Unsteady

It isn’t unusual for Coach Harris to ask to meet with me on an off day; as captain, it is more or less part of my responsibilities.

What is unusual is the presence of my father seated to my right, stuffed into a chair now angled into the wall from the incessant tapping of his foot. I wasn’t anxious driving in, but now with nothing to distract my mind, I feed off his restlessness.

The door opens and Coach Harris comes in and circles the desk with a quick handshake to my father, the two of them familiar.

“Max.” Harris nods, sitting and resting his elbows heavily across the dark oak. “Rhys. Thanks for coming.”

Something is wrong.

An unsettled feeling begins to slither in my stomach, swirling like unease in the rapidly shrinking room.

Why is it so hot in here?

“I wanted to talk with you both privately about this before his first official practice.” Harris pauses and holds a calloused palm up, as if stopping me. “I know you’re aware Davidson left, so we are down a defenseman on the first line with Doherty.”

While the information isn’t news, no one discusses Davidson’s sudden drop. Most only leave the team early if they’re drafted—he wasn’t. Now, Holden is without his usual line match. I’d assumed an underclassman would replace him.

Coach Harris clears his throat, before setting his face firm in a way that only further pricks the hairs on the back of my neck.

“So, we picked up a transfer from Michigan. Toren Kane.”

A wave of nausea hits, the massive lump in my throat is the only thing holding back my breakfast from spewing.

Toren Kane.

Massive defenseman for Michigan’s hockey team. Top NHL prospect for three years running, but consistent fuck-ups have prevented him from making it onto a roster. The player who’d nearly killed me last spring.

And he wants me to play with him—not just on my team, but on my goddamn line?

“Are you fucking serious?”

It isn’t me that speaks, but my father, his voice a menacing whisper while his hands white-knuckle the arms of the chair.

“I know—”

“Are you out of your damn mind?” His voice is louder this time, rising over my coach’s. “You know what he did to my son, Harris. He’s a goddamn nightmare.”

Harris looks as if this is the last argument he wants to have, and I know the words coming before he says them.

“It was a legal hit, Max. He’s a talented de—”

“He’s a liability is what he is. His entire team agreed with us, wanted him suspended.”

“Max—”

“There’s a reason he didn’t go to the draft, remember? Multiple times. That scandal was everywhere!” My father’s voice rises again, the light edge of his accent sharper as he mixes Russian curses into his shouting.

“Max—”

“Thousands of kids will come after this one, better than him—but you need him? At what cost? We’re talking about my son, this team’s captain!”

Coach doesn’t raise his voice or attempt to calm my father down, only nodding and flickering his gaze from me to my father, and back again.

I stand abruptly, accidentally knocking my chair back. They both pause for a moment, but the room keeps shrinking until I’m convinced I’ll suffocate if I stay in here for one moment longer.

I stalk out, ignoring their calls to me in both English and Russian, taking the corner by the door too quickly and clipping my shoulder. The halls are empty, my head down even as the pounding starts to overtake it. I try to concentrate; to do the grounding techniques I’ve learned to stop the real panic attack before it starts.

My body slams into someone and I barely mutter an apology before heading off, my vision hazy and tunneling as I stumble forward.

A hand grabs my wrist hard, little fingernails nearly pressing into my skin and I almost moan because I’d know the feel of her skin, even if I were blind.

I spin easily, letting her back me into the cool blue painted brick behind me. She looks so powerful like this, never mind the fact that I’m physically towering her—she just seems so in control, like she can calm me with a quick press of her skin to mine.

I realize, as my gaze tracks across her face, that she’s speaking to me.

“Sorry.” I breathe, just as pathetic and shaky as always. Apparently this is to be my new normal. I’ve never been the aggressive one, always controlled on or off the ice, but now I want to put my fist into something.

I can’t help the self-deprecating chuckle that slips free.

God, no wonder she doesn’t want me. Pathetic.

“Rhys, what’s wrong?” she asks, in a way that makes me sure she’s asked it already, and I’m freaking her out acting like a psych patient in some catatonic state. “You’re shaking.”

“I—”

I’m not scared—not of Toren Kane—I’m pissed. I feel betrayed by someone who’s had my back since freshman year, someone that has never once treated me like I was just some mini clone of my father; that stuck by me through my injury. It doesn’t matter that I know my team will have my back, why would he bring him here?

