by Elise Faber
“Considering it’s still hanging out,” he muttered, summoning the strength to yank up his underwear and pants, “it’s good you think that.”
Fuck.
He hadn’t even taken off his shoes.
“Oliver?”
“Hmm?” Smoothing back her hair, he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“I liked that.” She snuggled closer. “That ticks one box off my fantasy list.”
“Good,” he managed to say. He’d sit up in a second, leave her to sleep, but…just in a second. Because he didn’t feel like he had any bones left in his body.
“I think you might be able to tick off my entire list.”
His limbs were weighed down with concrete, he was so relaxed. The semi-constant background noise of pain of his injury had finally silenced, leaving only relaxed muscles and nerves and a brain that was full of haze. “Mmm-hmm.”
A giggle then her arm tightened around him. “Oliver?”
“Hmm?” he said again.
“Will you stay?” He sucked in a breath, some of that relaxation fading. “Just for a little while?” she added when he didn’t immediately respond. “It’s okay if you don’t want to,” she whispered as he was still trying to form words that weren’t hmm or mmm. “I know that you came out of your way and—”
“Babe.”
“Yeah?”
He summoned some inhuman strength and managed to say, “I didn’t even take my shoes off, I was in such a hurry to get to you. My shoes,” he repeated, wrapping an arm around her and tucking her close. “That’s how much I wanted to be here. You want me to stay, I’m here. Though,” he added gently. “I need to take off my leg to sleep, so if that’s something you’re not comfortable with…”
She sat up, hand on his chest. “It’s you, honey. I’m comfortable with every part of you.”
Something inside him relaxed. The last of those supports holding up the wall that kept everyone at a distance, the little bit of fear that this would be the moment she rejected him.
“Is there anything you need to make it easier?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t turn down a charger for my phone on the nightstand.”
She grinned, pushed off him. “I think I can do that.” Then she was out of bed, and he was watching her naked ass head for the door. She stooped to pick up her tank top and panties, pulling both on. Then she disappeared into the hall.
He summoned the energy to get out of bed, dealt with the post-best-orgasm-of-his-life wobble, yanked up his pants and moved to one of the two doors in the corner. One revealed a closet—messy enough to make him smile, apparently his woman was a packrat. The other was the bathroom. He did his thing, washed his hands, and when he came out to the bedroom again, it was to find Hazel plugging in a charger and draping the cord over the wood of the nightstand.
“There’s an extra toothbrush in the drawer by the sink.”
“Thanks, babe.” He turned back, found the drawer and the toothbrush, did his thing again—albeit with his teeth this time, and returned to the bedroom. The penguins were off, but in its place was some cooking show that Hazel paused.
She got up, crossed to him, pressing a kiss to his jaw, and trailing her hand across his stomach.
As though she’d done that a hundred times before.
He liked it.
Liked the way it made him feel like he belonged here.
Smiling and probably having no idea that she had once again rocked him to his core, she moved into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
The water turned on.
He moved to the bed, dug his wallet and keys out of his pocket, his cell out of the other, plugged it into the charger, and then took care of removing his prosthesis—working off the socket that attached it to the portion of his leg beneath his knee the doctors had been able to save, propping the prosthesis against the nightstand, then scooting back onto the bed and peeling away the liners and socks he wore beneath to cushion the impact on his skin and remaining limb.
Hazel came out of the bathroom, walking straight toward him, her eyes not once going to the stump or the space where his leg should be.
Instead, she crawled into bed, snuggled up next to him, yanked the covers up, and threw an arm over his waist, sighing contentedly.
“Beautiful.”
Her head tilted back, eyes hitting his. “What’s beautiful?”
“You.” He ran his knuckles over her cheek. “And what you’ve given me. I—” He wrapped his arms around her. “I didn’t think I could have that. Not because I didn’t deserve it or there was something wrong with me—I battled through those demons long ago, and losing my leg wasn’t going to bring me back. I just…I just never thought that being with a woman would bring me this much peace, didn’t think I could open up enough to have that peace.”
“Because when you found it with Theresa and Alex,” she whispered, “and then that peace was taken away.”
He nodded, voice cracking when he said, “It took them ages to get in. Then they were…”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And then they were gone.”
He nodded, smoothed her curls back, letting them bounce through his fingers. “Yeah, babe. Then they were gone. But”—a breath, needing to tell her this, needing to admit it aloud since it was all up in his heart—“you’re here now.”
She gripped him tighter, snuggled closer against him, sliding her leg over his thighs so she had him wrapped in a full-body hug. “I’m here,” she said, “and I’m not going anywhere.”
He was wide open. Vulnerable.
But Hazel had her body wrapped around him. Her promise on the air.
So, he wasn’t scared.
“What do you think?” he asked, the next night.
Hazel walked through his living room with its gray on gray on gray decor and winced. “It’s nice,” she began.
