CHAPTER EIGHT
WARD
Thirty minutes to go.
My eyes were on the ice but my mind had left the building long ago. Long enough that I could be home, my gloved hands wrapped around Sia’s pretty neck while i fucked both of us within an inch of our lives.
After I teased her out of the orgasm I promised to deny her from earlier.
Tonight wasn’t only about pleasure, though that was the reward at the end of it. A year of build up, the ultimate edging sessions. Seeing her but knowing I couldn’t touch her, have her in any way until tonight…
That was enough to drive a man insane.
Maybe I crossed that line long ago. Maybe we both had.
Commands left my lips on automaton. Some of the most experienced players who had been with me for long enough recognised the inconsistencies, but for everyone else and the cameras watching—hell, maybe even Sia for all I knew—the act held together. Mostly.
You’d better be curled up on your bedroom floor, waiting for me, wife.
Just like she promised.
Otherwise, I’d happily add my handprint to her perfect ass cheek as recompense for that slight.
“Knox, you’re off. Incarsen, swap him out.” The plays ran around in my head as the scores tallied up. We were in front, just. And if we played hard, played well, we’d keep it that way.
Twenty-three minutes to the bell.
Thirty-eight minutes until her body filled my gloved hands.
The time it would take before the media died enough for Hux to cover for me, let me out if I was at my luckiest. If we weren't and we needed to do a full press conference, then I’d be an hour or more.
Every minute here ate into my time with her.
“Head in the game, Coach.” Shannon dipped his chin, looking up into my eyes, though he kept his voice low, thank fuck. “Don’t you drop out on us when we need you.”
I glared at him. “Get your ass out on the ice before I decide to bench you for the rest of the game, Incarcsen. Or they’ll be calling you the Seatinator rather than the Incarcenator.”
Shannon grinned. “There’s the asshole we love.”
I was too relieved to see the smart ass smiling back at me, all cocky and white toothed, that I let the comment slide. My palms slapped together hard enough to sting. “Remmeber the plays! You know who your target is.”
The linesman shot me a dirty look, but I really didn’t have any fucks left to give him. I cheered with the rest of the crowd when Hux and Shannon took the puck down our end and scored flawlessly in seconds.
“That’s how you do it!” I hollered, knowing my voice would be raw for Sia. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d heard it, nor the last. I hoped to hell she found it sexy. I’d never thought to ask.
“I wanna be like them when I grow up.” Knox hung over the gate until I knocked his pads away.
“You are. But play goods and don’t earn yourself a penalty from the bench," I muttered, still watching the players.
My mind registered Knox’s surprised sound, but all I could do was watch Hux slam his competitor into the barrier helmet first.
“Not his fault. Come on,” I yelled, defending his inexcusable actions when the ref and I both knew he had no real reason for it.
Hey, it was part of the damn job. If I didn’t stand up for my boys, who would?
“Thanks.” Hux yanked off his helmet and ruffled his hair as Knox took his place on the ice.
Eight minutes to go.
“You shouldn’t be in there at all.” I glared at him.
“Yeah.” Hux shrugged. “But Knox has it.” He nodded to the younger man who worked with Shannon as though they had been playing together as long as the rest of the team.
I blinked, and my focus shifted off the teams on the ice entirely. “Did you just earn yourself a penalty for no good reason so we could share some ass space, captain?"
Hux watched me. “How are you, Ward?”
My throat worked hard. “I’m counting how many laps you’ll be doing tomorrow. Suicides. Every. Damn—”
“There’s no training tomorrow,” Hux said softly.
“There will be for you.”
“Have you called her?”
I froze. “There’s a game on.” The reminder hit me hard.
Three minutes to go.
Jesus frigid Christ. Where the hell was my attention? The score still had the same deficit in the opposite direction as it had before Hux screwed with my night.
I watched Knox and Incarsen banter it out on the ice for another breath.
“I haven’t called her.” I held up my hands.
The ref ignored me. The puck slid out from underneath Shannon.
I could hear him cursing from where I stood as his opposite whizzed across the ice, heading straight for our goals. “Fuck.”
“Valentine’s there.”
“He’s not Solace.”
“No.” Hux considered. “He’s himself.”
Thud. The puck hit Valentine’s pad. A player went down on the other team, apparently all by himself. Incarsen was nowhere in sight, but his little butt wriggle told me plenty. I signalled the ref and got a sub out.
"You're on. Get that last goal with Knox. He looks up to you.” I took Leon back, and slapped his shoulder pads. “You played a good game."
“Will do.” Hux left the box.
“Thanks, Coach,” Leon leaned back, stretching his legs, waiting for play to restart.
“You see it?”
Leon shrugged. “I mean, who knows? He’s a sneaky devil.”
“Who?” I stared hard at him.
“Uh, no one.” The chimera beside me chewed his lip and looked away.
