Tremblay’s face was hard to see as he rushed forward to help her stand. Even from halfway across the bar, I could see that her nose was gushing blood. The sight of her pulling back and then catching the assistant captain in the jaw with a pretty mean right hook caused my jaw to sag and my feet to still. Tremblay recoiled, a look of shock on his face as his fingers skimmed over what could only be a throbbing jaw.
I started forward again as she reached up to cradle a nose the was pretty obviously broken. There was a stagger in her step as she rushed toward the door, but no one bothered to stop her to see if she was okay. I totally got that she shoved one guy, elbowed another, and punched Tremblay, but she still deserved some help.
“Seriously?” I shouted as I launched into the crowded dance floor, “That girl is seriously injured! Someone needs to call an ambulance!”
Not a single person bothered to raise a cell phone to make the call, and I glared at the people I was pushing through. A strong hand caught my arm near the billiard tables, and I turned to see a stocky, blonde player staring up at me. I thought his name might have been Cal. Or maybe it was Carl. Either way, he was Tremblay’s best friend and linemate and one of the last people I wanted to see.
“Do you know that girl that just hooked Sean?”
“No, but she looks pretty fucking hurt. Let me go; I’m going to go make sure she’s all right.”
Concern flashed through his brown eyes briefly before a cold, disinterested look took its place. “She just punched our assistant captain, Cote. We don’t have time for that kind of crazy to distract us.”
“Considering the way she looked at Tremblay right before she laid one on him, I bet she thinks he tripped her. If we don’t find her and explain happened, she might call the police on him for assault.”
“Oh fuck,” was all Callum said before he started racing toward the door.
I ran after him, spilling out of the door in time to see a woman with coppery hair helping her into a small, beat-up car. As the red-haired woman raced around the back of the car, I caught a glance of her face in profile. What was Lindsey Thomas doing with Sexy Librarian?
Chapter 2
— D —
Practice ended on a sour note the next day. A lot of the guys skated like complete dog shit, thanks in part to the pitchers of beer they couldn’t seem to turn away. They didn’t have the reputation as a party team, but I couldn’t deny what I saw the night before. And if they were partying like that every weekend, it wasn’t hard to see why they were experiencing a midseason slump that might keep them out of the playoffs for the third year running.
I sat in front of my cubby at the end of practice, rubbing tense knots out of my calves as the team lumbered around me. Coach Fisher stood by the door of his office with his arms crossed over his chest. A dark glare settled over his face as Tremblay approached him with Joseph Martin, the defense coach for the team.
Coach whistled, loudly enough to cause several of the more hungover players to groan, and a hush fell over the room. His eyes flickered toward Tremblay, and I didn’t miss the way they darkened. The assistant captain seemed to shrink into his large frame when Coach cleared his throat.
“I’ve already spoken to Tremblay, but I thought I oughta let the rest of you know that I’ve benched him indefinitely.”
“What the fuck?” Cam Callahan shouted. The glares that were sent his way from Coach Fisher and Joseph silenced any further outbursts from him.
Daniel Creed, the team’s captain, piped up next. “Why the hell are you benching him? He’s the best enforcer we’ve got, and we have a hell of a schedule coming up over the next two weeks. Lots of teams with aggressive styles of play, y’know? We’re going to get our asses handed to us.”
“This is happening regardless of our schedule.” Joseph looked tired, his body visibly sagging as he glanced toward the team captain. He ran a hand down his stubbly face and stared with a hard glint in his eye before continuing, “We have to set the example that behavior like Sean’s will not be tolerated.”
I cocked my head to the side slightly. It had Sexy Librarian written all over it. Tremblay was silent and brooding for the majority of the night, only perking up occasionally when a particularly hot woman would stop before him. Beyond that, he hadn’t intentionally spilled his beer on her, and he stooped to help her after that puck bunny tripped her. The fuck was he acting so guilty for?
