Chapter 43
Gray
When Ash doesn’t come up to the locker room after practice two days later, I find him down on the ice still shooting pucks. I watch him for a few minutes as he uses his stick to guide the puck through a series of obstacles he’s set up before he shoots it at the net. He makes every shot.
Far from making him happy, every shot he nets only seems to anger him more. I expect him to start hitting his stick on the ice or engaging in some other show of temper, but he doesn’t. His swearing reaches me where I stand in the bench box, but he doesn’t act out.
Finally, he looks up and notices me. He skates over, and we look at each other. I’ve never felt more helpless in my life. I want so badly to find a way to fix this issue for him, but so far we haven’t found an intervention that works for more than a game or two.
I open my mouth to apologize for not finding the solution he needs, but before I can do so, he takes his helmet off, leans over, and lays his forehead on my shoulder. He wraps his arms around my waist, and his gloves dig into me lightly.
He’s sweaty and smelly, and now I will be too, but I don’t hesitate to wrap my arms around the top of his shoulders and thread my fingers through his wet hair.
“Are you okay?” I ask softly.
“I can do it,” he says. “I can make goals in my sleep if I’m not thinking about it. The skills are still there, the muscle memory, but the second I let my brain get involved…” He trails off, shaking his head against my shoulder, and I hold him tighter.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t seem to be helping much.”
He shakes his head again. “It’s not your fault. You were honest from the start that you didn’t know if you could do anything. No one can fault you for that.”
“Still, at this point I feel like I’m just getting paid to have sex with you,” I say. “I think there’s a word for that.”
He lifts his head, looking serious. “Are you saying you wouldn’t let me fuck you if Kaladin stopped paying you?”
My mouth drops open, and my jaw works as I search for the right way to respond to his misinterpretation of my words. I haven’t found it when his face cracks into a grin, and I realize he’s kidding. It’s a good thing I’m book smart, because I’m dumb as a stump when it comes to relationships.
He looks at my shoulder. “I got you all sweaty.”
I look down as well to see the wet spot on my shirt where his forehead rested. I shrug. “I’ll just make you do my laundry.”
He chuckles. “I wonder if we have any skates in your size. You should come out and skate with me.”
I hold up a hand and shake my head. “Oh no. I have no intention of re-enacting those cheesy scenes from movies where the guy pulls the woman out onto the ice and tries to help her skate, but she falls, and he catches her, and it’s all romantic. Nope. Not my idea of fun.”
He shrugs and opens the door to the bench area before he steps in.
“How about the scene where the hockey player picks up the woman and skates really fast around the ice with her in his arms?” he asks as he comes toward me.
I frown at him until it clicks into place what he wants to do. “Ash, no!” I yell as he scoops me up in his arms and turns to head back out onto the ice.
“Hold on tight,” he says.
“Sweet Jesus, please don’t drop me,” I say as I wrap my arms around his neck in a death hold, ignoring the squish of sweat against my skin.
“Never,” he says as he picks up speed and we swing around the back of the goal he was shooting at.
I feel his legs pump as he sprints down the straightaway, and I tuck my head against his shoulder, trying to pull my body in tight so my feet won’t hit the plexiglass.
“I’ve got you,” he says as we swing around the back of the other goal, and he puts on another burst of speed.
I know we’re not even going as fast as we could if he used his arms to help him skate, but we’re still going wickedly fast, or at least it feels that way. There’s a mix of elation and abject terror coursing through my body right now, and I just hold on as tight as I can.
Instead of swinging around the goal again, he comes to a stop in front of it, spraying shaved ice into the net, and then we’re skating backward. It’s not nearly as fast, and I untuck my head and look over his shoulder so I can be his eyes, since he’s not looking where he’s going.
“Watch the goal,” I say as we approach the far side again.
“Admit it, that was fun,” he says, glancing back only a second to see where the goal is before he skates backward around it, then cuts across the ice toward the bench again.
Back at the side, he lifts me over the boards and sets me on my feet, then climbs over them himself. I sway a bit as I try to reacclimate to not shooting around at Mach 6 on the ice.
