24. Aiden
24
AIDEN
C oach had warned us that Liv and Travis would be coming down to do some coverage about the playoffs, but I wasn’t prepared to see her walking into the locker room dressed like a news anchor for a major media outlet. There’s something intensely attractive about her looking like a boss and a goddess at the same time.
“Damn that woman is fine,” Connor mutters, and I grin at him in reply.
As she greets some of the other players who are closer to the doorway, I ponder what has changed. Lately, she’s been looking even more delicious and vibrant, like there’s a newfound glow about her. She positively exudes confidence and glorious sensuality, and me and my cock are all for it.
I think about the slightly scraggly, leggy kid that I grew up with and shake my head. I had always been half in love with Liv, even when we were little kids, but I hadn’t been prepared for her to turn into such a bombshell as an adult.
“Ready for the big game?” she says to Connor and me as she strides over to us.
She’s in full work mode. I clear my throat and stand up straighter, trying to meet her in the middle.
“I feel like our practices have been great lately,” I manage to say in a voice that sounds normal despite the hormones running rampant through my body. “We’re running like a well-oiled machine.”
“We kind of feel like we’re living under a lucky star,” Connor agrees with a wink. “Maybe this year it’s just our turn, you know?”
“You think that the hockey gods are blessing your team?” Travis asks, his tone dripping with fake good humor.
Dimitri pipes up, stepping into our little circle. “We put in the work, and we get results. We make it easy for the hockey gods to bless us.”
Liv blinks a little at his intensity but he isn’t looking at her. He’s glaring at Travis like he wants to rip his head off.
I need to say something that will ease the tension and make sure that the video they are collecting will be useful to them. “The Russian Bear is just riled up for the upcoming fray, you know? He’s not wrong, though. We have been working hard, and I think it’s paying off.”
“Let’s talk a little bit about stats,” Liv interjects, dragging the conversation away from the testosterone cloud hovering in the air.
I hear her rattling off facts and figures, but I’m not really listening. I’m distracted by how much I wish that I could go home to Liv every night. That’s one of the things that I miss the most about the days when were just silly kids growing up together. Liv hadn’t been off-limits back then. We’d all crashed out in the tree fort on warm summer nights, or we had sleepovers at one of our houses and watched movies until the early hours of the morning.
Things were just easy between us. Max and I had been friends first, but Liv had become a natural part of our companionship almost from the start. It had felt strange when we grew apart as adults.
I try to imagine what a life with Liv would look like. Would all of us live together in one big house? That would make the most sense, especially if we had kids at some point. Kids , I think, my brain catching on the word as Liv asks Connor about some stats from the last game. I’ve always wanted kids, but how would that work in our situation? Heck, I didn’t even know if Liv wanted children.
“What do you think, Hotshot?” Liv asks, using my nickname on the ice.
I blink for a moment, then flush a little as I realize that I have no idea what’s going on. “Sorry,” I manage to say, “can you repeat the question?”
“I asked if you thought that you could repeat your stats from the last game,” Liv starts to say, but then a strange look comes over her face. She holds up a finger, then races from the room hunched over, one hand pressed to her mouth.
Dimitri and I look at one another in confusion. Even Travis looks perplexed. Connor, however, hurries after her.
“Excuse me,” I say to Travis, stepping past him and slipping out into the hallway. I don’t see Connor and Liv but I have an idea of where they might be.
I stride down the hallway toward the women’s restroom, then poke my head inside.
“Connor? Liv?” I call out from the doorway.
“In here,” Connor calls back to me.
I push the door open just as Dimitri catches up with me. We step into the bathroom cautiously, looking around for other women. It seems the coast is clear.
“You okay, Liv?” I ask. I notice that Connor doesn’t seem that fazed, and I arch a brow at him. He just shakes his head.
“You guys, I’m fine,” she says, sounding a little annoyed. “I might be coming down with something, but I’ll be alright in a minute.”
“This happened this morning too,” Connor says to us.
My heart does a little flip-flop in my chest. This morning . So, Connor had been at Liv’s place this morning. I look over at him, trying to decide how to feel. We had all agreed that we wouldn’t get jealous if another spent time with Liv alone, but damn, it isn’t easy.
“You can be jealous later,” Connor says. “She needs us right now.”
Knowing that he’s right, I say, “Do you want some water? I can go grab a bottle from the team fridge.”
“Sure,” she calls back to me. I look at Connor and he just sighs and nods.
“We’ll talk about it,” he says, then makes a shooing motion to get going.
Dimitri decides to come with me to the breakroom area down the hallway. We grab a couple of bottles of water. I grab a banana too, in case she feels hungry once she starts coming back around.
“Here,” I say to her as I pass a bottle of cold water to Liv when we walk back into the women’s restroom.
“Thanks,” she replies gratefully. She drinks about a third of it in one go then sighs. “Sorry. It’s just been so damn stressful lately, with the media and everything.”
