One More Shot (Hometown Players #1) Read Online Free Page A

she automatically reaches for Rose, who willingly embraces her. And then Rose steps away and Donna is standing in front of me. She puts her hands on my shoulders and pulls me to her.
    “Welcome back, Jessie, honey,” she whispers in my ear. “It’s so good to see you. I just wish it wasn’t for these reasons.”
    I nod. It’s all I can do. If I try to talk, I will cry. Why is this still so hard? After all these years, I still can’t stop associating her with my loss of him. I hate myself for it.
    “Wyatt says you can keep the truck as long as you need,” Donna announces, and I shoot Callie a withering stare. I should have known she was driving Wyatt Garrison’s truck. “And if you need help with anything, just call. You know we’re here for you.”
    We all smile and nod.
    “The boys said to tell you—all of you—how sorry they are you’re going through this. I know they wish they could be here,” Donna tells us simply.
    As she turns to the door, she grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze. Her pale blue eyes level on me, and it’s like she two-handed me in the abdomen with a hockey stick when as she says, “Jordan told me to tell you he’s thinking of you.”
    I nod again, barely containing the urge to scream.
    “Thanks again, Donna.” Rose hugs her again. “You’re the best. Hopefully we can all have dinner with you and Wyatt before we leave.”
    “I’d love that, honey.” Donna smiles and heads out the door.
    Rose closes the door behind the woman I’d always wished was my mother and stares at me nervously. I turn and find Callie’s concerned stare on me too.
    “I need another shot. Now,” I announce in a shaky voice as I reach for the Patrón. I drink from the bottle.
    “He has no right sending messages through his mother,” Callie says, seething, as she hands me another beer. I promptly open it and chug. “What a cowardly thing to do.”
    “He’s had years to say something, and he waits all this time and then can’t even say it himself?” Rose muses with an angry shake of her head that causes her dark hair to tumble around her shoulders in waves. “God, why does he have to be such a dick?”
    I sink into the nearest chair and continue to chug the beer. Rosie scurries to get me another.
    “I hope he skates headfirst into the boards,” Callie rants, and cracks a new beer of her own.
    “He’s not playing right now,” I mumble. “He’s injured.”
    Callie slams her beer on the table so hard I’m surprised the bottle doesn’t break. “Why do you know that?”
    “Because it’s all over the damn news,” I explain defensively, and feel my cheeks getting red. “I live in freaking Seattle, remember?”
    “Yeah, unfortunately, I do,” Callie retorts as she twists a lock of her light brown hair around her finger. “I still don’t know how the hell you two ended up in the same city.”
    “Sea-Tac Sports Therapy offered me the best internship,” I remind her, and it’s a fact. I’d done my undergraduate degree in kinesiology at the University of Arizona and continued into a two-year graduate program in physical therapy. The final stage involved an internship at a rehab facility or hospital. The only paid one I was offered was in Seattle. Two weeks after I moved there, Jordan Garrison was traded from the Quebec City Royales to the Seattle Winterhawks. Life liked to shit on me like that.
    “What’s got him sidelined?” Callie asks with an evil grin. “Chlamydia? Gonorrhea? Syphilis?”
    I smirk at her dark humor. “Broken ankle.”
    “Good. I’m glad he’s injured,” Rosie says hotly, but it’s forced. The girl doesn’t have a vindictive bone in her body. “I hope he doesn’t play for the whole season.”
    “Can we just change the subject?” I beg, running my fingers through my long hair and tugging absently on a tangle.
    “Fine,” Callie relents, and sags in her chair as if the fight has physically left her. “Rose, let’s make a voodoo doll with his face on it