Pucking Strong: An MM Workplace Hockey Romance (Jacksonville Rays Book 4)

“Henrik—hey—wake up, man.” I shake his shoulder, trying to wake him. Fuck, he’s drenched in sweat. He thrashes again, groaning in his sleep. I was actually having a good dream until he kneed me in the hip, jolting me awake. Now I’m pressed against the wall while he cries out, flailing like he’s drowning on dry land.

“Henrik, come on,” I say, louder this time, grabbing him by the shoulders and pinning him down. “Wake up.”

I know the moment he finally wakes, because all the fight goes out of him like a robot powering down. He groans, his naked chest heaving for breath. But the second he feels me hovering over him, he gasps and tries to sit up. Cursing in Swedish, he frantically pulls away.

“Whoa, whoa—hey, it’s just me. It’s Teddy.”

“Teddy?” He’s clearly still confused. “I—what happened?”

“You’re awake,” I soothe, letting him go. “It’s okay, man. You’re okay.”

He presses a hand to his chest. “I couldn’t breathe.”

“It was just a dream.”

Still panting, he looks my way. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” I assure him, even though my hip is throbbing. The man has iron kneecaps.

He groans again, stretching an arm over his head to better catch his breath. “It always feels so real.” His voice sounds haunted. Is this just about his sister? What other demons does he carry?

I lie back down on my side, tucking my arm under my pillow. “Do you wanna talk about it? Sometimes that helps.”

He goes still as he considers. “No.”

It’s hard not to take that as rejection. “You’ve been having nightmares all week. Is that common for you?”noveldrama

He sighs, cracking the knuckles in his fingers with a practiced flex of his hands. “No.”

“You’ve been dreaming of the car accident with your sister.”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t really a question. We both know it’s true. Reaching out, I rest my hand on his forearm. He flinches at the contact but doesn’t pull away. “Henrik, it wasn’t your fault. You’re not to blame for what happened to Petra.”

His breath catches as he turns to look at me. “You’ve never said her name before.”

I shrug. “I didn’t feel I had the right.”

“And now you do?”

I search his face in the weak moonlight. I can make out little more than the bridge of his nose and his brows. He’s not mad. He’s genuinely asking. “A lot has changed in a week,” I reply.

He flops back to stare up at the ceiling. “Bit of an understatement.”

“I know I never met her, but I’m here with you now. I’ve met Karolina and your parents. I saw Petra’s pictures and heard her stories. She’s not just a name to me anymore. She’s a person. She’s your person. It’s my honor to say her name for you, to remember her with you.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. “This was a mistake.”

I prop up on my elbow. “What, getting married? Yeah, I’ve been saying that since we left the freaking chapel.”

His breath leaves him on a tired sigh. “No, it was a mistake to come here. To stay here.”

“What do you mean?”

He looks around the dark room. “Petra liked doing renovation projects. This shed was one. She turned this into an apartment for whenever we visited my parents.”

I smile, picturing Karro running up and down the dock, playing while her mom ripped out old boards and installed cabinets. From the smiles in her photos, I bet Petra had a great laugh. “The shed is perfect.”

He’s quiet again, but I can feel his mind humming. “She was the last one to stay here.”

“How do you know?”

Surprising me, he sucks in a sharp breath that catches in his throat like a sob. “Gud, hjälpe mig.”

“Henrik?”

“The bed linens still smell like her.”

Oh god. How can one sentence hold so much power? Tears fill my eyes as I take in the faintly floral scent of the sheets. I thought it was just laundry soap. It’s soft, like lavender. Warm, like sunshine. It’s Petra.

My hands reach for Henrik on instinct as he rolls to his side, his body going tense as he finally breaks. In the week since Petra’s death, he’s been holding it all together. He had that one moment of raw emotion in the locker room, but since then he’s been bottled up tight.

At first, I thought it was just a stoic Swedish thing, or maybe the macho, straight man, no-crying thing. But I think Henrik is actually just a master at compartmentalization. He hasn’t let himself feel his sister’s loss because there have been too many other things to do. He had to get here and take care of Karolina. He had to deal with the lawyers, comfort his parents, marry me.

Fuck, it hurts that I’m on the list of distractions keeping him from grieving. But I won’t be a distraction now. He needs to feel this. He needs to feel her. I pull him to me, wrapping my arms around him as he cries. “It’s okay. You just feel it all.”

His arm bands around my waist as he buries his face against my chest. I feel the heat of his breath as he pants for air, his fingers fisted tight into the back of my shirt. Shifting my weight, I roll us until I can unpin his left arm. Our legs snake together, and he’s practically on top of me.

“She’s dead,” he groans against my collarbone, his tears wetting my shirt.

I brush my fingers through his soft hair, sweeping the honey-nut strands back from his face. “I know.”

His arms tighten around me as his hands grip my back. “I’ll never see her again.”

That’s always the kicker, right? First, there’s the sadness that someone is gone. Then comes the resentment that you didn’t know the last time would be the last time. I stare up at the beams on the ceiling, blinking back my own tears. “I know.”

He shifts until just the side of his face is pressed against my chest. Then he sniffs, trying to choke back his tears. “God, I’m so angry.”

My fingers stroke lightly down the vertebra of his neck. “I know.” He groans again, clinging to me hard enough to crack my ribs. “Be angry all you want. I’ve got you.”

But after those three confessions, he’s silent except for the sound of his muted crying. I don’t know how long we stay like that, limbs twisted together. I stroke his hair, his back, humming under my breath as he grieves. Even once he’s calm, he doesn’t pull away. He lets me hold him, lets me comfort him.

It must be nearing morning when he finally pulls away, only shifting far enough to lift his head from my shoulder. I give him whatever space he wants. Our legs are still entangled, and my arm is pinned under him. It fell asleep ages ago.

“I wasn’t dreaming about the car,” he says, breaking the sacred silence of his grief.

If he’s opening this door, I’m walking through it. “What were you dreaming about?”

He rolls onto his back, freeing me from his heavy weight. How is it possible that I already miss it? “When I was seven, Petra and I went ice skating on the lake. The surface cracked, and I fell through.”

“This lake? The one outside?”

“No, a different lake.”

I settle back against my pillow, flexing feeling back into my fingers. “What happened?”

“I almost drowned,” he whispers. “It was awful.”

“How did you get out?”

He’s quiet for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. “Petra saved me. She threw herself flat on the ice and grabbed the end of my scarf as I went under. She risked her life to pull me to the surface just before I drowned.”

As he shares his haunting tale, my mind fills with images of my own sisters, fearless women all. I know they would brave any danger to come to my aid. “She sounds amazing.”

“She was.”

Reaching over, I take his hand. “I’m sorry I never got the chance to meet her.”

He squeezes my hand. “She would have liked you.”

His words send my nerves buzzing in my chest. “Why do you say that?”

“Because she would have seen in you the same thing I see.”

“And what do you see?”

Even in the dark, I know he’s looking at me. I feel the weight of his full attention, the deep anchoring of his soul behind his eyes. “Ett rent hjärta,” he whispers in Swedish.

If I ever knew how to breathe, I’ve long forgotten. “What does that mean?”

The knuckles of his right hand brush over the point where my heart thrums in my chest. “It means you have a pure heart.”