by Elise Faber
Thirteen
Liam
“Not fair, J.B.,” he murmured, setting Mia back on her feet after the kiss that had threatened to scorch his eyebrows.
“What?” she said, fingers tightening on his shoulders.
“There are too many people around for me to kiss you the way I want to.”
That cleared some of the fog in her eyes, and Mia’s cheeks flared red. He caught a glimpse of Mandy shamelessly watching them, a shit-eating smirk on her lips, and Liam knew this bit of news would be on the gossip train in a matter of moments.
In fact, if the sly smile as Mandy slipped her cell into her pocket was any indication, Mia’s launching act had been captured on film.
He paused, wondered how much he’d need to pay to get that picture.
Not to delete, but to frame on his wall.
Because something in Mia had changed . . . and it had shifted things between them.
From the moment he’d met her, Liam had been drawn to Mia, as though there was a filament connecting them, sewing them together from the instant she’d pulled him out of the path of that car. It had been growing, strengthening, transforming gossamer threads into a thin, but sturdy cotton. He might have even said it was working its way toward rope or nylon, or was it silk that supposed to be the strongest? Or perhaps that was denim?
Or maybe this line of thinking was useless because today had bypassed fabric altogether.
Steel.
The connection had hardened into metal because she was . . . open.
Lighter. That fluff peeking through.
“Don’t worry, J.B.,” he murmured and kissed her again, even though he was sweaty and still in his gear, even though he was still wearing his skates and had to bend a good number of inches to take her lips. “I liked it,” he said, pulling back. “Come on. I’ll change really quick, and we can go out and break some more rules.”
“Just because I kissed you doesn’t mean that we’re not going to follow the rules.”
A pert response that went straight to his cock.
Okay, just one more.
Liam kissed her until his lungs screamed for air, until he was breathing more heavily than after a long-ass shift on the ice.
Only then did he step back and take her hand.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I couldn’t help myself.” He brushed a hand down her arm. “I should have at least showered first.”
Mia’s pupils were darkened, widened until the black almost eclipsed the chocolate brown. The weight of those eyes, of her gaze was heavy as it traced down his body and back up. “No, you shouldn’t have.” White teeth pressing into her bottom lip. “You definitely shouldn’t have.”
His cock, half-mast from the kiss, went fully hard—and it wasn’t exactly comfortable in his cup.
He tried shifting it surreptitiously, but this woman didn’t miss anything.
“Problem?” she asked, lifting a brow.
“Yeah,” he muttered, nipping at her earlobe. “And you know exactly why.”
Hands on his chest, fingers digging into the front of his shoulder pads for a moment before she pushed him away. “Go,” she whispered. “Do what you need to do.” A beat. “I’ll think about breaking the rules.”
He winced when his cock twitched, liking that idea a whole hell of a lot.
Mia saw, giggling as she stepped away, and walked over to Mandy with total calm, as though she and Liam hadn’t been in their own personal bubble of want and need and desire.
“Are you sure I won’t be bugging you, if I hang out?” he heard her ask.
Mandy linked her arm through Mia’s. “Nope. I’ll put you to work.” She waved her fingers over her shoulder in Liam’s direction. “Plus, I get all the gossip on you and tall, stubbled, and talented over there. The girls have so many questions. I promised them I’d bring you up to the Family Suite in a bit.”
His stomach knotted.
No, he’d deliberately been avoiding bringing Mia to the Family Suite to meet the wives and girlfriends.
Because he knew that they were the other half of the gossip train.
Overwhelming, meant well, but . . . still a lot.
He opened his mouth to say . . . something, but unfortunately nothing came to mind.
Mia, as she often seemed to do, beat him to the punch.
Her gaze flicked over her shoulder, and she smiled at him.
A different smile, no sharp in sight. It was straight cotton candy, floating through the space between them and dissolving the moment it touched his skin. But it didn’t disappear. It coated him with sweetness.
Unexpected, that tart tempered with sweet. But then again, when was this woman anything but unexpected?
Swooping in out of nowhere to save him.
Knocking him to his ass more than once.
Carrot sticks at the movies.
Scorching kisses outside of elevators.
A gentle look that told him to take his time, that she’d be fine.
As he watched her disappear down the hall, Liam knew that she’d permanently claimed a large chunk of his heart.
Or maybe she had already claimed all of it.
Fourteen
Mia
“Are you sure you don’t mind that I’m here?” she asked Mandy as they turned the corner that led to the other woman’s work area.
“Oh, no,” Mandy said. “Most of my work these days comes if someone gets a new injury during a game or practice, or tracking their healing. The post-game stretches and massages and tapings are done by my underlings.”
That last was said loudly as they strode through the door into the PT Suite and resulted in a chorus of hissing and boos by the four other people in the room.
“Where are the players?” she asked.
“Showering or still talking to the media,” Mandy said. “I think we have approximately two-point-six minutes until the hoard descends.” Her volume increased as she addressed the room. “Everyone say, ‘Hi, Mia.’”
“Hi, Mia,” came the chorus of voices.