My team screamed dirty hit, and so did his team, but the officials said it was clean. So he’s cleared—it doesn’t matter he might’ve cost me my career if I can’t get this shit under control, or that he stole everything from me; and he’s got the nerve to show up on my team, at my school?

I’m not thinking anymore because everything in my head is swirling around like water through a drain, leaving me with that eerie numbness leaking into my fingertips.

I reach for her, picking her up in my grip easily, while shucking her duffel bag off her shoulder. A second of worry presses into me that she could very well reject me again—and who would blame her—but she doesn’t. Her legs slip over my hips, tightening to hold herself up as I press my lips to hers. Once, twice, then biting down on her plush bottom lip and soothing the nip with my tongue.

“Rhys,” she half whispers, half moans. “Not here.”

It makes me pause for only a moment, because she’s right—we’re in the middle of a hallway in the ice complex during the day. My dad drove here with me, otherwise I’d be halfway home with her in the passenger seat, creating some reason in my head to keep her in my room, in my bed—anywhere as long as it’s in my space.

“I think that you’re mad at me for something, but I—”

“I was.” She sighs quickly. “I’m over it.”

She doesn’t really look over it, but I feel a little too waterlogged and dizzy to investigate.

“I need you,” bursts from my lips, because it’s all I need. I don’t care about being in the open, getting caught. But if she does, then it matters to me.

She leaps down from my arms and wraps a hand around my wrist, fingers pressing into my pulse as she drags me down the hall and through into the showers.

It’s empty, but she shoves me into the furthest stall, yanking the curtain to close us in with speed and lust bursting in her eyes, only feeding the monster in my veins.

I’ve never done anything like this, I’ve never been like Freddy or Holden with their puck bunny hook-ups. I’ve always been boyfriend material. The good guy all-star athlete, straight A student that she wants to take home to her parents. A serial monogamist.

Not anymore.

Another laugh escapes me while her soft little hands climb up my stomach and chest.

I broke more than my body that game, my mind is fucking splintered.

As she shoves into me, her hands climbing quickly beneath my shirt and slipping into my belt loops, I reel back.

Nope. I don’t need her in control—I need the control, something to grasp ahold of while I’m spinning out.

I flip our position, letting her shoulders hit the tile as I slip a hand to the soft skin of her inner thigh, slipping a finger along the line of her spandex shorts, pressing hard, demanding kisses to her mouth, her neck, the spot behind her ear.

“I know you like to have control,” I whisper, pressing my lips against the skin of her cheek. “But I’m not some boy you’re using to try and feel nothing—you’re going to feel everything with me.” My teeth clamp down on her earlobe, just a nip before I cut off her moan with another hard press of my mouth to hers.

She follows my lead easily, battling me for dominance even still.

I sink to my knees in front of her, pressing kisses to her stomach, covered in that same fucking thread bare Waterfell shirt that only feeds my fantasies of her in a shirt that looks almost identical, except with my name on the back.

Just before I can move further, her hand grasps my chin and tilts my head back.

“I’m exhausted,” she confesses, relaxing back against the tiles and looking down at me, as our breathing still stutters, hands roving each other’s bodies. “Rhys, I’ve been at practice for hours. I should shower—”

“Great. I’ve got enough energy for the both of us.” I turn my head into her palm and plant an open mouth kiss there. “Just relax and let me take care of you.”

I put my hands underneath the long length of her shirt, fingertips dancing along the top of her shorts.

“Tell me, Gray. What do you want?”

Her eyes flash, realizing for a moment that I will do whatever she tells me. “I want you to eat me out.”

A groan leaves my throat before I can stop it.

“Thank god,” I whisper, tugging on her shorts until they pool around her ankles. “Do you trust me?”

Her brow furrows, teeth letting go of their tight hold of her bottom lip. “To eat me out? I think so.” Her tone is still sassy, but filled with a distinct breathiness, lusty haze taking over her face.

A part of me—distinctly old Rhys—wants to stop at that answer, to force myself off her until she can say yes. Trust and sex are one and the same, especially for me.

“Please.”

I am gone for this girl.

“Okay, Sadie Gray,” I whisper, before reaching my hands to her knees and pulling them slightly apart.