Taking a Shot Read Free Page A

they realized I didn’t have any hair left.

 
     

    MY CHEEK STILL tingled where Katie Weber had kissed it.
    I tried to push that from my mind because her dad was glaring at me from across the table at Amani’s Italian Restaurant like he wanted nothing more than to use his steak knife to cut off my balls and then feed them to me as my lunch instead of the chicken and pasta the waiters were serving us.
    Amani’s was our go-to restaurant for a pregame meal. It was a family-style place, where we ordered a few big dishes and all helped ourselves, and the staff always knew to expect us on the day of a home game. They made it feel homey—even if right now, Webs was doing his best to prevent me from feeling any sort of comfort.
    Self-preservation seemed to be the wisest course of action after I’d almost fucked up and touched Katie. The last couple of months had really screwed with my head, with her being sick—mainly because there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. That was the only excuse I could come up with for whatever idiocy had caused my lapse in judgment. Well, that and the fact that I’d completely lost all grip on reality when she’d kissed me.
    Not that Webs would give a shit about my excuses. As soon as he had seen Katie take the seat directly across from me at the restaurant, he’d plopped himself down right next to her, and he hadn’t stopped glaring at me since.
    She had a scarf tied around her head now, a soft blue silky one that matched the color of her eyes. For some reason, without any hair on her head, her eyes stood out even more than usual. I didn’t know if she’d chosen to put the scarf on or if her mom had insisted once she’d seen that all Katie’s hair was gone. It didn’t really matter, I supposed. But I liked how it made it easier to see her eyes. You could see a lot in Katie’s eyes, if you knew to look.
    Liam Kallen jabbed me in the ribs with his elbow to get my attention, and I snapped out of it long enough to take the bowl of pasta he was trying to pass to me. Kally was new to the team, and he was living with me now. He’d joined us at the trade deadline about a week ago along with Riley Jezek and Viktor Ellstrom. Kally and RJ had been playing for the Islanders, and Eller came over from Winnipeg.
    Kally used to be one of the most prolific goal-scorers in the league—until his wife died. Everyone said that when she’d died, he’d stopped living, too. I wasn’t so sure about that, but he was still trying to figure out how to score again, even though it had been more than a year since she’d been killed.
    I put some of the pasta on my plate and passed the bowl on to my best friend on the team, Ray Chambers. Razor loaded his plate with about three times as much as I had and then reached for the salad in the middle of the table. I’d never met anyone who could put away as much food as he could, and that was saying something since I had six younger brothers and every single one of us played hockey and ate like a pig according to my mom.
    Once I stopped staring at Katie and started eating, Webs finally focused more of his attention on his meal instead of inventing new and exciting ways to torture me.
    Razor stuffed a massive forkful of pasta into his mouth. He had barely chewed and swallowed when he said, “So, Katie…you going to prom with the same guy as last year? It’s coming up pretty soon, eh?”
    Not only did Razor eat more than anyone I’d ever known, he was also quite possibly the most fucking clueless guy on the face of the planet when it came to tact. I kicked his shin hard under the table.
    “Fuck, Babs!”
    “Watch your fucking mouth in front of my daughter, asswipe,” Webs grumbled at him.
    Razor shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, Katie.” But he didn’t sound sorry.
    I couldn’t make myself look anywhere but at Katie, though. She’d ducked her head down to stare at her plate and was as red-faced as she’d been while Webs had shaved her hair off a