Chapter Ten Sadie #2
“I haven’t. Didn’t know it was ‘bring-your-boy-toy-to-work’ day, or I wouldn’t have shown up empty-handed.” While the words are voiced toward Victoria, it’s Rhys who I want to hear them. The quick set of his jaw and flare of his nostrils are the only proof that I’ve succeeded.
My phone is buzzing again, and I finally grab for it, answering without even looking.
“What?”
“Sadie.” The tearful voice of my youngest brother comes through the line and my heart slams into my stomach. “You-you have to come back.”
There’s not even a moment of hesitation before I whisper into the receiver, “I’m on my way, bug,” and hang up.
With my back still turned away from them, huddling in the corner like I might disappear into it, I hear Victoria’s heavy sigh.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice a soft little whisper intended only for Rhys in this echoing room. “Sadie is… kind of a loner. She doesn’t really play well with others.”
I’ve played just fine with him for a month.
The way she speaks about me like some sort of problem child only ratchets up my rising anger at her well-rested face and bright-eyed beauty, until it’s bubbling out of my mouth.
“Well, there’s only room for one person on the first-place podium, Vicky,” I snap with a hateful smirk across my sullen, pale face. “But maybe you’ll get there one day.”
“Sadie.”
The bottom drops out of my stomach, making sweat bead on my brow.
Coach Kelley is standing tall in the doorway with a glowering stare and furrowed brows. His disappointment has always been a great weakness of mine as the single male figure I’ve looked up to most of my life.
He took me on when I was eleven after watching me throw a tantrum over ending my first-place streak, with no parental figure to stop me from pulling the plastic crown out of the other girl’s slicked-back hair.
His coaching career was only five years young at the time, starting immediately after tearing an ACL and being unable to recover his quad lutz status from his previous Olympic run.
He followed me from juniors to college once I missed the Olympic qualifier. But his disappointment in knowing his prized pupil would never skate for Team USA haunted me. It was part of what caused me to spiral.
And part of the reason I am now on probation, not able to compete until I pull my attendance up to at least seventy percent.
“Coach.” I grimace, nearly unable to swallow under the panic.
God, why is everyone here so fucking early today?
I reach to untie my skates to avoid every single eye now directed toward me.
“We gonna have a problem again this year?”
I keep my head held high, but my cheeks are warm with embarrassment at the obvious reprimand—even worse, in front of Victoria and Rhys.
“We talked about—” he starts, before realizing that I’m unlacing my skates. His eyebrows climb his forehead. “What are you doing?”
I shake my head, frustration, anger, fear swirling to the point that my eyes are stinging.
This is your fault. You kissed Rhys. You got distracted .
You left Oliver and Liam alone .
“I can’t.” Shaking my head, I grind my teeth together until I’m sure my jaw will break. “I have to go.”
“Sadie,” Coach Kelley snaps, gripping my arm as I try to maneuver past him. “You know the rules. You’re still on probation. You can’t miss—”
“I know.” I shrug out of his grip, not bothering to look behind me as I sprint outside and to my car.
“Sadie,” a voice calls just as my hand grips the handle to my driver’s side door. “Wait—where are you going?”
Eyes closed tightly, I snap out a quick, “Leave me alone, Rhys.”
“We should talk—”
“We don’t need to talk.” I toss my bag into the passenger seat. “I need to go, and you need to relax. You’re coming off as clingy, hotshot.”
I hate this version of myself—the desperate, fear-driven, and hateful girl who wants everyone and everything away from her because it’s too much. But Rhys needs to see this so he realizes what a mistake that moment in the locker room was.
I hear Liam’s little voice looping like a record in my head.
Slamming my door and locking it, I try to start the car, only to hear the grating scream of my engine refusing to turn over.
“No,” I huff, tears stinging my eyes. “No, no, no!”
I try to start it again and again.
Nothing.
There’s a tap tap tap on my window before the hockey golden boy with the sad eyes is plastered to the side of my car, gesturing for me to roll down the window. I want to ignore him, but heart-pounding fear has my hand reaching for the handle to manually roll it down.
“What?”
Rhys sighs, running a hand through his long, beautiful hair in a way that’s irritatingly distracting. “I know you said we’re not friends.”
I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t stop myself from spitting, “Well-established point there.”
A strange laugh bubbles from him, and it almost sounds like it’s causing him pain.
“Right, well, you’re the one who stuck your tongue down my throat, kitten, so your brand of not-friendship is one I can handle, I think.”
“Kitten?” I spit out before I can let the embarrassment of his crass comment overtake me completely. “Watch it. ‘Gray’ was bad enough.”
“It’s the eyes.” He smirks, and for a moment I can see him from before. Maybe our paths have crossed before, because right now he looks every bit the campus hero, hockey golden boy, and exactly the type of one-night stand I’d be rolling around with.
“No.” I glare at him.
He holds his hands up like a quick surrender. “I’ll pick another nickname for you, then.”
“No nicknames,” I barter. Nicknames seem too familiar.
