Chapter Ten
Alex pushed open the door to the lobby to find Nick sitting on one of the benches signing a Team USA jersey for one of the players’ dads.
He handed the sharpie and the jersey back to Kyle and smiled.
This wasn’t one of his breathtaking smiles, though, this was a tepid one, forced even. Something was wrong.
“Thanks, man,” Kyle said, holding out his hand.
Nick shook it. “You’re welcome.” His tone was even, no inflection whatsoever. Borderline robotic. Which was troubling. What the heck had happened?
She hurried over and sat next to Nick, pressing her arm against his. He was tense, his muscles clenched tight.
“Hey, Kyle.” She kept her voice bright but firm. “Could you excuse us for a minute?”
“Sure, sure.” Kyle nodded, looking just as dopey as ever. He spun around and walked away.
“Hey,” she said, leaning into Nick. He relaxed against her, the tension in him melting away. “Whatever he said, remember, he’s an idiot.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat. “Yeah, I kind of got that.” He didn’t sound like he did. He sounded almost defeated.
“What did he say to you?” She couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice.
“Nothing I didn’t already know.”
“And what’s that?”
He shrugged and fiddled with the laces on his skates, which were on the bench next to him. Something about the slump of his shoulders, the line of his jaw, made sadness scrape against the inside of her throat.
Especially when she compared him now to what he’d been like on the ice. He’d been happy, free of all the self-imposed expectations he’d balanced on his broad shoulders, even if it was just for a little while. The next time she saw Kyle she was going to wring his stupid, fat neck.
She nudged Nick with her shoulder. “Is this about the championship? Winning isn’t the only thing, you know?” She kept her voice soft, even, unsure of his reaction.
He closed his eyes for a second, and drew in a deep breath. The muscles in his chest and back pulled his t-shirt tight, and no, she shouldn’t be noticing because they were having a serious conversation.
“Alex…”
Her name was a mixture of warning and weariness, but she refused to back down.
“We always tell the kids that winning isn’t everything.
And that’s okay. The most important thing is that, if you love the game, you give it your all.
Trophy’s aren’t the only measure of how good someone is, or how much they love the game. ”
“It’s not the same thing.” He turned his head to look at her. The guardedness in his eyes sent a spiral of disappointment slicing through her. Where had the carefree Nick from earlier gone?
And why was she pushing this?
She didn’t know, other than she thought he needed to hear it. “Why? Because they’re kids?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what is it? Help me understand.”
He thrust a hand through his hair, making it stick up all cute and rumply.
“It’s hard to explain.” He stared out the window in front of them, his haunted gaze glued to the dark parking lot.
Silence wrapped around them, pulling tight enough to suffocate.
“It’s just, my whole life has been about me being the best, winning the championship.
It’s what I’ve trained for. What I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. ”
She swallowed down the response balanced on the tip of her tongue.
While she had no doubt he wanted to win, she suspected there was more to the story.
She remembered what his dad had been like, always pushing, pushing, pushing, barely letting Nick breathe.
It wasn’t a stretch to say his bordering-on-unhealthy obsession with winning had something to do with his complicated relationship with his dad.
Not that she had room to comment on screwed up parental relationships. She hadn’t spoken to her parents since they tossed her out of their house when she told them she was pregnant. Her hope was that she could at least break the cycle with Em. So far, she thought she was doing a pretty good job.
Way to bring down the mood, Alex. Great job.
Right. Maybe there was a way to bring back the lighthearted mood from earlier. “Well, I hope you’re not taking anything Kyle says to heart. As I said, he’s a fucking idiot.” She bumped him with her shoulder again.
He turned to her with wide eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched. A much more welcome sight than the disappointment and defeat from seconds ago. “I’ve never heard you swear before, let alone say fuck.”
She shrugged and raised her eyebrows, secretly happy it had worked. “I am a woman of many mysteries.”
He snorted. She laughed, her own tension melting away. Happy that some of the joy from earlier was back, she bent over and unlaced her skates. The release of pressure on her feet made her moan.
