Page 17 of What If I Hate You (Anaheim Stars Hockey #6)

They can chirp all they want. I’m just glad there’s nothing to be embarrassed about for once. I even let myself enjoy the walk-off. I earned it.

A break in the crowd gives me a line of sight to Rivers, who’s cornered by three of Cincinnati’s beat rats, all middle-aged white guys with receding hairlines.

They’ve got her boxed in where she’s finishing up her notes.

The men are not subtle and their behavior makes the hairs on my arm stand up.

They’re ogling her, but not the way you ogle a rival.

It’s the lazy, dismissive, who-let-the-girl-into-the-big-boy’s-room kind of stare, and it sets my teeth on edge.

It also makes me feel like shit because I wasn’t any nicer to her in that bathroom the other night.

Fuck.

At first, I’m just watching her, the way she keeps her chin up, her arms folded tight around her notepad, how she doesn’t flinch when one of the guys “accidentally” brushes her elbow while reaching for a water.

It’s gross, but she’s probably handled worse.

I’ve seen her field a room full of shithead reporters with nothing but a cold shoulder and an arched eyebrow.

Still, seeing it up close—watching these men try to shrink her to nothing, even when she’s clearly the sharpest in the room—makes my hands curl into fists.

One of them, a pale sack of smug shit named Tim, leans in too close. “So, Rivers, you ever do real journalism or just stick to hockey because the guys are cuter?” His pals snicker, emboldened by the fact that nobody’s going to check them for this.

Rivers doesn’t even blink. “I’m sorry, Tim, is that a question or just a cry for help?” She doesn’t look up from her notepad, but the line is pure venom. For a second, Tim’s thrown off, lips twitching at the corners.

But the friend chimes in, “I heard you only got this job because your boss wanted more eye candy on TV. It’s working, by the way.

” He winks, slow and slimy, like he’s got a direct line to HR and immunity for whatever he says.

For the first time I see Rivers hesitate.

Just a blink, but it’s there. The whole thing sours in my chest, the way watching someone kick a puppy would.

I’m not sure what compels me, maybe the leftover adrenaline, maybe the memory of my own mouth running wild, but I’m moving before my brain draws up a plan.

I wedge past a couple of interns, plant myself shoulder-to-shoulder with the nearest Cincinnati reporter, and stare him into silence.

“Is there a problem here?” I say, voice dialed low and ugly.

Tim snorts. He’s got a lanyard with a press pass and the kind of cheeks that makes every word sound like he’s storing soup for winter. “Just talking shop, Cunningham,” he says. “Didn’t mean to distract your”—he looks at Rivers, then at me, then back to Rivers—“friend here…or whatever you two are.”

It’s meant to get a rise, but I don’t so much as blink. “You were about to say ‘side piece,’” I say, voice flat as the Zamboni-ed ice. “Go ahead. Say it. Be a man about it.”

A couple of the local guys shift their weight, suddenly interested in their phones. Tim’s mouth opens and closes. He’s as spineless as he looks.

The third guy, a goateed prick in a fleece vest, tries to bail them out. “Hey, man, we’re just having some fun. No need to get chivalrous.”

I square my shoulders, letting every inch of my six-five frame do the talking.

“No, you’re just being a dick to someone who could out-write, out-skate, and out-play you before breakfast.” I tilt my head at Rivers, who’s watching the exchange with a look of clinical detachment, like she’s running an experiment on how long it takes for a man’s balls to invert under pressure.

Goatee’s face goes waxy, but he tries to laugh it off. “Is this where you tell us to leave the lady alone because she’s with you, Bear? I thought you two hated each other.”

I glare him down. “We do. But I hate you more.” The words hang there, heavy and mean. I’m pretty sure at least two people are filming this, but I don’t give a shit. Tim and crew shuffle back, suddenly remembering there’s a second press room on the other side of the building.

There’s a long, brittle pause as the room exhales.

I look at Rivers, expecting her to either rip me a new one for getting involved, or—god forbid—thank me.

Neither of those things happens. She closes her notebook, stares at me for a second, and then gives me this weird, tight smile that makes my chest twist. I want to ask her if she’s okay, or if I made it worse, or if she needs me to stick around, but her eyes say don’t you fucking dare.

She’s tougher than any guy in here, and we both know it.

Grabbing her bag, she walks out of the room and down the empty hallway. Like any lost puppy dog of a man, I follow close behind her because what the fuck else would I do?

“You know you don’t have to follow me, right?”

I clear my throat just to break the tension. “Are you okay?”

She turns on me, her heels planted, her brow cocked in a full Olympic arch, but doesn’t give me a verbal answer.

What’s an eyebrow supposed to mean?

“You know you don’t have to take that shit, right?

You could just…tell them to fuck off.” I half expect her to tell me to fuck off but instead she stares, lips parted, like she’s trying to recalibrate a universe she thought she already had mapped.

And then she shakes her head, staring at me like I’m the biggest idiot in the room.

Maybe I am.

“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice is low and lethal, and the echo in the corridor makes it sound even more dangerous. “Congratulations, you just made it ten times harder for me to get anyone in there to take me seriously next time.”

I bristle, because that’s not fair, and also because fuck, it’s probably true. “Or,” I challenge, “maybe next time they’ll think twice before treating you like a fucking prop.”

She groans, so sharp it’s almost a growl.

“You don’t get it. It doesn’t matter if they’re scared of you, Barrett.

