Chapter 20
Juliet
I’ve secured you an interview at Harver, Lansley, and Burnsfeld. They’re one of the premier corporate law firms and they’re willing to take you on as an intern while you finish law school–
Ugh. Not interested. Especially now.
My mom’s text comes at an inopportune time, just as the usher guides me to the team box at the Rainier Bank Center. When I step inside, instantly the entire energy in the arena is absolutely electric tonight.
I’m wearing Hunter’s jersey, like everybody else seems to be. The only difference is that he gave me mine. The memory makes me smile softly to myself.
It’s louder than usual with the fans going wild for Hunter in ways that make my chest feel tight.
There are chainsaw graphics flashing on the jumbotron every few minutes, chants erupting every time he gets near the puck.
A group of fans in the lower bowl holds up foam chainsaws and waves them like weapons.
Then I see something that makes me flinch. A woman near the glass pulls up her shirt, revealing a phone number scrawled across her chest in black marker along with “Call me, Chainsaw” in bold letters.
I look toward Hunter just in time to see the way his shoulders tighten.
He doesn’t acknowledge the attention, doesn’t even glance toward the woman who’s basically throwing herself at him.
His movements on the ice are aggressive and controlled, but there’s no enjoyment in it.
He’s not soaking up the adoration like I’d expect. He’s surviving it.
Not something I would have expected to see a month ago. Maybe I never noticed how it wears on him.
I study Hunter closely as the game goes on.
He plays hard tonight. Harder than usual.
He seems angry, like he’s trying to prove something to someone.
I get the Chainsaw thing now. The fans might have made up his nickname, but he has a mentality that goes with it.
When the inevitable fight breaks out in the second period, Hunter throws off his gloves and goes toe-to-toe with a guy half a foot shorter than him. The crowd goes absolutely wild.
My heart races watching it, but not for the same reasons as everyone else. I’m not thrilled with the violence. I’m worried.
About his safety, I tell myself. Not about how crushed I’d feel if he got hurt. Just professional concern for the success of our arrangement.
After the final buzzer, I head down toward the tunnel for my first real post-game media coordination.
I’m tingly with excitement, nervous energy making my hands shake slightly.
It’s the first time the Havoc organization has really trusted me with something like this, even if it’s only to help Ivy with damage control.
I walk into the tunnel just as everything explodes.
“Hunter!” comes a woman’s voice. “Hunter Alan Huxley! I know you can hear me!”
I whip my head around to identify the source of the voice, a woman’s voice that swings between sweet and sharp, like honey with glass shards mixed in.
Hunter freezes in the tunnel and I realize that something important is happening.
As I watch, his entire body language changes.
The confident swagger disappears, replaced by something that looks almost like fear.
That’s when I see her. The woman is tall and scrawny, with bleached blond hair, deep blue eyes, and outstretched hands tipped with fake nails. I don’t know who she is at first, but when Hunter backs away from her, I realize this is bad. Very bad.
She reaches toward Hux, a sneer on her lips, and something clicks into place. The similarity is uncanny.
This woman is Darla Huxley, Hunter’s mother. She’s gotten past security and into the player tunnel, which should be impossible. She’s wearing a designer purse that probably cost more than most people’s rent.
I’ve never seen Hunter backpedal to duck from someone’s touch before.
“Hunter, baby, don’t you want to talk to your mama?” Darla calls, reaching out to grab his arm before he can escape. The slightly terrified look on his face is enough to make me move.
Oh, hell no. This lady doesn’t get to grab at Hunter, especially when he clearly wants nothing to do with her.
I rush forward to help, instinct overriding everything else. I try to put myself between them, to pull her back from him, but Darla reacts with surprising strength. She grabs a handful of my hair and yanks hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.
“Get your hands off me, you little slut,” she snarls.
Hunter immediately shouts and moves to intervene, but not to protect himself. He’s trying to distract his mother, to redirect her attention away from me. “Mom, let her go. She’s not part of this.”
Darla softens for a moment, loosening her grip on my hair. She seems enamored with her son. “How are you, Hunty? I miss you so much.”
“Let go, Mom. Please.” He carefully separates her from me, disentangling her from my hair with a ginger touch, and then pushing me behind him protectively. He growls, “You need to leave.”
“I just want to talk to my son. Is that so wrong?”
“Fuck around and find out,” he hisses. “You aren’t welcome in my life anymore.”
Her face changes again, like a switch has flipped. “You abandoned me,” she shouts, her voice echoing off the concrete. “You used me and threw me away like garbage.” I can feel eyes turning toward us, see the glint of phones being raised by fans and reporters at the tunnel’s edge.
Then she turns her venom on me, jabbing a manicured finger in my direction. “And this is the little fiancée? The one you’re using to replace your own mother?”
Hunter flinches as though she struck him, but he says nothing. Her smile twists with satisfaction. “That’s what I thought.”
Security finally arrives, pulling her away as she calls over her shoulder, “You’ll come crawling back. They always do.” The sound of it follows us down the tunnel like smoke that won’t clear.
I turn my back on her, looking up at Hunter. He looks down at me, gripping my hips. On impulse, I press up on my tiptoes, dragging his jersey down until my mouth meets his.
The moment our mouths meet, the tunnel vanishes.
Noise drains away to a faint hum, and all that’s left is the bright heat of him pressed against me.
His lips are sure yet searching, tasting faintly of sweat, Gatorade, and the metallic tang of blood.
My hands fist in his jersey. I drag him closer until there’s no space between us.
His breath brushes my skin in slow, rough bursts, each one wound tight with restraint.
Fingers thread into my hair, curling just enough to tip my head back.
