21
This Seems Like Information I Shouldn’t Have
Kylie
Paige: Ok, so Koda just told me something.
Paige: And you cannot say anything! Promise me!
Paige: I can’t not tell you.
It’s Sunday morning, and I’m lying face down with one eye open and my phone six inches from my face.
Me: What?
Paige: Jules went to Nash’s last night.
Paige: After the party.
I read it, and it wakes me up a little, and then I read it again, and my heart is doing something completely unreasonable.
Because okay. Fine. Why would I care about that?
He’s a free man. He told me about her himself, used the words fuck buddies like they were nothing. That’s information I already had.
It’s not the Jules part. It’s the part where last night he watched me the whole night.
Every time I turned around, Paige confirmed it; she was sure something was going to happen, which is exactly why she’s telling me this now.
She’s being proven wrong. He stared at me for three hours, didn’t make a single move, and then went home and invited his fuck buddy over.
Annoying. That’s the word for it. It isn’t anything else.
Paige: Kylie?
Me: It’s whatever.
Paige: What?
Me: Cool. I don’t care.
Paige: Hm.
Me: Don’t hm me.
Tessa is already up at her desk with tea, dressed, writing in a notebook. She writes in it a lot, and I don’t think it’s homework.
“You got in late,” she says.
I sit up and rub my face. “Yeah. It was just a party. The whole hockey team was there.”
Her pen stops.
“It was fine,” I say. “Nothing happened. No fighting at all. Everybody stood around being weirdly polite to each other, and then we came home. I’m telling you that specifically because of—” I wave my hand. “I don’t want you sitting in here picturing something.”
Tessa looks at her page for a second. “I don’t care if there was one.”
And then something occurs to me. I sit up straighter. “Wait. Is that why you never leave this room?”
“What?”
“Because you know there are hockey players on this floor.”
Tessa’s face does absolutely nothing. “There are hockey players on this floor?”
“Tessa. Nash and Rafe are three doors down, Koda’s always coming down from five, and you’ve heard me talk about all of them for a month.”
She shakes her head. “I just like a private life.”
I watch her for a second. “Okay. I get it. I think.”
She doesn’t say anything else. Her lips press into a line, and she turns back to her notebook.
Paige and Kenzie summon me to breakfast, and Bianca’s somewhere with her cousin. I put on jeans and a sweatshirt and don’t touch my hair, because it still looks good from last night.
They’re at a table by the windows with their trays, and across from them are Koda and Nash.
Koda has a plate with a quantity of eggs on it that I don’t think anyone should be eating for breakfast. Nash is in a gray T-shirt with his hood down, eating, with his knuckles still healing and his face nearly back to normal except for a yellow patch along one cheekbone. No Rafe.
“Blondie,” Koda says. “Come sit.”
I sit next to Kenzie, which puts me directly across from Nash, who says “Hey,” and keeps eating.
“Hey, you.” I make it about ninety seconds, because my mouth has no filter. “So what was that last night?”
Nash looks up. “What was what?”
“The thing where you stared at me the whole night.”
Kenzie’s fork stops halfway to her mouth. Paige sits up so fast she jostles the table. Koda sets his fork down and looks over like he’s settling in for a show.
“What about it?” Nash says, like it was nothing.
“All. Night. And then you came over and asked me if I was ready to go.”
He shrugs. “I wasn’t going to leave without you. Or your friends, since we brought you.”
“Then why were you staring down the guy I was dancing with?”
Nash puts his fork down and gives me a lazy look, the same one he’s given me every time I’ve snapped at him since the night we met.
“Were you jealous?” I say, because he isn’t saying anything.
“I don’t get jealous,” he says easily, like it’s true. Maybe it is.
“Then what was it?”
“He kept touching you.”
Everybody’s eyes drop to their food.
“So?” I say. “We were dancing.”
“Yeah. Too fucking close.”
I lean forward. “And why do you care how close I’m dancing with someone? You don’t care about me.”
He looks at me. “How would you know what I care about?”
“Because you fucked Jules last night.”
