16. Wren
WREN
Another day, another practice, and this afternoon, with very grumpy men.
“Calloway,” Donnelly barks from near the equipment door, “gray bag for practice socks, blue for game jerseys, not the other way around. Don’t let Cooper touch either.”
Weston, sitting in his stall with his skates half-off, looks offended. “I’m capable of sorting.”
Asher walks by with a towel around his neck. “No, dude, you’re really not.”
I toss a towel into the cart. “For what it’s worth, I also don’t trust you with sorting.”
Weston presses a hand to his chest. “Et tu, Laundry Duchess?”
“Say duchess again, and I’m throwing a towel that was probably used to dry someone else’s ball sack right at your face.”
He straightens and pins me with a glare. “You wouldn’t.”
“With whatever crawled up everyone’s ass today? I so would.” I reach for a pile of towels near the end of the bench, catching Kai in the corner of my eye.
He’s near his stall, still in compression shorts and a base layer, hair damp from the shower, talking to Coach with that locked-in captain face, but the second Coach moves away, Kai’s eyes find mine.
My stomach, the little traitor it is, swoops low and pulls tight. Why can’t I react this way to literally any other guy? Why this one?
A towel lands in the cart beside my hand, and I jump.
Weston appears next to me, now shirtless but at least wearing compression pants, which I’m choosing to count as a professional courtesy.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“For startling ten years off my life?”
“For helping you.”
I raise a brow at him. “You threw your own towel in the bin.”
“Leadership starts small.”
Asher passes behind him. “He missed the cart twice before you looked.”
I bite back a laugh.
“I play hockey, bro, not fucking basketball. I put things in nets, not baskets,” Weston says, before lowering his voice. “You good?”
I don’t really know how to answer that, because no, I’m not good.
But I’m also working on trying to be good.
It didn’t help that my mom got called into a shift for this morning, so I had to run like a madwoman to pick up the twins and Justin so that he could watch them until Holden got home to help.
Hopefully, the house will still be standing by the time I get home.
Yeah, I am currently anything but good. “I’m working.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I look at him.
He lifts both hands. “Not prying. Just asking.”
“I’m good,” I say, softer.
He nods. “Cool. If anyone makes you not good, Asher is prepared to commit violence.”
Asher looks over. “Don’t volunteer me for crimes.”
“Fine. Kai is prepared in every category.”
My face heats instantly.
Across the room, Kai’s head turns.
Of course he heard that.
I glare at Weston. “You’re a menace.”
He waggles his eyebrows. “And yet, you love me.”
I push the cart forward before he can make it worse.
The room starts clearing out slowly. One of the media interns, Lyla, I think, pulls Grayson away for a few minutes while others disappear into showers.
Coleson is still lingering near his stall.
I’ve noticed that about him. Not in a dramatic way, just the way you notice a drawer that keeps sticking. He’s always half a step off from the rest of the team. When the room is loose, he looks bored. When Kai gives instructions, he looks like obedience costs too much.
Tonight, he’s leaning back in his stall, scrolling on his phone while a pile of towels sits at his feet.
I stop the cart beside him. “Hey, can you toss those in?”
He doesn’t look up. “Busy.”
I glance at his phone. He’s watching a video of someone falling off a treadmill.
“Looks important.”
That gets his eyes on me. They move over my sweatshirt, my leggings, the cart, then back to my face. It isn’t the kind of look that scares me. It’s the kind meant to remind me he thinks I’m beneath him.
“Towels, please,” I say.
He kicks one with the toe of his shoe. It lands near the cart, not in it.
“There.”
I look at the towel on the floor. Then at him.
“Do you give this little effort to everything or just women?”
A few guys nearby go quiet, and I can feel the air shift. Maybe the guys aren’t the only ones a little cranky today.
Coleson smiles without warmth. “You’re paid to pick up after us, right?”
My fingers tighten around the cart handle. I smile back because if I don’t, I might say something that gets me fired. “I’m paid to assist equipment operations. You’re capable of basic motor skills, or so I’ve heard.”
Someone snorts.
Coleson’s smile drops.
“Careful, Calloway,” he says. “You’re not one of the boys just because Cooper lets you joke around.”
My pulse jumps, but I keep my face steady.
“I don’t need to be one of the boys to ask you to put your towels in a cart.”
His eyes narrow. “No, I guess being the captain’s little slut gets you special privileges.”
My face burns hot with fury mixed with a twinge of embarrassment. Is that how the rest of the team sees me?
