16. Liv
For once in my life, if I could keep my mouth shut , that would be amazing.
Oversharing instead of heading up to Ash’s hotel room was entirely too on brand, and I hated every word that poured out of my mouth.
Alcohol certainly wasn’t to blame; I’d only had two beers.
No, it was Ash that intoxicated me into spilling all my deepest secrets.
I was almost grateful to Coach Olsen for interrupting the course of the night because it would inevitably end badly if we made it back to one of our rooms, given the way I let my issues seep in and take over.
I couldn’t make myself face Ash again yet because everything I’d revealed to him made me relive a thousand old conversations and unsaid reproaches.
It dragged me down old memories and left me scraped out and hollow inside.
Exactly the way I’d been with Alex. Hurt wasn’t a strong enough word to describe how deep a mark he left on me, how deeply it still cut.
Ash probably thought he’d done something wrong, and it just made the whole fucked up situation worse .
Reliving the look on his face as I left only reminded me why I shouldn’t have told him any of it.
I never meant to spill my guts with such spectacularly bad timing, but I also hadn’t realized how much hurt lingered beneath the surface after Alex.
Hiding from Ash was the only way I knew how to cope. Hiding from everything, at least until I got myself back out of this hole I’d fallen down.
My phone buzzed with a few messages, but I ignored them. If it was an emergency, whoever it was would probably call. If it was Ash, I wasn’t ready to see whatever he said, good or bad. Tossing my phone aside, I lay on the scratchy hotel sheets, on the too-firm mattress and pancaked pillows.
Sleep never came, but when my alarm blasted in the dim space, I dressed but avoided leaving.
Outside my door, I heard footsteps and voices, prompting me to stay away until the herd of hockey players emptied the hallway.
Another half hour of waiting to be certain they left, and I headed down for breakfast, uncertain what to do for the day.
Last night, Dad said the game wore him out, and there was no way I’d be able to work and focus on datasets while this exhausted.
Instead, I wandered around downtown Raleigh for a while, finding a coffee shop and wandering my old stomping grounds until I killed half the day doing nothing.
The caffeine vibrating through my veins gave me enough energy to tear through the remaining data when I returned to my room.
With work emails sent and nothing else to do, I opened one of the books I brought but couldn’t bear the romance after last night.
Even my fandom email inbox was empty, with none of my favorite fics updating all week.
With nothing else to do, I grabbed my purse and left the room again, wandering until I found myself in a sports bar. Once inside, I realized I’d tugged on Ash’s jersey over my shirt out of habit and winced.
I left it on.
Inside the dimly lit space, I found an empty spot at the bar and requested an order of boneless wings and a pitcher of beer. Beside me, a dude frighteningly reminiscent of Brad pointed at my jersey and grinned. “Hey, let’s put the Knights Hurricanes game up on the screen for the little lady.”
I bristled but said nothing. Little lady, my plump ass. If I was wrong and didn’t have a solid two inches on this guy, I’d buy a round for the whole bar.
The longer I stayed, the louder the bar grew. But I forced myself to stay; I deserved to be miserable after leaving Ash with no explanation. So, I sank into misery, letting it grow with every mediocre chicken wing and sip of tepid beer as I watched Ash on screen.
Until a fight broke out. He’d laughed when I hadn’t noticed a fight the night we met, but this one unfolded in slow-moving horror.
I tracked the players until I found the name Wilder emblazoned on the back of a white and teal jersey, identical to the one I wore.
There he was, right in the middle of the action. Of course. A frisson of worry crawled down my spine. And he was Asher the Basher, bashing into the thick of it, throwing a punch to connect solidly with the jaw of—was that his teammate?
“That Basher guy has a wicked left hook,” Brad’s twin said, leaning closer to look at the screen. “You a fan?”
“Clearly.” I plucked at the jersey in emphasis.
“Oh, yeah? When was the last time they won the Stanley Cup?”
Guys like this were the worst. Having to jump through hoops in any male-dominated space would exhaust anyone, and then even when I proved myself, I still didn’t meet the expectations of a ‘real fan’ simply because I was born with tits. It was infuriating.
“Actually,” I pitched my voice higher, breathier.
