Unspeakable (Ohio Rusties #4)

Chapter 1 Emma

ONE

EMMA

JANUARY

Professional thorn-in-my-side Harlan Royce stood at the counter of my coffee shop, telling my beloved baristas how to do their jobs.

“You have to add the water first, then the espresso shot, then the ice. Otherwise, it shocks the espresso and makes it taste metallic.”

Typical.

But it was some comfort that I wasn’t the only person he told what to do.

I shouldn’t have even been in there. I was over an hour late to my job as the Ohio Rusties’ team chef.

My seventeen-year-old son, Liam, woke up with a surprise double ear infection, and though he was old enough to take himself to the doctor, the mom in me saw my little baby boy suffering and decided I had to take him myself.

My sous chef, Miguel, would never make a peep about it, and I was confident he wouldn’t hold a grudge, but I still felt bad leaving him hanging for a breakfast service. I’d get him his favorite latte to make up for my absence.

Royce was two customers ahead of me, and though it was just a matter of time before I had to put up with his nonsense, I needed to delay the inevitable.

I picked up a discarded section of the newspaper from a nearby table and pretended to be engrossed in it.

Oldest trick in the book, but an effective one.

I glanced down to make sure my parka was zipped, thus covering my chef’s coat.

“Hey, Em!” Willa, my favorite barista, chirped. “Cappuccino?”

I made a shushing motion and held the newspaper next to my face. I tilted my head toward Royce. “Trying to lay low,” I said through tight lips.

A knowing look came over her face. “Ah. Coworker?”

“And pain in my ass,” I said. “Does he always do that with the Americano instructions?”

She chuckled. “Every time.”

I shook my head. “He’s such a pill.” We shared a quiet laugh. “But yes, cappuccino. And a vanilla latte with an extra shot for Miguel.”

“You got it.”

I tapped my card and tried to figure out where I could stand and not have to talk to Royce. It was always something with him. This could have used paprika or everybody uses Panko but you can get a more satisfying crust with cornmeal or just let me make it for myself.

The worst combination of things: a know-it-all, a food snob, and an entitled prick.

To everyone else, he was the hometown boy. Born and raised in upper-crust Columbus, he was the Rusties’ pride and joy. That was even more true now that he was playing so well.

But to me, he was the guy at work who loved to get a rise out of me.

It would all be easier if he was ugly, but he wasn’t. To add insult to injury, Harlan Royce had the gall to be attractive.

Jet black hair. Dark eyes. A stupid, smug little mustache. A slutty-ass gold chain. My molars ached from the fury it brought me.

But in my coffee shop, I wasn’t on the clock. I didn’t owe him shit. Before he caught sight of me, he answered his phone.

Saved by the bell.

The barista on the machine plopped three cups on the counter and shot me a wink before calling out, “Harlan.”

Royce scooped his cup off the counter and gave the crew a nod, tucking his phone into his ear while he put a straw into his iced Americano—because apparently he was too highly evolved for cold brew.

He straightened, tossed his falls-perfectly-every-time hockey hair, and slipped on a beanie from his pocket before heading to the exit.

Once he hit the door, I was summoned. “Here you go, Em. Tell Miguel hi for us.”

“I will. Thanks for the coverup,” I said. “Hope you guys have a good one.”

“You too!”

Before I could pick up my drinks, my phone chimed.

MIGUEL

Where are the extra eggs

Shit, I really needed to get there. I fired off a response, grabbed the drinks, and speedwalked out of the café. Contact with Royce was now inevitable if I wanted to get into work faster.

Much like everything else he did, he wasn’t going to make it easy for me to hide from him.

He zig-zagged across the sidewalk, bouncing between the curb and the building to our left.

Snow flurries scattered around us and swirled in frosty clumps in the middle of the road.

I was close enough to hear his phone call now.

“You can’t keep calling me like this.”

My cappuccino sloshed out the sip spout, and I bent to drink some off the top.

“I told you it was over. I gave you time to get your stuff. I had a right to change the locks.”

If he had to keep me from getting to work, at least he was entertaining me.

“If I find anything, I’ll mail it to you.” He paused to listen. “Maybe you should have thought about that when you were having me followed!”

Goddamn. I hadn’t seen his girlfriend at the last team event, but didn’t think much of it. If anything, he’d been playing better since November. I just assumed they were trying something new with the training staff.

I peered around to see if I could jaywalk and get around him on the other side of the street. No such luck. Sidewalk closed for the ever-present construction.

The corner was coming up. While we waited for the walk light, I could blast out in front of him.

But Royce didn’t stop at the corner. He stepped out into the street without a glance in either direction. Did his mother not drill looking both ways into his head? He was too absorbed in his phone call. There was no way he saw the bus barreling toward him.

“Royce?”

He didn’t hear me. If I didn’t move now, he was going to get hit by a bus. Hate him or not, I didn’t want him to die. I couldn’t live with myself if he got hurt and I didn’t do anything to stop it.

I ran full tilt into the street, trying to catch up to him. “ROYCE!”

He whipped around to see who was calling his name. The bus slammed on the brakes and laid on the horn, but it was too late. I charged and jumped, sailing through the air, I imagined, like a superhero. My arms wrapped around his tall figure at the waist and I tugged hard, tackling him to the curb.