He snorts. “Says the girl who keeps mocking me as the hockey hotshot. Trying to give me a complex?”
“Hard to give you something you already have.”
In truth, I don’t know him. In fact, everything I’ve seen from him so far should only prove that he isn’t the hockey hotshot I’m so fond of calling him. In the month I’ve skated with him, he’s either been heartbreakingly sweet or devastatingly panicked and sad.
No part he’s shared with me has been the hockey captain, Rhys Koteskiy—until today.
“Right,” he says. But his face looks a little forlorn, and I wish I could take it back. I hate this. I bite down hard on my lip, hoping to keep anything else horrible from spewing out of my mouth.
My phone rings again, Oliver’s and Liam’s grinning faces brightening the screen and sending another heated wave of anxiety through me. I answer quickly, waiting with my eyes shut tight for Liam’s small sobs, but it’s Oliver this time.
“Sadie?”
“Hey, killer,” I barely force out. “Are you okay? I’m on my way now.”
“We missed the bus for the early program. And Liam peed his pants again. Are we gonna get in trouble since it’s the first day of school?”
A breath of relief puffs through my lips and I shake my head, even though he can’t see it. “All right, that’s okay. And no, you’re not going to be in trouble. Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon and we’ll figure it out.”
After hanging up, I jerk my entire body toward my rolled-down window and grip the ledge with both hands.
“Were you going to offer me a ride? ’Cause I’ll take it.”
“Yeah.” Rhys’s expression is a mix of relief and confusion, most likely from my extreme hot-and-cold attitude.
“Great!” I nearly barrel him over when I unexpectedly push the door open. He only falters a moment before grabbing the handle and holding it for me.
He takes my bag from my shoulder, hauling it toward his sleek, shiny car—that I’ve already admired once this morning—and dropping it in the backseat.
When I climb in, the leather is cool on my skin. I lean back as if I’ve been here in this car with him a million times before.
The bubble that forms around me in his private presence starts to encase me as he settles next to me and takes my address. His eyes are keen on his backup camera and then on the road, as if he’s just earned his license.
“I hate driving,” he huffs after a few quiet minutes, cheeks glowing and eyes wide as if he hadn’t entirely meant to say that aloud.
“Why did you agree?”
His brow furrows again, hands squeezing tight on the steering wheel before he blows a hefty breath that ruffles the thick hair hanging over his forehead. And then he smiles that same dimpled shining-star smile, and I realize… it isn’t fake; he’s just that goddamn beautiful.
“You needed my help.”
I don’t trust myself to say anything.
It’s quiet in the car, but my ears are keen on the music he plays, as they always are.
It’s just the local pop station, rolling through top hits.
Rhys doesn’t sing along, doesn’t even tap his fingers; it’s like he’s too focused on driving to notice anything else.
Meanwhile every muscle in my body is tight with the restraint of not belting out every song or dancing in my seat.
Music, like sex, is a form of release for me.
When everything feels like too much, it’s a safe place for me to channel it all—much safer than my tendency to indulge in late-night party bathroom hookups or not-even-one-full-night stands.
Music, any style, makes me feel good.
I’m so tight with the swirling tension in the cabin of the car that I try to burst out of the door like a spring toy the second he gets slightly close to my cul-de-sac turnoff, pushing the door hard to open it.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouts, slamming the brakes so hard the open door swings, nearly hitting me despite my grip on the handle. “God, Sadie—please don’t ever do that again.”
I want to spout off something sarcastic, but there’s genuine fear in his eyes. His face looks stricken, like he’s just seen a ghost.
It’s the same look he had on his face when I fell into the boards.
So I bite down on my lip and mutter an apology, tacking on a thank you as I point over my shoulder at the shoddy redbrick duplex behind me, the grass too high and filled with weeds.
I’m not ashamed—I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime—but Rhys in a shiny black BMW screams silver spoons and daddy’s money, even if he has a deep well of secrets and emotional trauma beneath the pretty hair and handsome smile.
Showing him my home, where all my secrets live, doesn’t really rank highly on the list of things I’d like to do with the hockey boy.
“I need to go. Seriously, thank you, Rhys.”
He reaches across the console, his massive wingspan stretching until he’s able to keep me from closing the door. It’s surprisingly attractive and my cheeks blush with heat.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks, the concern on his face steadying me. He leaves the rest unsaid, but I can see it in his eyes. I’ve helped him when he couldn’t stand; he’s offering to do the same.
But I know inviting him into my prison as my backup will only endanger the ones relying on me, and reveal everything I’ve been able to contain for years.
Not to mention, I can still feel him—and I know that continuing to allow myself to be around him will only make it worse.
Even now, all I want to do is let his hands grab my hips and haul me across the console into his lap with the strength I know he has, and press me into the steering wheel—
No. Not with him. Stop it.
“I have to go. Thank you,” I repeat, closing the door.
The next morning, before I can even consider what I’ll do to get back my own car, I step outside to see my Jeep is in the driveway, freshly detailed. It starts without any complaint.