Rebound (Seattle Steelheads #1)(81)

He was the first to break eye contact. “All right. Go.” Still no anger. The words shook just enough to hint at the hurt underneath, but I recognized that posture and that tone. It was just like when he’d been struggling to hold himself together after the cops had escorted Nathan out of the house. When he’d kept himself upright until they were gone, and then he’d cracked and broken down on my shoulder. It broke my heart, knowing I was making him feel like that again, and it was also a hell of a shove toward the door. He didn’t have to say it out loud, but I could feel it radiating off him: Get out so I can let myself feel this.

So I left.

And all the way back to Lake City, wondered when it would feel like I’d done the right thing.





Chapter 24


Asher



Ready or not, life went on. The PHL, the Steelheads, the fans, and the team’s brutal schedule didn’t give one fiery fuck how badly I wanted to stay home, shut out the world, and lick my wounds.

Less than twelve hours after Geoff walked out my front door, I was in downtown Seattle and back on the ice. Another twenty-four after that, I was on my way to Omaha with the team for our seventeen thousandth away game this month.

We won the home game by the skin of our teeth. The less said about the Omaha game, the better. Fortunately, there was a foolproof remedy for the post-loss funk—beer. Lots of beer. We were all good about eating clean most of the time, and we didn’t party hard every night, but after a loss like that? Bottoms up.

At a bar near our hotel, the team pushed a bunch of tables together against the far wall, ordered our first round (which probably qualified as two or three rounds for normal people) and went to work drowning the shitty game in whatever this place had on tap. Grady even asked the waitress if she could just drag a couple of kegs out here and put straws in them. I was pretty sure she thought he was kidding. I was also pretty sure he wasn’t.

After a few drinks, I stopped obsessing over the mistakes I’d made during the last couple of games. I figured after several more, I’d stop obsessing over Geoff too. There were a lot of emotions trying to crack through right now, and if I let them I wouldn’t be able to stop them. I needed to drink them silent, so as soon as I’d finished my beer, I headed for the bar to order another. Maybe two more. People didn’t really look twice if a hockey player double-fisted his drinks. Hell, if anything they probably looked at us weird if we weren’t double-fisting. Or maybe that was just my team. Coach joked—sort of—that we should be called the Seattle Pickled Livers. He might’ve been on to something.

While I was waiting for my fourth and fifth beers, a flicker of movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I turned.

In an instant, I was…not sober, but definitely not feeling like I was three beers in anymore. A familiar profile disappeared into the crowd like a mirage, and I had to grab on to the bar as all the alcohol in my blood turned to icy panic. My heart didn’t beat this fast when I was out on the ice. Shit.

Had Nathan really followed me all the way to Nebraska? What the fuck?

Should I call the cops? I should call the cops.

Except how the fuck was he even out of jail? Time off for good behavior shouldn’t have happened this fast, right? Christ, and now he was—

He materialized again, and when he turned his head, a breath rushed out of me.

He wasn’t Nathan.

I had no idea who he was, and he didn’t even seem to notice I was here, never mind that I was this close to a legit panic attack after a glimpse of him. He wasn’t my ex. He wasn’t here to fuck with me. Jesus. Good thing I hadn’t already called the cops or something.

The bartender set my beers down in front of me, and I didn’t even know what to do next. The thought of drinking them made me queasy. What if Nathan really did show up and I was too drunk to know he was there? Except he was in jail, so he couldn’t have been—

A heavy hand on my shoulder almost made me jump out of my skin, and I startled so hard my elbow nearly took out both my untouched beers.

“Crows.” Grady kept his hand on my shoulder and looked right in my eyes, his wide with concern. “Man, what is going on?”

“I, um…” I swallowed, wondering when my throat had turned so acidic. Then I glanced past him and realized the rest of the team had fallen silent. They all watched me and Grady. No, they watched me. Half the guys were already smashed, but even they seemed to sober up enough to focus.

I swallowed hard, avoiding all the piercing stares. “I need… I need to pay for my beers.” I fumbled for my wallet, which was in the same pocket I always kept it in.

“Dude. The team has an open tab.” Grady picked up my drinks. “Why don’t I carry them, though?”

I felt like an idiot, but he was probably right. If I’d tried to pick one up, I’d have ended up wearing the beer and shattering the glass on the floor at my feet.

With Grady on my heels, I headed back to my seat at the table, and I tried to ignore the way my teammates watched me. Problem was, they weren’t ignoring me.

My ass had barely touched the chair before Bruiser said, “Hey, what’s going on? You looked like you were about to having a freak-out up there.”

I didn’t have an answer. Not one I was going to say out loud in front of my teammates, anyway.

Grady put the beers in front of me and sat beside me, and it wasn’t lost on me that they were both sitting closer than before. Despite all the scrutiny and my phantom ex-boyfriend, I felt oddly safe in between Grady and Bruiser. They were both huge, and with them on either side and my back to the wall, no one was getting the drop on me. It was comforting in a way that made my throat tight, which made it even tougher to face my teammates. I was already brittle as fuck from everything with Geoff. Now I’d had a moment—a fleeting, but fucking terrifying moment—of believing my psycho ex had hunted me down. I didn’t know which was worse: the thought that he might actually do that, or the realization of how scared I still was of him.