The Pucking Wrong Number: A Hockey Romance, page 1
THE PUCKING WRONG NUMBER
THE PUCKING WRONG BOOK #1
C.R. JANE
CONTENTS
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TPWN Soundtrack
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Epilogue No. 2
The Wrong Pucking Number Bonus Scene
The Wrong Pucking Guy
Mrs. Bentley’s Chorizo Breakfast Burritos
Sneak Preview
Prologue
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Acknowledgments
About C.R. Jane
Books by C.R. Jane
The Pucking Wrong Number by C. R. Jane
Copyright © 2023 by C. R. Jane
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, and except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
For permissions contact:
crjaneauthor@gmail.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design: Cassie Chapman/Opulent Designs
Photographer: Cadwallader Photography
Editing: Jasmine J.
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To S-
The only person I ever needed to love me…was you.
THE PUCKING WRONG NUMBER
One text to the wrong number…mine…and everything changed.
He won’t tell me his last name, and maybe that should throw up a thousand red flags, but when I’m all alone in a new city and struggling to make ends meet, his texts are the lifeline I’ve been desperate for.
But I never would have answered that text if I’d known that Lincoln Daniels, superstar hockey player extraordinaire was the one sending them.
He’s trying to sweep me off my feet now. He says he’s obsessed.
He wants me wearing his number…permanently.
The question is…is he still the wrong number, or can this hockey god prove he’s Mr. Right?
Mastermind
Taylor Swift
Hurt
Johnny Cash
Chasing Cars
Ryan Waters Band
bloody valentine-Acoustic
Machine Gun Kelly, Travis Barker
Young & Beautiful
Lana Del Rey
Eyes Closed
Ed Sheeran
Pretty Heart
Parker McCollum
The Most Beautiful Things
Tenille Townes
All Eyes on Me
Bo Burnham
Never on the Day You Leave
John Mayer
Vulnerable
Selena Gomez
Turning Tables
Adele
Someday
OneRepublic
Anti-Hero
Taylor Swift
Listen to the full playlist here.
"Why is a puck called a puck? Because dirty little bastard was taken."
—Martin Brodeur
PROLOGUE
MONROE
“Monroe. My pretty little girl,” Mama slurs from the couch. She’s staring up at the ceiling, and even though she’s saying my name, I know she’s not talking to me. Or at least the me that’s standing right here, scrubbing at the vomit stain she left on the floor. She’s talking to the me from the past, or wherever it is her brain takes her when she’s high as a kite.
There’s a knock on the door, and I glance at it fearfully, dread churning through my insides. Because I know who it is. One of her “customers” as Mama calls them.
The door opens without either of us saying anything. I’m not sure Mama even heard the knock. In steps a sweaty, pale-faced man that I’ve seen once or twice before. He has rosy cheeks and a belly that protrudes over his jeans. Like a perverse Santa Claus. Not that I believe in that guy anymore. He’s certainly never come to our place on Christmas Eve.
The man’s eyes gleam as he stares at me, but then Mama groans in a weird way, and his attention goes to her.
“Roxanne,” he says in a sing-song voice as he makes his way over there.
I want to say something. Anything. Tell him that Mama’s in no shape for company, but I know it’s no use. Besides, Mama would be furious with me later on if she missed out on the money she needs to get her fix.
I leave the room and lock myself in the one bedroom we have in this place. Mama and I share the room, but more often than not, she can’t make it any further than the couch.
The disgusting noises I’ve learned to hate start, so I turn on the radio, trying to drown them out. I fall into a fitful sleep, and my dreams are haunted by the image of a healthy mother that cares more about me than she does about escaping the life she created.
I wake with a start, panic blurring the edges of the room until I can convince my brain that everything’s fine.
Except everything doesn’t feel fine. It’s so quiet. Way too quiet.
I creep towards the door, pressing my ear against it to see if I can hear anything.
But there’s nothing.
I slowly open the door and peek out into the room. There’s no sign of the man, or my mother. Thinking the coast is clear, I make my way out of my room, only to come to a screeching halt when I see my mother on the ground by the front door, a pile of green liquid by her face.
