Chapter Fifteen
Owen
“R’my?” I rub my eyes as I drag myself back to consciousness. I try to wrap my arms around her and pull her closer, but the room is cold, and part of the cushions have been shoved aside.
I sit up and look around. It’s early morning, barely dawn, so it takes me a couple of minutes to piece together the evidence: Her side of the couch is empty.
The room still smells like her. Vanilla and coffee and something warmer underneath that my body immediately recognizes before my brain can catch up.
Fuck. “Her side?” Remy doesn’t belong here. Clearly, she doesn’t even want to be here. That shouldn’t hurt this much after one night. It absolutely does anyway.
“Stupid.” I cover my face with both hands. “Stupid!”
Because apparently all it takes is one woman touching me gently, and suddenly I’m out here building emotional attachment like a golden retriever.
From the floor, Shutout chimes in with a sympathetic howl.
I hate that this devastates me. I hate that I even care, when she didn’t care enough to stay.
By the time I get to the arena, I’ve convinced myself I’m being dramatic.
People leave after hookups all the time. Especially smart people. Professional people. People who realize sleeping with their client was a terrible idea sometime between the orgasm and sunrise.
Remy leaving doesn’t mean anything except that she has common sense. If anything, it probably means she has better instincts than I do.
So why does it feel like somebody hollowed my ribs out with a spoon?
I shove the thought away as I head for the ice.
Cold air hits me the second I step through the tunnel, sharp enough to sting my lungs. Usually that helps. Usually, hockey burns everything else out of my system until there’s nothing left except instinct and movement and the next save.
Today, my brain refuses to cooperate. Which feels vaguely threatening, considering hockey is usually the one place my head shuts the hell up.
“Rourke!” Coach Metcalfe barks from center ice. “You planning on joining us this morning, or should we send a search party?”
“Depends. You paying overtime?” I skate out toward the crease, trying to sound normal.
The guys laugh. It buys me maybe thirty seconds of camouflage.
Pucks start flying during warmups. I stop the first few automatically, muscle memory carrying me through movements my head barely tracks. Butterfly. Recover. Push left. Glove save.
Easy.
Except my timing is off by just enough that I can feel it.
“Holy shit,” Bowen quips after one shot slips under my arm. “You drunk?”
“Your mom wore me out.”
Weak chirp. Even I hear it. Remy really did break my brain.
Knight skates backward past the crease and gives me a longer look than I want. “You good?”
“Fine.”
Lie.
Everything in me feels scraped raw this morning.
My body’s exhausted in that deeply satisfied way that should feel incredible, except every good memory from last night comes attached to the image of Remy sneaking out before dawn like she regretted touching me at all.
That thought lands somewhere behind my ribs sharp enough to make breathing annoying.
I shove harder into the next drill.
Camden cuts toward the net. Tristan feeds him a pass. I track the puck cleanly this time and snag it out of the air with my glove.
“Welcome back,” Viktor calls.
I force a grin.
For a few minutes, the rhythm almost takes over. Skates carving ice. Pucks smacking boards. The familiar chaos of practice wraps around me like muscle memory.
Then Adler glances toward the stands. “No babysitter today?”
Every part of me goes instantly alert before I can stop it. I look too. The stands are empty.
Something ugly twists low in my stomach. “Nope,” I say flatly.
Adler shrugs. “Shame. I think she’s starting to like me.”
The puck hits my blocker hard enough to snap me back into the drill. “Focus on hockey, Newberry.”
“Touchy.”
He has no idea.
I reset in the crease and drag a breath into my lungs, trying to get my head on straight.
This is exactly why last night was a terrible idea.
I’m distracted. Emotional. Acting like some lovesick idiot because a woman I’ve known for five minutes let me put my head between her legs and then came to her senses.
Except even now, standing in full gear on the ice, all I can think about is the way she sounded when she came.
Fuck.
I slam my stick harder against the post than necessary.