But he could see her face and having spent some time at her place the previous morning, he knew that it was as he’d thought. Her house was a home. Warm and lived in, with loads of pictures and knick-knacks and artwork. It wasn’t like he wanted his shelves and walls filled with clutter. It was just…he wasn’t afraid of the connection now.
He wasn’t afraid to have something warm, worried that it might be taken away.
That had already happened, and he’d survived, and he was doing Teresa and Alex a disservice by continuing to hide. And if they were there, they’d kick his ass for daring to live that way. A big life, Teresa always said. We want you to live a big, big life.
Hazel had helped him remember that.
Because she saw beneath the barriers.
Gave him the courage to move beyond them.
So, he was continuing with his plan to slowly (okay, maybe not so slowly), to reel her in, and that meant getting her to invest in him, in them. Which was why he’d invited her over under the guise of “helping” him with a few things.
“You see my problem?” he said.
“That it looks like a very expensive hotel room?” she asked. “Or that fancy living room that you’re not allowed to step foot in because you might spill on the white carpet?”
“Yes. That.”
She grinned. “I see your problem.”
“So, you’ll help me?”
“Go boho chic like my place?”
The term boho made him shudder, and chic wasn’t much better, but he put on a brave face and nodded. One, he wanted Hazel to keep coming around and decorating his house as a great excuse to spend time with her. Two, if she managed to give him a bit of what she had at her place, he could build on that, keep making his house a home. “If that’s what you think will work best,” he said, meaning it. “I want to come home and feel home, not like I can’t step on that white carpet.”
She smiled at him, wide and open. “I am teasing about the boho chic, but I don’t think you’d go wrong with a little color.”
Color he could do.
Especially if it wasn’t more gray.
“So,” he said, “if I turn you loose at Target with my credit card, can you give me a little color in here?”
“In here,” she said, rolling her earring, as she always seemed to do when she was thinking hard about something, “Target will do. This whole house?” She spread her hands wide. “It’s a lot of space, and a designer might be better.”
“A designer is what got me into this.”
“You and me and Target will take time.”
He shrugged. “I have time.”
“You and me and Target means multiple trips to Target.”
Another shrug. “I like Target.”
She placed the back of her hand on his forehead. “Do you have a fever?” she teased. “What man in his right mind likes Target?”
“Will Target be with you?”
One half of her mouth hitched up. “Yes.”
“Then I like Target.”
She melted, her body going soft against him, and he’d thus resisted kissing her so far, but he couldn’t resist then, not with her so close and so soft.
When they broke apart, he dragged his mouth down her neck, nipped the sensitive skin of her collarbone. “Come on,” he said, tugging her into the kitchen, “I’ll cook, and then we can go shopping.”
Hazel sidled up to him. “You know what’s great about Target?”
“What?” he murmured, taking another bite out of her—figuratively, not literally, though he did have his teeth on her skin, her taste on his tongue.
“You can get food there,” she whispered.
He grinned. “Popcorn and slushies?”
“That.” A beat. “And Starbucks.”
“My woman needs coffee?”
She beamed up at him. “Your woman always needs coffee.” A hand on his waist, her lips on his throat. “And a cake pop.”
“You get this place looking and feeling like a home instead of a very luxurious jail, and I’ll buy you two cake pops.”
Fluttering eyelashes, twitching lips. “Oh, you know how to treat a girl.”
He cracked up.
Then swatted her on the butt.
Then he took his woman to Target.
And got her three cake pops.
Chapter Eighteen
Hazel
“Um, what?” Marcel asked.
She’d had her session with him yesterday, visualizing exercises, writing down some goals and things to work toward. Mediation and a bit of yoga.
But she’d saved the big guns for today.
Rage room 2.0.
Or at least, it was 2.0 for her.
For Marcel, he was looking around the room—the same one she and Oliver had gone to town on—and his eyes were wide.
“Break something,” she said. “Anything. It’s all here for us to destroy.”
“I—” His mouth opened and closed, his head jerked back, and she got a sick feeling in her stomach. Had she read this completely wrong? “But,” he whispered, picking up a truly ugly olive and turquoise plate from the stack that sat on a table she’d taken her baseball bat to just a few days before. “Why would I want to break this?”
Because it’s ugly as hell.
But she didn’t say that.
Instead, she smiled encouragingly. “Because it’s designed for it. Because sometimes, we need to break things in order to put ourselves back together. Because sometimes, it feels really fucking good to toss a plate instead of beating yourself up because you missed a breakaway.”
His eyes, an amber brown, flared with emotion before shifting away.
Damn.
He wasn’t going to bite.
He was shutting down.
Which was the worst thing he could do. Marcel in his head wasn’t a happy place, not when he rehashed every mistake he made during a game over and over again.
She shouldn’t have mentioned the breakaway.
She might as well have poked the wound inside him that was growing every day because he hadn’t scored in eighteen games with a stick.
And then rubbed salt in it.
How to salvage this? How to—
He launched the plate at the wall.
