Pucking Petty

I had survived playoff brawls, taken a stick to the face, played through broken knuckles, and once woke up from a concussion so deep I forgot my own jersey number for three days. But none of that pain, absolutely none, compared to the white-hot humiliation of being sent home to Maple Hollows like a misbehaving teenager because the league needed me on a metaphorical time-out.

The bus hissed away behind me, disappearing into the swirl of snowflakes. Alright, here we go. My breath came out in a sharp cloud as I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder, boots crunching down the icy pine-lined sidewalk. At the end of the trail of twinkling lights, which felt less festive and more taunting, sat a tiny Christmas cabin. The place I’d spent the last five years pretending didn’t exist. A cabin owned by the family of the only woman who still had the power to ruin me: Noelle Hart. The only place the league’s PR team could find for me to “lie low until the internet forgets I exist.”

If I had even one ounce of cosmic luck left, she wouldn’t be there.

Spoiler: I had never been lucky a day in my life.

I kept telling myself on the long bus ride here that I didn’t plan to see her. Didn’t plan to remember the last time I’d touched her, or the last thing she ever said to me: “You care more about your stick than your heart.” I shook the memory off hard. My breath puffed white as I lifted a fist to knock, but the door swung open before I touched it.

Noelle Hart stood in the doorway looking like every soft winter fantasy I had no business wanting. Leggings hugged tight against her legs, a cream sweater slipping off one shoulder just enough to expose a hint of skin—the skin I used to kiss like it was sacrilegious. Her blonde messy bun showed off the elegant, tempting line of her neck. Her lips were soft and glossed, parted in a startled breath that cut straight through me.

Then her eyes narrowed. “Oh,” she said. Flat. Sharp. Deadly. A single, venomous syllable. “You.”

I blinked once. Twice. The adrenaline from the bus ride finally crashed. “Merry Christmas to you too,” I tried.

She folded her arms, blocking the doorway like a shield. Every inch of her radiated danger and distance. “Why are you on my porch?”

“Long story,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my head. The short version? A viral video in a bar, a rival player who spun like a dreidel after one of my haymakers, and a PR team who decided a tiny Christmas cabin was the only place to ice me until the public stopped foaming at the mouth. “My PR team booked me a place to lie low. This is the place.”

“No, absolutely not.” She folded her arms, the sweater falling deliciously over one shoulder. “Pick a different place.”

I leaned on the doorframe, deploying the lazy, practiced smile that used to get me out of almost anything—the one that had worked on every puck bunny. “This is the only vacancy in town,” I drawled.

“There’s a motel off Route Seven.”

“It’s condemned.”

Noelle gave a sweet, vicious shrug, a flash of something cold in her eyes as she tried to close the door on me. “Then I suggest you get a tent. I’ll refund you.”

I huffed a slow laugh as I blocked the door with my foot, “Come on, Noelle. It’s Christmas.”

She stared at me like I’d just proposed a toast to the devil. “That,” she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous level, “is the reason you’re the absolute last person I want to see this time of year.” I took her in slowly, intentionally. Her cheeks flushed—hot, furious color, though it mimicked the exact way she used to blush when I pinned her against the boards of my truck kissing her. I let my gaze linger just a second too long. Her scowl sharpened. “I rent this place for holiday tourists, not ex-boyfriends with rage issues.”

“I’ll stay out of your way, I promise,” I said, and instead of waiting for her reply, I took a deliberate step past her. I heard the whoosh of cold air behind me as she stumbled back a half-pace.

She didn’t stop me. She let the heavy wood of the door shut behind us with a resonant thud that shook the tension in the air. “Doubtful,” she clipped out.

I glanced over my shoulder, hooking my thumb into the loop of my duffel bag. “You always underestimate me.”

She didn’t have to look at me. “You always overestimate yourself.” The scent of pine and cinnamon slammed into me like a bodycheck, a memory I’d spent five years trying to scrub out. Everything looked exactly like her—warm, orderly, gentle with an edge. It was the opposite of the locker room, the opposite of my life. A wreath hung above the stone fireplace. Two stockings lined the mantel. Fairy lights glowed along the ceiling beams.

I dropped my bag and rubbed my cold hands together, watching the twinkling lights. “Still obsessed with Christmas, I see.”

She didn’t turn around as she brushed past, hips swaying just enough to make me grit my teeth. She still had an amazing ass—the kind that had kept me awake for years, imagining it pressed against the front of my jeans. “Still obsessed with being irritating, I see.” There it was, the hit. The spark. The stupid, dangerous chemistry neither of us wanted but both still felt. My chest tightened. God, I forgot how good she was at this.

I followed her, naturally. I’ve always been a glutton for punishment; it’s what makes a good defense player. She moved into the kitchen and poured peppermint tea for one and absolutely did not offer me any.