I studied Sean, and I couldn’t but wince as I stared at the purple bruise that blossomed overnight on his now clenched jaw. Callahan exploded again, and I resisted the urge to join in his indigence over the treatment of his best friend. Tremblay hadn’t really done anything wrong. “What the fuck does that even mean? Sean minded his own damn business the entire night, and he wouldn’t have gone if you didn’t force him!”
A chorus of “yeah”s raised through the locker room. Joseph’s normally calm voice calling out over the din in the locker room caught my attention. “Sean’s behavior led to the serious injury of a woman in that bar last night.”
I couldn’t bite my tongue any longer. “I saw the entire thing; he never touched her! It was that brunette girl that was hanging around him that did it.”
Sean’s eyes flashed toward me, and I thought I could see just a little bit of gratitude there before glanced down again. Coach Fisher’s booming voice made me feel like a school kid being taken to task in the principal’s office. “I don’t give an almighty goddamn whether or not he actually touched her! What I care about is the Board of Directors being down my throat about the owners of Big Game pulling their sponsorship and banning our organization from holding future events at their bar. What I care about is the fact that there is a woman somewhere in our city that thinks Sean physically assaulted her. What I care about is the possibility of a scandal popping up that suggests I condone violence against women in this organization.
“Until one of you puts that woman in my office so we can explain to her just what exactly happened and hope like hell that she doesn’t sue us as a result of our ice girl’s actions, Tremblay is SITTING ON THE GODDAMN BENCH!”
I glanced toward Joseph. The defensive coordinator stood off to the side, shoulders slumped and looking like someone just kicked his puppy. To be fair, Tremblay was the best d-man on the team. The Valors would struggle through the next series of games and continue to slip further away from a playoff spot.
The shout that Coach Martin’s sister-in-law urged the injured woman into a car outside of the bar died on my lips. I’d only met Lindsey once, and I only saw the red-headed woman that helped Sexy Librarian in profile. I wasn’t absolutely sure that Lindsey was at the bar the night before, and I didn’t think Joseph needed any more bad news at the moment.
I continued to work the stiffness from my muscles as my prospective teammates shuffled toward the bathroom. Warm water running over my aching muscles called to me, and I stood to follow the trail of men into the showers. A shout stilled my movements. “Devon, wait up!”
I turned to see Joseph rushing toward me.
“What’s up, Coach?” I asked while turning toward my cubby. If I couldn’t shower, I could at least pack my gym bag up. If I didn’t have to face the stupidly nice man head-on, I’d feel less inclined to inform him that his much younger sister-in-law might be involved in the mess that had his star player benched for the foreseeable future.
“I just wanted to let you know that Coach has been really impressed with the work you’ve put in over the past couple of practices. As long as you do well in the next few games, you can expect a spot in the Valors lineup. When you get a contract, you’ll move in with Cam and Sean.”
Great. I did well enough to land myself on a mediocre team with apathetic teammates. To top it all off, I was rewarded by being forced to room with Callahan and Tremblay, neither of which my ex-teammate Nik “Big D” Dieffenbach had nice things to say about.
I steeled my reserve and headed for the shower. I would go to the trendy downtown bar Big D raved to me about o
n the phone that morning in between bouts of insisting that my prospective teammates were all garbage humans. Then I would head home and try to see if I could find any personal information about Sexy Librarian on the Kindle she left at the bar.
— C —
A series of booming knocks pulled me from my deep slumber. Blearily, I rubbed the grainy feeling of sleep from my eyes. Memories from the night before rushed to the forefront of my mind when the heel of my palm connected with the bridge of my nose and white-hot pain shot through the damaged appendage. Images from the disastrous night flashed through my mind as if on a malfunctioning projector.
My argument with the ultra-sexy man that sent me careening into a crowd of writhing bodies. Tripping over a foot that was thrust purposefully in my path. Falling. Breaking my nose when my face slammed against the side of a billiard table. Pulling my mangled glasses off of my face and tossing them onto the nearest table. Punching Sean Tremblay in his stupidly good-looking face. Panicking at the realization that I physically assaulted him. Fleeing the bar and racing into the parking lot at the same time that Lindsey finally arrived. A nerve-wracking drive to the hospital with a pissed off best friend that kept insisting she was going to kick Tremblay’s ass. The medication induced realization that I left my Kindle Fire sitting on the table at Big Game.
