Chapter 42
Freddie
A phone rings somewhere far away. I stir awake to muffled words and a pounding headache, like my skull’s been cracked open with a meat cleaver.
My mouth might as well be stuffed with cotton balls and I feel like my insides have shriveled up like raisins.
I rack my brain, but I don’t remember getting home.
When I roll over to reach for my phone, my hand drags through unfamiliar ivory, cotton sheets, and my eyes fly open.
This isn’t my bed. I’m not at home. And I’m enveloped by a horrifyingly familiar scent of pine and mint. Memories resurface, slamming into me all at once—patchy recollections of leaving the party last night. Of Mattias driving me home. Of me asking to go home with him instead.
Then I remember the vomiting, and it suddenly makes sense why my stomach feels as though it’s shrunk to the size of a pea.
I glance down and find I’m no longer in my dress.
I’m wearing only a white T-shirt that doesn’t belong to me, and the thong I was wearing the night before.
Blood drains from my face. I glance at the door, my ruined stomach churning at what, or who, lies beyond.
Come on, Freddie. It’s just Falkenberg, I tell myself.
I end up grabbing a pillow and screaming into it anyway.
My parents are probably shitting themselves since I didn’t come home last night.
They’re probably blowing up my phone. I jump out of bed and find my purse on the floor with my phone inside, somehow still perfectly intact with not so much as a crack in the screen.
It’s seen worse nights. It is dead, however, and I’m not going to make myself at home, so I don’t dig around for his charger.
I need to leave. I need my clothes.
I must go out there—in not much more than half of my undies. Fuck my life.
Gritting my teeth, I muster all of my courage and force myself to turn the door handle before I have the time to second guess myself.
I’m standing at the end of a sunlit hallway.
Light pours in through skylight windows near the ceiling and the clean wood floor is cool beneath my bare feet.
The T-shirt hangs to my mid-thigh, just enough to keep me decent.
Nothing Falkenberg hasn’t seen before, I rationalize.
A TV is on somewhere downstairs and I tentatively follow the sound.
Feeling like Sarah Carter descending into the Appalachian Cave System in The Descent, I brace myself before going downstairs.
Falkenberg is sitting on the sofa, laptop in his lap and last week’s match against the Ravens on the TV.
He looks up when I enter. His attention remains respectfully on my face.
He’s wearing his typical black get-up, somehow looking a million times more put together than I feel despite being clad in loungewear.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I’ve been better,” I say bitterly. My attention lands on a folded stack of green fabric laying over one of the sofa cushions and my eyes widen in horror.
“I washed it.” He follows my gaze. “I hope that’s alright. The tag said it was fine to wash with cold water.”
“That wasn’t necess—”
“It was covered in vomit.”
My cheeks flush. Of course it was. He might have carried me home for all I know.
I can’t remember. I do remember that I threw myself at him in the hotel corridor, and he flushed my attempt down the drain like Georgie’s boat in Pennywise’s sewer.
I’m so humiliated. How long was I naked in front of him?
When will I learn to live my life without humiliating myself at every turn?
I frown. “I didn’t…tell me we didn’t…um—”
“I prefer women to be conscious, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Oh. Noble of you,” I say.
“I know. It was so difficult to resist you with all the vomit in your hair.”
My hands fly to my head, and I’m disgusted to find that it does feel hard and caked in places.
“You wanted to shower last night, but I was afraid you would fall asleep and drown, so I said no. I left a spare towel and a clean set of clothes on the chest at the end of the bed for you if you’d like to clean up now,” he says as if reading my mind. “There’s a toothbrush for you as well.”
His thoughtfulness grabs me by the throat.
I almost burst into tears and probably would have if I hadn’t been crying so much lately.
My tear ducts are probably dried out. I feel so filthy, so useless, so disappointed in myself.
I’ve been enough of a burden to Falkenberg already.
I don’t need him to clean up my emotional mess, too.
He must clock my fragility, because he says, “What is it?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “A shower sounds nice. Thank you.”
He nods. I trudge back upstairs without saying anything else.
It’s too generous. The intimacy of walking through his bedroom, stepping into his shower and turning on the water grates against my skin. I can’t believe I’ve put him in this position when I now fully understand what he stands to lose. Why he needs this team.
I turn up the heat and water pressure as high as it’ll go, and let the scalding water burn away my misery.
He’s left me a pair of joggers and a soft cable knit sweater that smells like him.
There’s a comfort in breathing in his scent that I don’t feel belongs to me, but I inhale it anyway.
I further violate his personal space by digging in his bathroom drawers for a comb so my hair doesn’t dry a tangled mess, and can’t help but notice how neat and tidy everything is.
