Chapter 4
Rhys
I stared at the closed door for five full seconds. Ten. Lost count somewhere after that.
The silence she left behind felt heavier than it should.
My chest ached with something I didn't have a name for—something that had no business existing in the first place. I pressed the heel of my palm against the bridge of my nose, eyes shut, and tried to breathe through the exhaustion that had nothing to do with lack of sleep.
She thought I'd fire her over spilled coffee.
The idea would've been laughable if her voice hadn't carried that tremor of real fear. The kind that came from experience—from knowing what it meant to lose everything over small mistakes. From living in a world where people in power held your survival in their hands and squeezed.
Did I really come across as that intimidating?
The answer hit immediately: Yes.
I knew I did. Built my entire career on it. The silent menace. The cold discipline. The reputation that made rookie players check themselves before they got stupid. It served me well on the ice, in the locker room, anywhere I needed to maintain control without raising my voice.
But hearing that fear directed at me from her?—
That landed differently.
I dropped my hand and leaned back in the chair, gaze still fixed on the door.
My hoodie hung over the back of another chair, still damp from where she'd spilled on me.
The coffee had been hot enough to sting.
Not enough to burn, but close. And she'd looked horrified.
Genuinely terrified of the consequences.
Like she expected violence. Or cruelty. Or punishment that fit some pattern I didn't want to imagine.
Fifteen years.
She'd grown up so much in fifteen years.
The girl I'd carried out of that house had been small, fragile, all wide eyes and trembling hands.
This woman who'd just apologized to me had straightened her spine before walking in here.
Had forced steadiness into her voice even when her hands shook.
Had looked me in the eye despite the obvious effort it cost her.
Brave. Still so goddamn brave.
But the nerves lurked underneath—visible in every rushed word, every too-fast apology, every flicker of uncertainty that crossed her face when I spoke. She'd learned to hide it better. Learned to function through the fear instead of freezing under it.
The fact that I recognized the pattern gutted me.
She'd survived something. Maybe multiple somethings. The kind of experiences that taught you to calculate every word, track every exit, armor yourself against potential threats before they materialized.
I knew that survival strategy intimately. Lived it myself.
And I hated—hated—that she'd needed to learn it too.
My jaw clenched hard enough to ache. I forced myself to look away from the door, back to the practice diagrams scattered across my desk. The plays I'd been reviewing before she knocked. The game strategies that should've held my attention.
They didn't.
Because part of me was still replaying the moment she'd looked at me—really looked—and seen something that made her drop that cup. Recognition or fear or both tangled together until neither of us could pretend this was just an accident between strangers.
She remembered.
Maybe not consciously. Maybe not clearly. But something in her remembered me the same way I remembered her.
And that was the most dangerous thing possible.
The memory slammed into me before I could stop it.
Screams through apartment walls. High-pitched, desperate. The kind that said someone wasn't playing around anymore—that whatever was happening had crossed a line most people pretended didn't exist in their neighborhood.
I'd been younger then. Still playing, still angry, still carrying too much rage with nowhere to put it except the ice. I'd hesitated for maybe three seconds before I'd gone next door. Pounded hard enough to rattle the frame.
The silence that followed was worse than the screaming.
Then the door cracked open.
And I saw her.
Small. Bleeding from somewhere I couldn't immediately place.
Eyes too wide, too shocked, like she'd stopped processing reality somewhere between the screaming and my fist hitting wood.
A child. Maybe six or seven. Standing in a hallway that reeked of alcohol and violence and something darker I didn't have words for.
She'd looked at me like I might be another monster.
I'd carried her out, anyway.
Social services came. Police came. The whole ugly machine ground through its process while I gave my statement and tried not to think about the blood on her shirt or the way she'd flinched when the EMT touched her shoulder.
I never saw her again after that night. Never knew her name until I overheard it years later—a case file mentioned in passing, something about protective custody and a relative who took her in. Olivia. The little girl from 4B who'd survived her father's latest breakdown.
The screams had been hers.
That realization hit me months too late, when I couldn't do anything about it except carry the weight of knowing I'd heard her terror through the walls and almost hadn't acted fast enough.
