Offside Hearts (Love and Hockey Book 1)

“And just a little bit of salt…”

I sprinkle the last dash of seasoning onto the roasted chicken, which I’ve just taken out of the oven. It smells pretty fucking delicious, if I do say so myself. I’m not a professional chef or anything, but I know my way around the kitchen. Not to mention, I’ve watched about a dozen videos online about how to make the best roasted chicken in the world, so I’m feeling pretty confident.

The most challenging part of the preparation so far has been setting the table just right. Despite the fact that I grew up in a wealthy family, I never learned the rules of which side the knife goes on or where the water glasses should be relative to the plates.

That’s why, as I wait for Margo to arrive, I keep fiddling with the silverware and moving things around on the table. I did manage to find sunflowers at the third shop I visited today, and I add a little more water to the vase I put them in to make sure they won’t wilt.

Everything is perfect.

Or, at least, as perfect as I can hope for.

I take a pack of matches out of my junk drawer and light the candles that I set out on the table, then go to my record player and turn down the music just enough so that I’ll be able to hear Margo knock when she arrives.

Which I anticipate being any minute now. We agreed on 6:30, and my phone says it’s now 6:32.

In an attempt to calm my nerves and keep myself from pacing around the condo, I take a seat on the couch and flip through a menswear catalog that came in the mail. This only serves to distract me for a few minutes, though, so I stand up and start fussing with the table setting again. Then I duck into the bedroom to double check that my shirt is still stain free and run a hand through my hair.

It’s going on 6:45 when I stride into the entryway and peer through the peephole to see if there’s any sign of Margo.

Nothing.

A little bubble of worry rises up in my chest, and I pull out my phone. There are no messages from her telling me she’ll be late or anything, so I shoot her a quick text.

ME: Hey, just making sure you’re okay. You on your way?

She doesn’t respond. Not in the next few minutes, and not even after fifteen minutes have passed.

I’m starting to get really worried now, but when I pull my phone out and look at it again, I see a little notation under the text I sent her that says Read 6:48pm. The tension in my body loosens now that I know she’s not hurt or anything. But I don’t get why she didn’t text me back.

At 7:15, when she still hasn’t arrived, I try calling her, but it goes to voicemail.

And by 7:30pm, an hour after our date was supposed to begin, as the chicken cools on the table and the candles slowly burn down, I finally admit to myself the truth that I’ve been trying to deny.

She’s not coming.

For whatever reason, Margo has stood me up.

I don’t hear from Margo at all over the weekend.

We have a game on Saturday night, and I look for her in the stands but don’t see her. She’s not sitting in her usual spot, and although I know she’s at the game, she must slip away as soon as it’s done, because I can’t find her afterward either.

Everything that happened on Friday keeps playing through my mind, and I scroll back through our text conversation, trying to figure out if I said something that upset her or scared her away. Have I been coming on too strong? Were the texts about going to multiple florists to find her sunflowers too much?

I don’t get it, and it puts a fucking lump in my stomach every time I think about it.

I’m annoyed that she didn’t even call me to tell me she wasn’t coming, and that she’s been avoiding me ever since. But more than that, I’m just… confused.

We had something. I know we did.

So what the hell happened?

I need to know, so before the game on Tuesday night, I hang around outside the locker room for a while to see if she’ll show up, but she doesn’t. About fifteen minutes before warmups begin, I go into the locker room and start putting on my pads, keeping my head down as my teammates banter around me. I can’t seem to unclench my jaw for any meaningful amount of time, and I don’t want my teammates to notice how frustrated I am.

But Reese’s locker is close to mine, and he obviously picks up on some of my agitation. He claps me on the back and asks, “You good, man?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I mumble, not looking directly at him. “Just in my head a little.”

“Well, snap out of it!” he tells me with a laugh. “You know we’re going to win tonight. We always beat the Glaciers.”

“Which is exactly why you need to put your game face on,” Theo adds. “Because it’ll be embarrassing as fuck if we lose to a team we literally always destroy.”

“And then you’re coming out with us, right?” Reese prods. “After we win?”

“I don’t know,” I say, shrugging off my friend’s hand and bending down to put my skates on. “I’m not sure I’m going to be feeling up to hitting the bars tonight.”

Theo groans, raking a hand through his short dark hair. “Come on, man! You’ve been blowing us off left and right lately. What the hell is going on? Why don’t you ever come out with us anymore?”

“You’re being dramatic,” I say with a snort. “I go out with you guys all the time. But I’m also allowed to want a night off from drinking and partying sometimes, okay? We’re not in college anymore. We’re grown ass men, and it’s not a bad thing to want to act like it sometimes.”

I can tell from the tension in the room after I say this that nobody on the team expected me to snap like that. Hell, I didn’t expect to snap like that. I rarely say that kind of shit to my teammates, and if I do need to knock some sense into them, it’s usually because they’re getting too cocky on the ice. It’s one thing to call the Aces out as their captain, but calling them out as their friend—that can really shift the dynamics. And not in a good way.

I’m pissed at myself for causing a scene, so I decide to do what any good leader should do when they can feel their crew getting frustrated with them: give them time to themselves, to talk shit behind my back and get all their grievances out before the game starts. By the time the puck drops, we need to have left all our hard feelings behind and work as a team. If that means I have to give them five minutes to blow off steam without me in the room, then so be it.

“I’m going to go get some air,” I say, ditching my skates halfway through putting them on and walking out of the locker room in just my socks. Outside in the hallway, I tuck away into a corner for a second, scrubbing a hand over my face.

A tiny inhalation of breath draws my attention, and I look up just in time to see Margo turning around and hurrying off in the other direction. She must’ve started to come down this hallway, seen me standing here, and decided to take off running back the way she came.

“Hey!” I push away from the wall and follow her. “Margo, wait a second. I want to talk to you.”

“I have to go,” she mutters. I grab her arm before she starts to head toward the admin offices upstairs, but she shakes me off. “Noah, I don’t want to talk right now.”

“Well, I do,” I insist. “What the hell happened the other night? Why didn’t you show up, or even tell me you were okay?”

She shakes her head, and when she glances at me from beneath her eyelashes, her gray eyes spark with anger.