Page 15 of What If I Hate You (Anaheim Stars Hockey #6)

CHAPTER TEN

BLAKELY

T he rink is cold enough to numb my toes through my wool socks, but the air above the ice is thick with sweat and testosterone. I perch in my usual spot, Marlee and Ella flanking me like a set of overqualified bodyguards while we watch this morning’s skate.

Below us, the Stars spiral through drills—a wall of blue and gold punctuated by the snarl of Griffin’s beard and the occasional shriek of, “Come on, Pickle Pants! You call that a shot?” Mostly, it’s all business, no drama.

That is, until Barrett glides into view, mask off, hair matted and jaw set like he’s prepping for a mugshot. I watch the way he moves, clean and lethal, and try not to let it show that I’ve been tracking every line of his body since he hit the ice.

Marlee leans into me, her voice pitched low and confidential. “You two still not speaking? Because he’s been extra murdery all morning and I’m blaming you.”

I sip my coffee, eyes fixed on the ice below. “It’s not me, it’s his natural charm. Maybe someone switched his Gatorade for antifreeze.”

Ella giggles, twisting a lock of hair. “He does look like someone peed in his cereal.”

Marlee nudges my shoulder. “I’m serious, Rivers. I heard he skipped the team meeting this morning. Said he needed to work through some moves with Darius. Even Ledger couldn’t lure him off the ice. And we all know the guys only do extra workouts when they have something on their minds.”

I shrug, but the words burrow under my ribs. “He’ll get over it. Guys like Cunningham don’t stay wounded for long. They just go build a shed out of their feelings and never let anyone inside.”

“Oh, so you have a thing for emotionally unavailable men now?” Ella deadpans. “That’s healthy.”

I roll my eyes. “Like anyone in this business is emotionally available. The only difference is the press writes it up when a guy like Bear has a bad morning.” Across the glass, Cunningham slams his pads together in irritation after a strike from Bodhi gets past him, then punts the puck clear down the ice like he’s auditioning for the NFL.

Marlee whistles. “You sure you two aren’t sleeping together already? Because that’s some big ‘I only give my girlfriend this much hell’ energy.”

“We aren’t,” I say a little too fast. “I mean, obviously not. He can barely stand to be in the same room with me.” I watch as Bear squares up for Griffin’s next shot, eyes locked on the puck like he’s trying to will it into nonexistence.

“I think I might actually be the only thing in Anaheim he hates more than carbs.”

Marlee swallows a sip of the chai she’s holding and then cocks her head, “You know, Ella, I think Blakley’s type is not just emotionally unavailable men but the ones who are also a complete disaster at expressing basic human emotion. Honestly, she should just get it over with and jump his bones.”

Ella snickers. “Yes please. Put the rest of us out of our misery.”

“That’s not how sexual tension works,” I say, but I can hear the brittle edge in my own voice. “There has to be at least a forty- eight-hour refractory period after you disrespect a woman in a public bathroom before you can bang her.”

Ella leans over the rail, eyes bright. “Is that a rule? Or just a guideline?”

"It’s best practice," I say, but the answer is halfhearted. Down on the ice, Barrett is running through lateral shuffles with a vengeance that would make Liam Neeson cry. My cheeks flush, and I blink hard, reminding myself that I am the predator up here, not the prey.

“Ugh,” I groan, “why do all the dumbest, angriest men have to be built like Greek gods? If he was ugly, this would be so much easier.”

Ella leans forward again, gasping like Scooby Doo and his friends just tore the mask off the bad guy to reveal someone they knew. “Oh my God, Blakely, are you admitting he’s hot?”

“I’m admitting he looks like the type of guy who can chop lumber with his bare hands and then use the log as a toothpick.” I roll my eyes. “But he’s also the type to carry a grudge into the afterlife.”

Marlee glances at me conspiratorially. “What did he say to you, anyway? At the bar?”

I feel my face heat up, and for a second I want to say nothing, let it pass, but Marlee is one of my very best friends. She’s seen me through many of my darkest moments. I could never lie to her.

