11. Ellie
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELLIE
I’d been gripping the steering wheel hard enough to leave dents since I’d parked fifteen minutes ago, staring at my condo’s garage door without seeing it.
The professional mask I’d kept locked in place while telling Coach Beecham his starting goalie was out for at least the first two playoff games cracked.
I screamed, a full-throated, primal sound that came from below my ribs. The windows fogged. My throat burned. I hit the steering wheel with both palms until my hands stung and the horn gave a pathetic bleat.
The anger wasn’t just about today. It was the picnic, and every condescending smile from an attending physician who’d seen only half my solid patient outcomes.
Every “are you sure?” and “let me just double-check that.” I’d spent months telling myself I was fine, only now discovering I’d been wrong about all of it.
He hadn’t turned me down because of my weight. That was on me. I’d personalized his rejection, a natural thing. He wouldn’t have been the first.
I sat in my driveway breathing hard, mascara running down my cheeks before I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror. I looked like I’d been in a fight. Red-faced, blotchy, my carefully applied eyeliner smudged into something that belonged in a horror movie.
I forced myself to breathe. Four counts in, hold, four counts out. The same technique I taught patients, though I usually didn’t have to coach them while mascara ran down their faces.
In. Hold. Out.
Again.
Crim was expecting me at his place for dinner at 6:30, and it was 5:52 already. I had less than an hour to stop looking like I wanted to murder someone.
I grabbed my bag and went inside.
After patting Marzipan, who gave me her usual resting bitch face, I stomped upstairs and showered, dressing in something comfy and casual. Then I got back into my car and drove to my brother’s townhouse.
I climbed his front steps at 6:32, just as he swung the door open.
Crim took one look at my face. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Work stuff.”
“El.” He stepped back and urged me to enter. “I’ve known you since you were eight. Try again.”
I walked past him into the entryway. His townhouse was nice, all high ceilings and pale gray walls, full of touches that screamed permanent residence.
Photos of his parents lined the hallway.
Me and him in the orc kingdom. After we’d all moved to the surface.
At my dissertation defense, me grinning at the camera. Team photos from different seasons.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“How’s your shoulder?” I asked. “I noticed you favoring it during practice.”
Like any athlete, he loved talking about his body.
“It’s fine. I think I slept on it wrong.” I followed him into his kitchen made up of shiny countertops and equally shiny appliances. He’d gone for a modern look when it was built, and I always felt at home here. “I’m making khesva.”
Orc comfort food. Braised meat in a thick, spicy sauce, a root that tasted a bit like a potato, and vegetables that had been cooking long enough to turn soft.
A meal that took hours to make and tasted like someone cared.
His parents used to make it every Friday when I first moved in, back when everything felt foreign and I was still figuring out how to exist in a world without my mom and dad.
They’d been archaeologists, exploring the orc kingdom. They’d died during a mudslide.
Crim wore an apron that said, Kiss the Orc Cook in bold letters. One of his teammates had given it to him as a joke three Christmases ago, but he loved it.
Music played low in the background, an orc instrumental I loved.
I dropped onto a stool at the kitchen island. He poured me wine without asking, a generous glass.
“I’m going to kiss you,” I said as he handed it to me with a crooked smile.
“Please don’t.”
We both laughed, though mine came out a little forced. To him, I’d always been his younger sister. And to me, he was the hero I’d looked up to and the brother I’d adore for the rest of my days.
“So tell me about the new job,” he said, stirring the stew on the stove. “Do you like it?”
“I do. It’s great. Challenging.”
We fell into an easy rhythm. Him cooking, me sipping my wine.
I picked on him too, but that came with the sibling territory.
“You’re burning the bread,” I said, sniffing the air. My belly rumbled. I might be irritated but that didn’t mean I wasn’t hungry.
“I’m letting it get nice and golden.”
“That’s what people say when they’re burning bread.”
He grinned over his shoulder. “Are you going to complain or are you going to eat?”
“Both. Obviously.”
He paused, grabbing the bread from the oven with thick oven mitts, dumping the round loaf out onto a cutting board. “Brashe has been weird lately.”
I nearly choked on my wine, coughing after taking a swallow.
Crim cut thick chunks of bread and placed them in a basket, hissing at the hot temperature. “More than usual, I mean. He’s been distracted, but that’s not the only thing. He’s been full of questions for, oh, at least ten months.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, acting casual.
He shrugged. “About you, mostly.”
“No.”