Fucking Incarsen. This was how we lost players to penalties, like the one Hux set up minutes before. A purpose, but a penalty all the same. We couldn’t be giving them away for—
Play resumed, and my throat went raw. Mere seconds later the puck slammed into the goal at our end. Leon was on his feet screaming. Obscenarities, cheering? I had no idea. I swore the man blew out my eardrum.
“Christ, I’ll have to put you on the cheer team with the bunnies if you do that again,” I grumped.
“Sorry. Forgot you weren’t getting laid.”
I stiffened, and reorganised the team in my head.
“Sorry, Coach.”
“All good.” I dropped Leon from the team in my head.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.
I grinned without looking at him. He was safe, as long as he didn’t come out with anything like that again. We were six goals up and less than twenty seconds left on the clock. I counted it out, then we hit overtime.
Twenty minutes without sudden death it was over. The Chimeras survived another week in the playoffs and my head sprouted a few extra grey hairs.
Fists pounded my shoulders and I let them. The boys deserved every second, every shout.
“Go on, do the press,” I muttered to Hux after he’d showered and we’d had our talk. “We can kiss and make up after, yeah?”
He frowned at me. “Call her. We’ll survive.”
I shook my head, my press smile in place, the one both Sia and Cora coached me on long ago. “I’m here until it’s done.”
Hux’s eyes never left me. “Then we stay here until I hear her voice.”
My smile faded. “She’s asleep. Like I told her to be.”
“Yeah?’ He reached into my pocket and stole my motherfucking phone. “Dialing.”
“Jesus fucking—” I ground my teeth together. “You have a death wish.”
“Call me out on it Monday after you get your dick wet.”
It was a mark of our relationship that we were friends outside the arena and that right now, we weren’t coach and player.
“You think you can take me after that?” I snarled, stepping into his space, though I’d never raise a hand against the man I trusted more than anything.
“Ward?” Sia’s faint voice silenced us both.
“Love?” I murmured, forgetting for a moment that this was the woman I’d teased and tormented for the last twelve years. That we no longer lived together, and that I was going to he place to fuck the life out of her before I left like a stalker before the sun rose.
That we didn’t sleep together, and that I no longer had the right to hold her in my arms every night.
Because that cracked note in her voice washed all those years away in an instant.
“Ward?” Her shuddering breath broke something I’d held hard, impenetrable deep inside me for so many years. “It’s you.”
“Of course it’s me, Hia. Who else would it be?” I reached for the phone, but Hux—goddamn him—held the fucking thing tight, as though he had to prove a point by standing in on this conversation.
“I thought it was you.” A sob ripped her voice apart.
I froze, raising my eyes to meet Hux’s. Our furious tug-o-war over the handset ceased. “Sia, love? Can you say that again?”
“I thought he was you, when he came in. But he– he– wasn’t you at all.” Her sobs drowned out her next words.
My legs were already moving, the phone clasped too tight, creaking in my hand. Hux’s voice yelled out behind me, to me, then he was organising the men I should have been responsible for but no longer focused on.
“He who, Sia?” I asked softly, keeping the stress out of my voice by some miracle. “Who was there?” When, how long? I checked my watch. It was half twelve in the morning. Christ, I’d left her alone for so long, and this was the price. “I’m coming to you, baby. You need— what?”
“Y–you.”
My heart fractured. “I’m coming, Sa. Did he hurt you?”
“Yes.” That one came out clear.
“Okay.” I unlocked my car, climbed in. Chimera fans littered the car park in small groups, some still drinking.
I didn’t give a shit. The car kit connected and her voice filled the cabin.
“I’m six minutes away.” Four if I ignore every street sign.
“Where did he hurt you?” God, not like that. Please—
“He c-cut me.”
My blood iced over. I sent a message to Hux. “Okay, Love. I’m nearly there.” Lie. I pulled out of the parking lot and left rubber on the road. “Who was it?”
“I d-don’t know. I had a blindfold.”
“He did that?” Rage filled me.
“N-no. I did. F-for you.”
It hit me that she was freezing, not just traumatised. “Okay, gorgeous. Can you get that off? Can you get warm? I’m so close. You stay safe for me. I’m almost there.”
“So tired, Ward. So, so cold."
My cheeks were damp, and I could barely see the traffic lights as I took corners way too fast. Sirens wailed somewhere beyond me, too far away.
“I’m coming for you. Just hold on, a few more minutes.
You can do that, can’t you Sia? Can’t you?
” Desperation filled me. She had to hold on. This woman was my life. All of my life.
“Sia?”
Not even her breaths filled the shitty reception in my car any more. My tears tracked my face as I drove through her quiet streets faster.
One more street. One more.
I pulled up outside her townhouse, with its door ajar, and prayed my phone didn’t lie.
“I’m here, Sia.”
She never answered.