I lower my voice. “He called me a token bitch. In the middle of the women’s bathroom. And not even the fun, reclaim-the-word kind, but the old-school punch-in-the-teeth kind. All because I told him I thought he could do better than the blonde he was with.”

“Wait…” Ella’s brows furrow. “He was with a blonde?”

“Mhmm. Some super-hot blonde barbie type. I walked in on them practically making out.” I stare at the lid to my coffee, wishing I could sink myself inside and swim around in the hot liquid. “I think I may have earned the title, but it still stung.”

Marlee shakes her head in disbelief. “He said that to you? Out loud?”

I nod.

Ella makes a face, somewhere between sympathy and a weathered kind of pride. “That’s low, but also, if we’re being honest? It means you have him rattled.” She bumps my arm. “And that means you win.”

I muster a smile. “It didn’t feel very victorious. And I’m not sure I rattled him. I mean she was beautiful…the blonde.”

“Uh, and you’re not?” Ella scoffs. “Girl, have you seen you?”

I try to muster a smile. “Thanks, Ella.”

My best friend clutches my fingers. “Seriously, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lie, badly. “It was just…a moment. I’ve had worse. Plus, I slapped him. Hard enough to leave a mark.”

She laughs. “That’s my girl.”

“It wasn’t exactly my finest moment,” I tell them.

“ I don’t even know why—I mean, I do—I just…

I don’t want to be that girl, you know? The one who gets so rattled by a man’s opinion she commits battery in the bathroom of a dive bar.

I get enough of the hate at work. I’m used to it.

In fact, if I wanted to keep a running list of the times a man has tried to put me down or make me smaller so they feel better about themselves, I’d have to digitize it and get a fucking search bar.

I guess I just didn’t expect the same behavior from one of the players. ”

Marlee’s face softens, a little parental but mostly pissed.

“That’s what gets me. You work so hard. You’re better than all those old men in the media lounge, and you're still the one being subtly cut down beneath the surface. It’s not fair.

” She exhales a sharp breath, then pulls me in close until our foreheads nearly touch.

“If you ever want me to set fire to his car, I’m only a phone call away. ”

“Umm, please let me help?” Ella raises her hand like she’s auditioning to be a felon’s plus-one. “I’ve got a bunch of those little liquor bottles at home. Just saying.”

I snort and flick a crumb from my lap. “That’s why I keep you two around. Built-in arson squad.” But in truth, the resentment only flickers now, eclipsed by a kind of exhausted confusion that I can’t seem to shake.

On the ice, Barrett blocks three shots in a row from Bodhi Roche, stopping the third right on his kneecap.

He barks at Bodhi, just a single, cutting word, but the whole team freezes like they just heard gunfire.

Then, as quickly as the tension spikes, it’s gone and they’re skating again like dutiful little soldiers.

For a second, his head tilts up. Just a glance, but he knows exactly where to look.

Our eyes meet, and the force of it nearly knocks me off my stool.

He holds the stare a second longer than is appropriate, a dare and an apology and, maybe, something like regret.

I look away first, which is a new brand of humiliation for me, but I don’t want him to see that I’m still thinking about him.

About that word. About the goddamn bathroom and everything that came after.

“He’s looking at you,” Ella sing-songs, a lilt of pure glee in her voice. “Literally, right at you, not even trying to be subtle.”

I shove her arm. “Shut up. It’s probably just because he wants to murder me with a stray puck.”

“No, that isn’t murder energy,” Marlee says firmly. “That is, I’d-like-to-pin-you-against-the-glass-and-hate-fuck-for-three-periods-straight energy. I’d know it anywhere. That’s how my ex looked at me at the hot dog eating contest that one time at Harold’s, remember?”

“Yeah,” I say with a chuckle, “and then he threw up on your shoes.”

Marlee’s face goes dreamy and nostalgic. “Which is what love really feels like.”

We all laugh, but the edge of nervousness in my chest gives me away.

Barrett’s already back to drills, mask down, expression vanished, like he’s decided to never let anything human slip through again.

I finish my coffee, then start gathering my bag.