Hard to regret the decision that brought her into my life, though. That thought settles heavy in my chest seconds before Adler says, “Oh, never mind. There she is.”
I spin so fast my skate catches awkwardly beneath me. My entire body reacts before my brain does. Relief first. Then panic immediately afterward.
Remy stands near the top row of the arena seats, clipboard tucked against her, looking perfectly composed while my entire nervous system short-circuits at the sight of her.
* * *
Remy’s waiting for me outside of the locker room, her expression placid. We move off down the hall for a little privacy.
“Listen,” I begin, “about last night—”
“It was a mistake,” Remy interrupts.
Jesus. Just stab me in the heart, why don’t you? Cool. Awesome. Great. I think that might actually be the exact worst thing she could’ve said to me. I do my best to match her composure. “Yeah. Of course. Won’t happen again.”
She nods once. “Good. We’re on the same page.”
We absolutely are not.
“Hey, Remy!” Adler waves both arms over his head. “Nice to see you!”
Remy smiles and waves. There’s tension around her eyes, but I doubt Adler notices. “Hey, Adler. Nice job during practice.”
Adler puffs up his chest and loops his thumbs through the straps of his gym bag.
Anyone with eyes can see that he’s trying to show off his biceps.
Under normal circumstances, I’d make fun of him for this.
Right now, I’m too busy imagining committing minor felonies.
“Thanks. Now you know my secret, so…” He winks.
I swear to God, if he does another one of those fucking hip thrust routines, I will lose my shit.
I don’t know who or what will be on the receiving end of my frustration, which is a little alarming.
I’m not mad at Remy. I’m not even mad at Adler, really.
He’s annoying as hell sometimes, but he isn’t the one who fucked up.
I did. Me. I’m the fuckup.
To my relief, he doesn’t come over. He and a little knot of other players head out to the parking lot, leaving me and Remy stewing in the type of silence that makes me want to peel my own face off. She won’t even look me in the eye as she gets back to business.
“As you know, we have a Mite Skate tomorrow afternoon for two hours. Photo ops. Autographs.” She digs out a paper from one of her folders and hands it to me. “Think you can handle it?”
“Yeah. ’Course.” I take the paper, even though I have one just like it in my gym bag. I’d rather deal with kids than with my feelings any day. Kids are easy. Adults are where things get dangerous.
* * *
The next day dawns bright and sunny, which feels a little disrespectful considering the current state of my life.
Dante sends the SUV for both of us again because, apparently, public humiliation isn’t enough anymore. Now he wants sustained psychological damage too.
The drive across Vegas is brutal.
Remy sits beside me in tense silence while I stare out the window, pretending not to notice every tiny movement she makes. The soft sound of her breathing. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she’s nervous. The faint citrus smell of whatever lotion she uses.
I keep going back… there.
Ugh.
At one point, our eyes meet accidentally, and we both look away so fast my eyeballs jam up. Neither of us seems fully sure what we’re supposed to do with each other after yesterday.
Honestly, arriving at a rink full of tiny hockey kids feels less emotionally dangerous than being trapped in that car with her.
I liked visiting the smaller rink on the outskirts of Vegas, but there’s something extra special about mite skate at a big community rink. They’re practically babies. I don’t think I was ever that small. I went straight from the womb to squirts.
As I lean over the edge of the rink and watch the kids fumble around, I notice a dad helping his little boy tie his skates.
The kid leans against him automatically, comfortable in a way that feels completely foreign to me.
My heart constricts, and I taste bile at the back of my throat.
Nah, scratch that. I might have been small once, but I was never this damn young.
By the time I was as old as these kids, I was practically grown in other ways.
Old enough to know exactly when to stay out of the way to avoid a blow.
“Rourke!” One of the kids spots me and points at me. His helmet is askew, and his skates look a size too big. It’s cute as hell. “Look, Mama, it’s Rourke!”
I take that as my cue to hit the ice and skate over for a meet and greet. Remy stands by the boards, taking notes with the same detached demeanor she’s had all day. Like the other night never happened at all.
