Chapter 16 Zane
SIXTEEN
zane
My temples throb as I pace the conference room.
I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes.
The game footage from Seattle is queued up on my laptop, ready to dissect every one of Tate’s fuck-ups in Seattle.
Every goal I watched him give up while I stood behind the bench, helpless, knowing it was because he was thinking about me instead of doing his job.
I drop back into my chair and press my knee against the table leg. It throbs as a reminder of everything I have to lose if I can’t keep my shit together. I know what happens when you make choices based on want instead of logic. When you let feelings cloud your judgment.
The door opens, and Tate walks in, shoulders squared and spine stiff.
He barely looks at me, making it clear he’d rather be anywhere else.
His hair’s still damp from the shower, and there are dark circles under his eyes that suggest he slept about as well as I did last night. Which is to say not at all.
“Close the door,” I say.
He does, then sinks into the chair across from me with a heavy sigh. “Lemme guess. We’re gonna watch me shit the bed for two hours and talk about what I did wrong. How about you just type it up in an email and I’ll read it later?”
I clench and unclench my fingers under the table. “No, we’re gonna figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Right. Because it’s that simple.”
The exhaustion in his face makes something twist in my chest. This is my fault. All of it. His shitty performance, his crushed confidence, the way he’s sitting there like he expects me to tear him apart.
“It is that simple,” I say, shifting the laptop. “You’re a good goalie who had a bad game. It happens.”
“Coach Enver doesn’t seem to think so. Neither does the media. Or my family.”
“What did your family say?”
“They’re worried about me. They think that I should talk to someone about what’s going on.” His eyes latch onto mine, and my gut twists.
Because they’re right. He should talk to someone. Just not someone who’s the source of all his problems.
“Let’s start with the first goal,” I say, clicking play on the video.
The footage shows Tate in perfect position as Seattle’s forward comes barreling down the left wing. He tracks the play, positioning himself to make an easy save.
Then the puck slides between his legs.
“What do you see?” I ask.
“I see me fucking up a save I should make in my sleep.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the expert.”
There’s an edge to his voice that has nothing to do with hockey.
“I see a goalie who’s not focused on the puck,” I say. “Your positioning’s right, your angle’s good, but you’re not tracking the release.”
“So what was I tracking, Professor?”
But we both know the answer. He was tracking me. Watching me behind the bench instead of watching the shooter.
“I don’t know,” I lie. “That’s what we need to figure out.”
“Bullshit.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “You know exactly what I was looking at. Just like you know exactly why I can’t focus anymore.”
I close the laptop and look at him. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to admit that this is your fault. That I’m falling apart because I can’t stop thinking about you. That every time I’m in the net, I’m more focused on where you are than where the puck is.”
“That’s not my fault. That’s on you.”
His eyes widen when the words come out, much harsher than I intended. But I can’t swallow them back. And maybe I don’t want to. Because he’s right. This is destroying him, and it’s destroying me too.
“My fault?” His voice goes quiet. “For what? For wanting someone who keeps jerking me around? For letting you get in my head after you completely fucked me over at a time I was most vulnerable? How the hell can you blame me for that?”
“You need to be able to separate your personal life from your professional life and you aren’t.”
Christ, I hate myself more with every syllable that comes out of my goddamn mouth.
“My personal life? What personal life? You mean the part where I let you suck my cock in an empty arena and then pretend it never happened?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Why? Afraid someone might hear that their precious goalie coach isn’t as professional as he pretends to be?”
I stand up and walk around the table, closing the distance between us. “You need to stop this.”
“Stop what? Telling the truth? Stop admitting that I can’t do my job because I can’t stop thinking about someone who acts like I don’t exist half the time?” He rakes his hands through his hair. “How the fuck did I let this shit happen again? Why the hell did it have to be you?”
The raw honesty in his voice, the way he’s looking at me like I’m the source of all his problems, makes my chest tight.
“You need to compartmentalize,” I say but it’s weak. So fucking weak.
