by Vivian Lux
“Or not,” I smiled, waiting. My skin was already tingling in anticipation. This time, we would make love in the showers, the endless hot water raining down on our bodies, Ian’s groans against my slippery skin. My hand went to my waistband, ready to start peeling my jeans down off my hips.
“Candace.”
I whirled around, yanking my jeans back up again. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry!” I laughed. “I didn’t know anyone else was here!”
Jake stepped out behind a bank of lockers. “Are you looking for Ian?” he asked. There was an odd sort of off-kilter glint in his eyes.
“Um, yes.” I listened hard. Where the hell was Ian? He had told me to come. “Have you seen him?”
“Not since he left, no.”
“Left?” My heart thudded, a spurt of adrenaline kicking my breathing in high gear before my brain could catch up with what was wrong. “He left already?”
“Oh, he left a while ago,” Jake said, casually pulling something out of his pocket.
I braced myself, sliding my hand into my purse. Trying to locate something I could use as a weapon, if necessary. Lipstick? No. Cell phone? No.
My fingers closed around my car keys, and I slid them between my knuckles.
But the thing Jake pulled out of his pocket was nothing that could be used as a weapon. Just a cell phone.
Ian’s cell phone.
“What did you guys do here?” he asked, flicking his thumb across the screen.
“What do you mean?” I swallowed. If I could just edge towards the door…
“You asked if it would be ‘like the first time.’” His eyes glinted and roamed up and down my body. “The first time for what? Did you fuck him here? Right here in the locker room, after practice?” His voice rose slightly higher, and a vein stood out on his neck. “Everything gets handed to him here. Did he get that, too?”
“Fuck off,” I snarled, clutching my keys. “That’s none of your Goddamned business.”
“You know what?” Jake’s voice was high, almost wheedling. “I tried to be his friend. I tried really hard, but he just made fun of me. I found out what he really thought of me the night of the auction.” He looked back up from Ian’s phone, his thumb still moving. I could just make out what was on the screen. He was swiping though Ian’s pictures. I swallowed hard, thinking about the private ones we had shared.
He looked back down, swiped his thumb across the screen, and then stopped short. His tongue flicked quickly over his lips. Like a snake. He must have found one of the private photos.
He raised his eyebrows like a thought just occurred to him. “The auction you put together, Candace! That’s when I found out what Ian really was. I was so nice to him—to you, too! I signed up for the auction to help you out. And you two just laughed and laughed at me.”
A war was going on in my brain. The new part, the one that Ian had honed so carefully, teaching me to take what I wanted, stood with her hackles raised and her feet firmly planted, ready to fight or flee as soon as she could.
But the old me, the one who wanted to be nice and good, she was nearly crumpled in sympathetic sadness for the man in front of her. He seemed so genuinely hurt by how Ian had treated him…how I had treated him. How could I have been so cruel?
It was the war in my brain that distracted me. So I didn’t see his expression change from one of sadness, to unabashed anger.
“I don’t like being laughed at,” he snarled.
And then he lunged.
Quick as I could, I slashed outward with my fist, the keys in between my knuckles. “Don’t you come near me!” I shouted.
But Jake ducked with athletic ease. His hand slammed into my throat, pinning me back against the locker. I coughed and tried to peel his hand away, but his grip was like iron.
“I want you to know, I’m not trying to hurt you,” he crooned, eyes darting everywhere. “It really has nothing to do with you, even though you were mean to me at the auction. I’m willing to forgive that. You seem like a nice girl, Candace.” He pressed himself flush against me, and I could feel his erection digging into my thigh. I would have vomited if I could get a full breath to do so. “And I’m sorry that a nice girl like you got mixed up with an asshole like Ian in the first place.” Jake finally met my eyes, and smiled a smile that was all teeth. Like a wolf. “But he has this coming.”
“Please stop!” I choked. “You’re hurting me!”
“I know,” Jake sighed, like it couldn’t be helped. “And really, I’m totally sorry. I’m a nice guy, I promise you. I don’t hurt women, not ever. It’s just—Ian needs to be humbled.” I heard the jingle of his belt buckle and struggled, kicking out, but Jake just batted me away like he would a mosquito and continued his lunatic monologue. “Needs to be knocked off that Goddamned pedestal everyone puts him on. I mean, what the hell? This guy knocks up his fiancée, then dumps her when she has the miscarriage, and he is still loved and adored? He still gets to be the favored stepson of the coach? He gets in a fight with his beautiful, new girlfriend, but she still comes to see him and have makeup sex? Where’s the justice? Where’s the humility? When is he going to get what’s coming to him?” He looked me in the eye again. “I’ll tell you when. Right now.”
He smashed his lips into mine, just as he yanked my jeans down.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ian
Olivia stopped at the front entryway and breathed deeply. “Damn,” she sighed happily.
“I shudder to ask,” I grumbled.
She snuggled up to Brad. “Nothing. It’s just,” she inhaled again. “It smells like man in here.” Her hand disappeared around Brad’s front and he stiffened, something else probably stiffening, too. “It smells like you!” she whisper-screamed in his ear.
