Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Thorne
Mollie and I exist in a perfect bubble. Stolen kisses during the day, ducking into supply closets and the all-gender restroom for steamy makeout sessions, sneaking to the outer limits of town to go on dates and have public PDA.
And at night, we figure each other out, stripping, kissing, laughing. Lots of fingering and blowjobs. A nearly endless supply of me going down on Mollie in the shower and her gasping my name as she buries her hands in my hair.
But the bubble we are drifting along in snags, and nearly pops, when the Seattle Havoc has its first preseason away game against the Vancouver Vipers. We have to fly in the late afternoon to be ready for the first late-night game.
And stepping onto the plane without Mollie in tow feels… weird. I know that she’s getting on with her whole gaggle of workmates. I can even hear them laughing while they stand in the back of the line.
Lucky for me, Hunter and Silas already crossed the employee-player line.
Hunter isn’t just married to Juliet; she’s the only person he likes, I think.
And don’t get me started on how Silas dotes on Scout.
The brothers usually sit with their women, preferably with them on their laps, though Juliet does put up a fight sometimes.
So it’s not weird that I snag the seat across from Jessa and Mollie. Jessa arches a brow at me as I settle in, but otherwise doesn’t say anything. Which is perfectly sensible, given how Silas seems to be huffing Scout’s neck like a weirdo.
Actually, come to think of it, Mollie’s nape does smell intensely of her citrus vanilla scent. I could huff it. Would huff it if Beck hadn’t just claimed the seat in front of me. Scowling, I put on my over-ear headphones and try to focus on the game ahead.
Konstantin passes us, heading to the back of the plane to sit by himself.
Once there, he pulls his hood up and, to all appearances, goes to sleep.
Or maybe he just pretends to. That seems right.
I don’t think the man ever relaxes, even a little bit.
He’s a shark. If he lets his guard down, he’ll die.
I catch another faint whiff of Mollie. Just enough to torment me. Great, now I’m turned on. I spend the rest of the quick flight fighting half an erection.
No one wants that right now.
Cross puts Konstantin and me on the same line for the first game. No announcement, no explanation, not so much as a heads-up in the locker room. I find out the same way everyone else does, reading the whiteboard twenty minutes before warmups.
This right here? I've been dreading this since Jimbo's meeting.
Cross pairing us makes sense on paper. Kuznetsov is one of the best utility forwards in the league, has numbers that would make any coach drool, and the Sharks' decision to trade him had nothing to do with his performance on the ice.
It had to do with Dabrowski. With whatever happened between them.
The question I keep turning over is whether it matters here. Whether whatever Dabrowski said or did was specific enough that it won't happen again. Or maybe Kuznetsov is simply the kind of man who will eventually put someone in the hospital, regardless of where you put him.
Standing here in front of the whiteboard, I realize I'm about to find out.
Konstantin reads it beside me, his expression giving away exactly nothing. That gets under my skin.
We have a mad dog on the team already. Hunter Huxley looks like what he is, big and brooding, packed with muscle and a problematic hair-trigger.
But you always know where you stand with Hunter, even when where you stand is directly in his path. Kuznetsov, on the other hand, just looks faintly amused, like the whole situation is a mildly entertaining problem he'll solve when he gets around to it.
Konstantin grunts. “Cross is testing us.”
I slide him a look. “Always.”
He rubs a hand over his mouth. Beck sees my hardened expression and says nothing. Usually, my co-captain is the first to give sometimes-unwanted advice, but now? Nothing.
Warmups are fine. We run our drills separately, no contact, no puck battles, nothing that requires coordination.
Before we head out for the opening faceoff, one of the assistant coaches pulls us both aside and runs through the basic hand signals Cross uses for line changes and position calls.
Standard stuff that most of the team already knows.
Konstantin listens with his arms crossed, and nods once when it's done.
Then he fidgets with his ear. Shit. I’m a prick. I know about his cochlear implant thingie, but I think it’s just sinking in right now.