His countertops are immaculate and the drawers are perfectly organized with everything in its place.
He wasn’t lying—there is a toothbrush still in its wrapping and a tube of toothpaste near the sink.
Brushing the lingering vomit out of my mouth feels like being born again.
I quickly comb out my hair, rip away the remnant strands that got caught in the teeth to put in the trash, and check to make sure my eyes don’t look too puffy before reemerging.
“Thank you,” I say when I return to the living area. He looks up at me, this time taking full stock of my clothing. There’s something like approval in the firm press of his flat mouth that makes my pulse tick up.
“Feeling better?”
I nod. “Thank you for everything, Mattias. I’m sorry for all of this. I didn’t mean to ruin your night.”
He closes his laptop. “Come here.”
I look at him, confused.
“Sit down,” he says, pointing at a seat next to him on the sofa when I don’t say anything.
His tone tells me there’s no arguing with him, so I don’t. I look at him, and I open my mouth to say something smart but there’s something so earnest, so serious in his eyes that I hold back.
“What your father said wasn’t fair.”
Tears threaten to spring from my eyes again—his words are a quick punch in the gut.
“My father doesn’t think I know anything about hockey,” I force myself to say. “Just because it’s never been part of my world before. He thinks I should consider myself lucky that he gave me this job. That I’m really lucky compared to most people.”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Listening to anything he says. He insulted you. I suspect it’s not the first time.”
My expression tells him everything he needs to know.
“It’s true that you wouldn’t have this job without the privilege of your family, just like I probably wouldn’t be in the NHL if my father hadn’t pushed me into hockey at an early age.
That doesn’t mean you can’t become worthy of the position and honor the opportunities you’re given.
You care a lot about the game, Freddie. I can see it.
You’ve worked extremely hard to understand the Monarchs, and we haven’t made it easy for you.
You are meticulous in your direction, and you don’t settle for subpar results.
He had no right to speak to you like that, least of all in front of other industry professionals.
Especially since I doubt he could tell the puck from his own asshole if he tried.
So please, stop making excuses for him, and don’t accept his bullshit. You’re better than that.”
The ramshackle dam in my mind breaks again.
His words burn me up like the Wicker Man effigy.
Falkenberg thinks I’m good at my job. He thinks I belong.
When did I become such a crybaby? More tears slide down my face.
Snot drips from my nose, and I look around for a tissue, resisting the urge to wipe it away on his sweater.
He stands and disappears from the room for a moment, and when he returns it’s with a tissue box in hand.
Because of course he’s the kind of man who has a tissue box readily available.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he says, looming over me. “I just can’t stand seeing him put you down. You don’t deserve it. What is it about him that makes you feel so worthless?”
He takes a seat next to me, so close that our shoulders touch.
I shrug helplessly. “It’s always been that way.
He’s always made sure I could never achieve anything without his approval or help, and I guess deep down, part of me feels like I owe him something.
I’ve never really worked for anything in my life, and all of this artist stuff, it feels like it’s going nowhere.
Like my life’s going nowhere. Maybe he’s right about me. ”
“Never worked for anything? Are you telling me you were born knowing the LA Monarchs player stats and starting line? Because if so, I need to have a discussion with the league.”
I snort, and with my snotty nose the sound is less than flattering. He doesn’t recoil.
“There are so many people who could do a better job.”
He shrugs. “Maybe. But they’re not the ones with the job. You can’t sit here and spin on hypotheticals.”
“I just feel like such a fraud,” I whisper. And he doesn’t even know the bulk of it. He doesn’t know what a liar I am.
“Hey,” he says, his tone demanding my attention. “Not a chance. And I say this as the man who fought for the first opportunity to call you a fraud. You’ve earned your place on this team.”
Hearing it from him makes a pride I shouldn’t feel swell in my chest. I bite down hard on my bottom lip, afraid of how badly I want to tell him about the sale of the team.
How I want to tell him I’m quitting—that I never meant for it to go this way.
I was never supposed to care about him, or the team, or what happened when they were inevitably sold to some other billionaire.
I was supposed to make my millions and wash my hands of it all.
“Fuck your father for implying otherwise. I hate the way he talks to you,” he adds when I say nothing.
He may as well have reached his hand down my throat and ripped my heart out of my body with the way he’s looking at me.
Because he’s looking at me like he sees me.
Mattias doesn’t say anything else, but he lifts his hand to my face, brushing over my damp cheek with his thumb.
His palm is a reprieve, and I allow myself just a moment to lean into it.
Then, he gets up, the warmth disappearing. “You’re probably starving.”
I don’t deny it.
“I’ll make you breakfast,” he says.