The kiss deepens, pulling a sharp rush of heat down my spine that melts into something sweet.
I breathe him in: firewood, salt, and male sweat.
The crowd blurs. The phones vanish. Nothing exists except the weight of his palm, the solid press of his body, and the deliberate way his mouth moves over mine, like he’s memorizing it.
He tears himself away so suddenly I have to steady my feet. His breathing is uneven, and his eyes hold mine in an unyielding stare.
“Don’t mess with me,” he whispers. “I can’t take it right now.”
I don’t understand the warning, but it lingers between us, heavy and close, refusing to fade. Hunter brushes me off and storms down the hall without another word. I’m left stunned in the tunnel, everyone staring at me with a mixture of curiosity and pity.
* * *
Later that night, after making sure the footage hadn’t leaked to social media and helping Ivy spin the narrative with the few reporters who witnessed it, I plunk myself down on the couch. It’s naughty, I know, but the time has come for a little internet sleuthing.
If only to understand Hunter’s words from earlier. Don’t mess with me. I can’t take it right now.
Context will help me bring the picture into focus. Grabbing a Stanley Cup full of Diet Dr. Pepper for fortitude, I pull up old articles about Hunter’s history with his mother.
One headline talks about a court case. Something about financial mismanagement and stolen funds. Another describes a violent outburst at a restaurant that ended with police being called. The Hunter I know, grumpy and difficult and unfiltered, suddenly feels layered.
Heavy. He’s human in ways I’m not prepared for.
I hear noise from the kitchen and turn to find Hunter pouring whiskey from a bottle I’ve never seen before. The amber liquid splashes over ice cubes with a sound that seems too loud in the quiet condo.
I stand up and freeze in place like a deer in headlights. I’ve never seen him drink hard liquor, not even at the team retreat when everyone else was getting wasted. He’s always been a beer guy. He controls his alcohol intake just like his daily macros.
“Is everything okay?” I ask quietly.
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at me, actually. He just drains the glass in one swallow and pours another.
“Hunter.”
Still nothing. He guzzles the second drink, leaves the glass on the counter, and walks away. I’m left standing alone in the kitchen with the smell of expensive whiskey hanging in the air.
Wow. Hunter is more screwed up than I realized. What kind of number did his mom pull on him, exactly?
I give up trying to talk to him and go take a shower, hoping the hot water will wash away the lingering feeling of his mother’s hands in my hair. Afterward, wrapped in just a towel with my hair dripping, I open the bathroom door and run directly into Hunter in the hallway.
He jerks as if I startled him, eyes dropping to the towel wrapped around my body and then snapping away like he’s not allowed to see me in a towel.
“Be more careful,” he mutters.
I blink, offended by the tone. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
He disappears into his room without another word, leaving me standing there in my towel, agog. He might have had the shittiest day imaginable, but that’s no reason to take his frustrations out on yours truly.
Miffed, I get dressed quickly, still fuming from the encounter. This whole situation is spiraling out of control.
Someone has to deal with it. It looks like I need to get ahead of it before it destroys everything we’ve worked for.
I find the original list of house rules pinned to the fridge with a magnet. I stare at it for a long moment. If we’re struggling this much to maintain boundaries, fine.
We need new ones. Stricter guidelines. More distance.
No more walking around half-naked. The shared beds, even when we’re exhausted from events, have to end. There can’t be gray areas that leave room for misinterpretation.
If we want to make this work for the remaining months of our contract, we have to treat it like what it is. A business arrangement. Nothing more.
I head for my room, trying to reassure myself that this is what I wanted.
Boundaries. Professionalism. Clarity about our respective roles in this arrangement.
But when Hunter turns on loud music from his room, the same music I’ve learned to associate with him jerking off, I know exactly what he’s doing. And it drives me absolutely crazy.
Maybe he is more affected by our proximity than he lets on. Or maybe this is just his normal routine and I’m reading too much into it. I don’t know how often he got off before I moved in, but now it seems like it’s happening twice a day.
Is that normal for men? Patrick only ever wanted to have sex maybe once a month. Even then, it felt like a chore he was performing grudgingly. Then again, he was probably having affairs the entire time we were together.
I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, feeling like everything is slipping through my fingers. Not for the first time, I wish I had another option than to have to talk to Hunter tomorrow. It sounds hard.
The music from his room stops abruptly, replaced by the sound of his shower running. I try not to think about what that means, try not to picture him washing away the evidence of whatever fantasy he just indulged in.
Try not to wonder if I played a role in that fantasy.
My phone buzzes with a text from Ivy: “Damage control worked. No footage leaked. You did well today.”
I should feel relieved. Proud, even. I handled my first genuine crisis for the team without falling apart. But all I can think about is the look on Hunter’s face when his mother grabbed my hair. The way he immediately moved to protect me, even though it meant giving her exactly what she wanted.
And the way he looked at me in that towel. His eyes said that I was something dangerous he needed to avoid.
Four more months of this arrangement suddenly feel impossible. How are we supposed to maintain professional distance when every interaction feels charged with electricity? When I catch myself listening for the sound of his breathing through the wall that separates our rooms?
When I’m caring more about his wellbeing than my own career advancement?
I pull the covers up to my chin and close my eyes, trying to block out the sound of his movements in the next room.
Trying not to think about how small and fragile his mother had seemed until she turned violent.
Trying not to wonder what other secrets he’s hiding behind that carefully constructed wall of indifference.
But sleep doesn’t come easily. And when it finally does, I dream about gray-blue eyes and gentle hands and the way someone’s voice sounds when they’re trying not to wake the person sleeping next door.
I dream about things that can’t happen and probably shouldn’t. But feel more real than anything else in my carefully planned life.