All Chapters of Iced Out Hearts — Six Months With The Hockey Captain: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

Julio's POVI've watched myself knock a man unconscious forty-one times since sunrise.Here's the sick part.I'd do it again.* * *Twelve hours earlier, all I wanted was to go home.I hate this club. I hate the purple neon that makes everyone look like a bruised corpse. I hate the cheap gin, the damp velvet, the bass rattling my fillings. Most of all, I hate that I let my team drag me here on a Tuesday night, when I have a seven a.m. skate tomorrow and when my knee feels like broken glass."Cap! One more round!"Toby, our nineteen-year-old rookie center, is clinging to his third gin and tonic like a life raft. His eyes are glassy. His knuckles are white. And he keeps glancing at the VIP booth like something in there might bite him."You're done," I say. "Drink the water or I'm carrying you out over my shoulder.""I'm fine, Cap. Just getting used to the scene."He's not fine. He's terrified. Kids like Toby think you have to act untouchable off the ice, too. Nobody warns them this city

Julio's POVI'm well aware that I'm ten minutes late, and I don't give a damn.The entirety of this hassle from the scandal is all so irksome. There's no bloody reason why one punch I gave to an inconsequential idiot who deserved it should be putting me in the mess I'm in.It's crazy. Even more crazy how the media blows things out of proportion, scrutinizing every one of my past and present actions—The Daily Post actually called me a “violent, careless playboy” this morning.None of those fuckers know me. And fuck those comments. The so-called fans are singing a different tune now, when just a week ago they were thirsting over me and singing my praises after I won yet another game, just as I've been doing my whole damn life.And now I'm expected to be in a stupid fake relationship with some girl who will no doubt piss me the fuck off even more.This shit had better work. I cannot lose all I've worked for for years because the media decided to believe a bully's sob story of how I punch

Julio’s POV"Don't be bloody ridiculous, Julio," Sierra says sharply in answer to my prying question, acting like nothing is wrong but Sierra’s hand digs into my bicep so hard I can feel her nails biting straight through the custom wool of my tuxedo jacket.I’ve spent the last ten years of my life reading body language on the ice. I know the exact, micro-second shift in a defenseman’s posture before he tries to pin me against the glass. I know what fear looks like, and I know what a threat looks like.Now I don't think that man was a paramore.It's like she’s looking at a predator."Sierra?" My hand, resting on the back of her emerald silk dress, tightens against the small of her back. "I'm asking again. Who is that?""And I'm telling you again, Hayes. No one," she breathes, her voice thin and completely devoid of its usual razor-sharp edge. Her fingers are still white-knuckling my jacket. "The flashes...they're um...it’s just a panic attack."It’s a terrible lie. Sierra Rosso doesn'

Julio’s POV:“It was tactical. Purely tactical."The mirror doesn’t argue. It just reflects a guy with bedhair and a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, who has watched a one-minute clip of himself kissing his fake girlfriend a number of times I’m choosing not to disclose, even to myself.“It was a strategic, defensive maneuver in a high-pressure environment.” I spit, rinse, and try again with more conviction, because the first take sounded like I was being held hostage. “She was in danger, I took action, end of story.”My phone buzzes against the marble for roughly the nine-hundredth time since I woke up. The lock screen says 14.2 million views and 3,811 unread messages, which has to be some kind of goddamn medical condition.“Tactical,” I tell the mirror again, and the guy in it clearly isn’t buying a word.The worst part is that it isn’t even the kiss I keep replaying. I could handle the kiss, I could stuff the kiss in a locker and sit on it. It’s the sentence she said at the coat