CHAPTER THREE
ANYA
Captain Huxley Radfield had always been trouble. The moment he pulled up, even forewarned by my brother that he’d had a crappy day, I knew he’d be a handful. But I didn’t expect him to yell at me within an hour of walking in the door of the place where we all brewed childhood memories, even if his bore scars the rest of us had never been able to help him heal. Okay, so his weren’t so much happy childhood memories, but mine were. Teen ones, at least.
And I'd always had a crush on Sol’s best friend. Who wouldn’t? At six foot plus, he had to duck under most doorways, just like my brother, though Sol was all heavy set muscle where Hux fell into the leaner category. Not in the mean way, just…he was ripped as shit. I could see that now when all he wore was a towel I used last night and a handful of water droplets that traced the carved muscles of his abs and chest.
But it was the way he glowered at me, all riled and righteous, that left me giggling.
“I bet that’s scary to the newer guys on the team when you yell at them, huh?” I flicked my book shut as I rolled over to face him in full, managing to mark my page and not lose my place in the process. Pleased my coordination skills weren’t lacking after I’d killed half a bottle of white wine earlier when the snow started and I thought I’d be on my own for at least a while, I hit a fail when the sheet slipped off my body. Oops . Kinda.
“Did you just dog ear that page?” Hux made a strangled noise as he lunged forward and grabbed the absent sheet, yanking it upward. “Would you cover up,” he snapped through gritted teeth.
The dual command was kinda cute. I looked down and shrugged as I accepted the sheet and tucked it beneath my armpits to make him happy. “Sorry. But what did you expect when you barged into a girl’s room unannounced? Not that I’m objecting, and all.” I waved my book—yes, dogeared, it was my personal copy—at his own exposed, damp and steamy skin. “Did you need something?”
He gaped at me. “ Your room?”
Damnit, he wasn’t here for a booty call after all. My battered ego could have done with a decent round of that.
“Yes, Hux, my room. There’s the door. You found it on your way in.” Via the bathroom, but I wasn’t about to let a little thing like directions ruin my one-liner.
“But it was op-en.” He still gaped at me.
I nodded, sliding onto my back and opened my book with the manchest cover that only slightly resembled him. Okay, a little more than slightly. “Good to see you’re catching on.”
“But this is my room.”
I peeked over the top of the book to see if he stamped his foot. “That’s a great tantrum right there, Cap. But right now this girl’s tired. I was going to read a few chapters, but if you can put a lid on your temper, I promise you can stay.” I looked pointedly at the empty side of the bed between him and me.
Hux stared, and his mouth closed in a firm line. “This has always been my room,” he hissed. I swore he did it without moving his mouth.
Now, that was a talent.
“That’s nice. But you haven’t been here for a few years,” I said gently.
Hux blinked. “I haven’t—” he broke off, caught up, and cleared his throat. “I left my bag at the end of the bed.”
“Oh.” I sat forward to check. “So you did. Sorry. I crawled straight across the mattress.” I picked up my half empty wine glass from the bedside table and took a sip.
Hux’s eyes tracked the movement, his gaze coasting over me and back to my face. “Apologies. Which room is vacant this year?” he said abruptly.
I tipped my head backward. “Next door, adjoining the bathroom on the other side, if you want closer to the kitchen. Or any of the ones?—”
“Noted.” He leaned down, grabbed his bag, and stalked out of the room.
Apparently I wasn’t the only person in the house nursing a battered ego.
Huxley’s temper tantrum didn’t end at my doorway. Heavy stomps echoed through the second floor as he threw his things down. I hid in my book and failed to hide my smile. Maybe my shattered heart wouldn’t be so lonely this weekend after all.
If I could inject coffee intravenously into my veins, I would. The snowfall hadn’t stopped overnight, and I still had no reception on my phone. Or the streaming services because, when my insomnia kicked in at two a.m., I watched old police procedurals on the ancient DVD player in my room.
Ignored the heavy breathing next door that I could hear through the adjoining bathroom.
Eventually I ended up on the sofa in the living room with a thermos of coffee because sleep is overrated, though I threw on a pair of charcoal sweats that weren’t mine and a blue Chimera’s jersey—also not mine—before I flashed Hux again by accident. I really hadn’t meant to give him a show before, but since he was there and all…
Man, did I get sassy when I was stupid tired. Yep, sleep really was overrated.
Which was how I ended up passed out in front of the TV with some romantic scene still playing and cuddling an empty thermos when something warm tickled my feet.
