Free Scoring Lacey by Jenna Howard

promises.
    “I’ve never,” he exhaled, breaking up his thought. Leaning forward he set the puck back on her desk then looked up at her. “I never wanted to go bareback. Ever. All it takes is one determined sperm and everything changes. I didn’t want to be stuck here. I would’ve been stuck here. Am I shallow? I’m shallow. Once I left Granville I didn’t want a kid to hold me back. Then once I became really good, I didn’t want a kid to be a hostage negotiation for money. Always condoms. Always . Only mine, never hers because there’s sabotage: a pin, a fingernail, old condoms. Always .” He met her steady gaze. “Until you.”
    With a groan, he dropped his head to her thigh because he needed physical contact and he was exhausted. Her hand smoothed along his hair. The touch was soothing and reassuring. “I told myself earlier that that was it. No more fucking around with Lacey Magerin. And yet here I am.” He was confused. She confused the hell out of him. Every sign he saw told him to stay away from her and yet here he was.
    She had Granville permanently tattooed on her soul and the thought of him coming back here where he was always Jerry Donnelly’s kid made his skin tight. People who remembered his dad, didn’t look at Shayne and say “That’s Shayne Donnelly, he’s in the NHL now.” No, they said, “That’s Jerry Donnelly’s kid.”
    She had ventured out into the big, bad world but had returned. Permanently.
    He came back sporadically. In the ten years since he had left, he could count his flights into Regina on one hand. His one and only goal had been to get the fuck out of Granville. If it hadn’t been hockey, he would’ve hit the highway with his thumb pointing in any direction.
    He was, as Adam Payne said, a dirt farm boy. The only thing his father had grown on that small plot of land had been dirt, hangovers and bruises. Nothing thrived in that shack, not even Shayne. There were times even now when he woke up half expecting to see old hand-me-downs, a black eye and dirt on his skin.
    And here he was, fooling around with Coach’s daughter.
    What a piece of shit he was.
    The Magerins had been good to him. He couldn’t keep track of the amount of meals Mrs. Magerin had fed him or the times he’d slept over or the hours spent on the ice with Coach and Todd. He was Jerry Donnelly’s kid, she was Roger Magerin’s daughter. He was dirt, she was gold.
    “What are you doing with me?” he asked softly, not really aware of voicing the question out loud.
    A surprised laugh escaped her, quiet and low. “I have no idea, Shayne. Saturday morning I woke up and went with my mom to the salon for a style and a pedicure. Saturday afternoon I got into a screaming match with Carmen. Saturday evening I was remembering the last function where Kevin was my date and how so much could change in a year. Then I turn and there’s this guy who isn’t the kid I remember making me think things I shouldn’t. Saturday night I’m naked in my bed with him. Trust me when I say I have no idea what I’m doing.”
    He ran his hand down her leg. She had the silkiest skin. Head to toe. How cliché but it was true. His fingers traced the graceful curve of her calf, her slender ankle wrapped in leather straps from her sandals then back up to her knee then down again.
    “For the record, I don’t want a baby either. Jesus, my oldest is nineteen. At nineteen I was married. That’s old enough to make me a grandma and if she’s carrying around a baby sibling, the world will assume it’s hers. Fuck, the fifteen-year-old is old enough to make me a grandma. A baby wouldn’t be fair to the girls. I’ll be honest, I debated the morning after pill. My life is a mess, Shayne. My kids are pissed that I kicked out their dad. How mad would they be if I said I was pregnant?”
    “And yet here you are.”
    “Here I am,” she repeated in a softer voice. “I have no idea what I’m doing with you, Shayne. Is my ego so trashed