Standing on the ice with fifty thousand watts of arena lighting bouncing off the glass, I realize that on-ice communication between any member of the team and Konstantin is going to be entirely visual. And I’m right beside him. Is that why Coach Cross put us together?
There’s no calling for the puck. No shouting positioning adjustments mid-play. Just eye contact, body language, and whatever we've managed to build in two weeks of cross-training that we both hated.
Shit. I raise my eyebrows at Konstantin and mouth, “You good?”
His nod is brusque, but it’s better than nothing. Then the puck drops and all of that goes out the window immediately.
The problem is that we're both centers. Two men who have spent their entire careers owning the slot, controlling the puck, making the play.
Cross has designated me the center and Konstantin left wing, but neither of our bodies got the memo.
The first time he drifts into my space, I compensate, and we nearly collide at full speed.
The second time, I compensate wrong, and we both miss a clean shot at the net.
The third time our instincts have us arriving at the same spot, at the same moment.
We knock an opposing defender flat, entirely by accident.
The ref doesn't care that it was an accident.
Konstantin and I sit in the box together for two minutes and don't speak. He's got his elbows on his knees and his eyes on the ice, breathing through whatever he's feeling with the contained energy of a man who is very good at not showing it. Me, though? I’m vibrating with anger.
"That was your fault," I say.
He turns to look at me, and something in his expression says he’s read my lips just fine and is choosing his response carefully. "Maybe."
I glare at him. "Definitely."
He looks at me for a long moment. "Are we going to have a problem?" he asks. “Because I didn’t decide who plays where. That was all Cross.”
“I know.” I suck in a deep breath. I’m a captain, a leader.
It’s tough to push career worries aside, but I’ll do it because it’s my job.
Besides, my fears aren’t helping the situation any.
We’re getting our asses kicked. “Look. I don’t know you, but you’re obviously a great player. We have to work together, though.”
“Agreed.” Then he looks back at the ice, his expression unreadable. I still can't tell if he's agreeing or humoring me. I still hate that I can't tell.
We get out of the box and do it again twenty minutes later. Different play, same problem. We both want the puck, we both move to take it, we both crash into an opposing player and go down hard.
Fuuuuuuuck.
This time I catch Mollie through the glass as they march us back to the box. The small frown she's aiming at me is the specific one she reserves for when I'm doing something she finds both impressive and deeply stupid.
Goddammit. I rap my stick against the box three times. I’ve got to play better. This is kiddie league shit.
The second two minutes in the box are quieter than the first. At least it seems that way until Konstantin taps my arm once, sharp. When I look at him, he jerks his chin toward the left boards where Vancouver has set up a cycling play. He wants to know who's taking it when we get out.
I hold up two fingers, point at him, then point at the boards. He nods.
That's it. That's the whole conversation. It's the first thing we've agreed on all night.
Beck scores on the power play we created by being idiots. He skates past the box and doesn't look at us, but I can see him working not to smile. I hate him a little for it.
The third period is better. Not good, but better. Something shifts around the twelve-minute mark, some unconscious calibration that happens when two stubborn people have been forced into working together for long enough.
Konstantin stops drifting into my space, I stop overcompensating, and we both start using our eyes the way we should have been using them from the drop.
A head tilt means ‘I'm going to the net.’ An open palm down means ‘hold.’ We don't have a system, and we didn't discuss it.
Somehow, it's working anyway, the puck moving between us with the snap.
Cross stops pacing behind the bench, at least.
We lose the game 3-2, but at least we were clicking in the final period. That’s more than I hoped.
Afterward, Beck picks up his bag and heads for the showers. I sit on the bench for another minute with my phone face down, thinking about the line combinations on the whiteboard this afternoon and what Cross said and what he didn't say. What am I missing here?
Then I hear Mollie's voice in the corridor and I get up.
Konstantin stands in the hall, his pads stripped away, wearing his sweaty undershirt and hockey pants, his skates swapped for tennis shoes. Same as us, except I have abandoned shoes in favor of a pair of slides. Mollie looks up and her gaze brightens.