It shattered, loudly in the quiet space, making her jump and squeak out a breath.
“Shit,” he breathed. “I’m sorry. I—”
She snatched a plate and launched it. It crashed against the wall and broke, not into as many pieces as he’d made his plate break. But it was still in shards on the ground.
Marcel started. “Whoa.”
“What?”
“I just threw a plate.” He stared at her. “You just threw a plate.”
She grinned. “We did.” A beat. “So, how’d it feel?”
“I—”
When he didn’t go on, Hazel just grabbed another plate, shoved it at him. Then snagged one for herself.
“First one to hit that ugly-ass blue teacup on the shelf wins.”
“Wh-what?” he sputtered.
She launched her plate, discus style, at the shelf and teacup. Missed, of course. Because she didn’t have great aim to begin with, but at a target ten feet away? Hopeless.
Marcel, a sniper on the ice when he was on fire, wouldn’t have any trouble.
But he just stared at her.
“That teacup is awful,” she said. “I want it gone.”
She grabbed another plate, threw it. Missed horribly.
Still watching her, he lobbed the plate he held. It flew across the room like a frisbee and, of course (freaking athletes and their good aim), took out the teacup. Both plate and cup exploded into a ton of pieces.
She handed him another plate.
“Where next?” he asked.
Yes!
Hazel just barely resisted the urge to fist pump. Instead, she glanced around the room.
“The mirror.”
He launched it.
It hit the mirror.
Then he asked, “Where next?” again.
She finally breathed easy.
Because they were on.
This was going to work.
It had to.
The next evening, she sat in the owner’s box, staring down at the ice.
Okay, not staring at the ice so much as watching the players on the ice.
One player.
Marcel.
Who was on a tear.
Thank freaking God!
They’d gone through those plates, and then the ugly teacups, and then a typewriter, several vases, an old Dell computer, several baskets, decorative plates, and the gold-plated mirror.
By the end, Marcel had been going whole hog, and she’d just sat back as he exorcised some pretty serious demons.
It had been glorious.
He’d been glorious.
Sweat-damp hair sticking to his forehead, amber eyes gleaming, his damp T-shirt clinging to his muscles. Pru was right. He was beautiful.
Even more so with a hockey helmet, she thought, watching him carry the puck up the ice and hand it off on a really nice pass to Raph, who picked it up and drove toward the net. The guys got an excellent chance on goal that the other team’s goalie unfortunately stopped.
But more important, Marcel looked like himself.
“I don’t know what you did,” Luc murmured, using his clipboard to block his mouth, just in case the cameras were on them and someone got it in their mind to lip read. Which had been known to happen on occasion.
Seriously, though, that was why she loved Luc. He thought of those things and knew that with Marcel starting to relax a bit, his confidence coming back—tonight’s game play being a much-needed bolster to it—that the last thing he needed was some reporter asking a dumb question about why he needed appointments with a sports psychologist.
Hey dumbass, she always wanted to say when Luc or one of the players got a question about her role with the Breakers. They’re athletes, not robots. Which means they’re human, and human shit gets in the way. So, maybe they need to talk to someone to get their head straight every once in a while.
Or need a break before they’re ready to get on the ice.
Especially during a long season with eighty-two games in a physical, dangerous sport.
Oh, and maybe, just maybe, they might not always be mentally on their game.
But fans wanted results. Owners wanted to make money.
So there often wasn’t the space to take care of both sides of the athlete. But as far as Hazel was concerned, her job was as important as Tommy Franklin’s behind the bench.
Both mental and physical working together was key.
And seriously, she was so glad that Luc felt the same way.
“I don’t know what you did,” Luc repeated, “but damn, am I glad you did it.”
Marcel was off the ice, so she turned to her friend. “Just don’t question the line item in my budget for the rage room, and we’ll be all good.”
“Rage room?”
She grinned. “I bought him a punch card. He can drop into Rage whenever he wants to drown out those voices in his head.”
“I don’t know where you get these things,” he said, still holding the clipboard up, “but you’re seriously a miracle worker. First Oliver, now Marcel. I think we need to talk about upping your salary when your contract is up.”
She smiled, buffed her knuckles on her shoulder. “You said it, not me.”
There was a pause on the ice as the TV feed took a commercial break. Luc stood, a grin on his face, and tilted his head to the back of the suite, where they would be out of view of the cameras who might be filming for later.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“All the other sessions going well?” he asked. “The guys are being receptive and not too difficult?”
“My punching bag is getting a workout,” she admitted with a smile, “but it’s better than last season. The guys are more settled, as you know, since Shelby was traded.”
“I was worried with what happened with Oliver, that they’d regress.”
“They’re not.”
But since her boss had mentioned Oliver twice in as many minutes, she knew that she needed to bring up what she’d intended to discuss at his house on Wednesday. She shouldn’t have put it off in the first place, but the team had been traveling and then she’d been busy with sessions and Marcel and…Oliver. She’d been busy with Oliver.