Nash holds my eyes. Paige puts her face in her hands.
Kenzie whispers, “Oh my God.”
Koda looks thrilled.
“So,” I say. “Tell me again what it is you care about, if you’re just going to call your fuck buddy after staring at me all night.”
“Kylie,” Paige hisses.
I sip my coffee and almost laugh. Nash watches me the whole way.
“Would you rather I fucked you?” he says.
My heart squeezes, and I shut all the way up. Nothing happens in my brain at all, because I didn’t think of it like that. Paige freezes. The entire table stops breathing. Koda looks at Paige like he’s about to applaud.
Nash doesn’t look at any of them. He keeps his eyes on mine.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought. So the next time you wear something like you did last night, I’m going to stare at you and watch you all night to make sure nobody gets the wrong idea.”
“Okay.” I pick up my coffee, which I don’t want. “Right. The wrong idea.”
“Did you look in the mirror before you left Corvin?”
“Yeah, I fucking did.” I stop with the cup halfway up. “I can wear whatever the fuck I want, Nash.”
“Never said you couldn’t.”
“You’re implying it.”
“Wear whatever you want, Kylie. But keep wearing something where I can see your ass, and I’m going to make sure you’re safe all night.”
“Great,” I say. “I want my shirt back.”
“Then come and get it.”
I go hot in my face and my chest. I blink at the table and remember we aren’t alone. Everybody is very quiet.
“Sorry, guys,” I finally say, and they all tell me it’s fine at once, in their own ways, except Koda, who says, “Keep going. I like seeing Kennebeck squirm.”
Nash drinks his water, looking at me, and I narrow my eyes at him. He stands and picks up his tray. “Finish your breakfast,” he tells me, “and stop by when you’re done. For your shirt.”
He’s already in the hallway when I get up to the third floor, leaning on the wall between our doors with his ankles crossed, looking at his phone, with my shirt folded over his forearm.
“That was fast,” he says without looking up.
“I didn’t finish my breakfast.”
“Why?”
“Because you ruined it.”
“I told you to finish it and then come up.”
“Have you been waiting here this whole time?” I don’t wait for an answer. I hold out my hand. “Shirt.”
He pushes off the wall and hands it to me, and he doesn’t let go. I’ve got two fingers and a thumb on the edge of my own shirt, and he’s got the rest of it, and we stand in the middle of the hallway with an eleven-dollar palm tree shirt stretched between us.
“Nash,” I warn. “Let go of my shirt.”
He tugs it, not hard, just enough that I come forward half a step, because I’m not letting go either, and now there’s a foot between us instead of three. My heart jumps.
“Koda invited Paige to the rink,” I say, because it’s the first thing that arrives in my mouth. “To watch practice this afternoon. They’re getting pretty serious. He calls her every night. She knows everything about him.”
“I don’t know anything about it.” His hand hasn’t moved.
“Let go of my shirt.”
Then he says, “Come to practice with her. Two o’clock.”
I stop pulling. “Why?”
“Because I want you there.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you there. Same answer.”
I make myself breathe. “Then why don’t you invite Jules?”
His expression softens, and I hate that immediately. “Look who’s jealous now.”
I let go of the shirt. He folds it back over his arm like he’s holding it for me, which I guess he is, and I’m standing there with empty hands and a heart betraying me in every direction.
“I’m not jealous. There’s nothing to be jealous about. You can have whoever you want over. It’s not my—” I gesture at the hallway, at him, at the entire situation. “It’s not my business.”
Nash glances down the hall. Nobody’s out here. “I invited her over last night to tell her I’m done,” he says. “That’s what last night was. I’m not doing that anymore.”
I look up at him. “So you didn’t get your dick wet?”
Nash stares at me.
“That’s what I thought,” I say.
He holds up the shirt. “I’ll use this next time.”
“Use your hand, not my fucking shirt. What’s wrong with you?”
I grab for it, and he holds it over my head. “Come to my practice.”
I give up on the shirt. “Whatever, Nash.”
I walk into my room and I’m smiling before the door is all the way shut. Tessa is looking up at me from her desk.