Petty.

Predictable.

And the low-cut of that sweater when she bent over the steaming kettle? Goddamn, infuriatingly sexy. The view was a vivid, visceral reminder of exactly what I wasn’t allowed to touch anymore. I hated that after all this time, all I wanted to do was spin her around, pin her against the counter, and see if she tasted as much like peppermint and trouble as I remembered.

“So,” she said, her voice light and far too cheerful as she took a slow, savoring sip of the tea, “what did you do this time? Suspended? Benched? Arrested? Canceled? Banished from the league forever?”

“It was one punch.”

She raised a brow, the steam from her mug clouding her eyes. “One punch that supposedly cracked his orbital bone clean in half, according to the headline that ruined my morning.”

“He deserved it,” I insisted, shoving my hands in my pockets.

“He looked less like he deserved it, and more like he needed an ambulance,” she corrected, her voice going dangerously flat.

“Acting,” I said, shrugging.

“Sure.” Noelle rolled her eyes. Her eyes then flicked to my jaw as it tightened, and she caught herself staring before snapping her attention away.

“You’re enjoying this,”

“I enjoy many things,” she replied lightly. “Most of them do not involve you.”

I stepped closer slowly, deliberately. Reaching above her for a mug from the cabinet wasn’t necessary, but the scrape of my chest against her shoulder was. She went perfectly, enticingly still. She didn’t move. Not even an inch. “Why are you so tense?”

“I’m annoyed,” she snapped.

“Tense,” I corrected softly, my breath ghosting over the sensitive skin behind her ear. I watched, mesmerized, as a tiny tremor ran down the line of her shoulder, followed by the slow, delicious rise of goosebumps.

I leaned in just a fraction more, my lips almost grazing the shell of her ear. I could smell her the deep, warm vanilla scent of her skin that still lived in my dreams. My hand, still braced against the cabinet above her, flexed. I wanted to drop it. I wanted to wrap my fingers into the hem of that sweater and pull her against me until there wasn’t a single molecule of air left between us. God, how I’ve missed her.

“You’ve never been good at lying,” I whispered, my thigh crowding between hers just enough to make her gasp. “Your mouth says you’re annoyed, but your body isn’t saying the same thing.”

She looked up. And suddenly, air was a luxury neither of us had. Her breath hitched—just barely. Her pupils widened, dark and wanting for a fraction of a second, she couldn’t take back. Noelle swallowed. Hard. “You need to leave the kitchen,” she whispered.

I didn’t move. “Why?”

“Because the kitchen is closed,” she tried, but it sounded weak, a lie we both recognized.

“Cold,” I said, leaning in, letting her smell the frost still on my hoodie. “Almost as cold as you breaking up with me.”

“That,” she snapped, her nostrils flaring, “Was five years ago!”

“Feels like yesterday.”

She felt the shift in me and panicked, stepping to the side quickly to break the spell. She put the kitchen island between us, but the air was still vibrating. “Guest room is down the hall,” she said, her voice shaking with forced authority. “Don’t touch the thermostat. Don’t touch my decorations. Don’t—actually, let’s make this easy. Don’t touch anything.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart.”

She stiffened from head to toe. “Don’t call me that.”

I let a grin spread—slow, wicked, and dangerous. I let my eyes wander down the length of her, lingering on the way that low-cut sweater clung to her curves, reminding her exactly what I was thinking about. “Right. Forgot. You only like that when you’re—”

“Finish that sentence,” she warned, her voice dropping into a lethal, breathless register, “and I will smother you in your sleep.”

I took a step toward her, watching her eyes widen again. “The way I remember it, Noelle, you liked being smothered. Just not with a pillow.”

Something warm and reckless ignited in my chest, burning away the cold of the bus ride. I shouldn’t find this intoxicating. I shouldn’t enjoy her anger like oxygen. I definitely shouldn’t still want her—not after the way she’d gutted me five years ago.

But I did. My body was humming with it, a low-frequency vibration that settled deep in my bones. It was the only honest feeling I’d had all day. I wanted to see how far I could push her before she broke; I wanted to see if that fire in her eyes was still as hot as the fire I remembered between the sheets.

I hoisted my bag, walking toward the guest room, but at the threshold, I paused. I looked back, letting my gaze rake over her one last time—slow enough to be a challenge, heavy enough to let her know exactly where my mind was. “Merry Christmas, Noelle.”

She muttered something that sounded aggressively not merry or Christmas-like. But as I closed the door behind me, I caught her whisper under her breath: “This is going to be a long week.”

I leaned my head against the door and smiled for the first time in months. A long week. Seven days of shared walls, accidental brushes, and the scent of her skin.

A very long week. Exactly what I wanted.