Chapter 26 Sonya
SONYA
We’ve discovered a corner of plates. Side by side, we toss them across the room.
Three plates in, I notice him perfecting his technique. Aiming at targets and hitting them with unerring accuracy. It’s skilled. Very captain-of-a-pro-hockey-team-like.
I try to aim at something, too. A table at the other end of the room but large enough that it should be easy to hit. My plate smashes nowhere close to it.
I try again. Fail. Scowl. Stand there, annoyed. Grab another plate.
Sandalwood, soap, mint.
His scent envelops me. Hughes has come up behind me, and the world shrinks to that tiny distance left remaining between us.
“I’m going to take my chances and hope you don’t murder me,” he says in a rush, smirking at me.
He makes the barest moment of contact, touching the underside of my elbow, yet my pulse skyrockets. It’s absolutely ridiculous. My eyes widen at the amount of adrenaline that flows through me.
He repositions the way I’m holding the plate by adjusting my wrist. Any second now, I tell myself I’ll elbow him in the gut and pull away, but I don’t.
I gulp. It’s because it’s distracting how huskily he drawls instructions in my ear.
“Keep a loose grip. Hold on, but not too tightly. Focus on what you want to hit. Let’s aim for that bottle. ”
The bottle? It’s too far and too damn little. There’s no way…
The solid weight of his leg nudges my feet further apart. “You have to stand wider, Sonya.”
There’s a beat of silence as he finishes arranging me by straightening the angle of my hips. “You ready?”
Am I ready?
I don’t know. My face is overly flushed, and I’m a bit dazed for some reason. My ass accidentally grazes across the front of his crotch, and he’s been touching me all over, so there’s no reason for his breath to hitch, but it does. I hear it and feel him go completely still behind me
It’s probably the weight. We’re so padded that any brush of our bodies feels heavier. And there’s got to be static building up in these protective overalls that explains why electricity dances across my skin.
“I—” Hughes clears his throat. “You…throw the plate in a smooth, controlled motion. Lead with the elbow. You can—”
I release the plate. The bottle topples over.
Hughes comes around to face me, his mouth breaking out into a wicked grin. “That’s my girl! I knew you could do it, but fuck. You did so good, Sonya. Good job, baby.”
He’s calling me his girl and calling me baby. He can’t say such things because they are categorically untrue, but there’s something in the way that he’s looking at me right now. Like I’m impressive and incredible, and it makes my belly quiver and my core tighten.
I want to hear more.
“Sonya?” Hughes angles his head at me, his smile turning puzzled. “You look like you’re getting mad.”
I’m not mad. I’m freaking out.
Getting praised by him shouldn’t feel addictive in any way, but right now it does. I suck my cheeks, back-pedaling so he doesn’t figure that out. “Maybe I am mad, but I don’t want to talk about why. I want to talk about…” My thoughts trip over themselves. “You,” I blurt out.
“Me?”
I chew the corner of my lip. “Yeah. What makes you mad?”
What a clumsy pivot to a conversation. Something I’ve never done before.
While I stand there mortified, Adrian is seriously considering my question. “I get mad at lots of things. Like inequality. Famine. Human rights not being respected.”
His answer makes me mutter a disbelieving sound. “So does everyone else. How unique.”
“In that case…I get mad…at…lots of other things…”
“So you’ve said,” I remind him. I forgot why we started this conversation in the first place. I’m too invested now to hear a real answer. “Ugh. You’re telling me you don’t really get mad?”
“More like I have no reason to complain.”
I raise my eyes to the ceiling. “That level of contentment and happiness is sickening.”
Hughes grabs a plate and hands it to me, eyes brightening with deepening curiosity. “Would you like me more if I got mad?”
“No, I didn’t say you could ask me questions!”
“But your question makes me wonder. Did you have a lot of angry people in your life growing up?”
“What?” I pick up a plate and throw it like it’s a hot potato. “That’s none of your business.”
“If you don’t answer, I’m going to assume yes,” he warns, arching an eyebrow at me.
“So?” My mouth goes flat. “I don’t care.”
“It actually hurts me to imagine you getting yelled at, baby.”
I glare at Hughes. He’s wearing this earnest expression like every word he says is completely true.
“That’s not—” I sputter. “Ugh, you need to stop calling me baby.” The continued sincerity on his face makes my back rise further. “Look. Just—they weren’t angry. Never showed me any kind of emotions. But let’s stop talking—”
He’s too quick. Replenishing my hands with another plate, keeping me off-balance, maybe distracted. “What would you trust more? If a person tells you something quietly or if they yell it at the top of their lungs?”
What? That’s out of nowhere. I don’t like where this is going.
My mouth can’t decide whether to open or close.
I’m struggling. Why am I struggling? It’s because there’s an instinctive answer I don’t want to acknowledge.
One that snapped into my head as soon as he asked the question.
Yelling. Not because I want to be screamed at.
More like anything “too much” is better than…
Whatever “too little” I got growing up.
I think about coming home from school, or from that cheap dance studio two buses away, or my first part-time job where all I did was fry up different types of potatoes just so I could afford to keep dancing.
He’d be working on his car or reading books in the front yard.