I sigh, thinking of the clean-up ahead. Again. I hate these men. Every time they come here, they take a piece of her, while leaving her with nothing. It’s always like this after they’re done with her.
When I walk over with a rag and bucket, I see Mama is shaking, tears streaming down her face. She’s a scary gray color I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
“Mama,” I whisper, reaching down to touch her face, only to flinch at how icy cold her skin is. Her eyes suddenly shoot open, causing me to jump. They’re even more bloodshot than normal. Her bony hand claws at my shirt, and she frantically pulls me closer to her. Her lip is bruised and bloody. The bastard must’ve gotten rough.
“Don’t let ‘em taze your heart,” she slurs, incomprehensibly.
“Mama?” I ask, worry thick in my voice.
“Don’t…let a man…take your heart,” she spits out. “Don’t let him…” Her words fade away and her chest rises with one big inhale…before she goes perfectly still.
“Mama!” I whimper, shaking her over and over again.
But she never says another word. She’s just gone, like a flame extinguished in a dark room.
And I’m all alone, with her last words forever ringing in my ears.
CHAPTER 1
MONROE
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out the window into the dark, seemingly starless sky. Freedom was so close I could taste it.
18.
It felt like I’d been waiting my whole life for this moment. For this specific birthday. The thought of finally being able to leave this place, to start my life, on my own terms…it helped get me through each day.
I knew it would be difficult when I left. I only had my scrimpy savings from my after school job at the grocery store to start my life. But I’d do whatever it took to make something of myself.
Something more than the empty shell my mother had left me that day.
I’d been in the foster system since I was ten years old, the day after that fateful night where I’d lost her. Everyone wanted to adopt a baby, and a baby I had not been. I’d gone through what seemed like a hundred different homes at this point, but my current home was where I’d managed to stay the longest.
Unfortunately.
My foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. Detweiler, and their son Ripley, seemed like nice people at first, but over time, things had changed. They were different now.
Mrs. Detweiler, Marie, had come to think of me as her live-in maid. I was all for helping out around the house, but when they got up as a collective group after every meal and left everything to me to clean up–as well as every other chore around the house–it was too much.
Someday, hopefully in the near future, I would never clean someone else’s toilet again.
While I could deal with manual labor for another month, it was Mr. Detweiler, Todd, who had become a major problem. His actions had grown increasingly creepy, his longing stares and lingering glances making me sick. Everything he said to me had an underlying meaning…was an innuendo. He’d started talking about my birthday more, like he wanted to remind me of it for reasons far different than the promise of freedom it represented to me. I’m not sure it had even occurred to any of them yet that I was actually allowed to leave after that day. Both my birthday and high school graduation were the same week. Perfect timing. I just hoped he could control himself and keep his hands off me long enough to get to that point. Some people might not think a high school graduation was anything special, but to me, it represented everything.
Ripley was fine, I guess. He was more like a potato than a person, which was better than other things he could be. His eyes skipped over me when we were in the same room, like I didn’t actually exist. And maybe I didn’t exist to him. As long as his bed was made every day, and he had food on the table, and toilet paper stocked to wipe his ass, he could care less. He was much too involved in his video games to care about the world around him.
I glanced at the clock. It was 4:55pm, time to get dinner started before Mr. Detweiler got home from work. Sighing, I absentmindedly smoothed my faded quilt that Mrs. Detweiler had brought home from who knows where, and headed out to the hallway and down to the kitchen. The house was a three bedroom rambler in an okay part of town. It was nicer than other places I’d stayed, but I’d found that didn’t matter all that much. The hearts beating inside the home held a much greater significance than how nice, or not nice, the house actually was.
I’m sure I could have been perfectly happy in the hovel I’d started life in with my mother…if only she’d been different.
I came to a screeching halt, and panic laced my insides, when I walked into the kitchen and saw Mr. Detweiler leaning against the laminate counter. How had I missed him coming into the house? I couldn’t recall hearing the garage door opening.
