18. CHAPTER 18
Livia
The Los Angeles skyline twinkles brightly, and I watch it without any real appreciation as we take the team bus back to the hotel.
There’s a lot of exuberant chatter among the players after the stomping we just handed the Demons. I should be celebrating with them because I feel like I’m as much a part of this team as anyone and I’ve been welcomed as such.
But I’ve been distracted the last few days by how I left things with Locke. Or rather, how he left things before walking out of my office. The man has so far managed to kiss me into submission multiple times and then banged out a fast orgasm in his car that had me seeing stars.
And then he had the audacity to tell me that I’d be begging him for it at some point.
As if.
I’m feeling pressure, for sure.
Locke agreed to three sessions with me, and I’ve burned two of them already.
The Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house gave me a start just by being able to observe him.
The second session pulled back the curtain a little more.
The Beacon Hill brownstone, the father who never came to a game, the mother who was simply absent and by all accounts, self-absorbed, the billet families he kept at a distance because he’d already learned the math of temporary attachments.
Two sessions, only one left, and I don’t know anything really.
And now Locke Donovan has gone silent on me.
I’ve sent him two emails and a text with a scheduling link to my calendar. He’s not responded, even though I can tell from the read-receipts he’s received them. He’s avoided me in the halls, in the locker room and the team plane, and I’m going to have to call him out on it.
I know what he’s doing.
I understood it as soon as I watched him walk out of my office with that stubborn set to his shoulders, the tight jawline, and the cold exit that told me he’s recalibrating while putting distance between what happened in those chairs.
What he said before he left doesn’t help.
I want you begging for it.
Is he simply trying to scare me off?
From a personal connection?
I don’t know.
The professional problem is straightforward.
I have one session left to get what the team actually needs from him, which is not the childhood history I’ve accumulated, as useful as that is, but the real thing.
The team trust issue. The reason Locke Donovan plays like a lone wolf.
I’ve been circling around the outside of it for weeks and I know the shape of it, but I have so much to uncover in only one more session.
The personal problem is less straightforward.
The personal problem is that I sat in that chair two feet away from him and watched him give me things he doesn’t give anyone and felt a shift in me that remains resolutely stuck and unwilling to move.
The man has managed to tear my entire nervous system apart with a few dirty words and hot touches, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone as much as I want him.
Physically, and yes… I’m craving more of an emotional connection.
I look back out the window.
The bus takes a left and the hotel comes into view at the end of the block—a glass tower of vertical lines and ambient lighting. The bus slows.
I’m already mentally composing the follow-up email I’ll send tomorrow. Professional. Direct. The session is part of our agreement and I need him to honor it. If I can just get him back in my office—
I see him.
He’s on the sidewalk outside the hotel entrance, pacing back and forth, and my jaw drops.
I know his silhouette before my brain catches up with my eyes. The tablet slides off my knee but I catch it without looking.
Grant.
My stomach drops through the floor of the bus.
He’s thinner than I remember, or maybe it’s the way he’s standing with his shoulders forward, hands in his jacket pockets.
Nine hundred miles separated us just yesterday and now here he is standing on a Los Angeles sidewalk outside the Wildfire’s hotel.
The only thought that moves through me with any coherence is how he knows we’re here.
The answer arrives immediately and turns my blood cold.
He’s stalked me. The way he found my new number after I changed it. The way a card appeared at my Portland address.
The message is clear.
I can find you.
The bus pulls to a stop, the doors open and the team begins to move.
I sit for ten seconds longer than I should, watching him through the glass.
He can’t see me through the tinted windows and he’s scanning the bus door, waiting for me to exit, and his patience is the most frightening thing about him.
Grant has never had a short fuse. No, he’s a long-burn kind of man. He doesn’t mind waiting.
My options are to hide on the bus and hope he goes away or I can confront this issue head-on. I decide on the latter option, especially while there are plenty of witnesses around, so I exit my row and shuffle off the bus amid hulking hockey players.
When I step out, his eyes lock with mine, full of hope and yearning.
I walk up to him, keeping my tone even. “What are you doing here?”
“Livia.” He breathes it out like a prayer. “I just want to talk.”
