ask.

She nods. “I’ll give you another chance. But, Fitz? I need you to be honest with me. Completely.”

“It’s not Carl who is afraid of the dark. It’s me.”

“What?”

I lift a shoulder. “You said you wanted honesty. The reason I keep night-lights in every room is because I’m scared of the dark. I mean, Carl isn’t the biggest fan, but she’s got that cool crazy cat vision. I don’t and am totally afraid a monster is going to reach out and grab my leg and drag me away to hell. When I go on the road, I take a night-light with me and plug it in. I tell everyone Miller does it to make myself feel better, but he doesn’t. It’s all me.”

A laugh bubbles out of her, and not until this moment did I realize how much I missed hearing that sound over the last few days. This is the longest I’ve gone without seeing her for months, and I needed it more than I knew.

“That’s a good start. I was thinking more like you could not pretend to be someone else, but that works too.”

“That’s a fair request.”

“Speaking of requests…” She clears her throat. “I’d like it if you… Will you unsubscribe?”

A heaviness hits my gut. I hate the idea of not being able to see her.

But…I get it. It’s probably weird. I mean, she’s working; why would she want me to watch her?

“It’s just…I’d feel weird if we’re dating and I’m accepting money from you like that.”

Oh. Well, that makes sense too.

“Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll unsubscribe as soon as I get home.”

Then her words hit me.

“Wait… Are we?”

“Are we what?” she asks.

“Dating. Are we dating?”

“Yes.”

My chest fills with something I haven’t felt in a long damn time, and I love it.

I take another step toward her, closing that distance we created when Scout interrupted us. I cup her face once more, loving how soft her skin is under my touch.

“I know I’m not in any position to request something of you, but…can I kiss you?”

A slow smile spreads over those lips I know taste so damn incredible.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

I don’t hesitate, don’t waste another second. I capture her mouth with mine, and a groan leaves me the second our lips collide because kissing her feels so good, so right. Like coming home after a long road trip, it just feels right.

I gather her in my arms, hauling her to me, reveling in the way she feels pressed against me. I know I’ve only had it once before, but I missed this. I missed her.

And this kiss? It feels so different than our last one. That one was great, amazing even, but this? This feels like more than that. It feels like how our first kiss should have been—us.

I run my tongue along the seam of her lips, loving how she easily opens for me, giving me a taste of her.

Strawberries.

I love it, and it eggs me on. I slide my hands under her shirt, and she sighs when my palms coast over her body.

“Ivan…” She groans my name, and if I wasn’t holding on to her, I think my knees might buckle under me at the sound of it falling from her lips.

I kiss her harder, grinding my hips against her so she can feel what she’s doing to me under my running shorts. I have no idea how long we kiss, but it’s long enough for Scout to bang on the back of the truck.

“Wrap it up, you two!” she shouts.

“Yeah! I want donuts, dammit.”

I pull my mouth from Rosie’s.

“Is that…”

“Miller?” Rosie finishes for me.

I groan, resting my head against hers. My cock is hard as hell, and there is no way I’m going to be able to hide it.

“Think of something terrible, Ivan,” I mumble to myself.

Rosie laughs, and it does nothing to help.

“Stop that,” I tell her, pulling away, putting distance between us, hoping it will help with the situation in my pants. “You’re making it worse.”

“By laughing? That’s turning you on?”

“Rosie, everything you do turns me on.”

She grins up at me, clearly proud of herself.

“Stop smiling.”

“Why?” she asks, taking a step forward.

I retreat, glaring at her. “You know why.”

She doesn’t stop moving toward me, and fucking hell, I’m running out of space behind me. Truthfully, I’m okay with that. I hope I run out, because that means I get to touch her again, and I really want to touch her.

“I don’t. Can you enlighten me?”

“Rosie…”

“Ivan…” she teases, my name rolling off her lips like it was always meant to be there.

“You’re playing a dangerous game.”

She’s close, so damn close if I really wanted to, I could bend down just slightly, and my lips would be on hers.

She presses up on her tiptoes, narrowing the space between us even more. “A game I intend to win.”

“Oh, fuck it,” I mutter, then I crush my mouth to hers.

She sighs against me like I haven’t kissed her in years, never mind that we were just locked together.

Another loud knock sounds on the door, and it’s enough to break the kiss.

“Come on, man! I’m fucking starving. My woman didn’t make breakfast this morning.”

“Um, probably because you have two hands that are perfectly capable of making their own breakfast, you butthole.”

“Did Scout just call Miller a butthole?” I whisper.

“Did you just call me a butthole?” Miller echoes my words unknowingly.

“You’re damn right I did. Keep it up, and I swear, I’m going to pinch you, Miller.”

“Aw, come on. You know you love me.”

“Not today I don’t.”

I can just picture Scout stomping away and Miller chasing after her like the lovesick man he is.

“Those two are something else,” I remark.

“Yeah, but they’re cute together. They work.”

We work.

But I don’t say that.

“I should go,” I say instead.

She nods. “I think that’s probably best.”

I press one last soft kiss to her lips, then move as far away as possible before I do something crazy like kiss her again. “Can I make you dinner tomorrow?”

“Will Carl be there?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of her apartment too.”

Her smile is so bright. “Then, yes. I’d love that.”

“Good.” I step toward her but catch myself before I can go any further, and then I open the back door.

Something hits me before I leave, and I turn back to find her still watching me.

“Hey, Ro?”

“Yes?”

“Your live streams…do you ever accept private video requests?”

She shakes her head. “No. Never.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

Then I disappear out of the truck.

Somehow, I don’t run into Miller as I leave, and I’ve never been more thankful in my life. It’s already awful enough I have to run home with my cock rock hard. I don’t need to deal with Miller’s crap too, though I’m not sure it could ruin my mood.

Because kissing Rosie? It’s my new favorite thing, and I can’t wait to do it again.