Page 8

Harrison

W hen I wake up and hear the consistent vibration of my phone on my bedside table, I almost fool myself into thinking it could be Lovie, changing her mind about the program.

It’s been a month since Lovelace Waters joined the Blue Crabs team, and she’s come in like a storm.

Nothing is good enough for her, and it means she picks apart every single thing I do.

Drills before scrimmage? Let’s test and see which provides the best practice performance. What about pre-practice affirmations? What about the warm-ups each player does—are they completely customized to the guy?

Of course not. Everyone warms up together. That’s how we’ve always done it—that’s how every hockey team on the planet does it, as far as I know. But according to Lovie Waters, it’s high time that changed.

Everything is about being efficient, even as most of the stuff she wants us to do wastes time. Lovie and I butt heads at every turn.

So maybe it’s stupid, wishful thinking that I conjure her face first when hearing the vibration of my phone. And maybe it’s just the fact that not a night goes by without me thinking about what it would be like to get her in my bed again.

When I finally roll over and pick up my phone, blinking groggily at it, it’s not Lovie Waters I see, but instead Eliza Greene.

Eliza Green, once Eliza Clark.

My stomach turns sour like it does any time I have to think about her new last name, or when I have the misfortune of seeing a friend of a friend posting pictures of them doing something together. Or when I think about her, Brad, and the entire fucked up situation.

I want nothing to do with her, and my first instinct is to ignore the call. But it is only six in the morning, and if she’s calling, it must be for something important.

As much as I hate her fucking guts for what she did to me, I can’t ignore it.

What if she’s sick or dying? What if she was in a car accident, and this is Brad, calling to tell me she’s taking her last breath? What if, even after all this, Eliza is asking for me?

I’m not in love with her, but we were together long enough that I feel I owe those years something, even if it’s only answering during her dying moments.

“Hello?”

“Harrison?” Eliza says my name like we’ve just run into each other somewhere across the world, like it’s the largest coincidence in the world that we happen to be connecting right now.

I clear my throat, ruffle a hand through my hair, and sit up against my bedframe, preparing myself for whatever she’s about to tell me.

“Yeah.” My voice feels tight, still carrying the anger of what happened all those years ago. “What’s going on?”

She pauses, and I realize in this split moment that she’s not on her deathbed at all. “Well, Brad said that he ran into you, and…”

The sigh I let out is loud enough that it silences her on the other end. Brad told her he ran into me, and I ignored him, and that prompted her to think she should just call me out of the blue?

After everything first blew up, Eliza called me nonstop, trying to get me to just listen to her and hear her side. Once, when she cornered me outside our old place, she’d told me she could handle losing me, but she didn’t want Brad to lose his best friend.

If Brad didn’t want to lose his best friend, then he shouldn’t have fucked my wife. He definitely shouldn’t have gone on to have a baby with her, building up a new life for himself inside his best friend’s old one.

Instead of saying any of that, I just clarify, “Eliza. It’s six in the morning.”

“I know. But you’re usually up?—”

“You don’t know anything about my life, Eliza. You made that decision. Don’t call me again unless you’re fucking dead or dying, got it?”

When I hang up, my heart is pounding, and it takes me a few seconds to regret that last line. Then, immediately following the regret, comes another fresh wave of anger.

Eliza made her choice, and it wasn’t me. She has no right to be calling me like nothing happened.

Swinging my legs out of bed, I use the adrenaline coursing through my body for a great workout. One room in my loft is fully dedicated to workout equipment—a bench, squat rack, and rows of dumbbells I use to stay in shape.

I’ve seen some of the other guys who retired around the same time as me let themselves go completely, and I can’t imagine it. Even Brad looked a bit dad-bod-ish when I saw him at the deli.

When I’m finished with my workout, I shower and make a cup of coffee, planning to go into the complex, even though we technically have the day off. Tomorrow is our second pre-season game, then next week we’ll officially move into the regular season.

I walk out of my apartment and onto the street, already spotting the Baltimore residents dressing more for vibes than the actual weather. A woman walks by in a sweater and a pair of tall boots, already sweating.

We might technically be in autumn, but it’s already seventy-five degrees and only getting hotter from here.

The walk to the complex is short, and I even manage to whistle a bit as I go, putting Eliza’s call in the back of my mind. It’s not worth worrying or thinking about—that was all years ago.

If I’m going to focus my energy on anything, it should be the woman trying to ruin my life now.

The one forcing each of my players to test a thousand different hockey sticks, despite the fact that they already know which ones are their favorites.

The women insisting they log everything they eat and turn in the information to a new team of nutritionists.

These guys have been athletes since they were born. They know how to eat, for fuck’s sake.

But the worst part is that the guys aren’t even mad about it—they’re treating Lovie Waters like she’s some sort of hockey expert, when she and I both know she was still “studying” on her way into this city.

Last week, right in the middle of practice, she’d arrived with a carton of white robot-looking things. I’d skated over to where she was standing on the other side of the boards, glaring at her as she angled her head down at me, cool and collected, as always.

“Where the hell do you get off, interrupting practice?” I swung my arm out at the stuff being unloaded around us. “What is all this crap?”