Weston stands so fast the bench creaks. Asher’s expression goes flat. Grayson, who has just stepped back into the room near the doorway, stops dead in his tracks, taking in the scene.
Suddenly, I can feel someone’s body heat at my back, and I know who’s standing behind me without even looking.
Coleson’s eyes flick over my shoulder.
Whatever he sees makes his face change.
Kai’s voice is low when he speaks, causing shivers to surge down my spine.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to that way?”
I don’t turn around. I can’t. My hands are locked around the cart handle, and every inch of me is aware of Kai standing right behind me.
Coleson pushes to his feet, looking a lot less confident than he did a few seconds ago. “Relax, Mercer. It was a joke.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“What, you’re policing jokes now?”
“I’m policing how you talk to the staff.”
“Staff,” Coleson repeats. “Sure.”
Weston takes one step forward. “Man, just shut up. Even I have better self-preservation skills than you.”
Grayson’s voice comes from near the door, calm but hard. “You’re done.”
Asher says nothing. He just watches Coleson like he’s already decided where the body would go.
I look at Coleson. “Put the towels in the cart.”
The words come out a lot more confident than I’m feeling.
For one long second, no one moves.
Finally, Coleson bends down, grabs his towels, and throws them into the cart with a little more force than necessary.
“Happy?”
“No,” I say. “But thank you.”
Coleson grabs his bag and shoves toward the door. Grayson doesn’t move out of the way until the last second, just enough to let him pass.
The door swings shut behind Coleson.
The room exhales.
Kai makes the smallest sound behind me.
I turn because if I don’t, I’ll start shaking.
He’s right there, even closer than I expected. His face may look controlled, but his eyes are burning bright with anger, jaw clenched tight.
I should be annoyed at him, and I am, but only a little.
But I’m also warm all over, and my throat feels too tight, and I hate how much it mattered that he didn’t step in front of me, acting as if I couldn’t take care of myself. He stood at my back and made Coleson understand I wasn’t standing there alone. That I had support.
Kai must notice my mind going a million miles a minute, and whatever he sees on my face, he isn’t a fan. Without moving his gaze from mine, he speaks to the remainder of his team. “Show’s over. If you’re dressed, leave. If you’re not dressed, hurry up and get it done.”
I hear shuffling and mumbling, and soon it’s almost silent in the room.
Then he steps back, giving me space and finally breaking eye contact.
I should appreciate it, but my thoughts are still swirling, and I have no idea what to make of everything I’m feeling. Instead of trying to unpack everything that just happened, I turn to my laundry cart and start heading for the machines.
I know Kai is following closely behind me, as my body is still humiliatingly fluent in him.
I make it to the laundry room and grab the detergent, making sure to add extra sanitizer for this round of stinky towels.
“I’m fine, you know,” I say, still facing the washer. “You don’t have to babysit.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were going to.”
“That I was.”
At least he’s honest.
Kai lets the door shut, but leaves a few feet of space between us as I start taking the clean load of towels out of the dryer and folding them. “You didn’t have to do that.”
His jaw flexes. “Do what?”
“Step in.”
“I didn’t want to overstep, but what he said wasn’t okay, Wren. I would’ve stepped in for anyone, but especially you.”
The anger I was hoping to grab onto slips through my fingers at his words.
“He was trying to make you feel small,” Kai says. “To make you question whether you were respected. No one, and definitely not a woman working in a room surrounded by men, deserves that disrespect.”
“I know.”
He takes one step closer, then stops. “I’m sorry it happened here.”
Here.
His rink. His team. His space that I’ve been trying so hard not to make complicated.
“I can handle guys like Coleson,” I say.
“I know.”
“I didn’t want the whole room looking at me,” I admit, grabbing another towel and folding it before adding it to the pile. “And now they’re going to talk.”
“They won’t.”
I look at him again. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he says, and the confidence in his expression tells me that what he’s saying is a fact.
“Because you’ll threaten them into silence?”
“If I have to.”
I let out an exasperated sigh and groan.
“What?”
“You can’t control everything.”
His eyes narrow slightly, taken aback by my words. “I’m aware.”
“No, you’re not.” My chest is rising too fast. “You think if you stand there looking terrifying enough, everyone will behave, but Coleson said what he did because he wanted to provoke a reaction, and you gave him one.”
He crosses his arms across his chest. “I gave him a boundary.”
“You gave him proof that there’s something to poke.”
Kai goes still.
The hum of the washer fills the silence between us.