Or at least, that was the order I thought things happened in when I tried kicking at the thing stroking my feet. The warm thing that refused to move.
“Whoa there, Anya. I might be a confirmed bachelor and all, but I’d like to keep some of my swimmers intact in case I want a baby Hux runnin’ around some day.”
I knew that voice, and that accent. Away from the cameras Hux dropped the perfect enunciation the media coach banged into both him and my brother years ago, and fell back into some older habits. The real him. I kinda liked that he was more than just the TV personality and still the smartass I remembered.
Suppressing a smile, I cracked an eyelid open and found Hux tucked under the other end of my blanket, my feet resting in a sandwich made of his solid thighs and hands that cupped the top of my feet where he traced patterns around my ankles. His head was tipped back against the back of the sofa, his shoulders relaxed, not the tense line they’d been set in the night before.
This was the version of Hux that I grew up with, the one I remembered and had a huge crush on for years. Before he became a Chimera, and hit the realm of untouchable for the girl from a small town who couldn’t compete with fancy city WAGs who trailed him and my brother around in droves.
Mind, I loved my brother's current obsession, though I’d only spoken to Hallie once at Christmas on a quick call. But she seemed much more down to Earth than any of the boys’ other flings that lasted a few weeks at absolute best. Something told me this version for him was permanent.
The idea of someone permanent in Hux’s life, however, left my stomach plummeting off a puck bunny level, snow-covered drop that never seemed to end.
I kicked him in the stomach a little harder than I intended, but he deserved it for perving on me last night, even if I had enjoyed the process.
“Aren’t you supposed to ask a lady for permission before you touch her?” I asked, though my voice came out more sleepy than sassy.
He laughed without looking at me, his eyes still closed. “Girl, last night I saw more of you than any lady ever has on show and I remember how much you love a good foot massage…as an apology.”
“You call that an apology— ohh .” I sighed and settled back as he started in on my arches with strong thumbs, my argument completely forgotten. My thermos tumbled from hands that weren’t half as responsive as I needed them to be, but the muted thunk I expected didn’t arrive. Nor were my feet cold, considering my lazy ass didn’t relight the downstairs fire last night when in-zombie-ac me wandered about the house at all hours.
“I got it.”
I opened my eyes to find Hux leaning over me. He placed the long empty thermos gently on the carpet at my side, his proximity more intoxicating than he had been last night. Dark eyes, almost solid enough to be black that matched his hair, though I knew they reflected a deep chocolate brown in the right light, surveyed me with a sort of easy humor. I shivered as he squeezed the arch of my foot, resuming his massage as he eased back.
His gaze coasted over me, arched lips so often curved in a secret smirk he didn’t know I saw during my teenage years when he looked at me crooked up at one corner.
“Good to see you have some decent clothes.” His smirk grew. “Wait, isn’t that one of my old jerseys?”
I grabbed the nearest cushion and tossed it at him. The fluffy white thing bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. “Probably. I grabbed it out of a drawer this morning.”
He laughed at me. “How early were you up? ‘Cause you were asleep down here when I went out for wood.”
All the wrong sorts of comments about morning wood ran through my head. I chose to be an adult and shut my trap for a moment.
I shrugged and wished for a never ending thermos of enterally steaming black coffee instead. “Insomniac. I don’t sleep at any of the right times.”
He watched me for a long moment. Too long. I shifted under his gaze.
“No wonder, if you’re watching this shit.” He nodded at the TV that scrolled through the sixth season of a show I’d watched at least a dozen times around the clock plus the spin off. Not that I'd be fessing up to that any time soon.
“Way to insult a girl’s favorite midnight pastime, Hux.” I tugged my feet back, but he linked his thumb and forefinger around my ankle in an unbreakable—or so it seemed to my soggy, sleepless ass—hold. “Let go.”
“No chance. Since when haven’t you slept?”
Since I dated the wrong man and developed a few extra habits that are harder to break than others.
I closed my mouth with a snap as my cheeks heated. “Sorry. That was supposed to stay on the inside.”
Hux watched me. Again. He was also developing a new habit around me. I wasn’t sure I liked it. “Sometimes it needs to be said. You talked about it?” He kept the words casual, but his grip on my ankles flexed.
I swallowed at the flash of possession in his gaze, like he cared . Like he hadn’t left me alone years ago, and not come back. That’s not fair. But that was the truth. My ultimate hang up. Like anyone had the time when I was?—
Nope, not going there.