Another series of loud knocks echoed through my apartment, and I jumped, jostling my nose and causing a pained hiss to escape through clenched teeth. Grumbling, I pulled my aching body from the bed and stalked toward the front door. Acquaintances were few and far between for me. I grew up in Ohio and moved to South Carolina with the intent of getting a degree and then moving the fuck on.
Since Lindsey had a key to my apartment, I knew that the only person that could be beating on my door at this time in the morning was my across-the-hall neighbor, and other best friend, Nate. I would kill him for waking me up so early. Glancing toward the microwave in the kitchen to see just what ungodly hour he ushered me out of bed reminded me that my glasses were obliterated in the accident.
“Oh my God, your face! Lindsey called me first thing this morning and told me to keep an eye on you, but that bitch didn’t tell me what happened,” a high pitched tenor screeched when I opened the door.
Nate pushed past me into my apartment, and I was dumbfounded enough to stand frozen in place. Lindsey hated Nate (and the feeling was mutual), so I found it hard to believe that she put her pride aside to call him to check in on me. I felt myself tearing up, but I wasn’t quite sure if it was from the overwhelming emotion of fondness that I was feeling for my two best friends or from the intense pain that centered around my nose.
“Yes, please, do come in,” I muttered slowly under my breath as Nate headed straight to my kitchen. Rolling my eyes, I snapped the door shut behind him. The rattle of a pill bottle pulled me toward the kitchen, and I sat on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter.
He dropped two pills on the bar before me with the short explanation of, “Ibuprofen.”
“I’ve got Vicodin in my bedroom. I’ll take that,” I said, pushing both the pills and the glass of water Nate placed down next to them back toward him. His response was a hiked eyebrow and a pointed stare at the ibuprofen tablets sitting ignored on my faux-marble countertop.
All it took to pull his attention away from the neglected medicine was my finger pointing to what I assumed was a fairly rough looking face. “Does it look like ibuprofen is really going to negate the pain of all this?” I asked.
“Definitely not,” he said with a curt nod, “but Vicodin isn’t going to reduce inflammation and swelling. You do know that break is going to feel better without all of the pressure from swelling pushing on it, right?”
I sighed. It was with great reluctance that I accepted the water and medication that my neighbor and friend pushed back to me. I met him nearly a year and a half before when I moved into my apartment after my college graduation. Initially, I was quite taken aback by my generously handsome neighbor taking interest in me.
Nate stood right around six feet tall and was blessed with golden tan skin, cerulean blue eyes, and perfectly coiffed sandy blonde hair. He was thin, yet toned, and he was the only son of local businesswoman and entrepreneur Marguerite Cooper. Since the age of ten, he’d been groomed meticulously to fit in with the upper class of Charleston. He was 32, but he looked closer to my age of 25, a fact he attributed to his daily fight with Marguerite about his decision to manage a swanky downtown bar rather than one of her offices.
Feeling flattered by his interest lasted all of a few hours after I moved in. Once we started unpacking my boxes, he let loose a barrage of judgmental comments about everything from my choice of flatware to my favorite pair of sandals. (“Oh my God, girl, they’re orange! We are not Clemson fans. Those have to go!”) It was then that I realized my new neighbor, while possibly one of the hottest men I ever encountered in real life, was gay—and kind of a complete and utter asshole.
I was the private type by nature, so I was initially bothered by the exhaustingly energetic man interjecting himself into my personal life. After a while, it began to feel natural, and I often found myself dining in his kitchen or drinking wine on his balcony rather than my own. Our friendship was easy. He didn’t need me to talk to him every day, or even every week, and he was never too offended if I told him I was too busy for him.
