Chapter Eleven
Sadie
Vivi is like a bloodhound in goldendoodle’s clothing.
“Something is off with you.” She opens the tiny vents above our heads. The team jet has two spacious seats per row, and she sets it up so we can both be air-blasted. “You’ve been quiet the whole flight—before that, even.”
“There’s turbulence.”
“And? You staring out the window isn’t going to make it go away.”
“We got up at four a.m.”
“Yeah, but you’re the morning person. I should be the moody one.”
“I’m not moody.” I clutch the armrest between us as the plane does something unsavory. “We’re on our way to Miami, the team is starting to gel—kind of—and we’re playing a team with a weak defense. All is well, Viv.”
“Is that right?” Her face screws up in contemplation. “So then why was a certain brooding defenseman sitting outside our house last night like a Buckingham Palace guard?”
My stomach plummets, and not just from the sudden change in altitude. “What?”
“Leo was literally guarding our house last night when I got home. Sitting in his truck with the windows rolled down. I nearly whacked him with my purse before realizing it was him. And then I almost whacked him anyway, until he explained that the two of you had a rough night.”
Heat flashes up my neck, and my throat goes dry.
Leo stayed? After he’d already comforted me and taken me home when my brain was in freeze mode.
Held my hand.
Not held it. Our fingers weren’t threaded. He cradled it in his. That’s…very different.
It’s a distinction I don’t need to make, because I’ll never speak of that moment again, not even with Vivi. He was just trying to help.
He did help.
“I have given you hours to come clean,” she continues, “but curiosity is driving me bonkers. A ‘rough night’ with Leo McLaren? What does that mean?”
“Shh,” I hiss. “Lower your voice.”
“No one can hear us because they’re all sleeping.”
She’s right that it’s a symphony of snores in here.
But Jax and Eric are awake, chatting with Cruz and Dom at the back of the plane, and my current level of anxiety doesn’t understand the specifics of how noise travels on planes.
It could be like one of those whisper galleries where the words travel along a dome or an arc to echo in some distant part of the building.
“Start spilling before I start speculating,” Vivi insists. “You do not want me speculating.”
I most certainly do not.
With a resigned sigh, I peek at the rows behind us. Leo is four back, very much awake as he stares out his own window. His hair is unkempt, his shadowed jaw scruffy. He looks as tired as I feel.
Heart pinching, I turn back around. “I didn’t know he was out there—that he stayed.”
“He mentioned that right after he asked me not to tell you he was there.”
As I’d expect, Vivi proves her loyalty by telling me the exact thing she wasn’t supposed to. And while I wish we could change the subject—I’d like to put yesterday in the distant past—I can’t just leave her confused. “What exactly did he say?”
“That you had a rough night and he didn’t feel right leaving you alone, and that you’ll tell me if you want to tell me, and never mention this again.” She lifts a finger. “Oh, and ‘Why don’t you people have a security camera?’ Can’t forget that.”
My chest tightens. The cold, recycled plane air is too thin. “And what did you say?”
“I said, ‘Who needs a security camera when I have a six-foot-four D-man in a GMC?’” She pauses, and her brows lift. “Wow, normally you’d laugh at that.”
I wish I could laugh, but I’m struggling to form a coherent thought other than he stayed. “What time did you get home?”
“Twelve thirty.”
I do the simple math. Leo sat in front of my house for three hours.
The feeling in my chest claws into my throat.
“Again I ask: why were you together in the first place?”
“He and I meet up to discuss the team,” I admit.
“When he agreed to be captain, I asked him to help me out, since you and I can’t be in the locker room.
We miss out on valuable stuff that would help us be a more cohesive unit, you know?
So he helps me by being a bridge to the guys, despite his every instinct to avoid human interaction.
” I shake my head to put this ramble back on track.
“Anyway, we were out at a diner, and some unpleasant hockey fans were annoying us, so he drove me home. That’s why my car wasn’t in the driveway when you got home.
I had to Uber myself back there to pick it up at four a.m.”
Her mouth hangs open briefly. “When you say people were annoying you, what does that mean? It had to have been pretty bad if Leo felt compelled to drive you home and stay there.”
Leave it to her to get right to the meat and potatoes. “They were just Ivan fanboys saying things. It’s no big deal.”
Vivi’s brown eyes flash with a familiar protective malice. “Of course it was Ivan’s fuckwit fanboys. Did you get their names? If you were afraid they’d follow you home, this needs to be reported. Leo had the right idea hanging around.”
