Chapter 18
Rhys
The cold water hits me like a punishment.
I don't move.
Just stand there fully dressed, soaking, staring at the tile while everything in me refuses to settle. My cheek is throbbing. My pulse is going. The shower is cold and I can't even feel it.
Jamie Nash had his hand around my throat and I have not stopped thinking about it for one single second.
I reach over to turn the water off and stand in the dripping silence.
The bruise on my cheek pulses with my heartbeat.
I touch it once and wince. I peel my soaked shirt off and wring it out and drop it on the floor.
He gave me no choice.
Here's what I know about Jamie Nash. He's been wound tight since the second I transferred here.
Every time I got close he went rigid. Every time I pushed he snapped.
And I kept telling myself I knew what that was — I've seen it before, that tense get away from me energy — and I was right and I was completely wrong at the same time.
Because he didn't look at me like that in the shower block.
And he definitely didn't kiss me like that.
I wring out my shirt some more and walk out before I can finish that thought. I always leave an extra pair of clothes in my locker, but today is the one day I didn’t.
Phenomenal end to an amazing day.
The walk to my car is cold and miserable and I spend every step of it trying to talk myself down. I’ve done this before and I swore I was done doing it.
He put his hand on my throat — calculated, firm, furious — and his fingers trailed down my jaw and his face was close enough that I could feel the anger coming off him in waves and his voice was so low it was almost not a voice at all.
Don’t fuck with me, Rhys.
I walk faster to my car. Trying to outrun the mess in my head, all those feelings crashing together until the only thing left is anger.
When I finally make it home, I’m fuming.
Blake is on the couch. He sees me and immediately closes his laptop, look of concern written all over his face.
“Don’t fucking say anything,” I say, dripping water all over the living room.
He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but decides better, and opens the laptop back up.
I go to my room. I drop onto my bed in the dark with my wet jeans still on and stare at the ceiling and try — try — to be rational about this.
Jamie Nash kissed me back.
That's the thing I keep coming back to before anything else. Not the coffee shop. Not Fitch. Not the punch. Before all of that — in the locker room — he kissed me back.
And then he ran.
And then two days of nothing.
And then the coffee shop where he denied anything even happened. I touch my cheek carefully and feel the heat building under the skin.
I went to Fitch because I had to. Because the last time something like this happened and I said nothing for too long, it cost me everything. Because I swore after Eldridge I would never stay silent again. I did the right thing because he put his hands on me.
Except.
His hands were on me in the locker room too. Pulling me in. I press the back of my hand to my mouth and let that sit.
He is the single most infuriating person I have ever shared ice with and I transferred schools once already because I let a captain get into my head and I refuse, I absolutely refuse—
His thumb along my jaw.
The pulse jumping in my throat under his palm.
I close my eyes.
I stop fighting it.
Then I peel off the remainder of my wet clothes, drag myself to the bathroom, and turn the shower back on. Hot this time. Hot enough to stop my teeth from chattering, hot enough to fog the mirror, hot enough to maybe burn some sense back into me.
It doesn’t work. I stand under the spray with my head down and I’m furious the entire time.
The way he looked when I got there. That strung out, two-days-no-sleep look.
The way his voice cracked when he said I'm not gay — not angry when it came out.
Desperate. The sound of someone trying to convince themselves of something that stopped being true a long time ago.
And I pushed anyway. Said the word right to his face and didn't stop when I saw what it was doing to him.
I press my forehead against the cool tile.
I don’t feel bad he lost captain. I would have felt bad if he’d been kicked off the team entirely — because whatever else Jamie Nash is, nobody on that team loves hockey the way he does and I’m not a monster. But losing captain? He did that to himself.
I punch the tile and immediately regret it. Instead, I shake out my hand and stand there breathing steam.
The thing that keeps snagging — the thing I can’t get past no matter how many times I try — is that I’m the only one who does this to him. Everyone else gets the perfect captain. The composure. The controlled, measured, buttoned up version of Jamie Nash who has everything under wraps.
I get the vein in his temple. I get the feral look in his eyes. I get him completely undone. I get him kissing me back in an empty locker room with his hands shaking. I get him punching me because he can’t handle his own feelings.
And god help me, I still can’t stop thinking about it.
I know how this ends. I’ve been here before — a captain, a closed door, something that felt like more than it was. I left Eldridge because of it. I rebuilt because of it. I swore I was done doing this to myself.
The bathroom is so fogged I can barely see the wall in front of me. I close my eyes and think it through some more.
The thought sits heavy and confident in my chest. Jamie flinches when I get close.
Jamie hit me when I pushed too hard. And maybe I shouldn’t have.
Because whatever is underneath all that fury, whatever I think I saw in him — it doesn’t matter.
It can’t matter because I know better. Whatever he’s really fighting has nothing to do with me and he needs to stay the fuck away.
I stay under the water until it starts to run cold again. Then I turn it off, grab a towel, and stand in the foggy silence.
I came here to start over. I really need to start acting like it.