“You’re here! Can you guys talk to me for five minutes about the game?”
I slide Konstantin a look. He purses his lips, but he’s already nodding, fiddling with the removable part of his cochlear implant. She fiddles with her phone and mutters under her breath. I elbow her, pointing to Konstantin.
It’s not fair of her to mumble where he doesn’t even have a chance to read her lips.
She flushes. “Oh, right. Sorry. If you can’t see me, you might not be able to hear me. Duh.”
Konstantin arches both of his brows. “I heard you fine. You said, ‘fucking piece of shit’.”
“Oh.” Mollie laughs. “Yeah. Sorry. That was about my phone, not you. You’re lovely.”
I cough. She glances at me with wide eyes. “You’re all lovely. All the, um, hockey players.”
I give her a thumbs up. “Very smooth.”
“Shh.” She glances at her shot list, switching to professional mode. She has a story she's telling, and she just needs the footage to prove it. "Two penalty calls in the first two periods," she says, looking between us. "Walk me through it."
I give her the diplomatic answer. "We're still building chemistry. Two centers on the same line means we both want to own the same real estate. We'll figure it out."
“I’m sure.” She nods, then looks at Konstantin. “Anything to add?”
He rubs the back of his neck. "We kept arriving at the same place at the same time, which is either very good or very bad depending on whether there is a puck involved." He pauses, smirking faintly. "Tonight, it was mostly very bad."
“It’ll get better, though,” I add. “It has to.”
Mollie laughs, genuinely, the way she laughs when something surprises her. She tries to school her expression back to a professional one, and mostly fails. "And the third period?"
"Better," I say.
"We stopped fighting each other," Konstantin says, "and started fighting them instead." He glances at me. "Progress of a sort."
I don't say anything to that. He's not wrong, which is its own problem.
We answer a few more questions, then Mollie thanks us. A look passes between us. I wonder if I should expect her to come back to my hotel room, or whether I should text her.
The girl’s not a mind reader, but she is adorable, especially since she flushes directly under my gaze.
Konstantin notices. Of course he notices. He's been noticing things since he arrived.
"You're very good at this," he tells her. "The content. You make it feel like a real conversation instead of an interview."
"That's kind of the point," she says, giving him a lopsided smile.
I glare at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Odd, because usually when a big hockey player looks at you like you’re a dead man walking, you take note.
"It works." He smirks at her. "Maybe you can teach me your secrets over dinner sometime?"
I’d been holding myself back, but his question makes me snarl. "Back off, Kuznetsov."
Konstantin looks at me. Then he looks at Mollie. Something flickers in his expression, quick and unreadable.
"Maybe I was just being friendly," he says.
“You weren’t, and you know it.” My hands curl into fists. Just like that, I’m ready.
Konstantin is quiet for a moment. Then, pleasantly, he says, "I was following your example. Making nice with the staff."
I keep my face completely neutral, a skill I've been honing for thirty-two years. “Konstantin, man. Do us both a favor and don’t make me kick your fucking ass right now. I have no chill about her.”
Konstantin lifts his hands. "My mistake." He looks at Mollie once more, and then he walks away down the corridor without hurrying.
Mollie hisses, “Great, now he knows.”
“He suspects. But he doesn’t know for sure.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “You think you have everybody figured out. It’s one of your less attractive qualities.”
“Oh yeah? What are my more attractive qualities?” I smirk, my hands itching to find her waist and pull her to me. “It’s my big dick, isn’t it?”
She hits me in the torso playfully. “It’s definitely not your humble attitude.”
Silas and Jett step out into the hall, talking about their plans for the evening. I have to move back and let Mollie go as she waves to the guys.
“Can I get your reactions to the first preseason game?” she calls. But she shoots me a soft smile over her shoulder. Something that’s just for me. And I can’t wait to see her later.
Fuck it. I pull out my phone and send her a text about coming to my room tonight. That way there are no uncertainties between us.
I never seem to get enough of Mollie Tate.