“Yeah. I talk to a therapist once a month.” I gave a derisive snort. “She has an ostentatiously empty office. That’s how ‘good’ she is. And I talk to Mom when she’s in range. Sometimes.”
He swallowed. “Must be nice to have parents to talk to that sort of stuff about,” he muttered wistfully.
Fuckity fuck.
“Don’t do that,” I mumbled. Squeezing my eyes shut I mouthed sorry , unable to face the tragedy that happened less than two miles from this house. We all witnessed Hux lose it that year, and the next…he was a different man. The boy with a dream who grew up overnight, and never came back.
Until now. Huh. What a year to play happy families.
“It’s okay, Annie,” he murmured, running his fingers along the insides of my calves under my blanket.
I started at the nickname I hadn’t heard in years, though Hux had always called me that since we were kids. Since…I couldn’t remember how young I’d been. He just always had. The name sank over me. Familiar .
My heart squeezed, but Hux didn’t let up or give me a chance to breathe. His hands coasted over my borrowed sweats, but it was like he touched bare skin in a burning path. This isn’t fair. Any time I’d had a crush on him he’d been untouchable. I was cool with that; being untouchable left him firmly in the realm of my daydreams. And some other sorts of dreams.
But now…flirting with him last night had been the worst of ideas. A pit of regret swarmed low in my belly until I wanted to puke. I tugged my legs away and he let me, tucking them beneath me. Hux didn’t argue as I fumbled blindly for my thermos, still not looking at him even when I opened my eyes.
“Here.” He presented my thermos to me.
I took it from his scarred hands, marks he earned when he reached back into the mangled wreck, trying to extract his family from the tangled me when he alone walked away that day. No one else did.
I hiccuped on his behalf at the horrifying memory, unable to fathom how he could be here, now, and still function. I knew I wouldn’t be able to in his place.
“I think I liked you better when you were grumpy and stomping about last night.” I made the mistake of tipping my head back and meeting his eyes.
Dark as always, Hux didn’t back off like he had before.
“Anya,” he said slowly. Softly . “I’m sorry about last night. Busting in on you. Looking at you like I shouldn’t have.”
“That wasn’t your fault.” The lie fell out by rote. Another old habit too hard to break.
“Bullshit. I could have stopped looking. I didn’t want to.” The bald truth sat between us as he pressed the thermos into my chest. His knuckles dropped to graze my hip. “I’m not supposed to want anything about you.” Those strong, scarred fingers, so familiar, cupped my hip where my loose sweats slipped down to bare flesh, and squeezed firmly.
A gasp left my throat and before my brain caught up with the day’s agenda, I scrambled off the sofa, out from beneath my rug and darted to the kitchen. My heart pounded as I slammed my hand down on the coffee machine, intent on refilling the thermos with as much black coffee as it would take, and dashed about pulling out bread and shoving it in the toaster knowing I wouldn’t be able to stomach breakfast so early.
Wait, how early? I checked the clock on the microwave. Six a.m. No wonder I was still half asleep. Or at least, I had been a few minutes before. But no amount of distraction and toast making could erase Hux’s caresses that seared into my skin. And I liked the captain’s touch way too much.
Last night’s flirting had been a hell of a mistake. He was the reason I couldn’t sleep. He was the reason I ended up on the downstairs sofa so I wasn’t tempted to crawl into the spare room. No, I hadn’t thought about the bedroom I’d been sleeping in for years being his previously.
Sure, seventeen year old me did, once, the year he didn’t come back. That was the year I claimed his room and no one, not my parents, not Solace, told me otherwise. And so Hux’s room just became...mine.
And after the way he watched me just now, I should have thought more about my life choices. Because flirting with Hux and being right up close with my personal spank bank crush of too many years was scary as shit in real time. I was far from ready for the real thing, and no amount of coffee, smutty books or bottles of wine could prepare me for how Hux’s hands felt on my body.
The worst thing?
I really wanted what he offered. But after my last break up I was still too raw. No way could I risk being just a quick fling with one of the biggest players out there. Maybe the biggest of them all.
No, Huxley Radfield had to remain a schoolgirl crush. That was where I drew the line.
I prayed I’d be able to hold to that. Because if I crossed that line, when he walked away in a few days and forgot about me, I’d shatter like a snowflake tossed about on stormy winds.
And then I’d be just one more puck bunny left in Hux’s wake.