She’d be gardening or scrapbooking. As the sun set, my guardians would take breaks and chat with each other about the neighbors.
Politics. Celebrity gossip. Vacations that never seemed to include me.
Finances. Their future goals and dreams.
No big deal.
Except no matter how many times I came through that front gate, I was never pulled into the discussion.
There’d be a tepid greeting (Hello, Sonya), then they’d return to their own conversation.
I didn’t get: How was your day? Anything interesting happen?
Because you’re back way later than usual. Are you okay?
Actually, I’d have settled for a lot less.
Sonya, what are your thoughts on today’s weather…how fast grass grows…dry shampoo…?
When people say the opposite of love isn’t hate but apathy, there’s nothing I relate to more. Silence is also a message.
Hughes’ eyes lower.
We both notice I’m hugging the plate. Like a shield. Shit.
“Never mind,” he says quickly and softly, wincing. “You don’t have to answer that.”
I thrust my plate at him. “Good. Because it’s my turn to trip you up with an emotionally loaded bomb of a question.”
“Try me, Mrs. Hughes.”
I snarl and double down on looking for a way to unbalance him way worse than me. This is revenge. Retribution. Me going on the offensive so I don’t risk another second of any sort of vulnerability. “Aren’t the Wings still losing? Shouldn’t you at least be mad at that?”
Something flashes behind his eyes, but it’s gone too quickly for me to clock what it means. Hughes rubs the back of his neck and gives me a tight smile. “Sure. But we’re going to get better. I’m going to make sure of it. I have a plan. I know it’s going to work out.”
His practiced answer stirs a memory loose.
Him and I, sitting on a park bench eating fries after the Wings lost a game particularly horribly.
He seemed so raw and crestfallen then. Was that a temporary struggle or does he still feel that way?
I don’t know and it shouldn’t bother me…
but it does. “That’s a lot of I’s in your plan, buddy,” I say just to say something.
“Hey, Sonya?” he breathes.
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t call me buddy.” His shoulders drop ever so slightly. “I don’t want to be your buddy.”
We stare at each other.
“Because you already have so many friends in your life?” I venture explaining, chewing on the side of my lip.
“That’s not why,” he answers quietly, eyes locked on me.
My breath catches, and I realize I’m shoving another plate at him. “Don’t change the topic. This is about you. And you are talking as if the Wings are just your responsibility.”
“I’m their captain. It is my responsibility.”
“Doesn’t that stress you out?”
He throws the plate. “Sometimes.”
“How stressed are you?”
“I’m…managing it.”
My lips purse. “If you don’t want to keep talking, say so. Because non-answers don’t count.”
“No, that’s no—” He clears his throat. “The GM is the problem. He’s talking about trading a lot of the team. Clearing the roster. Starting fresh. Not giving us—me—a chance to pull us together as a team.”
We’re wearing protective visors attached to the helmets. They are slightly tinted, but not enough to hide twin spots of color forming on his cheeks. Little indications of what? I wonder.
“Okay, that sucks about your GM,” I say, starting to feel bad for pressuring as hard as I am. “Losing your teammates—”
“Not going to happen.”
I shake my head. His confidence isn’t exactly realistic. Not when hockey players get traded all the time. “Can you really make that promise, even as a captain?”
“I have to.”
“But I don’t think you can, right? You might not be able to stop anything.”
The plate in his hands drops closer to our feet. A strange, rare fumble.
My hand raises of its own volition, reaching towards him. “What was that?”
“My fingers slipped.”
“Why are you stepping back from me?”
He stills. Briefly I see it, a flicker in his eyes. Anguish? “Sonya—”
I close the distance between us and grip the sleeve of his arm. “Adrian.”
My mouth falls open. So does his. I’ve shocked both of us by using his first name.
Eventually Hughes swallows. Meanwhile, I’m paralyzed with this confusing turn of events and this underlying growing sense of worry I can’t explain.
My eyes flick down.
My ribcage feels too tight, and there’s an intense claustrophobia sensation going through my body I’ve never felt before.
Because did I see his hand tremble?
“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Hughes croaks. “It’s okay.”
How am I looking at him? My skin feels tight, eyebrows have drawn together, and my hand raised again at some point. Is it reaching out for him? “Are…you okay?”
“I am!”
His answer is immediate and way too cheery. The overly cocky, pleasant tone is a splinter in my skin. I hate it. I want to dig past it. “I don’t think you are. What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Adrian,” I say, shocking myself by using his first name twice now.
Pink blooms in the hollows of his cheeks.
Hughes is looking at me with wild eyes, round circles of pale topaz.
“It’s nothing,” he rushes to answer. “Just, you know, about letting my team down. Failing anyone who needs me. Being selfish. Because I can and have been selfish. Even Oslo, I wish I was there but I don’t deserve it—”
He halts.
Hughes rips off his helmet and threads shaky fingers through his damp hair. “W-Why does it have to be you?”
“M-Me?” I stammer back at him.
“This isn’t the first time it’s happened.”
I take my own helmet off. “What are you talking about?”
“How do you do it, Sonya?”
“Do what?”
“Get me to say things to you that I’ve never told anyone else.”