by Elise Faber
He’d fucked up royally. He’d pushed when he should have been patient, and because of that, he’d gotten an answer that stung like a motherfucker.
Dani liked him.
But she didn’t feel the same way about him.
Not yet, anyway.
He yanked out his notebook, spreading out his papers and books next to him, determined to focus on his schoolwork, something he’d been neglecting of late, and hockey.
The team typically traveled to their road destinations right after their game, unless there were more than the usual two down days in between matches. It made for a killer type of red-eye, but it was safer than potentially hitting a delay that might make them late for a game.
Because there was nothing professional athletes hated more than being off their routine.
Arriving the day before a game, sometimes getting in a practice or an optional morning skate in, let them get acclimated to the time zone, the weather, to get enough rest and exercise, and to continue their aforementioned routine.
For Ethan, this included joining in on Brit’s killer off-day workout and then spending an hour on the bike and another in either the hotel’s hot tub or sauna or the arena’s—if they happened to have the facilities for the away team. Not all did, including the one they’d be playing at the day after tomorrow—the final game of the road trip.
Which meant that he’d wake up in the morning, be tortured by Brit and company, and then head back to the hotel for food and hot tub time.
And all the while, he would be pretending that he hadn’t fucked up with Dani, that he hadn’t blown it, that he wasn’t spending all his time trying to figure out a way to explain to her what had gone through his head, and trying to find the strength to not push, to be patient, to hope she’d eventually feel the same way as him—
“Fuck,” he whispered, stretching back in his seat, the rumbling of the engines a pleasant drone that would normally make him sleepy. Most of the team was similarly coaxed, the adrenaline wearing down and the familiar sound luring them under. Brit was curled up in a seat across the aisle from him, Coop in the row behind her. If they abided by their routine, Calle would join him shortly, the two lovebirds, still sickeningly infatuated with each other. They’d probably fall asleep holding hands.
Ick.
Also, this just in, he was jealous.
Soft footsteps made him grip his pen tighter, writing faster in the notebook where he was jotting down ideas for one of his final papers. He just wanted to finish it, to get his thoughts on paper, and then he’d try to sleep for a bit.
Try to pretend he wasn’t responsible for gouging out his own heart.
The footsteps slowed.
He wrote faster . . . until heat prickled on his nape. Until he glanced up and saw it was Dani.
No, he’d known it was her.
That sensation on his skin, the rightness in his chest, the heat arrowing straight for his cock. It was the built-in Dani Locator, and right now she had stopped by his seat. Their gazes collided, and he felt the impact of those gorgeous eyes in his heart, as if she had reached a hand between his ribs and squeezed it tight.
“Hey,” he whispered.
Her mouth twitched, as though she’d been going for a smile, but then she seemed to catch herself, nodding and whispering, “Hi.” She hesitated. “I . . . about last night. I didn’t mean—”
“Say no more,” he said. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine—”
“Ethan.”
They turned, saw that Bernard had come up. “Need a word.”
“I—”
With one long look at him, Dani moved back up the aisle. He knew she’d be on her laptop, working until the plane landed, making sure that everything was ready for the team when they needed it. The equipment managers, the trainers, the video coaches—including Dani—were some of the hardest working people in the organization. Their jobs usually began before the players and ended long after them.
The equipment team washed and prepped gear and jerseys for travel, made sure extra sticks, laces, tape, and more were available during the game. They were constantly drying gloves, making sure the players’ skates were in good shape, their helmets weren’t worn or damaged. Hockey, as a sport, required a shit ton of equipment, and that meant their job didn’t stop. But the trainers were just as important. Their job being to keep the players healthy, to come up with workouts and rehab and conditioning plans in order to make sure everyone was skating at their best. Diet was one part. Injury treatment another. Building specific types of muscle strength was still one more. And they had to keep track of that for an entire roster. Not easy.
But as hard as they worked, he’d never seen anyone else pull the kinds of hours Dani did.
Part of the reason he loved and respected her was because she never missed a beat, was always impeccably prepared, a consummate professional. Even as shy as she was with most people, she got her shit done, and the team was the better for it.
In a word, she was amazing.
Multi-faceted. Smart. A hidden well of fire and spine. And pain. And fear. And so much fucking courage.
And he’d fucked up.
He’d pushed her beyond that bravery and into fear, and he’d never forgive himself for doing that. But now, he just needed to figure out how to get beyond that, to convince her to move beyond the scared and trust that he wouldn’t hurt her, to believe him when he said he wouldn’t push her again. But for all his wants and needs, how could he possibly expect that faith?
“We need to talk about the game tomorrow. I wanted to . . .”
Bernard kept talking, explaining a shift in the system, how he would be playing a bigger role, at least for the time being. Normally, that would have been the best fucking news ever, but today, he was too busy being miserable.
After a few minutes, Bernard moved up the aisle, sitting in his usual spot.
But Ethan’s eyes didn’t stay on his coach. Instead, they drifted to Dani. Because . . . she was his heart.
“You’re staring.”