“Compartmentalize? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You’re confused. You’re mixing up physical attraction with something else... ”
“Vegas.” He cuts me off with a bitter laugh. “You want to talk about Vegas? Fine. Let’s talk about how you made me feel things I’d never felt before and then disappeared like I was nothing.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Then what did happen? Because I’ve been trying to figure it out for two fucking years.
I’d never opened myself up like that and you walked away without so much as a fucking note.
It took me so long to take that step toward accepting who I really am, and you cut my legs right out from under me.
You made me feel like there was something wrong with me. ”
I should walk away. Should maintain professional distance and let him think whatever he wants. But the hurt in his voice, the way he’s looking at me right now, makes me want to give him something real.
“Look, I got involved with some bad people,” I say. “People who don’t like it when you try to walk away from them.”
“What kind of people?”
“The kind that ends careers. That hurts people you care about.”
I should stop talking now. I should walk right out of the conference room, maintain my professional distance and let him think whatever he wants to think. I’ve already said too much. I need to keep things impersonal or else we’re both screwed.
But instead of leaving the conference room, I back him against the wall.
“You want to know how I feel?” I say, our faces inches apart. “Fine. It’s fucking torture. Torture to want something so fucking bad it’s killing me knowing I can’t have it.”
A hiss of breath slips through his lips. “And why can’t you have it?”
“Because I’m not the kind of person you think I am.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means there are things about my past you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
I stare at him, and for a second my mind trips back in that Detroit hotel room three years ago, Volkov’s thick accent cutting through the smoke-filled air:
“Your father needs expensive care, yes? Memory problems cost much money. We help each other, problem solved.”
The desperation I felt then hits me now. Watching my father forget my name while medical bills piled up. The syndicate’s offer seemed like salvation until I figured out what they really wanted from me.
Until I understood that once you’re in, you never get out clean.
Until they destroyed my knee to teach me what happens when you try.
“No,” I say.
He shakes his head and starts to move away from the wall, but I put my hands on either side of his head, trapping him.
“What are you doing?” he rasps.
“Something stupid.”
I crush my lips against his, the kiss hard and desperate and everything I’ve been holding back since Seattle. He moans against my mouth, his tongue tangling with mine. I lose my fingers in his hair, tugging it tight as I drink in everything he has to give.
His hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer.
My senses are thrown into overdrive as I let him infuse me.
The taste of peppermint dances his tongue, the scent of his soap filling my lungs, the heat of his touch scorching my skin.
Everything about him is familiar and new at the same time, like coming home to a place I’ve never been.
When we finally break apart, our breaths are short and sharp.
“This is crazy,” he murmurs. “We could get caught.”
“Do you want to stop?”
He looks at me for a long moment, and I can see him weighing the risks against the want. The smart play would be to say yes, to push me away before this gets any more complicated.
“No,” he says finally. “Don’t stop.”
I kiss him again, softer this time but just as desperate.
“Zane,” he breathes when I start tugging his belt open.
“Tell me what you want,” I say, slipping my hand into the front of his jeans. I grasp his hard cock and a choked sound tumbles from his lips.
“I want you to fuck me,” he says, his voice trembling as I stroke him harder. “Fuck me like you did that night in Vegas.”
My cock throbs and screams at that. I flip him around so his face is pressed against the wall. With one hand, I undo my pants and pull out my cock, rubbing myself against his ass as I jerk him.
I almost let out a moan but swallow it back before it hits the air.
My stomach clenches. Precum gathers at the tip of my dick as it bobs against his ass. I spread it down the length of my shaft so that it’s slick between my fingers.
Everything tenses, the knowledge that anyone could come in here and catch us hangs in the air, tangled with lust and pent-up need.
Using my fingers, I scissor his hole to prep him. My balls ache, the sharp pain climbing into my gut. Tate melts against me, thrusting back and forth, alternating between beckoning my cock and fucking my hand.
“Fuck me,” he mutters. “I need your cock inside of me now.”
With one hand on his hip, I plow into his ass with one hard thrust, almost crying out as I bury myself in his heat. I fuck him with long, hard strokes as I jerk his throbbing cock. He squeezes me, his muscles tensing as they clamp down on me, pulling me in.