Like her thighs weren’t squeezing my head into a vice. And I never wanted her to let go. I can still taste her on my tongue.
“Looks like you’ve got some big shoes to fill,” I tell the boy who first spotted me.
“Yeah. They’re my brother’s.” The consonants come out soft and indistinct: bruvvers. When he speaks, there’s a gap in his mouth where at least two teeth are missing.
I kneel down to his level. “Then what’s your brother wearing?”
The kid tips his head back to keep his helmet from flopping in his eyes. “His new skates! These are too small. But he’s not here, so, uh, I guess he’s wearing sneakers, probably?”
I nod sagely at this deductive reasoning. “Is he a good brother?”
“Mostly.” The kid wrinkles his nose. “Unless there’s cake. Then he’s kind of a butt.”
“Duly noted. Is he a good enough brother that you’d want to take him a signed photo? I can do one for each of you.”
“Yeah!” The kid whirls away in search of his parents and shouts something about getting a signed photo for Carter.
I use my reprieve to check on Remy again. She’s talking to one of the moms. Moments after I turn my head, she gestures to me, though she continues to face the woman.
The mom looks me dead in the eyes before telling Remy, “Oh, you’re his handler? He must be a menace. Should he be around kids? He seems like a bad influence.”
The worst part is that some ugly little piece of me immediately wonders if she’s right. Fuck that. I turn away before Remy answers. Not that she’d speak that loud anyway.
I sign photos for Carter’s little brother.
I take pictures with a few of the kids, and some families, and even with somebody’s labradoodle.
Any joy I felt at the start of the event fades over the next two hours.
Remy isn’t looking at me, and a few of the parents give me a wide berth.
I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that people think I’m the kind of asshole who would take my supposed problems out on a little kid, or the fact that all these happy families remind me of everything I’ve never had.
Maybe they’re right to be afraid of you. Maybe you can’t be trusted. Maybe it’s in your blood.
My dad used to say people like us were built wrong from the start. Too angry. Too reactive. Too much.
“Owen?” Remy touches my elbow. My entire body goes alert from one stupid little touch. “You okay?”
“Hm?” I blink down at her. Where did she come from? “Yeah, just tired.”
Families are leaving. I’ve been caught in my own loop to the point that I didn’t notice the time.
“We can get ready to go now. Before we leave, though, we should—oh! Hello.”
A little girl with curly black hair is tugging on Remy’s sleeve. She holds up a crayon drawing. “I made this for your friend,” she whispers.
Remy takes the drawing. It’s a picture of me… I think. It’s definitely a person. Or a purple zebra.
“Thank you,” Remy says, all smiles, because today she has smiles for everyone but me. She passes me the drawing. “Owen, I think this is yours.”
I take it carefully, because the art is terrible, but her face is not. I’d frame this stupid drawing if it made her look at me that way again. “Thank you, Remy. And thank you, Picasso.”
The girl giggles. “That’s not my name.”
“My mistake.” I hold the paper out at arm’s length. “Rembrandt? Van Gogh?”
“It’s Jenny.”
“Jenny. Well, Jenny, when you become a world-famous artist, it’ll be nice to know that I have an original piece.”
Jenny giggles and darts away toward her waiting parents and a cluster of older sisters, all in their skate gear. They wave to me, and I wave back, then hold the picture aloft, pointing from the scribbles to my face and back. The older girls laugh, and Jenny beams with pride.
When I finally turn back to Remy, her posture has softened. All of her hard lines have gentled. For one dangerous second, hope flares hard enough to hurt. “We should go. I just got a text that Dante’s car is outside.”
The drive over here was agonizing, and I don’t expect the return trip to be any better. I want her to touch me again, even if it’s just the brush of her fingers on my bare elbow. I want her to tell me that this is going to be okay.
She doesn’t have to love me. As long as she doesn’t hate me, I’ll survive this.
Probably.