Chapter Forty-Five Sadie
It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been here in the past few weeks—the Koteskiy household always looks like a dream house.
And lately, I’ve been here a lot. Even without Rhys.
Today, they’re letting me use Anna’s office for a meeting with my attorney, who seems a bit more motivated since Max Koteskiy and Adam Reiner got involved. Bennett’s father had apparently offered to help more directly, but admitted that it wasn’t his area of expertise.
I have practice in an hour by the time the meeting finishes. I plan to get there early anyway—mostly to avoid standing awkwardly in the Koteskiy house with just Anna, since my brothers are off with Max at a First Line Foundation event. Rhys is traveling to the Harvard game.
But just as I’m sliding on my thick jacket, Anna descends the stairs.
“Sadie.” She smiles. “How did it go?”
“Great. I think I’ll be good until the hearing in January. Thanks for letting me use your office. I’m gonna head—”
“Do you have a minute, love?”
I do, but I wish I didn’t. She frightens me, and maybe if I looked a little deeper—or went to much-needed therapy—I would realize why.
She sits on a barstool at the kitchen counter and taps the one beside her for me to follow.
“You know I was thirty-three years old and pregnant when I met Max?”
I don’t move, just sit quietly. Just looking at her feels like too much.
“With Rhys?”
“No.” She smiles, shaking her head and scooting just a bit closer to my hunched form.
“It was before Rhys, and the father was my ex-husband, who I was trying to escape. I was absolutely terrified. And when hiding from someone, running into the arms of an up-and-coming twenty-four-year-old hockey star is not a good start.”
“I didn’t know he’s younger than you.” The words slip free, and my cheeks heat at how rude that might’ve sounded. “Sorry, I just mean—”
“No, Sadie girl, I take that as a compliment.” She sighs.
“Max was so mature for his age, but he should’ve been out gallivanting around and being messy in his rookie years, not taking care of a woman pregnant with someone else’s baby.
But he did. Because… well, that’s Maximillian.
He was so handsome, so sure—and the peek of his accent came out whenever he called me rybochka , which I believed to be something sweet until he told me at our wedding it meant little fish! ”
I can’t help but laugh.
“He didn’t.”
“Oh, he did—and even worse, he’d been calling me rybochka in bed for years!” She laughs as I blush, remembering how much Rhys had stressed that his mother has no filter.
“He was there for me for a long time, through my miscarriage, through my difficult pregnancy with Rhys… He played professional hockey and I was always, always who he put first.”
Her eyes close for a moment, before clear peace seems to spread across her features.
“But, what I want to tell you is I was running from someone who hurt me, and as much as I begged Max to leave me alone, knowing how much shit I was pulling into his very public life, he never let it go.
I was a secret for a long time, but only because I begged to be—I was still hiding and refused to tell him anything despite how much Max wanted to handle my problems for me.
“Rhys is a lot like his father; physically, I made a mini Max, but mentally, too. He’s strong and very capable and he loves with every cell in his body.”
“But I—”
She holds up a hand. “My son has more protectiveness packed into his body than he knows what to do with. It makes him a good hockey player, it makes him a good friend, and it makes him a good son. But with you? I know… he wants to protect you more than anything.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Anna sighs deeply, running a soft hand over my cheek and tucking my hair around my ear.
“Because I wish there had been someone there to tell me it was okay to ask for help, and that I wasn’t weak or a burden for accepting it.”
She starts to stand, to allow me to leave for my practice, before I stop her.
“Do you know any Russian?”
“Only a little. Not as much as Rhys or Max; language was never my specialty.”
“Do you know what kotyonok means?”
She laughs, smiling wider than I’m sure I’ve ever seen. “It means kitten, my love.”
My skin flushes. I have the urge to call Rhys and threaten him as much as tell him I love him.
But it can wait. Still, I’ve had enough space. The second he gets back, I’ll tell him.
Practice is brutal.
My ankle is throbbing—I’m almost positive I’ve sprained it, but Coach Kelley won’t let up for a fucking second. I try to put pressure on it again, my head spinning as I look at the stadium clock and see we are well past my two-hour mark.
He’s refused every water break I’ve asked for, ignored my complaints, and now, I’m pretty sure he’s injured me.
“I can’t.”
“You can. Do the fucking jump again.”
I limp-skate toward where he’s blocking my exit to the tunnels. Once I’m close enough to see the fury in his eyes, I try to skirt past him again.
He grabs my wrist, again .
“Is this about the boy? The pathetic hockey player?”
“This is about you hurting me. My ankle is killing me. Please, I need just a few minutes.”
I don’t sound angry, I realize. I sound like I’m about to cry.
“Don’t be a baby, my terror. Stop being lazy and do the jump again. We will do it till it’s perfect.”
“You’re going to make me seriously hurt myself.”
He grips me tighter on my wrist before shifting his hold up my arm and leering over me. “Not if you do it right. Again.”
I can’t take it anymore. I don’t need this.
“No.”
“Try again.” He grasps my arm somehow harder, twisting enough that there’s a sharp pain and suddenly I’m worried that he might break it. My stomach drops as I realize exactly how much danger I could be in. I’ve trusted him for years. Now…
A terrified sound rumbles out of me before I gather the breath to scream.
But I don’t have to.
Someone grabs Kelley from behind, yanking him off me and slamming one fist into his face. My coach goes down, out cold.
Toren Kane.
His eyes are bright embers of gold, just as unsettling and intoxicating as the last time I saw him.
“W-what are you doing here?”
“Coaches like that will never fucking stop.”
I wrap my arms around myself, still feeling shaken and scared. “Thank you,” I manage to mutter.
He scoffs, “Yeah, well. You can pay me back by telling someone how your own coach has been overtraining you to the point of injury.”
“He… He only trains me hard because he believes in me—”
An unsettling laugh bubbles from his mouth. “Yeah. Heard that one before.”
He flickers his eyes down at my unconscious coach before looking up at me with a half-smile that’s so fake I’m sure I could peel it off.
“Oh, and tell your little boyfriend we’re fucking even.”
I don’t have a single sound left in me that’s not a sob or scream so I nod jerkily. I nearly trip in my skates over the mats as I rush to leave.