Mia waved and said hi back. She’d met Mandy’s team two nights before. They seemed nice, albeit busy, and aside from wearing the same black shirt with a Gold logo embroidered above their chest pocket, Mandy’s “underlings” were about as different as possible.
Short, tall. Male, female. Rich brown skin, pale white with freckles, tan with hints of olive, porcelain and smooth. The same went for hair—curly and straight, two dark brown, one blonde, one black. It was a cornucopia of diversity in the same space, but the best part about it was the way Mandy’s team worked.
An elusive mix of joke and teasing, but with plenty of hard work thrown in.
It had been fun to just sit in the room and listen to the banter two nights before, to experience something different, something she enjoyed, but also something she would never be able to implement with her students.
This was democracy.
She was an autocrat.
But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Her adult classes were different from her children and teen levels. She was the clear leader, obviously, but they did have a lighter feel. Her younger crowd needed discipline, however, and they often needed a rigid structure to focus and stay on task. Banter wouldn’t exactly help implement that.
That was just the way it was.
Still, it also didn’t mean she couldn’t sit back and enjoy being in the mix. “How can I help?” she asked after waving to Aiden, one of the team’s massage therapists.
“You can sit your butt down and tell me how Liam went from sad and quiet to grinning like a fool.” Mandy pulled open a drawer, started lining up supplies on a tray. “How did you meet? How long have you been together? How—” She stopped, looking up. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
Mia was quiet for a moment, blinking from the speed of the conversational shifts and the multitude of questions.
Mandy squeezed her hand. “Sorry,” she said. “I forget sometimes that we’re used to this.”
“Used to what?”
“Everyone being in everyone else’s business,” Mandy said. “I was joking about getting all the gossip . . . kind of.” She lifted her hands, palms up, like she was weighing her options. “We’re a family here. The organization tries its best to have that vibe, anyway. And I do think they succeed. We care about each other, not just about hockey and making money, but we also want our team happy.”
“And you want to know every detail.”
A shrug. “Obviously.” She grinned. “We’re really nosy, but usually we try to ease people into it.”
Mia chuckled. “You’ll have to ease me into what exactly?”
“The gossip train”—she lifted a fist like she was blasting a train whistle—“Choo-choo!”
A snort.
“It’s true,” Mandy said. “It’s high speed. Faster than even those trains that run on magnets in Japan.”
Mia laughed outright at that. “Well, thanks for letting me know.” She sobered, meeting the other woman’s eyes, the warmth in those pale brown depths loosening her lips. “In truth, I think I’ll need the easing,” she said softly, admitting something she wouldn’t have dreamed of saying before she’d met Liam. But he’d peeled back the layers, buffed away the sharp edges, made her realize that even though she’d formed her outside in the very image of the person her dad had been—one exactly like him—Mia also still had some of her mom left. It had just been safer to pretend she didn’t. It didn’t hurt as much, didn’t make her as vulnerable.
If she could just be as invulnerable as her dad, then she would be safe.
But . . . that wasn’t how she wanted to live forever.
And it had taken Liam for her to realize that.
She inhaled, released it slowly, and forced herself to keep her gaze on Mandy’s. “But, another truth, and one that’s probably way too much for us barely knowing each other”—apparently getting too attached to people upon first meetings was becoming her superpower, even more so than multitasking—“I-I’m not used to having a family. Or at least, not one like this.”
Quiet.
A long, stretching moment of quiet that had pretty brown eyes turning sad.
Mia braced herself, prepped for pity or worse, derision. She’d had too much of both in the last decade.
Instead, Mandy set the roll of tape down and reached over to cover Mia’s hand. “Let me preface this by saying, I’m not trying to presume to know what your life is or has been like.” She squeezed lightly. “But . . . it’s hard for women like us. A sharp learning curve, too much at once until it’s almost painful. It’s . . . we think that we don’t deserve it and—” A deep shuddering breath. “Sometimes I still think that. Still struggle. But I also know that at the end of the day, I have my family, the one made by bonds of friendship, of trust, of some really fucking long and hard days.” The door opened, players started to come in, and she straightened, letting her hand fall away. “I’ll just say this one last thing, Mia. I know how hard it is for us to believe that someone might want us, but, babe, you’re valuable, you’re important, you mean something.”
Someone called out Mandy’s name before Mia could respond to that, and the trainer bustled off.
It was probably a good thing, as Mia couldn’t form words anyway.
You’re valuable, you’re important, you mean something.
Just words, but also words that cemented Mia’s instincts. Mandy was going to be a great mom, or was already, she supposed, but as her daughter got older, she was going to be even better.
You’re valuable, you’re important, you mean something.
Because her mom had said those same words to her, had driven them home year after year. Even though they’d been buried, tarnished and scratched to faintness by loss, by guilt, they were still there.
And now they were back in the open.
You’re valuable, you’re important, you mean something.
Fifteen
Liam
He walked out of the arena, his fingers laced with Mia’s. “Did you drive tonight?” The previous game she’d taken a Lyft, but he didn’t want to risk her car sitting in the lot all night.
