Secret Obsession: A Dark Hockey Romance (Hockey Gods)

I wake up with a dry mouth and a headache. My eyes crack open, and I immediately groan at the light coming in through my windows. My blinds are mostly closed slats, but I must not have remembered to pull the blackout shades down. Which means, as my windows point east, I get a face full of the morning sun.

It’s awful.

Anyway, the dry mouth is fixed by the bottle of water on my nightstand. The blinding headache, however…

Oh. Aspirin. I sit up a bit more, wincing, and swallow the pills.

Who put me to bed?

Hell, who got me home?

I scrunch up my nose and close my eyes, going back through my night. The last memory I have is of dancing on the bar and being dragged off it. I look beside me, my pulse skyrocketing, but I’m alone.

Didn’t bring anyone home, then.

Maybe Violet came and got me. Judging by the brightness, it’s still relatively early. The sun hasn’t risen high enough to stop being a nuisance—it’s right at eye level, I think. Beaming in with enough strength to kill me. I lean over and eye the trash bin from my bathroom placed on the floor by my nightstand.

“You’re awake.”

I scream and fall off the bed.

Not sure how that happens. One minute I’m leaning over, the next I’m on the floor.

Miles Whiteshaw, one of two guys I’d love to never see ever again, stands in the doorway. He… he was there last night. At Prime. We danced for two seconds.

Goddamn it, drunk Willow.

Why do I have the insane urge to whore myself out to the Whiteshaw brothers?

Wait, no. I definitely told him to get lost.

I scowl up at him. “What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

I need to get my bearings—and fast.

He lifts one shoulder. “Why don’t you come on out and see?” With that, he just turns on his heel and disappears from my doorway. Leaving me alone and totally confused.

I run my hands through my hair. The shortness of it reminds me of everything I went through for the past year, and I steel myself. I climb to my feet and hurry straight into the bathroom. My reflection almost makes me scream again. Almost. But holy shit, I’m terrifying.

Makeup smeared everywhere, my hair a mess, my eyes bloodshot.

The headache is still there, pounding against my temples. It kind of feels like my brain is going to explode. I ignore it in favor of scrubbing at my face with a makeup remover wipe, peeling off my false eyelashes and dropping them on the counter.

When I rinse away the last traces of last night, I meet my gaze and flinch again.

There are dark circles under my eyes, which are still red.

Teeth brushed, tongue scrubbed, clothes changed, and I finally feel human enough to venture into the living room.

Miles stands at my kitchen counter, pressing buttons on my coffee maker. I barely glance at him, because there’s a man sitting on the floor, in the middle of the open space. Not that there’s much open space, but it seems like Miles had no problem redecorating while I slept. My couch is pushed to the far wall, the plants shoved in the corner. The man sits on my area rug, his arms behind his back, and his legs… his legs are duct taped from his ankles all the way up to mid-thigh, extended out in front of him.

The most concerning part is the blood.

His shirt is covered in it, plastered to his skin and seeping from a hole in the fabric at his side.

“Wh—what is this?” I glance from the man, whose mouth is also taped, to Miles.

Miles sips his coffee and levels me with a single look. A look that has my stomach plummeting to the floor.

“How’s your head?” he asks instead of answering me.

I can’t seem to move. “I’m… it’s…”

“Hurts? A bit more than a usual hangover?” He lifts one shoulder. “Or maybe it feels the same as a hangover. I don’t fucking know how date rape drugs work.”

Date rape drugs?

Miles glowers at me. “This is why we don’t take drinks from strange men who want to fucking rape you!” he shouts.

“Don’t yell at me.” I cringe. “In what sort of world do we live in that I have to go out and mind all my drinks, and then—and then I get blamed for some douchebag’s decision to put something in my drink?”

“The rest of us are living in reality,” he snaps.

He sets the mug down—my favorite mug, I note with disdain—and comes stomping toward me. I backpedal, not necessarily afraid of him, but I really would rather not deal with any of this.

And being drugged doesn’t…

I scan my body. Miles is close enough to hear me whisper, “But he didn’t, right?”

Images of the man holding me against him, his hand between my legs, flash in front of my eyes. And I went back and danced with him again? Accepted more drinks from him?

I swear, Miles’ expression softens for a split second. “No, he didn’t.” Then it’s right back to loathing. “And if you thank God before you thank me, I swear, Willow…”

A few realizations hit at once.