“I think you can buy those at Target!” The guy stared, my joke going over his head.
“But I’m kind of new to this whole hockey thing; I just think the one player is hot.
” He gave me a patronizing smile, so I patronized him right back, feeding him all the stupid misogynistic stereotypes I could muster.
“Can you, like, explain it to me?” I even batted my lashes.
Give him some reason to drone on for half an hour so I could drown him out or escape.
He did exactly what I expected, and I ignored all of it, smiling randomly, and tilting my head at intervals to pretend to be interested.
You’d think he’d notice my disinterest and take the hint; instead, he bought another beer I didn’t want and edged his barstool too close to mine.
Telling him to fuck off had a fifty-fifty chance of ending poorly for me, given that I was alone in a bar, so I let him natter on without listening or encouraging him.
Once the Knights lost the game, I slid off the stool when he went to the bathroom, not wanting to deal with whatever expectations he might have formed from the purchase of the untouched beer.
What was it with men like this ignoring personal space and the word no?
My arrival back at the hotel coincided with the Knights’ bus arriving. Hot sauce and beer churned in my stomach when I caught sight of Ash’s broad back in a sea of similarly built men. He stood out, somehow. Maybe it was the height, or that unruly dark hair.
Maybe I’d committed the way he moved to memory, like my favorite song.
But I was too slow to catch him, unable to push through the crowd milling around the foyer and I slumped as the elevator hid him from view.
* * *
The next morning, my suitcase waited amongst the others, and I hovered on the fringes of the team, unwilling to break into their space when they were all so gloomy after the loss. On the shuttle to the airport, I boarded last after Coach Olsen, who gave me a blithe smile.
Compared to the flight to Raleigh, the flight home was morose.
Most of the team wore headphones, same as before, but the mood soured.
When I caught sight of Ash, I headed toward him, but without looking, he tugged the hood of his sweatshirt up and leaned back in the oversized seat.
The hood hid most of his face, though a greenish, purple bruise stained the visible part of his cheekbone.
Tension pulled his shoulders up to his ears, and I longed to card my fingers through his hair to ease it.
I took the coward’s way out and sent a text, asking if we could talk. Then I panicked and put my phone on airplane mode. From my vantage point a few rows back, I knew he’d barely moved since takeoff. Maybe he was asleep and didn’t see it.
Or maybe he saw it and he doesn’t want to talk to me. I’m the one who ran out.
My insides tied themselves into knots as I sat in painful silence, trying to look anywhere but the back of his head.
Out of nowhere, the plane swooped, taking my stomach with it, and the pilot made an announcement. “We’re going through a bit of turbulence,” she said, “but for your safety, stay in your seats for the next half-hour. We hit a pocket of cold air.”
The large, comfortable seats did nothing to keep me from feeling every bump and wobble of the plane.
Each dip had me squeezing the armrests until my knuckles threatened to snap.
Breathe . But my breaths came shallow and shaking, not enough to fill my lungs.
Ahead, Ash shifted in his seat, maybe adjusting his seatbelt before returning to his slouch.
But I remembered how he’d helped calm me each time I lost control in front of him.
He’d kind of… compressed. I wrapped my arms around myself, and while it was no replacement for the strength of Ash’s arms, it helped enough to get my breathing under control.
Something in my whirling, terrified mind solidified. Some awful, scared part of me wondered if my attraction to Ash stemmed from some sort of savior/damsel thing, with how well he’d been able to help me.
But I got myself out well enough to breathe through it without going catatonic.
Pushing myself through the mounting anxiety somehow led to a handful of realizations.
First, I wanted to tell Ash about all of it.
Alex and our relationship, and the way it’d left me a shell of myself.
Second, I wanted to help him work through his shit, too.
Whatever caused the fight last night and had him skulking around like a forlorn teenager with his headphones and hoodie.
And finally, I realized how real this all was for me, and how terrifying.
Finding a space for both of us to get everything out in the open became my new priority.
A churning ball formed in my gut, deeper than the nausea from the turbulence.
I needed to tell him how wrong I’d been to push him away. Sifting through our short-lived friendship and subsequent… whatever this was… there was no way the kind, thoughtful Ash Wilder I’d come to know would’ve shut me out.