Backhand (Gold Hockey) Page 3

  She gave a mental shrug, thinking he had the right of it. Her impulsivity was almost as widely known as her downfall.

  Once inside, he locked the door then swung to face her, his nose an inch from hers, his eyes holding her frozen.

  They were furious, dark-brown depths that she half expected to shoot sparks.

  “Why didn’t you fight it?”

  Shocked by the force of his anger, she stammered out, “H-how did you know where I worked?”

  Eyes narrowed. “I saw you come out last night as I drove by.” He lifted a hand. “How, Sara? How could you—?”

  She flinched, took a half step back. Not from his hand, but because she’d heard those words too many times.

  Mike hissed out a breath and, instinctively, she jumped.

  Very rarely had she seen him furious and never had she seen him like this. A cloud of black anger surrounding him, spilling into the space between them.

  His hands came to her shoulders, his grip tight, and he jostled her slightly, made her teeth clink together. Her ribs and hip protested the movement, but she didn’t tell him to stop. Some sick part of her felt the pain on the outside should match that within her heart.

  “Sara, why in the hell didn’t you fight?”

  Then it all clicked, and she couldn’t hold back the wave of disappointment coursing through her.

  He’d obviously taken her advice and Googled her. Knowing Mike had seen her like that — at rock bottom, broken, defeated — was almost worse than her going through it the first time.

  The one person in her life whose view of her hadn’t been tarnished and she pushed him to go ruin it.

  Every emotion from those horrible weeks of her life flashed right back into the forefront of her mind.

  Mike had burst the dam with his quiet demand, and it didn’t matter to him in the least that she had reasons for wanting to bury that part of her, for trying to shove it all down and forget. He wanted to know why.

  Icy calm flooded her veins.

  It was better this way. Better that he knew now, that he hated her from the get-go. Certainly, it was better that any and all expectations were crushed before they grew too large.

  She put her hands on his stomach. No, it didn’t feel good — those hard, flat abs certainly didn’t feel good beneath her palms — and shoved hard.

  Free, she took a couple of steps back.

  Mike followed her.

  “Stop. No,” she spat when he took another stride in her direction. “I’m serious. This—” she waved a hand at the shop “—is my life now. Not skating, not the past. If I wanted to talk about that shit, I’d be seeing a therapist. Don’t bring it up again.”

  She turned and snatched up a pair of scissors from the counter, then stomped into the back room.

  “Sara.”

  She didn’t respond, just got to work on the next box.

  And suddenly he was there, crouching slightly so he could look her straight in the eye. “I just want to understand.”

  Her hands plunked onto her hips, and she winced when the scissors jabbed at her side. She didn’t protest when Mike plucked the pocket-sized metal death trap from her grip and set it on a box.

  She did, however, sigh. Everyone wanted to understand. Trouble was, no one wanted to believe what had actually happened.

  “I don’t have anything more to say about it.”

  “So you cheated? Paid off the judges for higher scores? Is that what you’re saying?” He touched her cheek. “Because, Sara, I don’t believe it. You wouldn’t—”

  Good. God. Men. Could. Not. Listen.

  She pushed past him, strode over to the door, unlocked it, and held it open. “Out.”

  “No.” He leaned against the wall just outside the storeroom, crossed his arms.

  She resisted the urge to cross her own in return. “I’m not talking about it.”

  “You need to talk to someone about what happened.”

  Ha.

  It took every ounce of her restraint to hold back bitter laughter.

  When had talking ever solved anything for her?

  “Been there, done that.” She pulled her phone from her pocket. “Now go. Or I’m calling the police.”

  And there they were, staring each other down like they were on opposite sides of an old Western street, about to draw their guns and duel.

  Sara surprised herself by not backing away from the challenge. She’d given in so many times over the years, but she didn’t bend today.

  That was something.

  Lifting her chin, she held the door in one hand, the phone in the other, and waited.

  And — surprisingly, shockingly, a whole slew of other adverbs — Mike caved.

  “Fine,” he said, walking toward her. “No talk of the last decade. We’ll discuss other things. Deal?”

  She hesitated. Why was he here now? Why, after all these years, did he want to spend time with her? Why did he seem to care when no one else did?

  “Sara.”

  Her eyes found his, and her heart skipped a beat at the gentleness in them.

  “We were friends once.” His voice was soft, kind.

  “Yeah.” They had been friends, aside from the fact that she’d had the biggest, most painfully unrequited crush on him.

  “I’d like to be friends again.”

  What was probably unfortunate was that she liked the sound of that. But she was so tired of being lonely. Tired of holding everyone at arm’s length. “Yeah?”

  He flashed her that grin, the one that had turned her teenaged heart to mush. “Yeah.” In two steps, he’d closed the distance between them and plucked her phone from her hand. “There,” he said, pressing some buttons before handing it back to her.

  She heard his phone buzz.

  “Now you have my number.”

  All casual-like, he carefully pushed her aside and strode through the door, closing it behind him.

  “Lock up,” he called through the glass.

  Numbly, her fingers obeyed.

  “Talk soon.”