One: Miles was looking out for me.

Two: he has a black eye, a bruised cheekbone and throat. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have those the night before. Pair that with the blood on the guy, the wound that’s clearly from a weapon of some sort, and…

Three: something really bad could’ve happened last night.

And four: something bad is about to happen.

“Thank you, Miles, for not letting him do anything else.”

He stiffens. “What does that mean?”

Oh. “Um, beyond groping me on the dance floor… It was why I was in a hurry to get away from him and backed into you.”

He reaches out and touches my cheek, the rough pads of his index and middle finger burning a path on my skin. It tingles, and I tense to stop from leaning into it. Wouldn’t that be madness?

Too soon—or right on time, depending on who you ask—he steps back. He clears his throat and focuses back on the bleeding guy.

Right.

He’s been watching our interaction with fury in his eyes—and it makes me want to steer very, very clear of him. What the hell made me accept drinks from him last night? Except now he’s paler, and the blood is more obvious. It’s dripping onto the rug under him, adding to the pool of it. He’s pale, with sweat dotting his brow. A stiff wind could blow him over.

“Willow.”

I tear my attention back to Miles, who has picked up a folding knife from the kitchen counter. I hadn’t even noticed it sitting next to his mug, which he takes a sip from next.

“Your little game with my brother is over, got it? Your game with me is only just beginning. Starting with this.” He lets the tip of the blade point toward the man. “Starting with secrets that will tie us together forever.”

A shiver racks up my spine. I wrap my arms around my stomach, not sure I like what he’s insinuating. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not like Greyson or Steele. I’m not going to go behind your back and scare away the guys who think they have a right to touch you. And this is even more poetic because this fucker should’ve never laid a hand on you. But especially somewhere private. Somewhere that belongs to me.”

He sneers and kneels behind the guy, wrenching his head back and exposing his throat. The guy squirms. He tries to speak, but his voice is muffled behind the tape. His movements get jerkier. More frantic.

“No,” Miles continues. “I’m going to show you.”

“You don’t own me.” I step back, but the wall stops me from getting farther away from this madness. I can’t escape—the man and Miles are between me and the door. All I could do is sprint back into my room and lock the door, but something tells me that it would be a lost cause.

“I will,” he vows. He meets my eyes.

And then he stabs the man in the throat.

I scream.

Miles is on me in an instant, shoving me against the wall and covering my mouth with his blood-covered hand. I can feel the blood on my face, my neck. It burns like holy fire, making me complicit in this murder.

Murder.

I shudder when Miles leans down and runs his nose up the side of my face. His lips brush my temple.

“Look at him.” He grips my jaw, moving aside so I have no choice but to stare at the man dying on my carpet. Miles left the knife in his throat, and blood slips out around the blade.

“Pull it out and give him a painless death,” he whispers in my ear. “Or we can watch him die right here. However long it takes.”

“H-how long?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

He releases me completely, and I sag against the wall. The gurgling sound the man’s making—does he deserve to die? Or is Miles Whiteshaw just a complete psychopath?

He never struck me as the type. For a while, he was all smiles. A younger version of his charming brother. They look similar, sound similar…

Fuck.

I can’t escape them.

Your game with me, he said. Like this is just another way to toy with me. And of course it is. He and I… we’ve been glancing off of each other for years. It’s only fair that I picked his brother, got screwed over, and have to pay that price twice.

So the question is, do I play along?

Or do I fight it with every fiber of my being?

“Let him suffer,” I whisper. “But I’m not playing your game, Miles. I never will.”

I stuff my feet into my winter boots by the door. My jacket is slung over a kitchen chair, and I snatch that up, too. I don’t know where I’m going to go, but anywhere is better than here.

Miles doesn’t move. The guy has fallen on his side, and blood soaks the rug so much that it pools above the fibers. I take a good, hard look. It seems like I need to engrain this in my memory to remember, then I take my keys from the hook. I pause at the broken lock on my door, the chair holding the whole thing closed, and shove it aside. The door swings inward on its own, revealing the empty hallway.

“Willow,” Miles calls.

I glance back at him, gripping the doorframe. He’s moved closer to the man, closer to me.

He crouches beside him, seeming fascinated with the way he’s bleeding out. But then he looks back up at me. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

He pulls the knife out.