CHAPTER NINE
HUX
I slipped back into Anya’s car amidst the fresh snowfall to find her curled into a ball in the driver’s seat. Her hair tumbled forward over her face, and her arms were tucked into her chest. It didn’t take a genius to work out that she thought I’d run off on her and left her alone.
Swearing not so softly, I closed the passenger door and reached out to rest my fingers tentatively on her knee.
“Annie,” I murmured. “I meant to tell you I’d be back. But…that bit of information got jammed in my brain and never made it to my mouth. I’m sorry.”
It took a moment—an eternity—while I waited with my heart in my mouth and a tiny rectangular box in my hand, the long foxed edges cutting into my palm, but eventually she raised her head and looked at me. In the worst way.
The sparkle I’d always loved about her had dulled. Not just from her eyes, but all over. That inner brat I fought with, fought against—that part of her was gone.
Hidden.
I gritted my teeth hard. “I shouldn’t have left you. I’m sorry,” I said again, but she barely responded.
The look of a girl who had been hurt too many times. I remembered Tabitha’s battered face as she stared at me from her hospital bed and told me she never wanted to see another hockey player in her life. I hadn’t blamed her then, only myself for not fixing the culture on the team when I had a chance.
Now, I saw the same thing at a different scale play out on the stage of my personal life and fuck…
It hurt.
A puck sized lump filled my throat. Not again. Someone else I’d pushed away from the culture I tried so hard to cultivate a healthy image for and failed, this time on a much closer front. Another girl damaged because I couldn’t see the danger.
“Get out,” she said so quietly that it took a second for my brain to register her words.
“Annie,” I whispered. Nothing else came out when it mattered. When it really mattered. My heart constricted in my chest, running cold like ice chips were injected into my soul.
“Hux.” She stared straight at me, and those eyes broke me inside.
I swallowed and nodded, giving her the time I hoped she needed as I backed out of the car and left the tiny package on the front seat with the note inside I meant to give her years ago but never had the opportunity.
The day I lost my entire family. And now, just when I thought I found a new part of it again, it looked like I’d lost her, too.
Sol glared at me, thick arms folded across his chest. “I’ll hold off the punches to your pretty boy face because I know you have a media shoot in three days and it’ll be too hard to explain. So talk fast, and I’ll decide how much this will hurt you next week at training.”
His threat rolled over me. I’d faced far worse on the ice from a full team coming at me during some of our earlier games before we figured our shit out, but it wasn’t the pain that hurt.
I kept an eye on Anya from the shelter of a tree just behind her car where she couldn’t see me, my keys in my hand in case she really did take off down the hill, and I lost her, too. The thought of her driving in this weather, no snow chains, upset and not thinking straight—I knew how bad that road in these conditions could be. I might have lost her for now, but I wasn’t ready to give up on us just yet.
And if she got hurt because I screwed up…
When she made her way into the house, Sol was waiting for both of us. I gave them the time they needed, him checking her over, making sure she was okay. That she carried the box I left for her in her palm up the stairs to my old room sent my chest panging with a fraction of hope, though I didn’t want to bank on that right now.
Anya had been hurt enough, and I’d just doubled down on what she had experienced when I wasn’t there for her like I should have been. Like she expected me to be there for her.
Why didn’t I know?
Short answer: I’d been too involved with my own damn career to see what was right in front of me, if only I had looked. And right now, the person in front of me was my best friend who appeared ready to tear some random internal organ out of me through an existing orifice—or maybe a new one. Not that I blamed him.
“Save it,” I said shortly. “It’s Anya I’m worried about. I should have told you as soon as you walked in?—”
“Fucking right.”
“—but I didn’t. I worried what you’d say in front of her and I didn’t want to fuck up our relationship until I could take a breath and figure it all out. Yes, it was the wrong way to do it. I know that. And I’m sorry. Not for falling for her—” I sent him a warning look, “—but for not saying it straight up.”
He nodded. “You fucked up. All right. Not forgiven, but we’ll get to it. Talk to me about Benny and Tabitha.”
I started at the change of subject. “How much detail did Coach go into, huh?”
I’d told him off the record the moment I walked out of the hospital because I needed to tell someone. But I’d also kept the details scant, knowing Coach and legal would have my ass if information leaked. Not that Sol would tell anyone, which was why I confided in him in the first place. Why he was my best friend. The pitfall of not telling him about Anya slapped me in the face like a cleanly hit puck fresh off the ice.
Sol waited for me to catch up with the program in my own time. “Coach made a group chat. One sided, if chat is the right word when no one else can reply. But yeah, he got word out. I want to hear what you saw.”
My eyes narrowed. Sol said nothing that wasn’t related to anything else. “Benny hurt her bad, inside and out.” I didn’t want to go into graphic detail right now. My stomach couldn’t take that description, and Tabitha deserved some dignity that remained. Her privacy, as requested. “He’s been arrested, and he’ll be charged. No doubt. I did media, Coach did media, but we’ll deal. It’s not us that I’m worried about. It’s her. She wants nothing to do with any of us, which is fair. We’ll be lucky if the club isn’t sued, if I’m honest.”