  And, hurricane in her life that he was, Mike was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FLYING IN A private jet wasn’t awful.

  Aw, fuck, Mike couldn’t pull off humble. Or not very often anyway.

  Flying in a private jet was awesome. Lots of leg room, bathrooms someone could actually fit in, direct flights, and no crying kids.

  The only annoying people were his teammates, and since he was used to their particular brand of annoying, the flights were usually fun.

  They were flying out of SFO, delayed by the fog as per usual, for the first stop on an extended road trip. Management tried to organize games so that the whole renting-a-private-jet thing was kept to a minimum in order to save money.

  This leg they’d be playing against teams in Columbus, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Then they’d have two nights off and play the Capitals down in D.C. before returning home to the West Coast for a stretch.

  Playing that many away games in a row — being out of their normal practice schedule, their typical routines — was grueling, but it was the life, and it was exciting in a way.

  Less exciting now that he was old as fuck.

  Or at least old according to hockey standards. Almost thirty, and he was on the leeward side of his career, grizzled and scarred.

  Okay, yes to the scarred — it was tough to keep a pretty-boy face in a sport with flying pucks, blades on feet, and sticks in sometimes temperamental hands. But he couldn’t agree with the grizzled part. He was in the best shape of his life, playing the best hockey of his career.

  He’d gotten past self-sabotaging.

  He’d been cured of his very serious, life-threatening asshole condition.

  Things were looking up.

  Mike couldn’t help but think of Sara. She was still tiny as hell, barely coming up to his chest. But something had changed about her… okay, well, obviously a lot of things had changed. He was just hung up on the
most obvious one.

  She’d become a woman. He felt his face tilt into a smile and knew, just knew, that his buddies were going to give him shit for the grin.

  But what a woman Sara had turned into.

  She was petite, yes, her face almost elfin with its small delicate features. But, that wasn’t what had made his mouth go dry when he’d spotted her through the window bending over a box that morning at the gallery.

  No, his body had perked to complete attention because of the rest of it. Curves for days, pert little breasts he wanted to try out in his hands, a heart-shaped ass that he somehow just knew would be firm enough to bounce a dime off, a flat stomach, and delicate ankles.

  He was an ankle guy. Which was weird as fuck, he knew. But something about the little glimpse of skin beneath the cuff of a woman’s pants, the hint at what was hiding beneath, turned him on.

  Obviously he was a freak. And she wasn’t his little Sara any longer.

  She’d never been his.

  Oh, yeah. There was that.

  “Whatcha smirking about, Stewart?” Max. Resident funny man — at least he liked to think so — of the team and general shit-stirrer.

  And commence the shit-giving.

  “Your mom,” he said, bending to snag his earbuds from his backpack. The insult was old and overused, perhaps, but still a good one, given the spots of red appearing on Max’s cheeks.

  “Ha. Ha.” Max slammed down into the seat next to him and began pulling things out of his backpack.

  And by things, Mike meant enough toys and books and snacks to keep an entire flight full of toddlers busy for hours.

  “Dude,” he said when Max started powering up some sort of video game system on his tray table. Little plastic characters towered precariously on the flat surface. “You’re an adult.”

  “Young at heart, old man,” Max said, pulling out a controller and headphones. “I’m young at heart.”

  A piece of plastic — some sort of dragon-horned toy — fell off the tray and landed on his foot.

  It stung. The fuckers were heavier than they looked. “God, Max.”

  “Just God is fine.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  One side of Max’s mouth turned up. Mike had seen entire Reddit posts devoted to that mouth when someone — he thought their captain, Stefan Barie, because though the guy came across as clean-cut and nice as hell, he had a wicked sense of humor — had screenshotted and printed out the posts to hang in the locker room.

  Women had declared Max’s lips as perfectly pouty, expounded on his mouth being kissable enough to make their ovaries explode, sinful enough to kill them dead.

  At the moment, Mike was thinking he might prefer that plane full of screaming kids to Max’s mouth.

  “I’m hilarious,” Max declared.

  Yup. Definitely give him the crying babies.

  He bent and snatched up the toy, pulling his tray table down and plunking the little devil-horn-dragon thing onto the surface. “You are a lot of things. Hilarious not so much… unless that is, you’re referring to your face. Which is definitely a lesson in comedy.”

  Max chuckled then nodded at Mike’s tray table. “Thanks. I could use the extra space,” he said and proceeded to fill the entire surface of Mike’s table with more toys.

  Good God. They’d just taken off, which meant he had four more hours of this.

  He jammed his earbuds in, cranked his music, and hoped that Max would take the hint to just. Stop. Talking.

  Max didn’t.

  Of course not. He prattled on about the game he was playing, going into way too much detail about the characters and gameplay. Mike also found he didn’t really mind it. Especially since the eager way Max jabbered on reminded him of Sara chatting his ear off during their early morning car rides.

  Not that he would admit that to Max.

  “Why ya smiling, Stewie?”

  “Because you’re an idiot.”

  Max grinned. “Why were you late to the game on Friday? Thought Coach was going to scratch you. He was that pissed.”