I rolled my eyes right into infinity. “I’m glad I never got to eat lunch, because I would have lost it just then,” I announced, striding forward so the two of them were no longer in my line of sight.
“Jealous?” Brad called from behind me.
“Not even close,” I muttered, charging forward. I had bigger things on my mind. All sorts of scenarios had been running through my brain on the way here, most of them involving Candace answering my text lovingly, and then getting pissed when I never replied. Somehow I was just making this shit worse, no matter how hard I tried to get better.
No, I told myself. The phone wasn’t my fault. I had wracked my brain seven ways to Sunday, and every time I retraced my steps, I came to the same conclusion.
My phone had not been there.
It was not on the bench.
Which meant one of two things.
Either Jake was right, and I really was a senile old man, losing his shit.
Or someone had taken it.
But who? It would have to be a teammate, and that narrowed it down pretty thoroughly. And also pretty nonsensically. Who the hell on the team would have any use for my phone? I mean, it would be pretty obvious if Oswald, or Brad, or even Jake for that matter, suddenly started using it. I briefly wondered if maybe someone had sold it to the paparazzi that seemed to be multiplying like rabbits outside of my front door. But even then, it would be a pretty short deductive leap to figure out who had done it. Why would anyone on my team take that risk?
It made no damn sense.
The hallways running from the rink were dark and quiet, the steady hum of fluorescent lights the only noise I could hear. From far off, I heard Olivia giggle and the low murmur of Brad’s voice, most likely whispering something obscene. All normal, everyday, explainable noises.
But the hair on the back of my neck stood up anyway.
Without knowing why, or even stopping to think why my heart was suddenly racing in my chest, I broke out into a run.
Brad shouted something behind me, and I heard the squeak of his sneakers on the floor. Olivia swore, and then the sharp clack of her heels rang out. But I was focused on a different noise.
A strangled, gasping cry suddenly floated upward, like a bird o
n an injured wing.
It was a small sound, but it filled me with such terror that it may as well have been an as loud as thunder.
And everything started happening at once.
I slammed the door open, a raw ache exploding in my shoulder as it ricocheted off the wall and collided with me. But I barely even winced. I was moving, headlong, gliding effortlessly like I was wearing my skates. Moving at the speed of a bullet to my goal.
When I crashed into Jake it was at full speed, catching him around the waist and slamming us both to the ground.
“Ian!” Candace choked, her voice that same, strangled birdlike cry as she gasped for breath.
For only a second I had seen his hands at her throat, his lips on hers.
But that was all I needed to see to know that I was going to kill him right now.
The old me, the caged animal, the ball of rage that I kept hidden, the opposite of the nice guy—he exploded up and outward, a specter of pure instinct, and guided my fist as I raised it to collide with Jake’s jaw.
But Jake was quick, twisting underneath me so that it glanced off his shoulder instead. He roared with pain anyway, and his eyes were oddly bright with tears. “Stop!” he whined. “I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
I looked over my shoulder at Candace, who was doubled over, still gasping, bright red welts blooming across her delicate throat like the most perverse necklace in the world. “You did hurt her,” I grimaced, nearly doubled-over at the pain of seeing her like that.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were bright, but she had shed no tears, and all I wanted to do at that moment was hold her.
Then her expression changed from relief to one of horror. Too late, I twisted back around, but in my moment of weakness, Jake had wormed out from under me. He scrambled to get his feet underneath him. I stretched out to grab his shirt, but he sidestepped me and went running towards the showers.
The door burst open then, and Brad stormed in. “Take care of her!” I shouted at my friend. “I’m going after him!”
A teammate’s implicit trust meant that I took off running without hearing his reply. I knew Brad and Olivia would keep Candace safe.
There was an emergency exit leading from the showers to the back alleyway. If Jake made it out there, I’d lose him.
I careened through the bank of showers, which suddenly seemed to expand to the size of a small nation. Slipping a little on the still slick floor, I jammed my elbow into the tile wall to keep upright. Then I saw a flash of color, and I was running again.
Ten feet ahead of me, he was running pell-mell, his arms outstretched like Frankenstein’s monster. It would only be a matter of seconds before he was out of the door.
I crouched. Then I leaped.
At the last second of my leap, my foot slid in a patch of water. My right leg spun out awkwardly
I hit his back with a football tackle, knocking him forward. He let out a startled yelp as I slammed him flat down on his stomach.
But something was wrong. My body was at the wrong angle.
The full force of my two hundred and twenty-pound frame came down squarely over my right knee. It hit the ground with a sickening thud, and I swear I heard it. I heard the splintering noise as my kneecap shattered.
I bit back an agonized scream.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Candace
Olivia was rubbing her hand up and down my shoulder. Up and down, up and down, like she was trying to start a fire. It was both comforting and distracting at the same time.
My sister was on her way. My parents were calling lawyers.
Jake was sitting in a cell with an icepack on his head. Ian’s tackle had sent him flying into the metal door handle.
I hoped it hurt like hell.
I blinked again and tried once more to focus on what the officer was saying to me.