“Gotta go prep for my noon hit. Don’t want to give the network any reason to swap me for a bimbo with frosted tips and an overbite. ”

Marlee and Ella exchange a look. If there’s one thing I hate more than Barrett’s brooding, it’s my best friends’ silent judgment. “Just don’t let him off easy,” Marlee says, grabbing my forearm as I stand. “Make him squirm. It’s what he deserves.”

I nod, but my heart’s not in it. I can already see the interrogation headlines printed across my eyelids.

Rivers Grills Cunningham After Skate Meltdown .

I’ll play my role this evening, lob the snarky question, and he’ll volley it back with a sneer.

The two of us reenacting some weird, career-long Kabuki dance in front of the same ten reporters and their digital recorders.

Nothing ever changes, in this league or in this life.

It’s night two of the team’s away stretch and the locker room is a zoo before tonight’s game.

Reporters, camera guys, and a couple of the new digital interns all jockey for position while the guys scuttle around in various stages of undress.

In any other life I would be drooling over these half naked men walking around the locker room tossing their masculinity around like rebounds on a basketball court, but tonight I have a job to do.

The first thing I do is make a beeline for Griffin. He’s always good for a sound bite, and anyway, his habit of getting half un-dressed before talking to media means he doesn’t mind being on camera with his shirt off. Unlike, say, the grizzled, cold-blooded goalie I’m currently boycotting.

“What’s the vibe today, G?” I ask, clicking on my recorder and aiming my best I-am-not spiraling-into-a-personal-vendetta-right-now smile.

Griffin grins, a dimple popping in one cheek. “It’s all business. Cincinnati’s got speed, but we know what we have to do. No dumb penalties, keep the puck low, and let Bear do his job.” He winks. “You can quote me on that.”

I jot it down and move over to the next stall, where Bodhi is taping his stick with a look of Zen concentration usually reserved for Buddhist monks or first graders trying to color inside the lines.

“Roche, you feeling strong tonight?”

He glances up, hazel eyes quick and bright. “Always. You see the way Bear stopped my hits in practice this morning? The man’s in a mood, and I’m betting he wants to break a record tonight.”

It’s not lost on me that the guys all seem to be mentioning Barrett in their interview responses. It’s almost as if they’ve planned this.

“Think you’ll help him out?” I ask, keeping it light.

“If by help you mean light up the scoreboard so he actually has to work for it, yeah, I’m doing him a favor,” he says flashing a cocky grin.

I get a few more quotes, all of them somehow orbiting Cunningham. “The Bear’s dialed in,” August says into my recorder. “If he’s pissed, that’s good for all of us. We play better when we have to keep up with his rage.”

Ledger, who I catch literally elbow-deep in a tub of Bio freeze, just shrugs and says, “He’s a professional. He’ll show up. He always does.”

I note the party line and don’t bother crossing the room to where Barrett sits, headphones on, gaze locked somewhere in the middle distance between his locker and oblivion.

He’s stripped down to a compression shirt and shorts, legs splayed wide, arms loose at his sides.

For a second, I think he’s asleep with his eyes open, he’s that still.

But the moment I turn to leave, I feel it.

A slow, deliberate caress of his gaze lingering on the nape of my neck.

I turn, and sure enough, Barrett’s eyes are on me.

Just a flick, less than a second, but intense enough to send shivers down my spine.

The charged moment is so brief I wonder if I imagined it, but my heart races, nonetheless.

I make a show of tucking my notepad deeper into my bag, determined not to let him see how much he affects me.

I head for the corridor, already drafting my segment in my head. “Stars enter tonight’s matchup on high alert, with team chemistry at an all-time high and their notoriously unflappable goalie breaking sticks and egos in equal measure.”

I wonder what it’s like for Barrett, behind the mask. Not just the plastic and the wire, but the one he seems to wear every second he’s not in the crease. To be that locked down, all the time, has to be exhausting. I should know.

We actually have that in common.

Two closed-off people not wanting to show anyone how vulnerable we can actually be.

Fuck.

Maybe I don’t hate Barrett Cunningham as much as I want to.

Maybe that’s the real problem.