  Max had been late to the usual pregame festivities because he’d driven Sara home.

  Not that he was sharing that particular piece of information with the class.

  He’d let Coach know, calling him after dropping Sara and he was back on the way to the arena. Surprisingly, Bernard had been understanding after Mike had explained the situation.

  In the past, Mike would have said, “Fuck it all,” and shown up late, not caring if he was scratched or not.

  Things were different now. He had more at stake. He actually wanted to do well.

  But that wasn’t any of Max’s business.

  “How is it you’re a grown man playing a game designed for ten-year-olds?”

  “Hey! The graphics in this…”

  And Max was off, easily diverted as he talked about pixels and plot lines. Mike closed his eyes, tuned his teammate out, and wondered if there would be a text waiting for him when he landed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SARA GLANCED DOWN AT the screen on her phone, trying and failing to ignore the little green box with a bright red circle in the upper right corner.

  She’d seen Mike’s text that morning, watched it appear on the locked screen of her phone. And she hadn’t opened it.

  Oh, she’d read it all right.

  Read every single word on that black screen.

  Mike: Hey, Jumping Bean. How goes it?

  Which was really nothing.

  Except that it was Mike. All casual-like. All relaxed. As though the fact that he’d texted her hadn’t made her heart threaten to pound out of her chest.

  As though the last decade hadn’t happened.

  So his text just sat there, the red notification on her message icon glaring and guilt-inducing.

  Because she hadn’t responded.

  It had been hours, and she had not responded.

  And the Jerk-of-the-Day Award went to… (Cue her award show presenter voice here.)

  Except what could she say?

  What’s up?

  Too abrupt.

  How are you?

  So formal.

  How ‘bout those Niners?

  She didn’t even watch football.

  Hopeless. Sara was utterly hopeless.

  “You know just because you stare at it doesn’t mean it’s going to ring, right?”

  She blinked, glanced up at Mitch’s smirking face. “Shut up.”

  Mitch ignored her retort and pointed at a painting she’d unpacked that morning. “What do you think of the Prescott?”

  She thought it was brilliant and, accordingly, had hung it dead center on the studio’s most prominent wall. The lighting made the texture of the acrylics really pop.

  “It’s going to sell fast.”

  He nodded. “Yes, it is.” One of his brows came up. “And you’ll be taking that spot. So get something ready.”

  Dread. It poured over her in a tangible wave, prickling the hairs on her arms, twisting her stomach, causing sweat to break out on her palms, the backs of her knees.

  “Mitch, I—”

  “No excuses this time, Sara,” he said. “I thought we were past this. The discomfort you have with your work is insane.” He bent close, placed his hands on her shoulders. “You’re an incredible artist, and you deserve to have the world know that.”

  The world was what she was afraid of.

  “I-I can’t.”

  “You will,” he said, his tone somehow both gentle and firm at the same time. “If you want to keep working here.”

  The slice of betrayal burned.

  She stepped back, snatched up her backpack. “I’m a good employee.” Her chin lifted. “If you don’t want me working here—”

  “Ah, honey, that’s not it at all.” He started toward her, but she put up a palm to stop him. “I love having you here. What I don’t love is that it’s still holding you back. I’m holding you back. You shouldn’t be selling paintings
to idiots with way too much money and unpacking boxes of other artists’ work.” He pointed to the Prescott. “You should — you deserve — to be right there.”

  Her heart raced for the second time that day.

  Sara couldn’t deny that she wanted that too. But the risk — media attention, dredging through her past for the umpteenth time, barbed comments from her family, the people she considered friends — it was too much.

  She could not go through that again.

  “I know you didn’t cheat.”

  Her breath hitched, and she froze.

  Mitch had never mentioned her past. She’d assumed he hadn’t known.

  “I—” She shook her head.

  “Have you met me, honey?” He smirked. “While there are plenty of gay men who don’t love sparkles and music and dancing, I’m not one of them. Of course I’m familiar with figure skating. I just didn’t expect to find out that a disgraced Olympic champion was a fabulous artist as well.” He touched her cheek. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

  So, so much.

  She’d been great at skating, naturally talented and a skilled show-woman. She’d excelled at giving soundbites, never failed to put together a spunky-yet-sweet answer to even the dumbest of dumbass questions, but Mitch had struck her mute. All she could do was shake her head and clutch at the straps of her bag.

  “You’re too honest to cheat,” he said. “It took barely five minutes with you for me to know that.” His mouth twisted into a sad smile. “It’s just unfortunate the rest of the world couldn’t figure that out.”

  She snorted. Now that was for damn sure.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “So, here’s what we’re going to do. You bring me something to sell on Monday, and you’ll still have a job. You don’t, or you decide you’ve had it with my dictatorial-push-you-out-of-your-comfort-zone days, and we’ll just be friends.”

  He grabbed her coat, shoved it at her, and pushed her toward the door. “Because, honey, ‘you’ve got a friend in me.’”

  She found her tongue. “Of course you’d quote a Disney song.”

  “A bad one at that.” He smirked. “For now, take off early. Think about it. Dooo it.” The last was a whisper that made her lips twitch.