It was a small sound, barely more than a rumble in her throat, but he obviously heard it, because he wrapped his fingers around the seat of the bench. Keeping her chin tucked to her chest, she smiled.
She pulled off her skates and wiggled her toes. It felt so good, she sighed.
“You keep doing that and…” His voice was all rumbly. She glanced over at him. The heat in his gaze practically incinerated her on the spot. Had anyone ever looked at her like that before?
The answer to that was an unequivocal no.
She licked her suddenly dry lips. His gaze dropped to her mouth. He swallowed hard. The urge to lean over and press her lips to the strong column of his throat overwhelmed her. She swayed forward a bit and then caught herself.
Jeez, could she be any needier?
She pulled back, a sigh of regret trapped in her chest. They were out in public, with the prying eyes of the gossipy parents of her team all watching. The last thing she needed was the rumor mill to start churning. She and Nick had already given them enough to chatter about tonight.
He was already ready to go, so she quickly changed her shoes and packed her skates away in her bag. He stood and grabbed her bag in one hand and her sticks—she’d brought one of her spares for him to use tonight, even though it was too short for him—in the other and headed for the door.
She should protest, the whole she-was-perfectly-capable-argument one she was intimately familiar with.
But she didn’t say anything, because, although she’d never admit it to anyone, she liked being looked after.
It was a nice change. She’d spent so much of her life being the one to do the looking after.
It had stopped raining, although the air was still thick with moisture. And frigidly cold. She pulled her coat tighter around herself and followed him to her car. He stashed her stuff in the trunk. She climbed in the driver’s side.
The power locks worked this time—thank goodness—and he slid into the passenger seat. Her little Tercel seemed so much smaller when he was inside. He was just so broad and muscley.
Her mind drifted back to him on the ice, his powerful thighs working.
She really needed to stop thinking about those muscles, and the way they rippled and bunched when he moved.
Or the way his jeans cupped his tight butt to perfection.
She knew it was a cliché, but she’d bet anything you could bounce a quarter off of that sucker.
She turned over the key and the engine sputtered to life.
Yeah, she was totally going to have to get that checked out one of these days.
Not that there was much a mechanic could do.
The car was old. She should really think about getting something a little newer.
It was just difficult right now, what with opening the business and her student loan payments and the mortgage on the townhouse and making sure she put enough away for Em’s college fund.
The money Nick was paying her was nice, but she couldn’t go crazy. Her plan was to put a chunk on her student loans and hopefully decrease the monthly payment amount. She’d then be able to tuck a touch more away for Em’s future, and sink the rest back into the business.
She pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic.
The windows were fogging up again, so she snapped on the defrosters, lost in her own thoughts.
She knew what it was like to have to work and go to school.
Because she hadn’t been able to work full time and attend classes, she’d had to work two part time jobs while in school.
And even then, she could only take classes part time.
When she’d factored in the cost of childcare, they’d barely scraped by.
And she was not going back to that again. Ever. That feeling of insecurity, the fear that, at any moment, something would go wrong, and then everything would just fall apart. One wrong move and the whole carefully balanced house of cards would come crashing down.
“You okay?”
His question startled her and she glanced over at him. He was staring at her, but his features were shadowed, so she couldn’t get a read on him. The concern in his voice was very real, though.
She gave him a quick smile. Her grip on the wheel was so tight, her fingers ached. “Yeah, I’m good.” She relaxed her grip, took a deep breath. “Do you want to go grab something to eat? I know it’s a bit late, but—”
“I’m not hungry.” He reached over and brushed the back of his hand along the outside of her thigh. It was like he touched her with a live wire. Every nerve ending in her leg sparked to life. “At least not for food.” His voice was a deep, dirty rasp in the dark.
And, oh, that cheesy line should absolutely not turn her into a puddle of goo. But it did. It really did. At this point, the only thing keeping her upright was the seatbelt.
She opened her mouth to say something, but her mouth was so dry, she couldn’t get any words out. She swallowed and tried again. “Your hotel?”
He hesitated for just a fraction of a second. “Sure.”
Uh oh. “It’s not like… I mean, I would love for you to come back to my place. It’s just that… well, Em is there tonight, and I don’t really think—”