“Did you hear any of that?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No.”
Liar.
A few of the guys are already on the ice when we walk in, and none of them look like Nash.
A shiver goes all the way through me, so I wrap my arms around myself and follow Paige and Kenzie into the stands.
There are maybe fifteen people spread out in twos and threes: a couple of parents, a girl in a Woodbury hoodie with her phone out.
We sit eight rows up behind the glass, and Kenzie hands me half the blanket she brought, which turns out to be the smartest thing anybody has ever done.
The rest of the team comes out in pairs and threes until there are twenty-something guys down there, and the building fills with noise from blades, pucks banging off the boards, and a whistle every ninety seconds from a guy in full gear who Paige says is the captain.
I can’t find Nash for the first few minutes.
They’re all in the same practice jerseys, half of them are the same size, and they’re at the far end.
Then they split into groups, and then I finally find him at the far circle.
I don’t understand a single thing that’s happening, and that’s not an exaggeration.
I don’t know what any of the drills are for or why they stop and start.
There’s a thing where two guys crouch over a dot on the ice and everything happens so fast that the puck is gone before I’ve seen anyone touch it.
I keep watching Nash, and he’s fast. Not the fastest guy out there, because there’s somebody on the other end who skates like something’s chasing him. But Nash goes from standing still to full speed in about two strides, every single time, like it’s nothing.
And he’s loud. I can hear him from eight rows up through a wall of glass, not yelling, calling, short flat words all the way up the ice, and people move when he does it.
Koda takes off before the puck is anywhere near him.
Rafe, who I’ve watched be a prick to everyone he’s ever met, does what Nash says instantly, without even turning his head.
They come up the ice together three times in twenty minutes, and all three times it ends with somebody scoring and somebody banging a stick on the boards.
The third time, Kenzie says, “Okay, that was cool,” out loud, and I say, “Mm,” because my mouth isn’t working right.
Somebody hits him along the boards right in front of us. I think it’s Declan. I hear the whole thing, glass and boards and body, and my stomach drops through the floor. Nash doesn’t fall. He takes it, turns, and keeps going.
Eventually, he comes off at the far end and stands at the bench with his helmet off.
His hair is soaked and pushed back off his forehead and his face is red.
He’s got one glove tucked under his arm while he shoves his hair out of his eyes with the back of his other hand, saying something to the captain with his whole jaw, pointing down the ice with his stick without looking.
Then he puts the helmet back on, and my heart goes down with it.
He’s back on the ice, and my heart is racing.
I fold my fingers together before they can start fidgeting.
My stomach is going like something bad is happening, and I think something bad is happening to me.
I never felt this way watching Evan. What I had with Evan grew out of attention.
I never watched him with this unexplainable weight sitting on my chest thinking, what the hell am I going to do?
That’s what’s happening right now. Then I remember breakfast, and then the hallway, and I go hot all over.
I cross my legs and throw the blanket off.
Kenzie looks at me and hands more of the blanket to Paige.
“It’s freezing in here,” she mutters.
I look down at the ice, and Nash is looking up at me. The heat goes all the way through me, and I know I’m in deep shit.
When it’s done, we wait by the doors, because Koda told Paige to.
The guys come out with wet hair and bags over their shoulders and faces still red from the cold.
Nash comes out last, in a hoodie and joggers with his hair pushed back and still wet.
He stops in front of me and looks me up and down once. “You’re not cold?”
I shake my head, the same heat filling me as I look up at him. “No.” How could I be?
“What’d you think?” he asks as we start walking.
“Like I was held here against my will and forced to watch men skate in circles for two hours, and the only interesting part was when Declan hit you into the wall.”
Something moves at the corner of his mouth. “You liked that.”
“I liked that he didn’t knock you over,” I say. “I didn’t like that you didn’t do it back.”
Nash looks at me for a second longer than he needs to.
I follow him out with Paige’s arm hooked through mine, and she doesn’t say one word the whole way across the parking lot. She squeezes my elbow every four steps, and I keep not looking at her.