Suddenly, her lower lip starts trembling. I look at her in confusion as I realize that tears are streaming down her face.
“Hey,” I say gently, stepping closer and pulling her into my arms. “What’s wrong?”
“So many things,” she says, her voice muffled against my shoulder, “but most of them have to do with Travis.”
“Is that bastard still bothering you?” Dimitri asks. He starts cracking his knuckles and I notice a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“When isn’t he bothering me?” she sniffles. Connor brings her some toilet paper and she blows her nose. “But I want this damn job. I won’t let him scare me off.”
“Scare you off?” I echo, feeling my blood heat up. “Look, if he’s scaring you, we can convince him to leave you alone.”
“No, it’s okay,” she insists, shaking her head. I notice some color coming back into her cheeks. She seems to be feeling better. She eyes the banana in my hand, and I hold it out to her. Watching her eat it starts to make me think of other things she’s had in her mouth when the bathroom door opens again and Max walks in.
“Liv?” he said. “What’s going on?”
She starts crying again, throwing herself into her brother’s arms.
“What the hell?” he says to us with confusion as his arms come up to pull her closer to him.
I shrug and shake my head. It seems like there’s more than one thing going wrong for her right now but I don’t know what it is. I knew she had been collecting evidence to use against that bastard Travis, but I have a nagging feeling that something else is going on.
I glance over at Connor, who appears uncomfortable. He keeps looking over at Dimitri with a worried look on his face, avoiding Max’s gaze entirely. That isn’t like him, I don’t know what could be causing him so much concern.
I’m beginning to feel irritated. I like to be kept in the loop and usually people confide in me. I’m the kind of person you can tell tough secrets to and I keep them. I don’t like standing outside the circle, feeling so left out.
“Look, I can take you back to your place,” Max says to his sister as he rubs her back. “You aren’t feeling good and you’re upset. You should go home and rest.”
“No, no,” Liv insists, stepping back and swiping at her face. How does she manage to look so beautiful even when she has mascara running down her cheeks? “I’ll be fine. I’m just… emotional. That time of the month,” she finishes lamely.
I look over at Connor, who has a confused look on his face. He opens his mouth to say something then immediately closes it, shaking his head.
“Liv, I think you should consider?—”
“And I think you all need to stop babying me,” she snaps, cutting me off. She pulls out of her brother’s arms then grabs some paper towel to dap at her ruined makeup. “I’m a big girl. I’ve gotten by on my own just fine. I’ll let you know if I need to be saved, okay?”
We all exchange an uncomfortable look. Even Max looks a bit surprised at her sharp tone.
“Want me to walk you back out there?” Max asks her.
She sighs and shakes her head. “Can’t show any weakness in this business, you know?” She plasters a fake smile on her face in an attempt to hide the pain. I know it’s there though. I can see her worries and her suffering as clearly as if she had a neon sign over her head that declared, “I’m feeling really shitty about my life and the future right now.”
“See you later?” Max asks as she heads to the bathroom door.
“Yeah,” she replies hastily as she yanks the door open.
A moment later she pokes her head back in. “You guys had better get out of the women’s restroom before you all get labeled as weirdos or creeps.”
I catch a tiny hint of the usual vigor in her expression before she steps back into the hall and vanishes from sight.
“What the hell is going on?” I demand as soon as she leaves. I glance at my friends with annoyance. It’s like I’ve been left in the dark and everyone else knows what’s happening.
“I have a lot of questions myself,” Max says a bit darkly, glaring at all of us. “If I find out that any of you have let her down in some way, I’m going to be really angry. I do want to talk about all this bad press surrounding you guys about being at her place. I assume you were there being helpful, but it makes you all look bad and threatens her job when the media starts publishing pictures like that.”
“The media, wait, what?” I demand, totally confused now.
“You guys really need to pay more attention to like, almost everything,” Max says. “Check out The Insider site and also Celebrity Today, you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
We all pull out our phones and start Googling.
“Oh shit.”
“I’ll kill those fuckers,” Dimitri states in a flat, deadly tone.
Connor stays suspiciously silent.
“Liv and I are going to meet up after she’s done working to talk about a bodyguard, and a few other adjustments to her routine,” Max says. “In the meantime, you guys probably need to be extra careful about being seen with her.”
I nod mechanically, staring at the hateful articles that nearly every gossip rag is sharing about her and us. I feel slightly ill thinking about what this kind of bad press could do to her career. It’s not ideal for us, either, but we’re hockey players. We’re practically expected to do inappropriate things. A female media personality is held to unrealistic standards, and she could easily be fired for these pictures.
As I file out of the women’s restroom after my friends, I wonder why I feel like there’s more to all of this than meets the eye. I keep feeling like there’s something that I’m missing, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
One thing I know for sure is that we need to figure out what we are doing about this situationship that we are all in, before someone gets hurt.