Chapter Twelve Sadie #2
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” He laughs, backing off barely an inch, but it’s enough to notice someone lurking behind him.
Spinning on his feet, he braces back against the wall, angling into my shoulder like he might slip around me at any moment.
He nods his head toward Rhys with a quick smile. “Oh, shit. Koteskiy, hey.”
The drawn out hey does nothing to erase the tightness around Rhys’s eyes.
Still, he plasters a smile across his mouth and drops his chin in a quick, cool acknowledgment, before he glances back at me.
It’s hard to wrestle with the want in my chest; my heart thrums with the effort not to sprint toward him and use him like a personal shield from the ghost of my lowest moments.
“Gonna make it to Frozen Four this year?”
“That’s the plan,” Rhys replies, hands shoved into pockets, quirking an eyebrow at my tense stance. “Okay, Gray?”
His question to me isn’t any softer, but something about it is different… familiar. Genuine, but quiet, like the soft sadness etched permanently into his eyes that no one besides me seems able to see.
“ Gray? ” Sean mocks, laughing, his arm dropping onto my shoulder like a heavy weight. I wonder if I stopped trying to stay upright, would I sink into the floor? “Oh, am I interrupting something?”
“Yes,” Koteskiy says, at the same time I blurt, “No.”
Rhys’s gaze turns darker, a feat I didn’t think possible, before I shrug Sean off and slink away from them both.
Sean guffaws loudly, the sound grating to my ears. “Koteskiy, huh? Upping the competition this year, Sadie?” He bumps me with his hip, green eyes on fire as he takes me in again.
It’s my fault that Sean feels this way. Last semester, I spent an exorbitant amount of time playing with his drunk frat buddies just to get some kind of fire beneath him, so he would pull me upstairs and wreck me instead of trying to romance me.
If Sean sees Rhys Koteskiy as some sort of game between us, it’s only because I put that thought there.
I should be nicer about it, but I find myself somehow angrier—at myself, at Sean. Even at Rhys for whatever painful dance we are doing with each other.
“That’s not what this is,” I finally concede, hating that a part of me still wants to grab Sean by the hand and lead him into the now-vacant bathroom, let him slip into my body while I close my eyes and think only of Rhys…
his deep brown eyes gazing up at me perched on his lap and the sound of his heavy breaths against my skin…
It would be so much easier to leave after that, to pull down my dress and get the hell out of this suffocating house.
But I can’t .
“Listen—”
Whatever Sean is going to say is cut off sharply as Rhys grabs ahold of his shoulder and stops his attempt to crowd me again.
“Having trouble hearing?” he says, shoving Sean back hard enough that he trips, even though Rhys has barely moved. “She’s told you no repeatedly.” His voice is calm even as the storms gather in his eyes.
“You don’t know Sadie. It’s all fucking games to her, man.”
Every bit of confidence I walked in here with tonight is gone, shredded. I wait for Rhys to pull away, but he only looks at me. Like he wants me to refute the claims, instead of standing here, avoiding his gaze, completely shrunken in on myself.
Normally, I would. I’d love to bite Sean’s head off. But I feel so full of everything, I need a release…
“Fine,” Rhys offers, stepping closer to me. His stance is all power, towering over Sean’s too-relaxed form and semi-shielding mine. His hand settles on my waist, slipping around to press against my lower back. “Then she can play them with me. Get the fuck out of here.”
The warmth building in my chest spreads throughout my body, head to toe, my pulse racing. The weighted heat of his palm is searing through the thin silk of my dress.
I want to kiss him, like some schoolgirl who’s had her virtue protected, like he’s some knight in shining armor.
“It’s my house.”
Warm brown eyes go nearly black, fists clenching, and from Sean’s unintentional step backward, I realize maybe this erratic behavior isn’t normal for the hockey star. I reach for Rhys’s hand quickly, wrapping a hand around his wrist.
“We’re leaving,” I say with more confidence than I feel, snapping my entire body forward hard enough that it jolts Rhys into me. His hands mold to my middle, keeping me upright and making me hyperaware of how large his palms are compared to my waist.
I stop short as Sean shoves past both of us and stomps down the stairs, his angry mumbles barely audible above music so loud the walls shake.
Rhys’s breath flutters against my hair in the opening of the stairwell where I’ve abruptly stopped. “Some kind of warning would be nice next time, babe . Unless you want to sideline me for my last season.”
His use of that little sneered name works like a drug, relaxing every tense muscle through my neck, back, and arms. It’s almost ridiculous how much I can tell he’s trying to calm me, when I barely acknowledge my anxiety in the first place.
I snort without meaning to, tilting my head up at him while I snip, “A fall down the stairs would end your entire season? I thought you hockey boys are indestructible.”
It takes only a moment to realize I’ve said something wrong, crossed some unspoken boundary with my words. His face tightens, eyes filling again with that deep well of pain I’ve seen in them more often than not, before he adjusts his mask and grants me a small, quick smile.
“I need to find my friend.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say.
He nods toward the stairs leading to the thumping party. “Me too.”
But neither of us moves.
Something is making me hesitate, keeping my body pressed to his as “The Hills” by The Weeknd starts to blare from downstairs. I should go and find Ro. Go back home and finish myself off. I should…
Spinning, I grab Rhys’s wrist and pull him again, straight into the still-vacant bathroom.
I slam the door shut and lock it behind us.
There isn’t much light, just a dusty red glow from the painted bulbs someone has installed for the party.
The walls shake with the bass from below, the song bleeding through the cracks around the door as I grab onto the black fabric of his shirt.
“Sadie, I—”
“Yes or no, hotshot.” It’s more of a statement than a question, but my entire brain feels like it’s hanging by a thread, barely sane through the overwhelming thoughts that could’ve been drowned out by someone else’s touch by now.
Rhys looks nearly in pain, his brown eyes dilated, red light flickering over his chiseled, handsome face while his sharp jaw stays tight. I watch the thick column of his throat work, only getting hotter with the image of him as he makes his decision.
“I’m only doing this if we talk after.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Sadie.” He grasps my hair in his hand and holds me still while angling his mouth to my ear. “I don’t do this… party bathroom hookups? That’s not…”
The rejection stings, and I jerk out of his hold, ignoring the slight pain in my scalp as I wrench my head from his grasp. “But locker rooms are perfectly fine? As long as it’s to soothe your shit, not mine, yeah?”
It doesn’t register what I’ve said, what I’ve revealed, until I’m reaching for the doorknob, desperate to escape.