“Yes. Lately, he’s been asking how you’re settling in. If you like the team. If you’re seeing anyone.”
I lost all focus.
“Prior to you moving to the area, he wanted to know how your fellowship was going. If your dissertation would be published.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure if he wanted to read it or what.”
Crim served the stew in big bowls and brought it and the basket of bread to the dining room table in the adjoining room. I followed, taking a seat, admiring the lit candles and the vase with flowers in the center.
“Eat,” he said, sitting to my right.
The khesva smelled amazing and was thick with chunks of meat that fell apart at the touch of my spoon. The yeasty scent of the bread made my belly rumble.
Crim slid the butter dish closer.
“How did you reply to Brashe’s questions?”
He stirred his stew with his spoon. “I told him to leave you alone.”
My butter knife clattered against the plate. “You did what?”
His face scrunched, and he sniffed. “I saw what happened at the picnic. He was an ass. I was highly tempted to lay him out flat during our next practice.”
“Jeez, Crim.”
“Yeah, that would be funny now, right? You’d have to rehab him from any injury I might give him.” He smirked. “I’ve also been tempted to trip him more than once.”
“Don’t do that either.”
“The coach wouldn’t like it.”
“And that’s the only reason you haven’t?”
His feral grin returned. “I’d take a lot of satisfaction from doing it, but I doubt he’d understand. I did tell him if he ever pulled something like that again, we’d have a problem.”
My lips had gone numb, and I could feel my rising fury blazing in my face. “I can’t believe you talked to him about me.” My sentence ended on a screech.
“El—”
“No El about it. You talked to him as if I was a problem you needed to manage.”
“I was protecting you.”
“From making my own choices?” My voice climbed even higher in pitch. “Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Like I’m some helpless little human who can’t handle her own life.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“But that’s what you did. You went behind my back and told one of your teammates to stay away from me like I’m your property.” The wine glass trembled in my hand. I set it down before I threw it. “I’m not fourteen anymore, Crim. I don’t need you fighting my battles.”
His jaw worked. For a long moment, he just stared at his stew.
“You’re right,” he said. “I was wrong.”
“Yeah. You were.”
He looked up, his expression raw. “I saw the way you looked when you walked away from him, and I wanted to break him for that. I still do.”
The fight drained out of me. How could I remain angry when I understood? He’d been protecting the fourteen-year-old girl who’d lost everything. The problem was, I wasn’t her anymore.
“I can protect myself. Very well, in fact.”
“Not as well as an orc can.”
“I’ll concede that you’re bigger than me.” I brandished my fist in the air. “But you taught me how to use this.”
“That I did, but you know how orcs are.”
Too well. “Males think they need to protect females from themselves, you mean. I’ll remind you that women are not the weaker sex.”
“I’d never say you were.”
“Good,” I snapped.
“Good,” he growled right back.
We both grinned, but while it lessened my irritation a touch, I still couldn’t believe he’d actually pulled the protective older brother role with one of his teammates.
“He didn’t hurt me,” I said.
“Not from where I was sitting.”
My shoulders drooped. “Only a little, but I deserved it.”
“And what does that mean?”
“You know. I’m…me. I’m used to rejection.”
Crim went very still. “No way.”
“I mean, it’s fine. I’m comfortable in my own skin.
But when someone looks at me like Brashe did at that picnic…
” I shrugged, aiming for casual and landing somewhere closer to pathetic.
“I wondered if maybe everyone else is right. That confidence is just the lie I told myself before the world corrected me.”
“Who taught you that?”
I took a drink of wine instead of answering.
He started to rise from his chair. “Who do I need to kill?”
“No one. Jeez.” I laid my hand on his arm, urging him to sit again. To eat. “I haven’t been rejected in years.”
His growl rose again, throatier this time. “I do need to kill someone.”
“I’m over it.” Though the sting still lingered. I’d always been comfortable in my skin, and yeah, some would say I could stand to lose some weight, but there were more important things in life than being skinny.
“Say the word, and they’re dead meat.”
Damn, but I loved my big brother. “Deal.”
We ate a few bites.
“This is amazing,” I said, dipping my bread in the broth and eating some more.
“Of course it is.”
“Your ego has continued to grow while I was away, I see.”
He reeled back in his chair, pretending to be offended. “Not me.”
“I mean, I get it. You’ve been a star hockey player since you were eight.”
“Five, actually.”
I rolled my eyes. “Alright, five.”