And up close, I can see all the signs. The bloodshot eyes. The way he’s working a little harder than usual to track me. His shirt is untucked on one side, and I can smell the alcohol.
He’s inebriated.
Not falling-down drunk but enough that his usual precision is gone. I know him well when he drinks. He has no emotional management, which will make this conversation harder.
In fact, there’s no version of this conversation that goes anywhere useful tonight.
“Go home, Grant.”
“But I love you, Livvy.” His voice rises just enough that a few players glance over. “Do you understand that? I’m not just some guy sending texts, I came here because you won’t—”
“Keep your voice down,” I hiss at him with embarrassment.
“Don’t tell me to keep my voice down,” he snaps back angrily. “You always have to be in control. Everything always has to be quiet and professional and God forbid”—his voice raises to spite me—“anyone feel anything too loudly around Livia Cross.”
I wince because I’m sure everyone in a four-block radius heard that. “You’ve been drinking.”
He gives me a dopey grin. “Just a few.” He steps closer and I hold my ground because showing him I’m afraid is the one thing I won’t do.
I try for logic, knowing it’s probably futile. “The fact you’ve been drinking makes this conversation pointless. Go home and sleep it off.”
“I’m not leaving,” he replies stubbornly, chin lifted in defiance.
His eyes are very bright and fixed on my face with an intensity that creeps me out.
“Not until you talk to me. Really talk to me. Not this.” He gestures at me, waving his hands.
“Not this version of you. I want to talk to the real one.”
No fucking clue what he’s talking about. “This is the only version you’re getting tonight.”
“So we can talk?” he asks hopefully.
“No, we can’t talk,” I snap, my anger driving away the uneasiness. “I said go home.”
His expression morphs. The pleading quality drops out of it and what’s underneath is slightly sinister.
He leans in close enough that I can smell bourbon and when he speaks, it’s low, meant only for me.
“You think moving away fixed things? You think nine hundred miles and a new job and a new city and suddenly you’re someone different?
” His tone is laced with warning. “You’re still mine.
You know that, right? You’ve always known that.
And whatever you think you’re building up there”—his eyes move briefly over my shoulder toward the hotel, toward the team—“it doesn’t change what we are. ”
My blood goes cold at his proclamation. This isn’t the Grant I knew. He sounds so completely unhinged that I have to wonder what happened to him.
“We are nothing,” I say tightly. “We are over, you’re being way too weird for me to deal with, and I want you to leave me alone.”
I turn away from him, intent on walking into the hotel, and that’s when his hand closes around my upper arm.
The grip is brutal, fingers digging in hard as he wrenches me around to face him and for one full second, I am back in that apartment with his hand on my arm, his face close to mine, the promise of retribution in his eyes.
A bolt of fear courses through me, so strong it makes my knees weak and my body reacts on instinct. I cower, waiting for him to strike with my arm raising up halfway in a defensive mode to protect my face.
“Don’t you walk away from me,” he snarls, spittle flying from his mouth. “Don’t you dare—”
Locke hits him like a wall.
I don’t see him coming. One second Grant’s hand is clamped around my arm and the next it’s in Locke’s grip, bent backward at the wrist. It doesn’t stay there long because Locke brings his forearm to Grant’s chest and drives him backward with a controlled ferocity that clears the distance to the hotel wall in three steps.
Grant’s back slams into the concrete hard enough, I hear the air whoosh out of him.
Locke pins him with a forearm across the sternum and leans in close.
Grant recovers faster than he should, the bourbon and perhaps adrenaline giving him strength, and instead of going still the way a sensible person would with a man Locke’s size holding him against a wall, he shoves back. He puts both hands into Locke’s chest and pushes with everything he has.
Locke doesn’t move an inch.
“Get your hands off me,” Grant yells, fully unraveled now. He shoves again, uselessly. “Get the fuck off me, you fucking Neanderthal. You have no idea who I am!”
“I know exactly who you are,” Locke replies softly. There’s no heat, no volume, just a low rumble that seems deadly in its warning. “And I know what you did to Livia.”
“Oh, that’s rich.” Grant barks out a laugh. “That’s completely fucking rich. Whatever she said, she’s a liar, she’s always been a—”
Locke’s forearm presses in and Grant’s next words don’t make it out.