“No,” she said. “I walked.”
“Walked?”
Her studio and apartment were near the Castro. The Gold Mine was at the waterfront, almost in the shadow of the Bay Bridge. San Francisco wasn’t huge, but that wasn’t an easily walkable distance, not by a long shot.
“I was at the Ferry Building,” she said. “I—” A shake of her head.
“What?”
Her eyes closed, slowly reopened. “I didn’t realize it until during the game, but the memories were chasing me today, pressing down on me from all sides, and I just needed to feel close to her, to go someplace that she loved.”
He tugged her to a stop. “Her?” he asked gently.
“My mom.” She released a long, slow breath. “I spent a long time trying to forget everything that happened. But it’s like, from the moment I met you”—a shake of her head—“those memories won’t stay tucked away.”
Her quiet admission was a punch to his gut. He was hurting her? Meeting Mia had helped him start to find his way back to himself, and meanwhile, he was—
“No,” she said, the firm word making his eyes snap back to hers. “No, Liam. Not like that.”
He turned, cupped her cheek with his free hand. “How can you possibly know what I’m thinking?”
Her hand covered his. “I don’t know. It makes no sense. I just—I guess I just feel like I’ve known you for my whole life. Or maybe that’s not right, because I haven’t even known me for the last ten years.” Her eyes filled with tears. “My mom died when I was sixteen. It was my fault, and my dad . . . well, he didn’t exactly blame me outright, but I felt that weight all the same.”
Fuck.
“Come here, J.B.” He tugged her against his chest, began walking them to his car. As much as he was glad she’d opened up to him, as much as he wanted to hear the rest, they were also in a parking lot.
His teammates could come out. Some paparazzi could be lurking.
The Gold had been receiving an inordinate amount of media attention, even before Brit had become the first female to play in the NHL.
Liam didn’t want any of that attention shifted to Mia.
So, he bustled her into the back seat of his car and slid in next to her. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, holding her close.
“It was my birthday.”
Those words were four slices to his heart.
“Honey,” he murmured, stroking a hand up and down her back. “I’m sorry,” he said again, not knowing what else to say, knowing that even if he magically found the right sentiment that it wouldn’t make her feel better.
There was no healing this kind of pain.
“She loved abalone diving.” She leaned back slightly, damp eyes meeting his. “Do you know what that is?”
He shook his head.
“It’s like a giant sea snail. You’ve probably seen the shells around. They’re huge. Or at least the ones you’re allowed to catch are. A minimum of seven inches wide, nondescript on the outside, but inside they have these beautiful iridescent shells.” She swallowed. “People eat the meat, but I haven’t been able to stomach it since—”
She broke off, shook her head.
“Well, I can’t eat it anymore.” Her voice dropped. “But I did then. And so, when my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I asked for abalone soup. I didn’t know she was going to go out diving that day. I thought she’d buy some at the Ferry Building. I-I—” A sob. “I wouldn’t have asked if I’d known what was going to happen.”
“Shh,” he said, holding her tighter. “Of course you wouldn’t have.”
“She went out to her favorite spot. A swell pushed her into a rock. She was a strong swimmer, but I guess . . . she couldn’t get out. I don’t know if she hit her head or—” Mia dropped her forehead to his collarbone, wrapped her arms
tightly around him. “The season is tightly controlled because they’re so rare and the population is at risk.” A shuddering breath. “You have to free dive, no oxygen tanks, and the underwater cliffs they like to hang out on are full of caves and hideaways that the abalone love but are dangerous for humans.”
Bile burned the back of his throat, but Liam forced himself to be still, to hold her, to listen.
“She . . . well, she wasn’t there when I came home from school, wasn’t back for dinner.” Her arms convulsed, voice jagged shards. “I remember being furious she wasn’t there. That she’d missed my birthday, hadn’t even made the one thing I’d asked for.” Mia sucked in a breath, released it slowly. “As much as my mom loved having her own business and wanted the karate studio to be successful, she wasn’t a martial artist. She couldn’t stand the sport, actually. She handled schedules and billing and phone calls . . . and not very well. She was really more at home painting.”
He touched her cheek. “What did she paint?” he asked gently.
“Anything.” Mia sat up, lips curving. “Used to drive my dad crazy. Every other week there would be a new mural on one of the apartment walls or wet paint in the studio that the kids had to avoid.” She chuckled lightly. “He was always happier when she got a commission because the mess would be someone else’s problem.”
He cupped her jaw, asked softly, “How did your parents end up starting the studio?”
Warmth in her expression. “She wanted my dad to have a place that was his. They’d met in Europe where my dad competed internationally. He even got a gold medal in Judo in 1988. I think because she had her art and was doing well at it, she knew he needed a project, something to keep him busy and engaged when he stopped competing.” She brushed her hair out of her face. “They bought the building outright after she sold a commission, and the rest is history. My dad put his focus to good use, made the business successful. My mom kept painting. Eventually, they had me, and we were a happy unit.”
Liam cupped the side of her neck, tilted her head until his eyes met hers. “It’s not your fault.”