Luc stopped and looked up at the guys. “Jesus,” he said. “This can’t be me.” But he had a bad feeling that it was.
Luc’s gaze stopped on the last line, and he backed up and read it one more time.
“What the hell?” he whispered as he continued.
Stunned, Luc dropped the magazine and sat back. He felt as if he’d been hit in the head with a smoking puck. This absolutely could not be happening. He was imagining things that did not exist.
“Do you know Honey Pie?” Bressler asked, letting Luc know he wasn’t imagining things.
“No.” But there was something familiar about it. Something real personal.
“You’re famous now,” the captain joked. “Read on. You’ve been put into a coma by Honey Pie.”
The rest of the guys laughed, but Luc didn’t find it at all amusing. No, he found it disturbing.
“Why’d she pick you this time?” Fish wanted to know. “She must have seen you play and wanted to get a look at your paraphernalia.”
“Maybe she’s someone who’s seen the paraphernalia,” Lynch added.
Anger welled up in his chest, but he battled it back and said, “I can guarantee she hasn’t seen the paraphernalia.” Anger would only get in the way. He knew that much from experience. He needed a clear head to think. He felt like he was looking at one of those ringer puzzles with a big picture on it-a picture of his life-but all the pieces were mixed up. And if he could just get it all in the right order, everything would become clear.
“I’d think it was cool if Honey Pie screwed me into a coma,” someone said.
“She isn’t real,” Lynch told everyone.
“She has to be real,” Scott Manchester argued. “Someone is writing the columns.”
The conversation quickly turned to speculation over where Honey Pie might have seen Luc. They all agreed she lived in Seattle, but they differed on gender. They wondered if Honey Pie had actually met Luc, and if she was actually a man. The general consensus was that if she wasn’t a man, she thought like one.
Luc didn’t give a flying fuck if Honey Pie was a man or a woman. He’d spent the last two years trying to live down that kind of shit. And here it was again. Fueling the fire he’d been trying to extinguish. Only this time it was worse than ever before.
“It’s all made up,” someone said. But it didn’t feel at all made up to Luc. It was all so eerily familiar it raised the hair on the back of his neck. The red dress. The part about hard nipples. About being cold or turned on. The red thong panties. Sucking a bruise.
A piece of the puzzle slid into place. It was Jane. Someone had been eavesdropping on him and Jane, but that was impossible.
“Hey, boys. What are you all doing?”
Luc glanced up from the glossy pages of the magazine to Jane’s green eyes. He would have to tell her. She’d freak out.
“Sharky,” the guys greeted her.
The corners of her lips tilted up slightly as she looked at him. Then her gaze fell on the open magazine and her little smile froze.
“Have you ever heard of
Jane’s gaze locked with Luc’s. “Yes. I have.”
“Honey Pie wrote about Luc.”
Color drained from her already pale complexion. “Are you sure it’s you?”
“Positive.”
“I’m sorry, Luc.”
Luc rose from his chair. She understood what it meant. To him. She understood even what the rest of the guys didn’t. Now, when anything was written about him, the Honey Pie article would be mentioned, just one more excuse to dissect his private life. To dig into the stuff that just didn’t matter. He moved to her and looked into her eyes.