Boldly

by Elise Faber

  They did it moving. Pacing.

  Sometimes punching that upright bag she had in the corner.

  Her most expensive purchase, aside from the fancy rug that covered the industrial carpeting.

  The guys deserved something nice to pace over.

  Even if it got trampled.

  They also deserved…or maybe needed that punching bag.

  So, it wasn’t like she’d developed some magical treatment plan to help professional athletes—unless punching and pacing could be considered magic. She just…tried to give them what they needed.

  But now…

  She didn’t know if she could do it.

  Mostly because she’d fucked up so much the first time she’d tried to help.

  Which was why she was the one pacing.

  Why she was seriously considering wailing on that bag in the corner. Because. She. Had. Fucked. Up. So. Fucking. Bad.

  The knock at the door stopped her from doing just that—from wailing, both aloud and on the bag.

  He was here.

  A deep breath in. A deep breath out.

  She needed to own her shit, apologize, and hope they could move past it. Otherwise, she would have to refer him to someone else and—

  Another knock.

  “Fuck,” she breathed, hurrying to the door and swinging it open.

  And there he was.

  So fucking gorgeous. A sharp jawline, stubble on his cheeks, pale blue eyes, brown hair. He wore slacks and a button-down, and he wasn’t as bulky as he’d been the season before, having lost some of his muscle mass.

  He was still in shape.

  Just less muscular.

  And…she liked him less bulky.

  His brows rose, and she realized she was just staring at him. Quickly, she hopped back. “Please, come in.”

  He gave her a sharp look, probably because her voice sounded like she’d become intimately familiar with deep-throating the twelve-inch dildo her friends had gotten her for her bachelorette party.

  A bachelorette party that had coincided with her fiancé’s bachelor party.

  A bachelor party that had then coincided with the end of her engagement.

  Because how could a man be expected to not partake in variety when it was right there in front of him?

  Turned out, Trevor wasn’t a one-woman man.

  And she considered herself to have dodged a bullet—no, a grenade—to have found that out before she’d walked down the aisle.

  Of course, she would have rather known that before she’d put down the deposit for the venue and bought her dress and signed contracts with the caterer and florist and photographer. But she definitely would have rather known before he’d given her the ring, or even before they’d moved in together.

  Sighing, she rubbed her fingers over her forehead.

  “I don’t have to do this, you know?” Oliver said, his voice as calm and gentle as always, though she detected a thread of hurt.

  And why wouldn’t he be hurt?

  Based on the staring and their disastrous last meeting and—

  He shifted.

  She blinked, realized she’d gone way down the rabbit hole and was into serious Fuck Land.

  It was an amusement park for screwed-up people—therapists being right there at the top of the list because what was that about contractors’ houses never getting fixed? Oh yeah, when someone spent the majority of their time analyzing everyone else’s lives, it was easy to pretend their own life was fine, if only to spare them the brainpower.

  And she’d been sparing herself a lot of brainpower lately.

  So anyway, Fuck Land had Ferris wheels that spun people out of control, cotton candy that gifted consumers food poisoning, a carousel that had anal beads instead of saddles (because at Fuck Land one got fucked), and one of those mirrored houses that made everyone look the worst versions of themselves (her: pimples, braces, ratty hair, and unibrow for days…yay!)

  But she was a goddamned professional—screwed-up thoughts of Fuck Land aside—so, she had to lock it down.

  “I think you have to do this,” she said mildly, “if only to fulfill the terms of your contract.”

  His gaze came to hers, and God, his eyes were beautiful. “I can do it with someone else.” A beat. “If…” There he trailed off, and she was reminded again of the apology she needed to give him.

  And not just because of her trip to Fuck Land.

  “Please, sit down,” she said in her patented mix of gentle and firm. Gentle because she found that most of the guys responded to her going soft and sweet (hello, patriarchy), and firm because the other half of them liked to go toe-to-toe with someone who could hold their own.

  When he didn’t move, probably because before his injury, he would have been one of those guys pacing back and forth on her rug, she dragged her chair out from behind her desk. It was wood, scarred, but with a kick-ass cushion that supported her back and butt like she was floating on a heavenly cloud. She placed it dead center of the couch and sank down onto it. She normally wouldn’t have pushed this, but she wasn’t certain if standing on his prosthesis for too long would hurt him.

  She’d need to broach the subject.

  Just not the first day.

  Oliver was quiet for a moment before he moved.

  She shouldn’t be cataloging the movement, the way he walked—so smooth it was almost unnoticeable that he’d been so severely injured. But she had cataloged a lot of things about Oliver, okay, everything about him from the first moment she’d met him.

  He was gorgeous but quiet.

  A puzzle she wanted to untangle.

  But this wasn’t about that.

  “First,” she said, after he’d eased himself onto the worn leather of the couch, “I owe you an apology. I definitely am happy to work with you, and I’m sorry if I gave you the impression otherwise.” She rubbed her temple again, the constant throb that had invaded her temple from the moment Trevor had shown up on her porch that morning intensifying.