He glanced to the left, away from the aisle that Dani had walked up, saw Fanny leaning against the seat opposite him, her generous mouth curved into a smile. Since she didn’t normally fly with them on away games, he asked, “Just couldn’t get enough of us?”
The tall, statuesque brunette glanced behind her, then propped herself on the arm of the empty seat next to him. Well, mostly empty since it currently held a stack of his schoolwork.
“Well, actually,” she said, lips twitching, “now that you bring it up . . .”
He chuckled quietly. “Visiting family?”
A nod. “Well, I had been visiting. We took a road trip of our own, and now I’m with you guys until we fly back to San Francisco. But don’t worry, I’ll be working plenty. I’ve got a whole slew of new skating drills to torture you with.”
He groaned good-naturedly.
Yes, he hated skating drills. Especially after a lifetime of doing them.
But old—bad—habits crept in quickly, and Fanny kept him straight.
“You love them,” she said. Then she leaned in.
Aw, fuck. Here they went.
“Who ya looking at?” she asked casually.
“No one.”
“Hmm.” A beat. “So, why is Dani walking around with pain and indecision in her eyes?”
He didn’t bite.
“Ah, a recalcitrant one.” She tapped her chin. “How many ways to destroy your legs shall I use?”
“I fucked up.”
“Ah,” she said again. “So, I need to destroy you.”
He groaned, rested his head in his hands.
She sighed, scooping up his papers and books then sitting down in the seat next to him.
“You know I had a system for that, right?” he muttered.
“I know you had a mess.” She opened the tray table in front of her, began stacking and organizing the texts in a way that he knew would make sense—just based on her tota
lly organized system of drills both on and off ice, plus keeping track of players’ milestones and goals. Fanny was far better suited for balancing a career and degree than he was. “There, now,” she said, straightening the stack and turning toward him. “All in order. Now tell me, Dani and you, what’s up?”
He made a face. “I told you. I messed up.”
“How?” She pointed at said face. “And how badly?”
“Badly.” Her expression clouded, and deliberately he dropped his eyes back down to his notebook, ignoring the steady brown gaze trying to force the rest out of him. He’d dealt with Fanny enough on the ice to know that she was a fucking force to be reckoned with once she picked at the thread of something. On the ice for him, it had been his backward crossovers, specifically him not putting weight on the proper edge on his left foot. She’d pulled that out of nowhere, had picked and prodded and drilled the shit out of him until he’d fixed that bad habit. It had taken the entire fucking summer, but he’d managed, thanks to this woman’s bulldog tendencies.
And now, she was focused on Dani. On him and Dani.
Things were off. He was moping. Dani was hurt, and Fanny had seen that pain. Which meant it wouldn’t be long until the rest of the team would notice.
He’d be getting wooing advice from Kevin, who’d managed to snare PR-Rebecca. Gabe, who was the Gold’s head trainer and with Nutritionist Rebecca and really good at asking for forgiveness, would give him a multitude of tips, all while prescribing uncomfortable TENS therapy and/or a pressure point massage as punishment for Ethan’s wrongdoings. And Brit would be all over it, enlisting Max and Blue and Coop to enact revenge.
That wasn’t even including Blane, Stefan—their former captain and Brit’s hubby, Mike, Liam, and Logan.
They’d all have an opinion over his mistakes, would drag him over the coals with one breath, and with the next, they’d want to help him fix his fuck up.
It would be awful.
It would be fucking great.
Because they were family, and they cared.
Ethan just . . . he already had put enough pressure on his own shoulders to try to fix things with Dani. The full-court press of the entire team would probably work against him, make it even harder.
Either that or he was worried that she really didn’t love him, wouldn’t ever find her way there, and she was just looking for some fun, exploring her attraction to a semi-good-looking guy with a decent job, some smarts, and a nice body. Maybe she didn’t actually like what was beneath the surface.
Maybe she didn’t see the same future he did.
And perhaps that was the biggest mindfuck of all. Because he wasn’t the type of man to back down from what he wanted.
The degree was difficult with his job and travel. He was making it happen. It might have taken longer than planned, but he’d done it. His parents didn’t want him to help them when his father had been let go from his job a few years back. He’d paid off their house, refused to accept any repayment when they’d sold it after his parents had both gotten jobs at a different university. He wasn’t the most talented guy in the league (not by a long shot). But he’d put his fucking head down and worked to make a place for himself on the special teams. He’d found a way to be valuable and content without trying to be a superstar—not that he had the skill for it.
And that wasn’t self-deprecation.
It was reality.
So he was living the fucking dream, feeling fulfilled in his work, in his life . . . well, in most parts of his life.
Because he couldn’t make Dani love him. No matter how much he wanted her to.
“Earth to Ethan,” Fanny said lightly.
“I’m working,” he muttered, squeezing his pen.
“Thinking about Dani. Thinking about how to fix your fuck up.”
“Fanny,” he warned.
“Ethan,” she warned back.
He sighed. “I love her,” he said. “But she doesn’t love me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And I can’t make her. Even though I really want to.”
Fanny’s mouth fell open, but he had to give her credit; she recovered quickly. “Ethan, that’s—”
“Don’t.”