I shut the memory down. Hard. Slammed it back into the mental box where it belonged.
I refused to think about her father. Refused to picture what had been happening before I knocked.
Refused to imagine the nights I hadn't heard screaming—the ones where she'd learned to stay quiet, learned to survive without making noise, learned that help might not come at all.
Refused to think about what she'd endured after that night.
After I'd handed her off to strangers and walked away because I wasn't equipped to do anything else.
My hands had curled into fists without permission.
I forced them open. Breathed. Focused on the present.
She was here. Alive. Functioning. Working a job she desperately needed to keep.
That had to be enough.
You're not responsible for her.
The thought arrived sharp and clear, like a voice from outside my own head. Logic. Reason. The kind of detachment I'd spent decades perfecting.
She was an adult now. Had her own life, her own battles, her own path. What happened fifteen years ago didn't create some permanent obligation. I'd done what anyone should've done that night—intervened when intervention was needed. Nothing more.
The debt, if there'd ever been one, was paid.
You shouldn't even be looking at her.
That one landed harder.
Because I had looked. In the café, when her eyes met mine and something tightened low in my gut that had nothing to do with memory or guilt.
When I'd cataloged the shape of her mouth, the nervous energy in her hands, the way she held herself like she expected the world to hit back.
When I'd noticed she was beautiful in a way that made my chest ache.
Wrong. That entire line of thinking was wrong.
Tainted by history—by the image of a terrified child that would never fully separate from the woman standing in front of me.
How could I look at her as anything other than someone I'd failed to protect completely?
Someone who carried scars I'd only witnessed the beginning of?
The attraction felt like a violation. Not of her—she didn't even know I felt it—but of something fundamental in myself. Some line I'd never imagined crossing.
The protectiveness felt worse. Too strong.
Too immediate. Too visceral. One apologetic conversation and I already wanted to stand between her and anything that might hurt her.
The team. The players who'd inevitably notice her.
The casual cruelty of a world that chewed up people like her and spit them out.
Myself most of all.
I exhaled hard, dragging both hands through my hair. Irritation prickled under my skin—not at her, but at my own inability to compartmentalize the way I usually did. To shut down the response before it became a problem.
She wasn't a child anymore.
Wasn't helpless, despite the fear I'd seen in her eyes.
She'd walked into my office, voiced her needs clearly, held her ground even while terrified. That took strength most people never developed. She'd survived. Built something. Kept going.
She didn't need me playing guardian.
And yet.
One look at her and every instinct I possessed roared to life with a single directive: protect.
From everything.
From everyone.
From the version of myself that couldn't stop noticing the curve of her neck when she'd tilted her head, apologizing for something that didn't matter.
I was so screwed.
A knock rattled the door frame—sharp, efficient, the kind that expected an immediate response.
"Rhys? You ready for morning skate?"
Coach Barrett's voice cut through the spiral of thoughts like a blade through fog. I blinked, awareness snapping back to the present with an almost physical jolt. The practice diagrams. The office. The job I actually got paid to do.
Right.
"Yeah," I called back, voice steady. Flat. Nothing in it to suggest I'd just spent the last ten minutes dissecting every reason I had no business thinking about the new barista.
I grabbed the lukewarm coffee sitting on my desk—the cup Jenna had made after Olivia's disaster—and knocked it back in three long swallows.
Bitter. Cold. Borderline undrinkable. I didn't react.
Didn't grimace. Just set the empty cup down and stood, rolling my shoulders until something in my upper back cracked.
Professional mode clicked into place like armor sliding over vulnerable flesh. The thoughts, the memories, the unwanted pull toward someone I couldn't afford to notice—all of it got shoved down deep where it belonged. Locked away. Controlled.
I was good at this part.
Shutting down. Compartmentalizing. Becoming exactly what the team needed: cold, focused, unshakable.
I crossed to the door in measured steps, grabbed my jacket off the hook, and pulled it on without hurrying. Neutral expression. Blank slate. The mask I'd worn for years settled over my features like it had never left.
When I opened the door, Barrett stood in the hallway with his arms crossed, gray stubble catching the fluorescent light. He studied me for half a second—assessing, the way good coaches did—then jerked his chin toward the rink.