“He scared those guys off pretty thoroughly.” I drop her gaze and run my thumb along my watch band. “He probably hung around because I overreacted to the whole situation. But everything is fine now.”
“You can say it’s fine as many times as you want,” she says gently. “But that does not make it true. The things you deal with in your job are—”
“All part of the deal. I know what I signed up for.”
We hit a pocket of air or whatever it is that makes the plane dip. My stomach still feels like it’s in free fall a full minute later.
I don’t have time for motion sickness. I’m supposed to be studying Miami’s most recent game for opportunities. I lean forward and place my face against my cool hands.
Vivi’s palm finds my back. “It was nice of Leo to stay.”
“Are you not feeling this turbulence?” The last thing I need is for any of these people to see me throw up, apart from Vivi. I can practically hear them. Sadie has a weak stomach and a weak coaching style? That tracks!
“Not really, no.” She pauses. “And back on the topic of Leo—”
“Why are we back there, exactly?”
“—when I found you two outside at casino night, it felt like maybe I was interrupting something. More than him just getting an Uber or whatever he said.”
My hand burns as if his touch last night branded my skin. The reality is that I almost invited him inside. Theoretically, I’d have no problem inviting a player into my home, especially for safety purposes.
But I couldn’t do it with Leo. And I am terrified to look too deeply into why.
Right now, I need Vivi not to get any ideas. “I’m a coach. He’s a player. We were doing hockey business. We’re not even friends.”
Her stare is pointed, and her voice is as low as it could possibly be while still remaining audible.
“I’m not talking about friendship. Sadie, I know you.
Something is going on here. I wasn’t going to spell it out, but since you’re forcing me to, you two were eye-fucking each other when I interrupted you that night.
You are at the very least entertaining some thoughts.
No judgment, of course. He’s filthy hot. ”
Panic wallops me in the gut. I work extremely hard not to think about that—the memory of Leo’s sharp, slow, deliberate gaze.
How it mapped every inch of my face and neck—and lower—without touching, dragging electricity across my skin.
How I did the same to him, letting the moment stretch dangerously long.
Because it was a fluke. Just like the belt loop thing. And the moment in the diner.
You have anyone? In your house or…otherwise?
Flukes. All of them. “Impossible. You know I cannot and will not do that. Imagine, even for a second, what something like that would do to me, or to you, and the women coming up after us.”
“Okay, but let me just get this out: you may be the hockey pro, but I know men. And no man sits outside a house for hours—in secret—to make sure their coach is okay. That was Leo worrying about Sadie. Potentially ready to Carrie Underwood someone’s car on your behalf if they pulled in your driveway. ”
The image of Leo ripping off that car mirror—with complete and utter ease—nudges at my brain.
Eye-fucking is dangerous enough. But that? And then him guarding my house?
I fumble for the bag in the seatback pocket.
Vivi startles and helps me open it. “Oh shit. The turbulence is hitting you that hard?”
Holding it steady, I wait for something to happen.
Anything.
I almost wish it would so this feeling—this sensation that something is pushing against a dam inside of me—would pass.
Vivi rubs soothing circles on my back. “I had no idea you had motion sickness. That’s new.”
“It’ll pass. I just need a Coke or something.”
“You got it, Sugar Tits. Let me flag down the flight attendant.”
“Actually, no—I need game footage from Miami’s latest, please.”
“Ah yes, work, the universal antidote for illness. Have you considered resting?”
“I am resting. Looking at the footage will be relaxing for me.”
Or at the very least, distracting. Because I cannot sit here and think about Leo for another second.
Miami’s arena hums, a live wire of anticipation. The low roar fades as the scoreboard reboots to flash 0-0.
Another shoot-out.
My notes lie in a forgotten heap on the ground beside me as I scan the ice from behind the boards. Nic’s looking my way, awaiting the signal.
I nod.
Noise swells as Miami’s loyal fans aim to disturb. They want to get in his head so badly. That’s why I put Lindberg first. He is emotionally immovable. Nothing gets to him.
And the man is agile.
Miami’s goalie squares up, in position to defend. I know that crouch well. The memory of it echoes through my hips and burns in my quads. It feels like holding the weight of a stadium on your shoulders.
Nic glides across the ice, fakes left, shifts right, throws his weight left again, and snaps his stick.
The goalie lunges, but the puck slides into the corner of the net.
Goal.