  “Are you not feeling well?” Oliver asked, voice soft, and she thought he might know something of mixing gentle and firm.

  “Just a headache.”

  She stood and went to her desk, pulling out a bottle of acetaminophen and taking two tablets dry.

  Because she was that good.

  Because she couldn’t risk taking her migraine meds and being drowsy for the rest of her workday.

  Or maybe just because headaches were kind of her thing.

  Along with a season pass to Fuck Land and having formerly been engaged to a man who’d decided to take up polygamy.

  Noticing Oliver staring at her, she dropped the bottle back into her drawer, returned to her chair, and sank down into that cloud-like cushion. “That’ll help,” she said. “Next—”

  “Do you get headaches a lot?”

  Her fingers had made their way back to her temples, and she consciously forced them down. “Yes, unfortunately. But it’ll go away. They always do.” Except for the ones that chased her all day and forced her into an early bedtime, and then were there greeting her so sweetly in the morning. “Okay, so the next—”

  “What causes them?”

  Hazel stopped, studied him.

  Avoidance or interest?

  She didn’t know him well enough to say which one it was for sure. But she didn’t really want to get into a battle of wills during their first session.

  So, she gave him the honest answer. “Stress. Too much caffeine. Not enough caffeine. Occasionally, too much alcohol. The wind deciding to blow. The flowers blooming. The sun being really sunny.” Her lips curved. “My computer making a whirring sound that makes my ears unhappy—”

  He pushed to his feet. “Your computer’s making a sound?” He moved to her desk, picked up her laptop and listened.

  Sure enough, it was making the noise that made her want to punch herself in her throat.

  “Hmm,” he said, bringing it back onto the couch and flipping it open on his lap. Then, su
rprising the shit out of her, he flipped it over, pulled out a tiny toolkit from his pant pocket, and started unscrewing things. “What else?” he asked as he worked.

  Thank God she’d backed up all her files that morning.

  She wasn’t sure she trusted a hockey player to provide tech support on her computer.

  “What else?” he repeated, when she debated between asking him to stop and hoping that he might be able to fix it. And, oh, also she lost herself for a minute watching those long fingers work so efficiently as they removed the plastic cover on her laptop.

  Where else might they work so efficiently?

  “Hmm?” she asked, gaze on his hands.

  There were some scars on the backs of them, white lines marring the olive skin, probably from fights on the ice. She wanted to study them, to tally all those tiny hurts, to ask him about each one and then kiss away the pain.

  And then she wanted his hands on her body.

  Yeah, that would be…well, better than nice.

  “What else causes your headaches?” he asked.

  “Besides the sun being sunny?”

  A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “Yes, aside from the sun being sunny.”

  “I—” She sighed. “It’s nothing concrete. I wear a super, sexy mouthguard at night because I used to grind my teeth”—too much information, Reid, she thought to herself, even as her heart started fluttering because the corners of that lush mouth had curved further, twisted up into a smile—“and my ex-fiancé is really good at pushing my buttons and bringing them on.” His lips flattened, so she hurried to add, “but anyway, no one has been able to figure out a single trigger. It’s just…” She shook her head, shrugged. “Something that happens.”

  “Hmm.” A beat, then, “What’s your guess for the one today?” Pale eyes on hers, holding her in place.

  She stilled in her chair, the answer on the tip of her tongue.

  He was good.

  Getting her to relax, to internalize, to easily give answers, and then…boom! Time to pounce.

  Well, she should pounce herself.

  “I owe you an apology,” she said.

  Eyes flicking to hers. Then back down to the laptop. “You already did that.”

  “Not for today.” She started to lift her hand, caught herself, and clutched them both in her lap. “For the hospital. I…reacted poorly, and made you feel self-conscious, and I’m so sorry for that.”

  His gaze was on hers, holding her in place, eyes unreadable, and yet there was something beneath the surface that called out to her, something that needed to be teased free and dealt with. Then he shrugged, and the roiling below disappeared. “It was an intense situation. Not everyone is good with seeing someone like that.”

  That being with a newly amputated leg, covered in wires and tubes, a man she’d formerly seen as huge and untouchable reduced to something breakable.

  The latter was her problem since no one was unbreakable.

  It was…it just hurt her to see him suffering.

  But she could deal with all of that, could logic and think and control her reaction to all of that, if not for…

  “The blood,” she blurted. “I…um…have an aversion to blood, and that’s the only reason I reacted the way I did. It’s illogical and unfair and had absolutely nothing to do with you. But when I see it, especially in person, I…have a reaction that isn’t…good,” she finished lamely.

  “Okay.” This time, his voice was all gentle.

  “It wasn’t you, it was…” She trailed off before she could say “me,” and tore her gaze from his, studying the painting that hung over the couch. Swathes of blue—turquoise to royal with a dash of white in between—covered the canvas. It was chaotic and rife with color…and it was also peace.

