14. February 4, Friday #2
The joke landed and hung there for a second.
Then his expression changed. The easy amusement drained away. He set his fork down with deliberate care. “Don’t,” he ordered.
She blinked. “Don’t what?”
“Talk about yourself like that.” His voice was low and even, but there was steel under it now. “Not as a joke. Not like you are a problem to fix.”
Heat climbed her neck. “I was kidding.”
“Were you really?” His gaze stayed on hers. “Either way, that does not make it better.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Are you healthy?” he asked.
“Mostly, yeah,” she dragged out, regretting that she said anything at all. “According to my doctor, anyway. I just need to be more active.”
He nodded once. “Then that’s different from what you were saying.”
Her throat tightened unexpectedly.
“I don’t like when you talk about yourself like you are less.” He frowned at her. “Or too much. Never have. Because you’re not.”
She looked down at her coffee. “You’re very sure for someone who doesn’t understand women’s sizing.”
“I don’t,” he agreed. “But I understand you.”
Her fingers tightened around the mug. He meant, you are not a number on a scale. You are not the joke you make when you are hurting. Her heart, however, heard that sentence and immediately became a problem.
She cleared her throat. “Well. That seems wildly inconvenient for me.”
“You used to love working out,” he said, shifting slightly, like he’d decided to change angles but not retreat. “In college. You and Kayla lived in the gym.”
Memories flickered: her and Kayla in ratty leggings, laughing on side-by-side treadmills; the rush of finishing a set she hadn’t thought she could; the way her body felt strong and capable and entirely hers.
“Yeah,” she softly agreed. “I did.”
“You liked feeling strong,” he said. “It made you...bright. You would come into the dining hall after and you were...” He exhaled, searching. “Lit up.”
“That was the thought of food.”
“Was it?” He leveled a serious expression on her, and a lump formed in her throat.
She’d forgotten about all that. Back then, she’d been so focused on Mitch, on their gravitational pull, she hadn’t realized there was a quiet satellite in the corner, tracking her orbit.
“Life got in the way,” she claimed lightly. “Marriage. Moves. Marriage drama. Divorce. It’s been a weird decade.”
“Life always gets in the way,” he said. “You have to push back to make room for things that are important.”
“Spoken like a man who can bench-press a small car,” she joked. “Some of us are more...bench-pressed by life.”
He shook his head once, decisive. “Come to our gym.”
She blinked. “Your...what now?”
“The Cyclones training center. It’s private. Good equipment. No crowds, just employees. You can work out there.”
Her brain stuttered, trying to picture it: her, in too-tight leggings and an old T-shirt, in the same weight room as professional athletes who thought a warm-up was a casual five miles on a ten incline.
“Oh, I...no,” she stammered, a horrified laugh catching in her throat. “Absolutely not. I would die. Or cause a pileup at the end of a treadmill. Or accidentally knock myself unconscious with a medicine ball.”
“There won’t be any pileups,” he said, almost amused. “I’ll install traffic lights if I have to. And if there’s anything you want to try but don’t want to when people are there, I can show you how to use it off-hours, when no one else is there.”
“Off-hours?” she repeated faintly.
“After practice. Or before. Whenever it’s quiet. That’s a good time to go for people who...don’t want to feel judged.”
God, he got it.
The exact fear she hadn’t even articulated yet. The idea of walking into a gym after all this time, surrounded by people who knew what they were doing, who had matching sets and tiny waists and no concept of starting over.
She swallowed. “I’d look ridiculous.”
His gaze locked on hers, steady and unyielding. “No. You would not.”
“Ilya—”
“I promise you,” he said, each word deliberate, “no one will make you feel unwelcome. No trainer. No player. No staff. If they do—which they won’t—they will answer to me.”
A shiver ran down her spine at his tone. Protective, no-nonsense, the same voice she’d heard on the bench when a ref made a bullshit call, or when a rookie took a dirty hit.
If this was what PR heard when they asked him for time commitments, no wonder they feared him.
“You can’t just...punish people for glancing at me on a treadmill,” she said weakly.
“I can strongly suggest they run stadiums until they stop making you feel unwelcome.” A flash of wicked humor sparked in his eyes. “Very effective.”
She snorted. “Abuse of power.”