Nate was notoriously absent from my nightlife for several reasons. First and foremost, I didn’t really have a nightlife. Second, Nate managed a well-to-do speakeasy type bar downtown; and while I adored him, I didn’t adore his working hours and the $15 cocktails his bar served. And above all else, Nate didn’t like to mix me with his would-be socialite friends.
Nate and Lindsey’s mutual dislike for one another could be exclusively traced to the fact that Nate kept me well separated from his other girlfriends. She accused Nate of treating me like a freakish sideshow. A flustered Nate tried to explain that the first time he brought me along on one of his outings with his “soc hags,” they treated me like trash, which I didn’t deserve. Lindsey responded that he shouldn’t go slumming if he wanted his friends to accept new members into their ultra-elite pack. Nate said he didn’t understand how I could be friends with such an ignorant bitch.
I screamed, telling them that if they couldn’t be civil to one another they needn’t bother trying to be friends with me, and kicked them both out of my apartment.
My BFFLs extended a sort-of truce after that argument, and life between the two was mostly easy. Lindsey took a lot of my free time, but I still got plenty of Nate’s attention when she was in class or working. As much as Lindsey begged me to be offended by Nate’s treatment toward me and his other group of friends, I couldn’t be. Those girls were introduced to him by Marguerite during his formative years when she still refused to believe that such a handsome boy could be gay, and they latched onto him and his status.
They were complete assholes, and I did not fit in with them. After all, I didn’t have this long-lasting hope that Nate would miraculously realize he wasn’t gay and then immediately ask for my hand in marriage. It was only on very special occasions that I let myself be dragged around with them, such as Nate’s birthday or his sister’s engagement party.
“When the hag called this morning, she only said you were hurt. You’ve clearly managed to break your beautiful nose. How did you do it? Tell Auntie Nate everything.”
“A hockey player and a pool table.”
One of his perfectly maintained eyebrows shot straight into his hairline. “I’m sorry… What?”
“Nate, I love you, but it’s too early to talk about this. I want to go back to bed,” I replied irritably.
He was one of the three pillars of my support system, and I needed him as much as I needed Lindsey and Emily. But I just wasn’t in the mood to dive back into that particular pool of memories. My head throbbed, my body wracked with cold chills, and my stomach roiled angrily. On top of everything else, I wasn’t ready to
admit to someone other than myself that I instigated the entire incident. Up until that very point, I had a perfect record. I wasn’t willing to mar it over a bar fight. I was too young for an aggravated assault charge—that shit was reserved for your midlife crisis.
“Bitch, it’s two in the afternoon!”
My stomach rumbled loudly as I raised my hands in the universal sign of surrender. “Fine, we can talk about it, but you have to take me to get lunch in exchange for the gory details.”
“Ugh, fine, let’s go,” he said, jerking the now empty glass across the counter and depositing it in the sink with the rest of my neglected dirty dishes.
My barstool scraped against the dark hardwood floor, and I laughed. “Nice try, friend. I’m gonna try to find an old pair of glasses or some contacts and take a shower before I go anywhere. I’m pretty sure there’s blood dried to my boobs.”
“You are so disgusting. It’s no wonder you’re still single.”
I shoved Nate from my apartment and picked my way back toward my bedroom. When I couldn’t find an old pair of glasses, I turned my attention to digging through the drawer of my bedside table. Contacts definitely weren’t my favorite form of corrective eyewear and I didn’t bother with wearing them often, but I always kept some around in case of emergencies. My fingers connected with the glossy edge of the box and a small smile quirked on my lips. The irony of the fact that I kept a box of emergency contacts rather than condoms in the drawer of my bedside table was not lost on me.
A trail of beer and blood infused clothing followed me into the bathroom, and I began to compose the lecture that I was going to deliver to Lindsey later that day. How could she let me sleep in bloodstained and beer soaked clothes? My bedsheets would have to be washed at least twice to free them of the stench of bad decisions. The burgeoning masterpiece of a lecture was pushed to the recesses of my mind as I reached into the shower, turning the hot water tap on full blast.
Breakaway: A Hockey Romance Page 2