You stepping in just confirms every bullshit rumor that I’m here because I’m screwing a player, or someone else in the organization, or my boss for fuck’s sake.

It certainly tells them that I can’t handle myself without a man to play security detail.

” She’s breathing fast now, hands clenched at her sides, and I realize that for all her steel, she’s vibrating with the same adrenaline that’s making my skin crawl.

I want to walk away, let her have the win, but instead I plant my feet and take her best shot.

“That’s not what I was doing.”

She barks a laugh, biting and mean. “Yeah? Then what were you doing, Barrett, if not the big tough guy routine? You think I need you to play my fucking bodyguard? After you called me a bitch in public roughly twenty-four hours ago?”

I swallow that like a pill. “I said I was sorry.”

She spits back, “Actually, you didn’t say you were sorry.

You said you were out of line, you let it get out of hand, and you fucked up.

” She ticks my words off on her fingers.

“Not once did you formally say the words ‘I’m sorry’ so let’s not pretend that you’re the least bit apologetic as much as you were trying to save face in front of your friends.

Besides, sorry isn’t a magic eraser, Barrett. It’s not even a fucking Band-Aid.”

We’re standing toe to toe now, the hallway reeking of ammonia and old sweat, and I can’t decide if I want to yell back or just drown in her fury for a minute. She’s trembling with it, the same way I shake after a shutout. Charged, untamed, every nerve ending tingling with electricity.

I square my jaw. “You want me to say I’m sorry?

Fine. I’m sorry, Blakely. I’m sorry for being an asshole, and for not seeing what it costs you every time you have to prove you belong here.

I’m sorry for using that word, too. I am.

But I’m not sorry for thinking you’re better than every dickhead in that room.

” The words come out hot, fast, before I can second-guess them.

“And I’m not sorry for wanting to shut them up, even if it makes you hate me.

Even if it makes you think I’m just another one of them. ”

Her eyes flicker, their depths shimmering with emotion, but the rest of her is solid granite. “You don’t get to decide what I need, Barrett. You don’t get to make that call.”

My hands are in fists at my sides, and for a second, I think she’s going to swing at me.

I almost want her to. Maybe I’d take the hit and feel less like a walking, talking mistake.

But instead, she just stands there, eyes narrowed, lips trembling, not with tears, but with the effort of keeping every last shred of dignity intact.

“Do you really think,” she says, so quietly I almost miss it, “that I haven’t had to fight every goddamn day just to stand here?

” Her voice shakes with the force of it, and now I see the real hurt, raw and unvarnished, behind all the steel and swagger.

“You think I need you to rescue me?” she asks, bringing her hand to her chest. “That I’m not used to this? ”

I don’t have an answer. Because she’s right.

Because I see it now, carved into the lines of her face, the same lines I try to erase with every fuck-you save and every shutout.

She’s been doing this, surviving this, a lot longer than I’ve been paying attention.

I want to tell her I know how hard it is.

That I spent my whole goddamn life fighting to get out of a shithole town where the only thing that mattered was how much money you had and if you had none, it was how fast you could drink a bottle or how hard you could hit.

That I know what it’s like to wear a mask, not the goalie kind, but the kind you grow into your skin because if you let them see you hurt, they eat you alive.

I open my mouth to say something, anything, but she’s already turning away from me. Instinctively my hand darts to her wrist before my mind can catch up and she whirls, eyes blazing, every inch of her daring me to make another move.

For half a second, neither of us speaks. We just stare, locked in a standoff so charged it makes every press room spat and locker room rumor seem like child’s play. The air between us is taut, crackling with something so raw I almost forget to breathe.

Then I fuck it all up—again—because I can’t let her have the last word.

“You’re right,” I say, voice hoarse. “You don’t need me. But goddammit, Blakely, maybe I need you.” The words are out before I can stop them, and for a second I’m sure I’ll regret it, but it’s the only truth worth hanging onto.

She jerks her arm back, but she doesn’t move away.

“Don’t,” she says, voice trembling with the effort.

“Don’t you dare turn this into some—” Her breath comes out sharp, furious, but her eyes betray her, because for one impossible heartbeat, she doesn’t look angry.

She just looks tired. “You can’t just barge in, play the fucking hero, then?—”

“Blakely.” Her name in my mouth is a promise and a warning. The sound of it splits the air between us like a puck off the glass, and I don’t know if I want to make her yell or never let her get a word in again.

She shoves me, flat-palmed, right in the chest, and it barely rocks me, but I stagger back a step to let her think she did.

Her eyes are wild. “You don’t get to need me.

” Her breaths comes in ragged gasps, her face blotched red, and for a split second there’s so much fire in her I want to skate right into it and never come up for air.

“Too fucking late,” I say, and as soon as the words leave my mouth, I know what’s going to happen. I know it the way you know a puck’s about to hit you in the mask, the way you can sense the vibration in your bones before the impact. But I don’t move. I let it happen.

She’s on me before I can even finish the breath, hands in my collar, lips crashing into mine with the violence of a thrown punch.

There’s no finesse, just heat and fury, and I match it, grabbing her by the waist and hauling her flush against me, pinning her to the wall of the hallway.

Her teeth find my bottom lip and she bites, hard, and I taste blood.

But I don’t care.

I want more.

I want all of her, every fuck-you she can throw my way and every goddamn shattered piece of her.

I want it all.