“Use of power,” he corrected. “You want to feel strong again. This can help. Let me help.”
The last sentence slipped out quieter, almost like he hadn’t meant to say it.
Her heart thudded, slow and heavy.
She’d spent so long being the helper. The adjuster. The person in the wings, making things easier for someone else.
The idea of someone rearranging their life, their resources, their giant fancy gym, around her needs...it made her want to curl up and cry and also kiss him stupid.
Which were, generally speaking, bad impulses to have toward a coworker. And also, her ex-husband’s best friend. Coincidentally, also the man who had drawn a line in the sand about her not needing male validation.
“I’ll think about it,” she relented, because yes felt too big to say just yet. “The gym. Not the...stadium-running punishment program.”
He inclined his head, accepting this like it was a binding contract. “Good.”
They fell into easier conversation after that.
He told her a story about Ty’s horrifying experience of accidentally hiking through a tick nest and his girlfriend losing her mind at the seemingly millions of ticks she kept finding all over her body.
She told him about Jayden at the group home asking her if hockey players got paid extra for missing teeth.
Ilya laughed at her story and absently ran his tongue over his own teeth, causing Zoey’s confused heart to thud a little harder at the sensual glide of his tongue along his pearly whites.
Oh. Sweet baby Jesus.
They lingered over coffee refills until the waitress got in a heated shouting match with the cook in the back of the diner.
The resulting slamming of pots made both of them flinch. Ilya checked his watch. “Coach will yell if I’m a zombie tomorrow.”
“Can’t have that,” she said. “We all know how much he hates to raise his voice.”
Ilya grinned and pulled out his wallet. He was handing the tired waitress a wad of bills before Zoey could protest and demand to pay her half.
Of course, he paid. She’d have to slip a twenty into the cupholder of his truck.
Outside, the air had turned sharper, their breath puffing in little clouds. His truck waited under a light, a thin crust of frost starting to form on the windshield.
He walked her to the passenger side, hands in his pockets. Their footsteps crunched on the salt-sprinkled pavement.
“Thank you,” she said, turning to face him. The words were too small for what she meant. “For...rescuing me. And feeding me. And listening to my tabloid trauma dump.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And for yelling at me about my...divorce diet.”
“I did not yell,” he corrected with a grin. “I firmly...disagreed.”
Tiny smile. Tiny, devastating smile.
She hugged her arms around herself, more to contain the weird fizzing in her chest than from the cold. “I’ll...let you know about the gym.”
He nodded. “Whenever you are ready. It will be there.”
They stood there for a beat too long, exhaust from his truck mingling with the white of their breath.
He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. “Up you get. You always get the jitters in the cold.”
Warmth spread through her chest, slow and bright. She did. But that wasn’t what this was. “I have bad circulation,” she protested weakly as she climbed up and pulled her seatbelt across.
“Mhm,” was his only response as he gently, but firmly, shut the door.
Zoey sat there shivering, hands rubbing frantically at her thighs, cursing her decision to wear a stupid dress in the heart of winter.
By the original metrics of the evening, the night had been a total failure. No one bought her a drink just to stare at her cleavage. No numbers had been exchanged. There would be no anonymous make-out session to scrub Mitch’s stupid tabloid grin out of her head.
Instead, she’d gotten pancakes at midnight with the one man she was absolutely not supposed to want. She’d spilled her guts about Mitch and Nina and foster care. He’d looked at her like she was bright and capable and not ridiculous for wanting more.
He’d defended her from a stranger and from her own worst thoughts with the same quiet, uncompromising intensity.
Ilya climbed quickly into the driver’s side and slammed his door with much more force than he’d used on hers. He converted the remote start to a real start, the heat kicked up, and he turned a couple of vents toward Zoey before pausing with his hand on the gearshift.
“That’s a really nice dress, by the way. It looks great on you.” Then he put the truck in reverse, backed out of the space, and started the trip to take Zoey home.
Zoey turned to face her window to hide her smile. Absolutely unable to stop herself.
She’d gone out looking for proof that she was still desirable. What she’d gotten felt a lot harder to explain away.
As her heart enjoyed an uneven tap dance, she ran her hands gently over the fabric of the dress on her thighs.
Maybe the dress wasn’t totally stupid.