26. Schmoozin’ for a Bruisin’ #2
He looks amused. “Comes with the job. I don’t pay much attention. Thanks for the offer, though.”
“That’s why I’m here.” I check my watch. The others will be done in a minute. “You’ll be glad to know you get lunch after this.”
“With you?” At my raised eyebrows, he backtracks. “I mean, do you get a break? You’ve been working all morning. Haven’t stopped.”
“Oh. Yeah.” At around ten tonight, when I fully intend to take a basket of Eileen’s deluxe pistachio cookies I might have hidden behind a pillar into my nest and not appear until morning. “Somebody’s been paying attention.”
“I do that.” Austin’s voice drops an octave, growing apologetic. “Watching people is a bit of a hobby for me. Weird one, I know.”
“I don’t know.” I lean forward, both of us watching the crowd now. “I enjoy a bit of people watching. Every single one of them have their own lives, their own issues that we have no part in. Fascinating.”
“Sonder.” When I look at him in question, he’s smiling slightly. “The realization that everyone around us has a life as detailed and as difficult as our own. We may be the hero in our own story, but we’re insignificant in someone else’s. A by-line, or a walk on. Or we never exist at all.”
“Sonder,” I test it, liking the sound. “It’s a beautiful word.”
“It is.” He plays with his hands, flexing his fingers. “Rosie… I wanted to ask you about Chicago.”
A sense of peace I didn’t notice vanishes as easily as a cloud, and I find myself… bereft. Drawing myself up, my response is distinctly cold. “What about it?”
Dark brown eyes—molasses and treacle and autumn—study me intently, and the icy sensation in my chest only grows. “I saw you. Not sure if you remember. But you were…”
I don’t want to be part of this conversation anymore. But I can’t leave. I have to deliver him to lunch any minute. “What? Spit it out.”
“Scared,” Austin says evenly, still watching me. “You were scared.”
I inhale sharply, my body locked into stillness. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t comment on my personal life. I’m at work.”
He nods slowly, as if he was expecting it. “Just so you know, fear like that doesn’t go away.”
I shrink back, searching over my shoulder. Mackenzie is standing, shaking Callum Morris’s hand, still talking. I silently will him to hurry up. There’s no sign of Benji and Noah. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” Navarro straightens, but his words are gentle. “Look, I don’t know what happened in that elevator. But fear like that? It doesn’t go away once it’s there. It only ever grows.”
My hands are shaking. I curl them inward, hiding them at my sides. “Lunch is in the Exec Suite up on the eighth floor. You can follow the signs. Tell—tell the others.”
I leave him standing there. But his eyes follow me until I’m out of sight, lost in a crowd of people and a state of sonder with shaking hands and an empty heart.
He’s wrong. This—feeling—strange and soft as it is, buried and hidden but still there beneath Liam’s demands and the shell encasing me, it will go eventually.
It will end, and things will go back to some sort of normal.
But what if it doesn’t?
Beelining for the closest bathroom, I drop to my knees and lose the remains of my breakfast.
It has to.
It has to.
***
By the time I hunt down Boone and Carter, I’m running on pure adrenaline and the tank is empty. The call sheet shakes in my hand, every line crossed off aside from one.
I’ve smiled and laughed and cajoled players into content, forced Ryker into staying still so a photographer could take new headshots and filmed a half-joking, half-furious guessing game between several Aces and Titans—none of whom, thankfully, were part of my pack or Boone fucking Mercers.
He straightens out on the ice as I approach the boards, looking irritated. He’s swapped his suit for full kit, his scarlet Aces jersey bearing an unfamiliar logo. “We’ve been here for an hour. How much longer is this going to take?”
“Few more shots.” Ness looks equally unimpressed, though whether it’s with Boone or Nate, who stands beside her, I couldn’t say. “Then we’ll finish with the press conference and you’re done for the day.”
Boone looks like he mutters something distinctly uncomplimentary, but he nods at Ness before crouching back down, his stick braced. Carter does the same, the two of them almost touching as a photographer circles them. “Closer, both of you—I need anger, fury, rage—oh, that’s perfect.”
No acting necessary for this one. Also, Katie would absolutely have an opinion about the tension burning between them. I hoist myself up on the boards to watch, swinging my legs over.
The photographer is beside himself with joy. “Gorgeous. You really look like you hate each other. I love it!”
A videographer circles, ducking out of the way of the photos. His camera zeroes in on the beer between them in place of a puck.
Highlighting male aggression in drink isn’t exactly my idea of an award-winning advertising campaign, but what do I know? I’m just the social media gal.
Bet it was Dick’s idea. I know for a fact that brand is his favorite. He keeps it stocked in the mini fridge in his office.
“Did you know there’s a reported increase in domestic violence during international football matches?” Turning, I take the coffee Lauren holds out. She hands me hers too before lifting herself up to sit beside me and taking it back. “Not sure it’s ever been looked into for hockey.”
“Probably should be.” I take a sip of my coffee. Lauren looks as tired as I feel, her hair hastily tied in a ponytail that’s already coming loose. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“No problem.” She hides a delicate yawn behind her hand. “Long day. Almost done, though. I was thinking about what you said earlier. That’s why I’m here.”