Chapter 1 #2
Alexio’s best friend and self-appointed newest brother-in-law to Jonah, now that he and Alexio were engaged. Not that he was actually related to Alexio, but Vanya didn’t seem to care about that sort of thing.
I liked him.
And I hated that I liked him.
And I never, ever wanted him to see me like this. I was probably pale, I was definitely shaking, and I felt like I was going to sick up those weak-ass gin and tonics the bartender had made me.
His big, warm hand closed tighter around my hip and tugged me back into a massive wall of muscle.
I knew the feeling of him almost as well as I knew the shape of my own body.
Vanya was big on the hugging kind of celly whenever we played competitive games against Alexio and Jonah and won. Which was often.
But it had been a long while since I’d been in his arms. Hunter’s bullshit had ramped up again once summer was over, and I’d started avoiding everyone all over again so I didn’t have to answer questions.
“Who the fuck is this?” Hunter demanded.
“I already tell you. I am his boyfriend,” Vanya growled. “Went to bathroom and come back to find what? Ugly little snake slithering over him? Fuck off before I rip your limbs off and make you look like actual snake.”
“Micah?” Hunter whined.
I couldn’t fucking believe my ears. Was Hunter actually trying to appeal to me?
“You know what’ll happen if you make me unhappy,” Hunter said when I didn’t reply, his voice taking on a hard edge.
I almost laughed. If the situation weren’t actually dire this time, I might have. There was nothing Hunter could do that would make me leave with him. Not when Vanya was holding me so tightly. Not when the tone of his voice said he’d kill Hunter and suffer whatever consequences came with that.
I leaned into Vanya and tried not to feel like a scared loser who couldn’t fight his own battles. “I don’t give a fuck what you do.”
I was bluffing. I very much gave a fuck, but he didn’t need to know that right now.
Hunter claimed he had video of me, and he’d been threatening to release it. The first text he’d sent me about it came on the heels of leaving my mother’s house the day she told us she was leaving the country.
And life had gone to shit from that moment.
Vanya’s arm circled around my waist, and he moved us to the beat of the music. It felt almost like an unconscious thing—like he couldn’t help it.
And I didn’t want him to help it. It was ridiculously soothing. Therapy through childhood had all but attempted to beat the blind stimming from me and my brothers, so I was overly self-conscious whenever I was rocking in public, but to the music? In Vanya’s arms?
Part of me wanted to turn my head up and just fucking kiss him on his obnoxiously cheerful mouth.
Another part of me wanted to shove him to the ground like a playground asshole with a crush.
Instead, I did nothing.
“Okay, now I am bored looking at your face. It’s a terrible face,” Vanya said after a moment. “Go away.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Hunter all but shouted. Unfortunately for him, the music was switching to another song, so his voice carried, and someone beside him burst into laughter.
“Bruh. That’s Maximov. You don’t know who that is?”
Another voice spoke. “You tryn’a fuck Maxy’s boyfriend? Bruuuh…”
The new song kicked over—a faster beat, and Vanya moved us with it. Instead of engaging Hunter further, he turned me in his arms and pulled me closer against his chest. His smell was overwhelming, but not in the gross cologne way that Jonah’s boyfriend wore.
It was something more subtle.
Clean, crisp, very much just…him.
“Micah,” he murmured. He was leaning into my ear now. “You want me to let you go?”
Never. Not ever. Not at all.
“Is he still here?” I asked instead.
He was quiet for a moment and pulled back just far enough to look. At least, that’s what I assumed. “No. Gone, I think. Not sure to where. Want me to go check? I can find him. Kill him.”
“Jesus, no.” On some strange instinct I didn’t realize I even had, I wrapped my arms around him tightly and kept him pressed against me. “No, just…can you hang out with me here until we’re sure he’s not here anymore?”
“Anything.” He began to move again, his body in sync with every thump of the bass, rolling with every change in the melody. “Whatever you want, I give. Okay?”
I took in a shaking breath. I didn’t want to hear that shit. Those words usually came on the heels of some guy wanting to fuck me—even if I didn’t want that. It was close to what had happened to me in high school.
Those words were similar to what Jacob, the popular goalball captain with enough sight that he had the upper hand against me, had said junior year. That was seconds before he forced his dick into my mouth to shut me up because I kept saying no.
And after that day—after throwing up and shaking and crying and having panic attacks every time I heard his voice in the hallways—I tried to reclaim myself…
And failed.
Miserably.
In the early years, right after getting drafted, I tried to enter into my slut era. To take back the power that fuck-face had ripped from my hands. I tried to let myself have a piece of living that everyone else around me got to enjoy.
I went on so many dates that Jonah started giving me shit about it. I went through boyfriends like one-ply, cheap toilet paper. And I rarely got further than getting my pants off because every time I did, it felt the same as back then.
My chest would get tight, and the back of my neck would sweat, and my dick would sit like a limp fish in my boxers. The few times I did manage to get further, the moment it was over, my emotions would become too big and too terrible, and I would never call the person again.
Which was why this thing with Vanya could not happen. It didn’t matter how much I wanted him. It didn’t matter how safe I felt. Even if I could get hard for him, it would end in a goddamn disaster.
“I think I need to go,” I blurted loudly.
He jolted, and then his hands skated down my spine, making me shiver. In spite of how awful everything had gone, my dick twitched in my jeans.
“You going with team? Where you staying?”
“Oh, uh…” Shit. I’d forgotten I was actually here with my goddamn team, and the reason he was here was because the Glaciers were playing in New York too. “How did your game go?”
Vanya burst into laughter and nosed along my ear. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“We won. Unlike you.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
He laughed again, and his hand rose up, tugging gently at the hair along the back of my neck.
I needed it cut. “Maybe later. It was good game though. Easy game. Was miked up, so maybe we release for fun in a few weeks.” His breath ghosted over my cheek, and when he spoke again, his lips brushed the edge of my jaw.
“You almost win though. So many good saves.”
“How do you even know that? You were on the ice.”
“I watch highlights after.”
I had no idea what to say to that. Swallowing heavily, I said, “I think I should get to the hotel.”
“Okay. I drive.” He started to slip his hand into mine, but I froze. “You change your mind?”
“No. Uh…what do you mean you’ll drive? Haven’t you been drinking?”
“No, pretty goalie. I have appointment for my ankle, so Alexio give me his car to drive. I stay sober because if I crash, he kill me.”
Oh my fuck. Alexio. Was he here too? Jesus Christ, he was going to have seen what happened, and he was going to tell Jonah, and—
“He’s not here. He’s with team, having pizza.”
Did I say that aloud? I was too afraid to ask. I bit my lip when I realized he’d called me pretty, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that, so I decided not to do anything at all.
Well, except for one thing. “Okay. Yeah. Um…a ride would be nice. Thank you.”
His fingers stroked over my wrist, and he said for the second time tonight, “Anything for you.”