The Pucking Wrong Number: A Hockey Romance (The Pucking Wrong Series Book 1)

It’s amazing what you can find out by padding a few pockets. The PI I’d used a few times in the past to suss out some stalkers, had now allowed me to become the stalker.

Monroe Destiny Bardot. My fingers traced the letters like a man possessed, my eyes gobbling up the folder like it held the keys to eternal happiness.

With how I’d felt since I’d seen her picture, maybe it did.

Destiny was an apt middle name for her, since that’s what I felt like she’d become.

‘Need anything else from me?’ David, the PI, asked. He was an extremely innocuous looking dude, the kind that your eyes would immediately brush over if you saw him in the streets, never thinking twice about him. Maybe that was why he was so fucking good at his job.

‘Nope, I’m good. Thanks for this,’ I told him, holding up my phone to show him I’d wired his money, and trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. I used him because he was one of the few PIs in the city that didn’t do work for my father, but you never knew where allegiances lay, and the last thing I wanted was for him to hear about my new obsession.

David nodded and strode out of the room, and the second the door clicked shut behind him, I was flipping open the folder, staring at the pictures he’d managed to dredge up.

Holy fuck.

This girl.

I’d been obsessing over the picture she’d sent me for the last two days, but having new ones was almost more than I could handle.

She was gorgeous.

More than gorgeous. Golden and perfect. Her beauty hit me like a train wreck, knocking me into some sort of crazy trance. She was the kinda girl where you had to actually blink a couple times to make sure you weren’t hallucinating. My fingers traced one of the pictures. She was seated on the grass, her head tipped up into the sunlight, a soft smile on her face. She was blowing my fucking mind.

I dragged my eyes away from her perfection and read through the information he’d gathered.

She was an orphan. The death dates of both parents were listed, and it looked like she’d been in the foster system since she was ten.

I knew I should feel bad about this angel being alone for so long, but I also knew she probably felt like an outcast. Abandoned. Rejected.

Maybe she’d been waiting for me like I’d been waiting for her.

Maybe I could get her to want me as much as I was wanting her.

You’re an asshole, my inner voice seethed, but as my eyes roved over her picture, reminding me that she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, I couldn’t find it in myself to fucking care.

I was fucking hooked, like there was something magical about her.

I continued reading, noting the address he’d provided. It was in a really shitty part of town, and I immediately began obsessing over if she’d be safe getting to her place, especially since her preferred method of transportation was walking.

He’d found the companies she worked for—one sounded like a doctor’s office and the other, “Great Food Kitchen”, sounded like some kind of restaurant. I scanned the rest of the list…which was short. She was taking classes at the local community college, and she had straight A’s.

There were two other pictures of her. One was the one I’d just been dying over, and the other was of her as a little girl that must’ve been in her state file. In the picture, she was staring at the person taking it with those big golden eyes, heaviness and sorrow there that you never wanted to see in a 10-year-old. I could feel the aching sadness that lived within her.

And that was what got me. That was what threw me over the edge, spiraling me forward where I wouldn’t be able to control myself anymore. Because the look in her eyes, the pain reflected there…it was the same pain that I felt every fucking day. This was a girl that could understand.

Without thinking, I got up from the couch a moment later, grabbing my keys and clutching the paper with her address tightly.

A second later, I was racing my Corvette down the street, breaking every traffic law as I rushed to get to her place to do…I don’t know what.

To see her in person? Even though I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. I already felt like I’d chase her to the fucking ends of the earth.

But a part of me was still worried she wasn’t real, that something inside of me had imagined all of this. Because a person as broken and worthless as me, he didn’t deserve the stars to align like this. He didn’t deserve a goddess like her.

But there was no part of me that cared.

Deserving or not… She was going to be mine.

I was two blocks away, in the shittiest neighborhood I’d ever seen, when I realized how much my lime green Corvette would stand out. She was sure to notice a vehicle like this if it was parked nearby.

I maneuvered the car into a tight parallel parking stall and climbed out. There was a group of kids playing on the sidewalk across the street, an abandoned basketball at their feet as they stared with wide eyes and mouths at my ride. I locked the doors and strode over to them.

“If my car’s still here, and still has all of its parts when I return, I’ll give each of you a hundred bucks,” I told them.

The five little boys’ eyes widened even further, and they all nodded eagerly. I shot them a chin lift, and I set off down the street, annoyed that two blocks still separated me from her.

I growled when I turned the corner and saw the complex that matched the address on the paper. She lived in a shit hole. More than a shit hole. This place should have been condemned years ago. The front gate hung askew, and with the peeling paint and the decaying wood, the whole place looked seconds away from collapsing.

There was a homeless man camped out in front of the building, for Christ’s sake.

The street was pretty quiet though, and it gave me some time to plot how I would convince my girl to leave and move in with me.

Burn the place down?

I’d just had that thought when, like a mirage, she turned the corner. Her backpack was held tightly against her chest, and her face was pointing down, like she was trying to make sure she didn’t make eye contact with anyone.

The pictures hadn’t done her justice. I was thirty feet away, and I was getting hard from the combined effect of that face…that hair…and that body…

It was ludicrous how beautiful she was.

I wanted to kidnap her and lock her away so no one else could see her perfection.

I tensed when she passed the homeless man and he sat up from the pile of ratty blankets he’d been under, the color of them no longer recognizable under their filth. I could hear the low murmur of voices as she talked to him, the tension in her body fading.

And then she smiled.

And it felt like I’d been cursed, like my cock would never relax again. That smile undid me. My heart was thumping violently against my ribcage.

I’d always considered myself a pretty reasonable guy. Ever since my brother’s death I’d done my best not to be a shithead. If I saw an old lady walking across the street, I helped her. I never gave a girl any expectations. I followed the law—except on the road.

Part of my appeal was supposedly the wholesome “golden boy” persona I had going.

But here I was, contemplating things I never would’ve considered before I saw that picture.

All I could think about was devouring her. Keeping her forever. Dirtying her with my cum, spreading it across her skin every day.

I wanted her.

It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to watch her wave goodbye to the homeless man and then start up the stairs, disappearing from sight.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I cursed when I pulled it out and looked at the reminder that practice was starting in thirty minutes and I was at least forty-five minutes away.

I reluctantly dragged my gaze away and started back to my car, feeling more rabid and savage than I’d ever experienced in my life. The boys were gathered around the car, none of them touching it, but all of them practically frothing at the mouth as they stared. I did a quick check and saw that all the wheels still appeared to be there, which was better than you could expect in this neighborhood.

I quickly pulled out five hundred dollar bills and passed them out, giving them a casual wave as they squealed in joy and ran away.

I didn’t remember the drive to the stadium, and it barely entered my consciousness when Coach screamed at me for my tardiness.

I was thinking about my angel. My obsession. Mine.