“…Can get him for theft, because of the phone. And for assault and battery, for the—” he gestured to my neck, and I reflexively swallowed, feeling the raw ache that still lingered where his fingers had crushed into my windpipe.
I nodded. “And attempted rape, too,” I said. My voice could barely rise above a whisper, but I was surprised at how steady it sounded.
Olivia started rubbing my shoulder even harder.
The officer nodded. “That’s up to you, ma’am. Sometimes the women these things—happen to…they don’t want to relive it. Because it’s your word against his and all.”
I lifted my chin defiantly. “I want to press charges,” I repeated. “He tried to rape me. If Ian hadn’t shown up when he did, Jake would have raped me. He told me so himself.”
The officer’s eyes widened for a second. Then he nodded and noted something on the report in front of him.
Olivia put her other hand on my shoulder, and started rubbing that one, too.
I closed my eyes, feeling the frustration clench in my chest. “Are we done now? I really need to go.”
“Just a few more minutes.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I told you everything. I cooperated in every way.” I stood up. “Now, I need you to go and do your job while I go see if my boyfriend—the one who saved me from this whackjob—made it through surgery all right.”
Something old and not quite gone inside of me winced at how mean I sounded.
“Such a shame,” the officer said, shaking his head. For a second, I melted at the sympathy. Then he continued, “We were so close to getting the Cup this year.”
I rolled my eyes, and then shook my head a little at Olivia when she opened her mouth to start reaming him out. “Let’s go,” I told her.
“Your car?”
“Yes,” I said, then looked down at my trembling hands. “But I think I need you to drive it.”
She drove like an absolute madwoman, getting me to the hospital in record time. My mind raced the whole time, over and over again, replaying the same scenes.
Jake’s hands on my throat. The red mist creeping in from the edges of my sight as he closed my airway. The terrible thudding of the blood in my ears that was still not loud enough to drown out the jingle of his belt buckle as he freed himself. Nor was it loud enough to mask the sound of stitches popping as he yanked my jeans down past my hips. I had stomped and squirmed, clawed and fought, but the harder I fought, the more quickly I lost oxygen…
And then the yell, the blur, the dizzy thumping as I sank suddenly to the floor, freed from Jake’s grasp by Ian, swooping in like an avenging angel.
The second time he’d rescued me.
First I had to find my breath again, and stop the world from spinning away. My sight cleared in increments, revealing the chaos around me. But all the while, Ian was at the very center of my vision, the only thing I could see through the blur.
Then I had to quiet my hysterical gasps. Then I had to wait for my heart rate to slow.
Only then could I stand up and go to him, and by that time, the ambulance had come and they were lifting him up on the stretcher while he gritted his teeth in pain.
Then the police came, with their questions and evidence collecting. I tried to give them the time they needed, but all the while I was thinking about this.
This moment, when I would finally see him again.
I burst into his room and stopped dead, my hands going to my mouth. “Oh Ian, no.”
He was lying on a hospital bed, his massive frame making it look like it was built for a child. The sheets were twisted into ropes around him, no doubt from him writhing in pain.
A cast covered his leg from the thigh all the way down to the ankle.
“How long?” I asked, barely able to contain my tears.
He swallowed and stared at the ceiling. I felt my heart sink. The finals were in ten days. There was no way…
“Six months,” he breathed. “Six months in the cast.”
“The Cup—” I choked.
He blinked and then chuckled. “They’re going to have to win the Cup without me.” The last word came out
in a strangled whisper.
My heart broke in half. I went to him and brushed the dark hair off of his forehead. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “Ian. I am so sorry. I know hockey is everything to you.”
His eyes snapped open and he turned, craning his neck to look me right in the eye. “No,” he said firmly. “You’re wrong.” He lifted my hand and kissed it fiercely. “You’re my everything.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ian
The nurse who came in pushing the wheelchair was as big as a house. And stronger looking, too. I briefly considered asking her to try out for the Blackhawks next season.
“Let’s get you home, Mr. Carter,” she said sweetly, in a soft, girlish voice that was completely at odds with her appearance.
“Yes, Mr. Carter,” Candace echoed, smiling. “Let’s get you home.”
I couldn’t keep the flutter of anger from my belly as we took the elevator down to the main floor. Waves of nausea coursed through my body, and I gritted my teeth, steeling myself as the elevator settled to a stop.
Then Candace’s small hands alighted on my shoulder, and I felt instantly calmer. “Every day,” she said, echoing the words the doctor had said just before my discharge. “It’s going to get better. Little by little, every day you will heal.”
I nodded, but when I caught my reflection in the mirrored glass, I could see the sullen look on my face, and I hated it.
“Wait here,” Candace said as we rolled on to the front entranceway. “I just need to run and grab my car.”
“I can get up now,” I told the nurse, once Candace had disappeared into the parking garage.
“No, I’m sorry sir, not yet,” the nurse said softly.
I gritted my teeth, and angrily closed my fingers around the armrest of the wheelchair. The five minutes it took for Candace to pull around the front felt like a lifetime.
But finally she did pull up, and got out of the driver’s seat with a huge grin on her face.
“What are you so happy about?” I asked. I genuinely wanted to know.