He was nursing his favorite bottle of beer, which was actually the fanciest thing in the kitchen, costing far more than any of the other food they bought. Todd Detweiler was still dressed in the baggy suit he wore to the accounting office he worked at. He had a receding hairline that rivaled any I’d seen, so he brushed all the hair forward, carefully styling it to a point on his forehead right above his watery blue eyes.
He raised an eyebrow at the fact I was still frozen in place. But he usually didn’t get home until 6:30, long enough for me to get dinner on the table and hide away until they were done.
“Well, hello there, Monroe,” he drawled, my name sounding dirty coming from his lips.
I schooled my face and steeled my insides, taking methodical steps towards the fridge like his presence hadn’t disarmed me.
“Hello,” I answered pleasantly, hating the way I could feel his gaze stroking across my skin. Like I was an object to be coveted rather than a person.
I knew I was pretty. The spitting image of my mother when she was young. But just like with her, my looks had only been a curse, forever designed to attract assholes whose only goal was to use and abuse me.
I reached into the fridge to grab the bowl of chicken I’d put in there earlier to defrost…when suddenly he was behind me. Close enough that if I moved, he’d be pressed against me.
“Is there something you need?” I asked, trying to keep the edge of hysteria out of my voice. His hand settled on my hip and I squeezed my eyes shut, cursing the universe.
He leaned close, his breath a whisper against my skin. "You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?" Todd’s breath stunk of beer, a smell that would prevent me from ever trying it, no matter how expensive and nice it was supposed to be.
“I—I’m not sure what you’re talking about, sir.” I grabbed the chicken and tried to stand , hoping he would back away. But the only thing he did was straighten up, so our bodies were against each other. I tried to move away, but his hand squeezed against my hip. Hard.
“I need to get this chicken on the stove,” I said pleasantly, like I wasn’t dying inside at the feel of his touch.
“Such a tease,” he murmured with a small chuckle. “I love how you like to play games. Just going to make it so much better when we stop.” There was a bulge growing harder against my lower back, and I bit down on my lip hard enough that the salty tang of blood flooded my taste buds.
My hands were shaking, the water sloshing around in the bowl. An idiot could figure out what he was talking about.
“Have you noticed how much I love to collect things?” he asked randomly, finally releasing my hip and stepping back.
I moved quickly towards the sink, setting the bowl inside and going to grab the breadcrumbs I needed to coat the chicken breasts with for dinner.
“I have noticed that,” I finally responded, after he’d taken a step towards me when I didn’t answer fast enough.
How could anyone miss it? Todd collected…beer bottles. Both walls of the garage had various cans and bottles lined up neatly on shelves. There were so many of them that you could barely see the wall—not sure how social services never seemed concerned he might have a drinking problem with that amount of empties. But Todd was never worried about that. He added at least five to the wall every day.
“Virgins happen to be my favorite thing to collect.”
I’d been holding a carton of eggs, and I dropped them, shocked that he’d outright said that, shells and yolk ricocheting everywhere.
Just then, Mrs. Detweiler ambled in, her gaze flicking between her husband and me suspiciously. “What’s going on in here?” she asked, her eyes stopping on the ruined eggs all over the floor.
Marie had once been a pretty woman, but like her husband, her attempt to hold onto youth was a miserable failure. Right now, she was wearing a too tight flowered dress that resembled a couch from the eighties. It accented every roll, and there was a fine sheen of sweat across her heavily made up face, probably from the effort she’d had to make to get out of her armchair and storm in here. Her hair was a harsh, bottle-black color, and though she attempted to curl and keep it nice, it was thin and limp and I’m sure disappointing for her.
I usually didn’t pay attention to looks; I knew better than most they could be deceiving, but Todd and Marie Detweiler’s appearances were too in your face to ignore.
“Just an accident, honey,” he drawled, walking towards her and pulling her into a soul sickening kiss that made me want to puke considering Marie most likely had no idea where else that mouth had been.
They walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance, leaving me a shaking, miserable mess as I cleaned up the eggs and tried to make dinner.