“I need this job,” I say, quieter. “I need it to just be a job. I need people not to think I’m here because of you.”
“You’re not.”
“I know that. You know that, but the rest of the team doesn't."
“Then let them be wrong.”
I let out a small, humorless laugh. “That is such a Kai answer.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you can survive people being wrong about you because you’re already standing on solid ground. I’m not.”
The words leave me exposed.
Moments pass, and when he finally speaks, his voice is careful. “Wren.”
“No.” I lift a hand. “Don’t say it like you want to fix it.”
He takes another step closer.
This time, he doesn’t stop as far away.
“I do want to fix it,” he says. “That’s the problem. I want to fix all of it. The job, the money, the car, the mornings where you don’t have enough hands. I want to make it easier for you, and I know you don’t want me to, and I know I don’t have that right anymore.”
My breath catches as he keeps going, voice rougher now.
“But watching you try to carry everything is making me lose my fucking mind.”
I feel his words everywhere. I also feel a strong wave of want from myself. I want to let him fix everything, but I can’t. I won’t.
It doesn’t stop the weak place under my ribs that has always belonged to him from squeezing.
“Kai,” I whisper.
“I know.” He drags a hand through his hair, frustrated with himself now. “I’m not saying this to make you feel bad or anything like that.”
“Then why are you saying it?”
His eyes meet mine. “Because I’m tired of lying to you.”
Oh.
Kai steps closer, then stops again, like his body is fighting itself with every inch and losing the battle.
“Tell me to go,” he says.
I should.
That would be the smart thing to do. The safe thing. The thing that keeps my job simple and my heart intact and out of whatever mess this becomes. The thing that remembers he’ll be leaving soon, remembers the three years of silence, remembers that wanting Kai Mercer has never once stayed small.
But I’m so tired of pretending I don’t want him.
“I can’t,” I say.
His eyes close for half a second.
When they open, there is no confusion left in them, only want.
He moves slowly, still giving me time to change my mind. His hand comes up to my face, his fingers gently moving a piece of hair behind my ear before he cups me gently.
“This is a bad idea,” I say, mostly to myself.
His thumb brushes my cheek. “Maybe a little.”
He’s close enough now that I can see the small cut near his bottom lip from his last game. Close enough to smell his soap, a hint of winter mint, and him.
I lift my hand to his chest, not to push him away, but to feel his heart. It’s beating wildly, mirroring my own.
“Kiss me,” I whisper, the words barely leaving my mouth before he bends toward me.
The first touch of his mouth to mine is careful.
Too careful, as if he’s asking if I’m sure and giving me time to pull back.
I answer by gripping the front of his shirt and pulling him closer.
Kai breaks.
He kisses me like the restraint has been hurting him. Like every look, every almost, every inch of space he gave me has been leading here. His hand slides deeper into my hair, and I make a sound that embarrasses me until he answers with one of his own, low and rough against my mouth.
The washer digs into my back.
I don’t care.
I kiss him back with both hands in his shirt and years of missing him tearing through me too fast to manage. It isn’t like being seventeen. At seventeen, kissing Kai felt like a secret we were always racing to keep. This feels like a truth that finally ran out of places to hide.
He shudders.
“Hey, Kai-Kai!” Weston yells from somewhere in the locker room. “I’m starving and we gotta go!”
Reality crashes back so hard I almost laugh against Kai’s mouth.
He pulls back just enough to breathe, forehead hovering close to mine. Neither of us moves far enough to pretend this is over.
“Wren,” he says.
My name sounds broken in his mouth.
I keep my eyes closed for one second because if I open them, I’ll have to deal with the fact that we did it.
Not by accident.
On purpose.
I open my eyes.
His are already on me. Dark. Unsteady. Too honest.
Weston yells again, farther away this time. “Kai Mercer! I’m hangry, let’s go!”
The absurdity helps and hurts at the same time.
Kai’s mouth curves faintly, but his eyes don’t leave mine.
“We should stop,” I whisper.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
I force my hands to release his shirt.
His hand leaves my hair slowly, like it costs him.
The second there is space between us, I miss the contact so badly it scares me.
Kai’s jaw tightens. “I should go.”
I nod, even though some reckless part of me wants to say no.
He reaches the door, then stops with his hand on the handle. When he looks back, his face is still raw in a way I’ve never seen on him before.
“I’m not sorry,” he says.
A small smile plays on my lips, my chest almost seeming to vibrate at his words.
“Me neither.”