JAY (EXCERPT FROM HOSTILE GAME)
Slam.
“Attwood! Watch where you’re fucking going!”
I pulled myself upright, rubbing at my chest where I’d apparently collided with my teammate Toby Wells’s shoulder. “Sorry, mate. I was—” Cutting myself off with a shrug, I sighed. “Sorry.”
He shook his head. “It’s not like you to be blind to your surroundings. We—” His eyes widened as he glanced over my shoulder. “Fuck. Hoyts. Sort him out before Coach sees.”
Following the direction of his gaze, I groaned, getting off the ice as fast as I could so I could get in between Arson and his personal nemesis, Lincoln Bellingham. They both completely ignored my approach, too caught up in trading insults.
“Back to your little prison masquerading as a uni after this, are you?” Bellingham got all up in Arson’s face, a mocking sneer curving over his lips. “I’ll think of you, shivering in your single bed while I’m stretched out in my comfy king size bed with a woman or two.”
“Here watching me for tips, were you?” Arson shot back. “Maybe you should’ve stuck to lacrosse instead of hockey. Then again, neither of those sports have managed to teach you how to use your stick. I feel sorry for any woman that ends up in your bed.”
“At least I can get women.”
“At least I don’t think of you while I’m in my bed with those women. You’re fucking obsessed with me.”
“You fucking wish,” Bellingham snarled. “You’re the one stalking me.”
“You came to my fucking game!”
“It’s the Whelford rink. It belongs to us.”
“Daniel!” I shoved at Arson’s arm, and he stumbled, his head whipping around. He blinked rapidly, seeming to realise where we were, mouthing Shit, as he took a step back from a now-smirking Bellingham. Ripping off my glove, I gave Bellingham the finger as we made our way towards the locker rooms. Fucking pretentious asshole. Yes, we had to share the rink with his university. Yes, none of us were happy about it. It wasn’t as if we could change that fact. Our universities were both too small to separately support that kind of infrastructure, despite no lack of money between us.
Technically, I was supposed to remain neutral around Bellingham, only because several of his mother’s friends were clients of my family’s clinic, but he made it difficult. Very difficult. At least him being here to taunt Arson had taken my mind off the way Volkov’s hand had spanned Nova’s waist, his mouth connecting with the softest fucking lips I’d ever kissed, his—
Enough. Fucking enough.
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©️2026 Becca Steele (unedited & subject to change)