“That woman has come alive since you’ve started dating. She likes you. She loves you.” Fanny squeezed his hand. “She may not be ready to say it yet, but have no doubt that her heart beats for yours.”
The pain in him lessoned, the edges of the gaping wound closing slowly. “I still need to find a way for her to forgive me for pushing.”
She snorted. “You’re a man. Men push.”
“That doesn’t make it—” He broke off when her lips twitched. “Hilarious. I should make you do skating drills.”
“I’d kill your puny little skating drills.” She narrowed her eyes, lips twitching again, and more of that painful, caused-by-his-own-hand wound closed. “Dani is a good person. She’s clearly crazy about you. So just be patient but persistent, and”—she leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper—“for the record, she loves Hot Tamales.”
“What if she doesn’t love me?”
Fanny smacked him on the arm. Hard.
The woman was stronger than she appeared, but her tone was even more fierce. “You are a fucking catch, Ethan Korhonen, and if you don’t believe that, look inside yourself and imagine how you’d feel if Dani thought that she wasn’t worthy of your love.”
His jaw clenched as reality struck home.
How could he expect Dani to see herself as he saw her—wonderful, beautiful inside and out, smart, funny, incredibly strong—if he continued to view himself as never quite measuring up?
She nudged him. “Exactly. So put that derision and self-doubt to bed once and for all, woman up, and love her with every bit of your soul.”
Fanny was out of the seat and walking down the aisle before he could summon any words, the reality of her words hitting him hard enough to momentarily freeze his lungs.
Because he finally understood.
Self-deprecating took on a different tact when it was laced with self-loathing, when it was used as a joke, but one with a painful center. He stared down at the tray table, knowing that it had begun long ago when he’d overheard one of his father’s colleagues telling another colleague that Ethan’s parents must be “so disappointed” to not have an “intellectual child.”
Because he’d played hockey.
Because he hadn’t taken to piano or Math Club. He hadn’t had the patience to want to join the debate team.
He loved learning, but only what he found interesting.
Because outside of that, he’d loved even more to move—to be on the ice, to feel the cool air on his face, the joy of a teammate scoring or connecting a sweet pass, the terror when a player was streaking back toward their zone, the dip in his stomach when a goal went in their net, the tightness of his lungs, the burn of his quads when he worked his ass off during a shift.
And he’d never quite realized how much how he’d valued that as less.
It had been masked by humor, by self-decrepitation over the years. Yes, the team called him Big, Juicy Brain, but he’d never felt that way—and how could he? He knew he was nowhere near as smart as his parents, and he’d been okay with that.
Except . . . he hadn’t.
Because beneath all that okay was a thorn pressing against the inside of his ribs, jabbing him every time he threatened to breathe too deeply, to look too closely.
For all the joking and pretending to be confident in his place and unaffected by the bullshit that others brought, deep down Ethan didn’t feel like he was enough. When he peeled back the layers, studied what was beneath that veneer, he didn’t feel like enough. It was a painful fucking truth, because he wanted to be what he appeared to be on the surface, self-assured, comfortable in his space.
He’d found that professionally, felt it like a second skin settling over him by finding his place on the Gold. But as he’d found that, it had masked the rest of the turmoil beneath.
>
Why his first reaction when Dani hadn’t returned his declaration had been to assume that of course she couldn’t love him back.
Why he’d stayed away, avoided her like hell because he’d known that she was going to cut him loose.
Why he’d been so wrapped up in his own head, his own certainty that he wouldn’t be enough instead of moving forward with patience and understanding, with openness instead of silent misery.
And, most importantly, finally, finally understanding that he could never love Dani properly if he was always worried about being worthy of her heart. He had to believe he was worth it, not to just give her his in an effort to avoid looking beneath.
But could he?
As he wrestled with that, with understanding he needed to be able to accept her love so they could build something lasting, his cell—connected to the plane’s WiFi—buzzed.
He tugged it from his pocket, saw a text from his mom.
Thanks for letting us crash your date with Dani. She’s wonderful.
Yes, she was.
It’s not crashing when you’re invited. Thanks for coming to the game.
The “…” danced on his screen, and he waited for the message to appear. Waited what felt like an eternity since his mom was a slow texter. But as he did all that waiting, he found his own fingers moving, tapping out a question he didn’t really process until it was sent. Until the “…” on his mom’s side disappeared.
Do you ever wish you had a different son?
His throat seized, fingers flying again, wanting to explain that he’d meant intellectually, or with a different profession, or—
No.
And then his cell vibrated with an incoming call. From his mom. And fuck, he didn’t want to have this conversation, didn’t want to delve too deeply, not when the realizations already had him feeling raw.
“Hello?” he murmured, after putting his earpiece in.
“I know you’re on the plane,” his mom said, her voice an odd blend of fierce and gentle, “so I’ll keep this brief. I love you. Just as you are.” She paused for a brief moment then went on, “When I see you doing something you love, when I watch you interact with others, demonstrating warmth and kindness and empathy, you make me so fucking proud to be a mother. To be your mother. I look at you and feel like my heart is going to explode with pride.”