“You don’t think she will?”
I shrugged. “It’s her right. What she wants is her privacy as she heals and never to see any of us ever again. I—” I hesitated, swallowed. “I don’t want to have done that to another girl after I saw the damage one of us did already. Not one I love.”
“You do, huh?” Sol stared me down.
“I do what?”
“Love my sister.”
I stared back at him. “Yeah, of course I fucking well love her. I wouldn’t be this cut up over her if I didn’t. I walked back in here after years away and found her alone, pretty as the day I lost my brother and my parents, all the things I’ve wanted in one sassy little bundle and never got to tell her—” My throat closed again.
Sol clapped a hand on my shoulder in a slap that ricocheted around the room. I should have felt the sting, but somehow that one passed me by. “So go tell her. She’s been hurt enough.”
“You’re all right with this?” I rolled the shoulder, waiting for the pain that didn’t come. It felt lighter.
“Was waiting for you to figure yourself out, Cap,” he muttered. “I’ll deal with Hallie. Don’t come into the kitchen for a while. She has a thing for avocado. So do I, now.”
I winced. “Wipe down the surfaces when you’re done. Anyone else turning up this weekend?” I spoke to his back as he sauntered to the door.
Sol didn’t stop walking, and he didn’t turn back. “You still don’t get it, do you? This weekend was all about her. And you. Happy Valentine’s Day, pucker.”
My twisted mess of a heart still felt lighter as I took the stairs two at a time. This time, I stopped at Anya’s bedroom door, and knocked.
“Come in.” Like before, her usually bright voice was muted.
I pushed open the door, steeling myself for her rejection, though Sol’s acceptance both offered relief and confused the fuck out of me. I had expected him to be furious—and rightfully so—but his reaction was unexpected. The thought he’d set us up irritated me at some other level, but I’d deal with that faux pas another training day.
Right now, I needed to focus on the sibling in front of me.
And the sight of Anya, wrapped in a different pair of my old sweats that swam on her and the first jersey I was ever given that looked far older and more worn than I remembered it ever being, sparked a fresh bout of that most dangerous of emotions.
She looked up at me, all big, wide eyes. Her pretty curls were pulled off her face in a low ponytail, the unopened box I left in the car in her hands. Her legs were crossed under her and she sat in the middle of her bed. My old bed, and she wore my clothes.
My heart beat a little faster.
“Hi,” I said, my voice as hoarse as it had been in the car.
“Hi.” Hers was just as soft, and maybe not as flat.
Or maybe I imagined that.
“Can I come in?” I leaned against the doorframe, my hands stuffed into my pockets.
She turned the box over in her hands, not looking at it. “How long have you had this in your car? That was where you went, right? When you left me?”
The run of questions left me airless. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat when the single word stuck in it. “Yeah, that’s where I went. I had it in the glove box. As a birthday present.” I shut my mouth before I rambled on, but she kept looking at me, all wide eyes like she was waiting for something. Me, maybe. “Uh, I’ve had it since—” Fuck. Man up. “Since the day you turned eighteen. I was gonna give it to you before dinner. After lunch. Something like that. I didn’t have a plan.”
Bullshit. I wanted to take her out to the pond, skate with her for a bit, pull her in and kiss her.
My chest ached at the omission, but I didn’t need to say the words. She seemed to have heard them anyway, or maybe part of them.
“The day your parents died.”
The floor fell out from under me. I yanked one hand out from my pocket and strangled the door frame in a death grip to keep myself upright. “Yeah. That day.”
“It’s been there ever since.”
“Yeah.” Conversational skills of a shittily packed snowball. That was me.
“Because…”
“You’re gonna make me say it, huh?” My skin prickled, the room zeroing down to just her. It had always been just her.
She nodded. Once.
I blew out a breath and risked a step into the room. Another. When she didn’t object, I approached the bed, kneeling down to rest my forearms on the edge. That was as close as I came to her. Just in case she bolted, and from the way she looked at me, like I might attack her at any given moment, I didn’t blame her.
“I fell in love with you years ago, Annie. I was gonna tell you—try to tell you, if I didn’t lose my nerve. That day. But your brother and I…we signed with the Chimeras and our careers took off…” It was a pithy excuse and I winced at the egotistical self-portrait I painted. Not that it mattered; she’d always seen me just as I was, without any glam mirror. Or maybe not. Maybe I was still kidding myself. I blew out a slow breath. “I ran that year. I got busy and I stayed that way. It stopped me from thinking, from feeling. I filled my life with hockey, with the team. Responsibilities that weren’t mine to start with, but that have become mine now.” Like Tabitha, and I’m still fucking up. “By the time I wanted something more than the superficial bunnies and ego trip, everyone else had found their person and I…”
“Was left alone.” She finished the thought for me in that same quiet way that left me spinning.
A shiver ripped through me that I suppressed, but it was a near thing. “Yeah. Alone.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it.” Her voice was still flat and quiet.
I swallowed. “I think I like bratty Annie better.”
