It was just one little kiss, and she’d acted like I’d tried to fuck her.
Little Miss Prude.
Carson narrowed his eyes. “What’s up with you?”
“What? Nothing.” I barged past him, heading for the kitchen.
“You know, it’s going to be a long summer if you don’t talk to me about it.”
“Nothing to say.”
“Aiden, man, come on.”
Fuck. The guy was like a dog with a bone. All day, he’d been trying to get me to talk. I didn’t want to fucking talk. I wanted to do my time out here, go back to college for my final year with the Lakers, and forget all about my piece of a shit sperm donor.
It wasn’t my fault I drew the short straw in the father lottery.
Dawson Dumfries was nobody to me.
Nothing.
Yet, his reputation haunted me like a spirit that refused to move on to the afterlife.
“You are not your father,” he said.
“Yeah, well, try telling that to the residents of Monroe.”
“Talk to me. What happened?” He leaned against the counter, arms folded over his chest.
“Some asshole was running his mouth in the diner where my mom works. I asked him to stop. Twice. The third time, I lost it.”
“You broke his nose.”
“Yeah, well,” I clenched a fist, wincing at the bite of pain across my tender knuckles. “I should have done a whole lot worse than that.”
“Coach barely kept your ass out of jail.”
“What do you want me to say?” I shrugged. “He was disrespecting my mom. I’m not just going to standby and take that shit.”
She’d been through enough.
“There are other ways…”
“Yeah, okay. So you’re telling me you wouldn’t break some fuckers nose if he were talking shit about your mom or Dayna.”
“Dayna?” His brows crinkled. “What’s she got to do with anything?”
“I just figured you two are close?”
What the fuck? I didn’t care about his relationship with Dayna. Didn’t care that she’d shoved me away like I was some creeper. Which I guess, when you thought about it, I was.
I hadn’t meant to kiss her. But she was pretty, all those sun-kissed freckles taunting me every time she smiled, and aside from being on the ice, getting down and dirty with a girl was the best fucking distraction there was.
But she was important to Carson, and he was important to the team—the team I needed if I was going to turn pro.
For fuck’s sake.
I’d come close to screwing up today. But that was my middle name.