The signature clatter of a dropped phone and the hollow thunk of spilled drinks registered as we too hit the ground. My momentum placed me on the bottom of our two-person dogpile. My bones crunched against the pavement and I vaguely wondered if this was how NFL players felt.

No, this couldn’t be how NFL players felt. NFL players had the benefit of padding and grass. Astroturf at a minimum. I had a brick sidewalk and a stone curb that bit into my spine on the fall. My winter coat served as my only padding.

Royce’s phone and our poor, barely consumed coffees lay crushed in the street as he sat up, a stark reminder of what could have been.

“Oh my god.” I always heard him goofing off with his teammates or giving me hell about something or another, but here, he sounded raspy, rattled.

Rightfully so. He almost got hit by a bus.

We almost got hit by a bus, but I saved him.

His beanie was knocked askew, his jet black hair sticking out haphazardly beneath it.

His pupils were tiny dots when he whirled to look at me. “Holy shit. Chef. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. In truth, my back hurt like a bitch from where it smashed against the curb with probably a two hundred pound man on top of me.

I sat up slowly, sitting like a forgotten doll with my legs out in a V-shape.

At least I could feel my legs, and beyond the burn of a scrape and an impending bruise, I didn’t feel like I had some major injury.

Royce clutched my upper arms, his head dipping to look into my eyes.

I never took the time to really look at him.

His eyes were gorgeous. I’d previously thought they were brown, but up close like this, I could see they were a marbled midnight blue.

The concern in them now made me think I must be more hurt than I thought.

On instinct, I touched his cheek, checking his face like it would tell me if he was injured.

Finding nothing, I blurted out my first thought.

“Didn’t your mom teach you to look both ways?”

Royce coughed out a laugh and a genuine, wide smile broke over his face.

I laughed too. We were alive. What started as a humdrum day became a brush with death that left me tangled on the ground with this man.

Harlan and I did not make a habit of laughing together, always one of us laughing while the other was peeved.

A constant back and forth, antagonizing each other—or at least, him antagonizing me, and me not accepting his bullshit.

“My god, Emma.”

Emma. He usually called me Chef. Nothing but Chef. My stomach swooped at the use of my name, the way his eyes flashed over my face like he was absorbing every detail, the way he had my upper arms in his massive hands.

On a mix of a sob and a laugh, we fell into a hug. My stomach tightened further when he pressed his cheek to mine and cupped the back of my head.

Harlan Royce was normally a walking snark machine, forever with his upper lip curled and ready to deliver some annoying criticism or joke. Here, in the street in front of the arena, he was tender, kind even. It was disorienting. Or maybe that was the potential head trauma.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“I couldn’t let you die,” I said.

“You almost died for me. You must have only had a second to react.” We sat back, but he kept his hands on my biceps. We looked at the wreckage in the street: his phone, our coffees pathetically on their sides, one rolling in the wind. “I feel so stupid.”

I tried to shrug, but he had too firm of a grip on me, like I was his mooring in a stormy sea. “I’m sure you’ll save someone someday. Pay it forward.”

With shaking hands and a tear in his eye, his fingers touched my cheek, pausing before he tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. His breathing was fast, or was that mine? And why was he looking at my lips like they might be his last meal?

For a moment, I was under his spell. Maybe all that stuff about trauma bonding was true. I felt drawn to him, like we existed in this weird snowglobe where it was just the two of us, sealed in and bound together.

He inched toward me, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. His name came out as a choked sigh. “Harlan.”

That snapped me out of it. I was saying his name.

His first name. It surprised me that any part of my brain thought to call him by his first name.

Except that one time I had a sex dream about him and woke up grinding a pillow.

But he was essentially my bully, right? Everyone has a sex dream about their bully every once in a while.

Bully’s a strong word. He was just my annoyer. Annoyist.

This was not a sex dream. The adrenaline was wearing off. I was sitting on the frosty-cold curb about to kiss a guy ten plus years my junior who made it his business to irritate me.

What the hell was happening?

I pressed a hand to his chest.

“I’m late for work,” I rushed out. I tried to stand but stumbled. Hands the size of grizzly paws slipped under my arms to steady me. Were grizzly paws even that big?

“Careful,” he said. “Maybe I should walk with you.”

He patted me in various places, inspecting me for damage.

I realized how rarely the players touched me, and well, that was probably with good reason.

Beats the alternative. Working for the Rusties was like working for a nunnery compared to the very lax kitchens I’d worked in.

Basic sexual harassment was a love language in the service industry.

If a line cook didn’t tell me how beautiful I was at least twice per shift, I started to consider changing my skincare regimen.

But now, one of the players was touching me, and it felt a thousand times more intimate than any passing line cook’s compliments.

I stifled a pained groan and my legs shook as I took a step. Whatever moment happened between us was officially over. The moment only even happened because he made a careless mistake.

There was no way in hell that Harlan Royce wanted me.

I stepped away from him, straightened my clothes, and dusted off my pants. The broken skin on my back howled at me, but the show had to go on. “No. Thank you. I need to go help Miguel. Um. See ya in there!”

I walked away, hoping he couldn’t see me limp.