“I like you grumpier. You’re less scary then.”
“No emotions, huh?”
She nodded, still turning the box over and over and over. I reached out a tentative hand, risking it all on a simple gesture and covered her compulsive motion with my fingers. She stilled, letting me close my hand around hers.
“Have you opened it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Open it.”
I held my breath and released my hold on her hands. Anya flicked the corner of the lid and I hoped the whole thing hadn’t been ruined. I never had the guts to check. Never thought I'd give it to her afterward, until now.
Her breath stuttered as she flicked open the lid with excruciating care. The folded one line note sat one top. She seemed to read the words I put there more than once, and then the old ink swam in a sea of salt.
Shit, I made her cry again.
The lid and the note were set aside with care as I dared to breathe. Anya ran her fingers over the tiny pearl carved into the shape of tulip petals. The gem sat on a stem of delicate silver, with green enamel leaves.
“I remembered you loved them. I wanted to give you something you liked, and flowers die so… this seemed to last a little longer.” My voice cracked but I didn’t care.
She stared down at the jewellery that had sat in its box for the last years, the box that survived the crash when I saved it, and that had traveled everywhere with me since.
Everything I felt for her was right there, and my heart had never changed.
“I hoped you still liked tulips,” I said helplessly when she said nothing, didn’t even move. “If you don’t, that’s okay. I can–”
I had no idea what I’d do or would have offered, rambling on. Thankfully she didn’t make me find out as she launched across the bed at me, necklace in her hand, and slithered off the covers and onto my lap. Her sweat covered legs dangled either side of my hips as she straddled me.
“You got this for me…back then?” Anya squeezed her thighs around my hips as she stared me straight in the face, some of her spark returning.
I nodded, barely trusting my voice. “It was the first thing I had made up with my first paycheck from the team. It’s not much, but back then it was everything I had.”
Her eyes flared, then her mouth was on mine in a flurry of kisses I could barely keep up with, but I wasn’t about to say no. Soft lips assaulted mine as I sank my hands into her hair and held her to me, kissing her back. I let her take the lead, more than happy to give over control if it meant she let me taste her, touch her again.
When she pulled back, her chest heaved, and she rubbed her body against mine, all needy.
“There’s the little brat I remember,” I murmured, squeezing her name.
“And love,” she prompted.
“And love,” I agreed, thinking of the note she had cried over. Words I couldn’t say, so I wrote them down. Something more permanent than a promise whispered in her ear and broken the next moment. A secret I’d held for so long, and now she shared it too.
A smile I thought I’d never see again spread over her face. “You took your sweet time, Hux. Where did my brother hurt you? I thought you’d be crawling up the stairs.”
I laughed. “He set us up.”
A kitten-worthy growl ripped from her throat. “That little shit…”
My laugh transformed into a snort. “Only one person in this world can get away with calling Solace Hunter a little shit , but I’ll treasure this moment forever,” I promised her.
Anya slapped my shoulder. “You better.”
“Always.” I kissed the tip of her nose, and she went crossed eyed. “Damn, girl. I was scared for a minute. Thought I lost you.”
She went quiet again. “For a minute, I think you did.”
My heart stalled in my chest. “What changed your mind?”
“Well, my brother didn’t kill you and, best friend or not, I trust his judge of character. Plus, he hated Peter and I didn’t listen,” she added, offhand.
“Anya,” I growled, tugging her head back until she arched for me. “Your brother has good taste.”
“You’re only saying that because he approved of you.”
“I’m still alive. I’m counting that as a win.”
Her giggle filled my veins with the pink fluffy shit cupids made their living off every February. “That’s a good thing. Cause I ‘ve got at least a dozen fantasies I need to try out and see if the real thing matches up to the Chimera-worthy daydream.”
“A dozen, huh?” I kissed her soundly until she whimpered for me, and stole the necklace from her fingers while she was distracted, linking the fine chain around her neck. “Keep making sounds like that and wearing my old jerseys and I’ll let you test out your theories as much as you like.”
“Oh?” Anya ran her fingers over the necklace, cupping the flower I designed for her years ago at a jeweller back home. The sight of her wearing the piece—finally—turned my heart over in my chest. “What about you, Hux? How many fantasies do you want to play out?”
My sassy girl wiggled on my lap until I groaned and lifted her onto the bed, sliding my hands into the loose fitting sweats. She could keep wearing my clothes all she liked if I got to strip her out of them each day. “Just one, Annie. One I’ve been dying to play out since the day I didn’t get to give you that necklace.” I leaned in and kissed her again while she squirmed beneath me and slid my fingers lower, teasing the warm flesh of her soft belly.
“Hux, the door’s open,” she murmured.
“Your brother said the kitchen is out of bounds for a bit. Something about an avocado fetish. Get these off.” I tugged at the sweats, baring her on my old bed like a feast spread out before me.
Sure, I had a fantasy I wanted to play out, but that one could wait until the snow stopped falling. Right now, I needed to find out how fast she came on my tongue when the only thing she wore was an old jersey bearing my name.
Okay, so maybe it was two fantasies.