  “Hazel.” She glanced back to him, knowing when she saw him staring at the painting, that this session had gotten out of her control, and yet not knowing how to get it back.

  “Yeah?”

  “Our time’s up.”

  He stood, set her laptop—now all back together—onto her desk. Her gaze flew to her watch, saw that the hour had indeed passed. Somehow, she’d stared in silence at a painting during the majority of his session and talked about herself for the rest of it.

  Fuck.

  She sucked ass.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “I’m not,” he said, and then he stroked his knuckles down her cheek.

  Her lips parted on a gasp.

  Then he was gone.

  Chapter Three

  Oliver

  He sat in the office that had been assigned to him, wearing a suit that was a little too big for him, staring at a computer, and hoping like hell he could meet this challenge.

  The class—a series of online seminars, homework, and then a video conference at the beginning of next week—was going well.

  So far, he hadn’t learned a ton.

  Not to say it wasn’t helpful.

  Just that most of the material was something he’d learned from his coaches over the years, and the rest was intuitive.

  Now that he’d begun making good progress on the coaching course, he was going through the motions of trying to understand the system already in place in the development department.

  He needed to hire a couple of new people.

  The two assistant directors had gone off to run departments at other teams, and the current head, Marco, would only be around for another couple of weeks. He was retiring to his beach house in Florida.

  Which meant that Oliver had a stack of files on his desk to go through.

  And the one he’d happened to open to start with?

  His own.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, resisting the urge to toss it aside and forcing himself to start at the beginning, to take note of the way the file was formatted, the things that had been jotted down.

  The information was good, all things that had been appropriate about his game play (before he’d stopped playing) and the skills earmarked for improvement were on point as well. It was just…this was a paper fucking file. Why was this information not computerized when everything else in the Breakers organization was of the highest tech?

  He knew the answer to that.

  Marco.

  Old school.

  The man had an allergy to computers but was good at his job. Which was why Oliver put his file to the side—gently—then moved onto the next, reading through information about Smithy and Marcel and Raph.

  All of it precise.

  All of it exactly what the guys needed.

  And that was the moment he started to get excited. He knew drills that could help with the weaknesses called out in those files. Knew that there was equipment the team could bring out to build up what was lacking, bolster what needed support.

  For the first time since Luc had offered him the job the week before, he thought that, yeah, he could be of use.

  Which felt really fucking good.

  Smiling, he moved on to the next file just as there was a knock at the door.

  Glancing up, since the panel was open, he saw Connor Smith—Smithy—leaning against the jamb, arms and ankles crossed. “Lunch?” he asked.

  Oliver wanted to turn him down.

  Not because he didn’t want to see or hang out with his friend, but because he wanted to dive into the files, get caught up, and then start developing a computerized system where he could dump all this information.

  Just the thought of spreadsheets and coding them got him excited.

  What could he say? He might be an athlete, but he loved anything tech-related, and though he was better at the hardware stuff than the software, he could make his way through a bit of base code.

  Plus, he knew a couple of people who were way better at it, and he’d bet at least one of them would take on the project.

  Then he could hire some assistants to replace those who’d gone their own way.

  “Ollie?”

  He blinked. “
Sorry.” He closed the folder, stood. “I was thinking about all the things I needed to do.”

  “Is it a lot?”

  Snagging his cell as he moved around his desk, Oliver nodded. “A lot, but I think it’ll be good.”

  “And you’re good with it? With working in the back office instead of playing?”

  That was Smithy.

  Let it hang right out there.

  Luckily, Oliver was used to dealing with him, and he wasn’t easily offended. “I’m as good with it as I can be, Smithy. Would I rather be playing? Yes. Would I rather have my leg? Fuck, yes. But do I? No. So, I’m dealing with it.”

  “Dealing with it how?”

  “I’m getting on with my life.”

  Connor’s lips pressed flat. “Right.”

  “Smithy, look. I appreciate you being concerned, but I’m fine.”

  “Fine,” Smithy repeated.

  And his face told Oliver he didn’t get it.

  It was infuriating. It was…what it was.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing his suit jacket and shrugging into it. “Food, and then you get to do all the fun conditioning on the ice while I get to mess around on my computer.”

  Smithy moved out of the door when Oliver walked toward it, but he didn’t miss that his friend’s eyes still held concern, still held worry.

  Stifling a sigh, he slipped out into the hall and tried for a joke.

  “Since you still have that big contract, you’re buying.”

  But Smithy didn’t laugh.

  And lunch was…too damned quiet, filled with too many awkward pauses.

  “What do you think?” he asked Luc that Friday.

  A week since he’d agreed to the job.

  Three days since his time with Hazel, since he’d found out her ex was an ex, since he’d understood the horror on her face wasn’t because of him, or at least not really about him.

  Blood.

  It had been so much clearer when she’d said that.

  Pale skin. Wide eyes. Wavering on her feet.

  Not because she was disgusted with him, but because she had some phobia that had nothing to do with him.

  And somehow that made it better.

  “I think I’d better show you the budget for your department.”