Chapter Ten #2
I want to reel them back in. Maybe run them through the garbage disposal. But at the same time, I need her to know. It feels imperative.
Now all I can do is the logical thing—turn it back on her. “Do you?”
Her gaze snaps back to me. “Do I have a baby?”
“Do you have anyone?” I swallow thickly. “In your house or…otherwise.”
Forbidden. This conversation should be off-limits.
She cups her coffee mug in her hands. “I have a Vivi in my house.”
That doesn’t fully answer my question, not that I have any business asking in the first place. She could live with Vivi and still—
No. Screw that. She’s single until she states otherwise. She’s got to be, right? Otherwise, she wouldn’t be out with me.
What am I saying? Of course she would. We’re working.
Coach. Player.
“You live together, too?” I say, attempting to smother my dumb thoughts. “Wow, you really don’t believe in personal space.”
She laughs. The sound wraps around me, rich and warm. “It’s not like we share a bed, Leo. I have a whole second story to myself. Bedroom, bathroom, and so on.”
I nod, unsure what to say or do with that information. “Good to know.”
She lifts the mug to her lips, the flush on her cheeks deepening.
What the hell am I doing?
Her sip abruptly ends. “Hang on.” She sets her mug down and retrieves her phone from her pocket. “It’s my dad. He’s in Seattle, so three hours behind us. Probably checking up on me on his commute home.”
I wave for her to take it.
She excuses herself from the table. Her jeans fit as well as her top, hugging her just right as she moves quickly toward the exit.
Those things are sinful.
As I’m finishing what’s left of my dinner, a figure moves in my periphery.
Sadie is pacing a small path in the parking lot, not far from our window.
She’s grinning up a storm, cupping the curve of her neck with her free hand, so caught up in her conversation she’s probably not even aware I can see her.
That makes sense, given she’s the kind of person who gives whoever she’s talking to her undivided attention. She’s like a human spotlight—
It happens so fast, it’s like a glitch.
An object—a cup—sailing in the air.
Exploding against her leg.
The phone falling from her hand as she stumbles backward. Her heel catching on concrete.
I’m out of the table, shoving the door, and outside the diner before I can think or breathe. The night is tinted red.
I jump in the path of the car attempting to reverse, beating an open palm on the back windshield until the driver—one of those fucking douchebags I confronted when I walked in—lowers his window.
“Get out of the car,” I bellow.
“Dude—”
“Get out of the car,” I repeat, slower this time.
“I’m not getting out, McLaren. You’ve lost your mind. I’ll—I’ll call the NHL!”
I channel a decade of forced restraint—the kind you only get from learning to control your temper in the most brutal sport there is.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I wouldn’t risk my fist.” I jab a finger in Sadie’s direction.
She’s on her knees, picking up pieces of Styrofoam. “Did you throw that at her?”
“I was aiming for the trash can.” His answer is immediate. Too fast.
Sadie’s voice sounds like it’s coming to me through a tube. “Leo, stop. It’s not worth it.”
I lift a hand, signaling for her to stay back. “And where is it?” I place my hand above my eyebrows and make a show of searching left and right. “Where’s the fucking trash can?”
That one he doesn’t answer fast enough.
I clamp a hand over his side mirror and rip it clean off his beater car.
Pain shoots up my right arm so hard my vision blurs, but I’m too pissed off to care. “I was aiming for your head.” I launch it inside his car, striking his center console. “Now get the fuck out of here, because next time? I won’t miss.”
As he spins his tires trying to get out of the parking lot, I stride toward Sadie. “Are you all right?”
She’s still clutching pieces of Styrofoam in her hand. Her voice quivers as she answers. “We have an audience. Through the window. Diner people.”
“I don’t care about them. Are you hurt?”
“I care. I—I need somewhere to throw these.”
“Give it here.” I reach for the trash. Fire sears through my shoulder so intensely I falter and shake it out, but only for a second before I take the pile.
“Your arm.” She’s so worked up her teeth start to chatter. “Is it okay?”
“Do not turn this around on me. Look at me, Rivers. You’re not okay.”
She doesn’t. “I’m fine. They were…”
Whatever they were remains a mystery, because she fails to complete her sentence. I understand what shock looks like, usually in the context of an injury. But this—the faraway look in her eyes, her body tensing up, the cadence of her breathing—looks more like a panic attack.
I free my keys from my pocket to unlock and remote start my truck. It hums to life in the back corner of the lot. “Get in. I’ll get our stuff and settle up, okay? You can pick up your car tomorrow.”
“I can drive.”
“Sure you can. But you don’t have to.”
She presses her eyes shut as she hugs herself. “I’ll come with you inside. Then we’ll go.”
It hits me that she doesn’t want to be alone, not even for the amount of time it’d take me to take care of business inside.
She stays close, arms crossed tightly as I grab her bag and book from the booth. I drop cash on the table, enough to make the waitress forget what she saw in the parking lot, if she saw anything at all.
Sadie says nothing apart from her address for the entirety of the ride home. Her chattering eventually settles, but something is very wrong.
There are no cars parked in the driveway, and the house doesn’t have a garage. “Where’s Vivi?”
“I don’t know. You can go, though.”
“I don’t like the idea of you here alone.”
“I’ll be okay.”
I press my molars together, carefully considering my words. “That sucked, Rivers. I’m not going to pretend it didn’t. But you’ve barely taken a deep breath since it happened. Look at your fists.”
She unclenches them. “I’m fine now. I was just shocked. They said something about Ivan as they approached their car, and I ignored them because I was on my phone. Then I sort of thought they called me a bitch, but I was in the middle of hanging up with my dad and…” She trails off, shaking her head.
“You didn’t know them, right?”
She sighs. “No. I never do.”
“What does that mean? ‘You never do’ what?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“What exactly did they say about Ivan?” My stomach lurches. “Fuck, this is my fault. It’s the captain stuff.”
“No, Leo. It was just heckling. It’s what diehard fans do.” She reaches for the door handle. “I’ve kept you too long. Good night. Thanks for the—”
“Sadie.”
She goes still at the sound of her name.
“Has anything like that ever happened to you before?”
After a brief eternity, she turns. Her eyes meet mine. She’s not crying or on the verge of tears like I thought she might be. She just looks completely shaken.
It’s almost worse.
Ignoring the pain that’s only partially subsided since we got in the truck—and risking a punch in the face—I stretch to take her hand.
It’s warm and trembling. I close her fist in mine. She doesn’t push me away, doesn’t really seem to breathe.
“Let me sit with you until Vivi gets home.” My thumb brushes over her warm skin. “You got a TV?”
Her gaze is glued to where we’re touching for several long seconds before it lifts to mine. The silence stretches like a taut rubber band.
I swallow around a tight throat.
She releases my hand and lets out a shaky exhale. “I’ll be okay on my own.”
Her eyes and voice and body language may all be telling a different story, but I have no choice but to take her at her word. “Okay. You have my number if you need anything.”
The scent of her perfume lingers as she climbs out of the truck and shuts the door. As she turns around to give me a feeble I’m fine, see? wave, I clock the soda stain on her jeans and get mad all over again.
Did her Fury shirt catch their eye, or did they already know who she was? Is it because I joined her for dinner that they put two and two together?
In reality, Sadie has a recognizable face, and since those fuckheads clearly follow the Fury, they would’ve known who she was whether or not I was there. As much as I want to fix it, this is beyond me.
Professional hockey has defined my life, and I’m confident she’d say the same of hers. For all that it’s taken of my time and body, it’s given more. I don’t know who I am without it.
But fuck if there isn’t a dark side to being known.