“These,” Lovie had said, like she was explaining clouds to a child, “are highly advanced cameras with body-tracking programming. We’re going to use them to map player movement and provide highly-attuned coaching for each person on the ice.”

“Uh, hello?” I raised my eyebrows, gesturing to myself. “I’m already providing the coaching, in case you already forgot what it is that I do here.”

“It’s not to replace you,” she’d said, shaking her head. “It’s to enhance you.”

And damn it if she didn’t say that last bit with a hint of satisfaction, like she enjoyed riling me up.

Now, I push into my office, muttering under my breath as I drop my bag onto my desk and my body into my seat, booting up my computer to print out the details for the pre-season game. I work better with tactile, physical information. Always have.

And I don’t need enhancement. Don’t need fancy robots and cameras in the ass of every player on the ice. I got the team to the Stanley Cup just fine on my own.

A voice sounds in my head, but you didn’t win the Stanley Cup .

“Fuck,” I mutter, when I realize that, yet again, my printer is out of paper.

The walk to the supply closet is short, and I only run into some of the cleaning staff and the odd accountant, surely here on the weekend to try and catch up on work.

They all wave with that familiar, don’t you wish you weren’t here?

look that I don’t actually feel. I come here on off days all the time.

When I reach the supply closet, the door is jammed slightly, like it always is, and I have to yank a little harder to get it to come open. When it does, there is a sharp, high-pitched scream that nearly bursts my ear drums.

“What the fuck?” Lovie asks, just before the pile of binders she’s reaching for tips forward, tumbling straight for her head. I jump forward, letting go of the supply closet door and reaching up, stopping the box from emptying completely.

A single binder falls, cracking against the ground and lying open, the silver rings shining in the low, fluorescent light.

Then, that goes out, too.

“Just great,” she grumbles, her face close enough to mine that I can feel the breath from her speaking against my neck.

The closet is tight enough that we have to be touching to fit in together at the same time.

A counter is pushing in on one side and tall metal shelving is in the way on the other. “What are you doing?”

“You could try thank you for saving my life,” I return, my arms starting to burn from the effort of holding up the box of binders.

“My life was only in danger because you yanked the door open to this room like it had personally offended you!”

Rolling my eyes, I shove the binders back onto the shelf and turn, barely able to see Lovie as she grabs the door handle and shoves. A small sliver of light is filtering into the room from the partially shut door.

“See?” I say, sliding past her, my chest thoroughly rubbing against hers, “It sticks.”

Except when I shove against it, it still doesn’t open.

She takes a deep breath, and I feel the press of her breasts, the soft, smooth feeling of her satiny shirt. It occurs to me that this isn’t the first time the two of us have been alone in a dark, small space like this.

Maybe it occurs to her, too, because she sucks in a tiny breath, a sound I’ve heard before—a sound that takes me back to that airplane, her body nestled against mine. The quiet, careful restraint of not being too loud.

I can’t help it. Lovie Waters is a beautiful woman, and I’m just a man.

When I go hard against her, she sucks in another little breath, raising her chin in search of my eyes in the dark. I hold her gaze through the dark, watching her pupils as they grow even larger, feeling the subtle shift of her body as she leans in even closer to me.

What did she say out on the patio?

The most important thing here is that absolutely nobody can know about what happened between us.

We can’t be seen together.

She meant it too, based on the way she’s skirted around me these past few weeks, only interacting with me in front of other people, and only when I called her out on her “modernization” initiatives.

But now? Now, the way she’s leaning into me, the way she’s looking up at me, it says something different. It says that, in the dark of this supply closet, she might be done with pretending we’ve never touched one another before.

Reaching out slowly, like she’s a bird I might startle, I cup my hand around her elbow, guide her hand up onto my chest.

She closes her eyes when her palm makes contact with my body, then spreads her fingers out, breathing deeply through her nose. I’m really hard now, pressing against her thigh, and when I give a little push against her, a noise rises up from the bottom of her throat.

A noise that I want to swallow whole.

Lovie brings her other hand up to my chest, snaking it around my shoulders, and I get my hands on her hips, grabbing her and lifting her up onto the counter. When I get my cock pressed against her core, I realize, for the first time, that she’s wearing a dress today.

“Oh, fuck,” slips out of me, but she doesn’t seem to mind, because she’s already adjusting, letting out a muffled moan when I press against her panties—which are already damp.

I’m just reaching up, dragging my thumb over her thigh with the intention of sliding her underwear to the side, when there’s a click on the other side of the door, then the jostling of the handle.

“Oh, damn it,” the janitor I saw earlier grouses. “Goddamn thing is stuck again.”

“We’re in here!” Lovie calls, her voice sounding surprisingly professional, not breathy at all. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she pushes on my shoulders and slides down the length of my body.

“Someone’s stuck in there?” the guy calls. “Shit—give me one second.”

True to his word, there’s a moment of hesitation, then another, louder click, and a grinding sound.

Then the door pops and swings merrily open like there was never an issue at all.

“Thank you,” Lovie says, stepping out and touching the man's shoulder lightly, before disappearing down the hallway without a backwards glance.