I look up at Ash and realize he’s waiting for an answer.
“It was fun, in an ‘I almost wet myself’ kind of way,” I tell him.
He chuckles and ushers me into the tunnel toward the locker room.
“I’ll meet you in the shower,” Ash says when we get there. “It takes a while to get all this gear off.”
“I’ll wait until we get home to shower,” I tell him. It hasn’t taken me long to call his place ‘home.’
He sits down on the bench and pulls his gloves off. “But I want to fuck you in the shower,” he says.
The muscles between my legs tighten, but I ignore them. “I suspected as much,” I say, “but I’m not taking the chance that one of the coaches or cleaning staff is still hanging around and will walk in on us.”
He pulls off his shirt. “The risk of getting caught is part of the fun.”
“Another time,” I say. “My legs are already wobbly from our little free skate. I’m not sure I can handle the thrill of possibly getting caught having shower sex so soon.”
He sighs and pulls me forward by my hips so I’m standing between his legs. “Fair enough,” he says, “but you understand that if you deny me now, that’s only going to carry over to what I do to you when we get home, right?”
My stomach flips. “Carry over how?”
He shrugs. “Maybe I’ll tie your wrists to your ankles and fuck your ass tonight,” he says.
I let out a long breath. I love how dirty he is, and I won’t let myself think about why I love it so much.
“If that’s the price I pay, so be it,” I manage.
He grins at me. “Alright then. As long as you’re willing to accept the consequences, we’ll wait until we get home. Stay here, and I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“I’ll wait out in the hall,” I say. “No offense, but this locker room smells like twenty sweaty men.”
He chuckles. “Not gonna argue with you about that.”
I head for the door. I briefly consider staying long enough to finish watching him undress, but if I see Ash naked, all my resolve about shower sex will go out the window.
I slip out into the cool, less-pungent air of the hall and take a deep breath. If people only knew the reality of how those locker rooms smell.
The sound of cart wheels on vinyl flooring draws my attention. One of the custodial staff is pushing a large laundry bin down the hall, and I feel a huge sense of relief at turning down shower sex. This guy almost certainly would’ve walked in on us.
I lean against the opposite wall to give him plenty of room to get by me or to go into the locker room, but he stops in front of me.
I’m lost in thought, so it takes me a second to realize he’s just standing there. I look up, ready to apologize if I’m in his way, but the words freeze on my tongue. I know this guy from somewhere, but I blank on where. Maybe he’s one of Ash’s guys I’ve seen following me.
Then it clicks into place.
“Barry?” I ask, finally recognizing ManOfYourDreams89, the guy with whom I had my first InSync date. The one who tried to pick me up at home and who wanted to order the same thing I did.
“I didn’t know you worked here,” I say. I frown at his expression, which looks annoyed, even angry.
“Yeah, for several months now,” he says. “Not that you’d notice.”
I frown deeper. “When would I have seen you?”
He huffs a laugh. “I walked right between you and that hockey player when the two of you were having an argument in the hall one day,” he says. “He grabbed you and shoved you into the equipment room.”
I open my mouth to explain, but he cuts me off.
“I figured you’d be mad and come stalking out, but no.” He shakes his head. “For some reason, you women seem to like the big neanderthal assholes that push you around.”
I shake my own head, but he starts talking again before I can formulate an explanation.
“You all say you want a gentleman, someone who treats you right,” he says, and I can hear his anger now. “But when you actually get someone like that, you reject them.”
I know he’s talking about himself. “Barry, it’s more complicated-”
“It’s really not,” he interrupts. “But if that’s what you want, a guy who’s going to be aggressive, even violent with you, then fine. That’s what you’ll get.”
He pulls something out of his pocket, and it takes me half a second too long to realize it’s a taser.
I try to step back from him, but he’s too quick, and the scream that works up my throat is cut off as searing hot pain hits me in the chest like a baseball bat.
Every one of my muscles convulses like I’m having a full-body cramp, and my teeth clack together as my jaw tenses shut.
The agony goes on for what feels like an eternity, but what’s likely only seconds. I feel myself fall, and there’s a sharp pain at the back of my head before everything goes dark.