by Elise Faber
A shot.
A block.
The girl got another try, jamming it at the goalie, and…
Goal!
The girl squealed! Hannah bounced on her skates, and they both skated back to center ice.
“You want a job?” the brunette coaching Hannah and company said, her eyes warm. “I’ve been trying to make that happen for almost six months now.”
“You’re doing a great job with them.”
A shrug. “I’m just a mom, not a former player. My limited skating experience doesn’t mean I’m a good coach.”
“The smiles on their faces tell me you’re a good coach.” He stuck out his hand. “Oliver.”
“I know.” She shook it. “Flo.” A beat. “And I’m kidding about the job. Sort of.”
He grinned. “I’ll see what I can work out for next season,” he said. “You guys are almost done now, right?”
A nod.
“I might be more comfortable being back on the ice then.”
Her brows drew together, and then it dawned on her. He wasn’t the player he’d been. He couldn’t just jump onto the rink and be what he was. “Shit, I’m so—”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he murmured. “Shit happens.”
Her face gentled, regret in her eyes. “It does. But I’m still sorry it happened to you.”
Maybe once that apology would have derailed him, would have made him feel like shit, or less than a whole person. Would have made him think this woman saw him as an injury and nothing more. But Hazel had shown him differently. He’d shown himself that he was different. More. Which was why he touched her arm and said, “But I meant what I said about next season. I’ll give you my number. You call me when it’s set, and I’ll try to come out and help as much as I can.”
“Really?” she exclaimed.
“Really,” he said.
“Wow. I—” Her mouth opened and closed. “You are amazing.”
His cheeks felt hot. “No,” he said quickly. “Hannah is. These girls are. And you are because you’re a coach who told her players that the most important thing is to help others and to be kind.”
Flo sniffed. “Now you’re going to make me cry.”
“Then you’d better put my number into your phone before you can’t see the screen.”
A laugh, albeit one that was watery. But she plugged his number into her phone.
Then went to corral the masses.
“Charmer,” came a soft voice.
He spun, saw Hazel had come up behind him. She was smiling, but it was tentative. Probably worried she’d pushed him when he wasn’t ready, that he would take it out on her because he was upset.
But…how could he be upset?
She’d given him everything.
Instead of telling her that, of trying to convince her that he wasn’t mad, he tugged her close and wrapped his arms around her. Oliver couldn’t lie. He’d been terrified he’d embarrass himself, scared he would look like an idiot who didn’t know what to do, upset that it wouldn’t feel the same.
And it was all those things.
In a way, he’d felt like a rookie. He had fallen more than was good for his pride. He hadn’t known exactly what to do.
But he’d figured it out.
He’d managed.
He’d moved forward while part of him had still been looking back, blending the joy of the past with the excitement of the future, of a new challenge with threads of something he’d loved beyond reason.
Because of Hazel.
So, hell no, he wasn’t upset.
He was so fucking in love with this woman.
So, he told her. So, he kissed her.
Then with their fingers laced together, they walked out to her car.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hazel
It had been almost three weeks since her mom had canceled Sunday dinner. The rescheduled meal was just two days away, and it was Thursday.
The Breakers had been traveling on a long road stretch, so she hadn’t had a chance to check back in with Marcel since they’d had their breakthrough. Though they had a session today, and he had sent her a text a couple of days ago while on that road trip, letting her know that he’d found a rage room in San Francisco during their time there and had taken several of the guys there to work off steam from their loss.
Heaven help her if one of them pulled a muscle destroying some old shit.
Sam would kill Hazel if one of the guys got injured, and Hazel did not want to get on the head trainer’s bad side.
She was scary.
With italics.
Sam took the guys’ health and safety very seriously, and though she was fully on board with Hazel’s assertion that physical and mental health were equally as important, she wouldn’t take kindly to one of “her” (yes, “her” with the quotes because she let everyone know they were her players, and they were to be protected) players getting injured at a rage room. Hazel agreed completely. So if destroying some stuff in a safe space meant they received some mental clarity in return—without getting injured—then she knew Sam would be all over it too.
Hazel was just glad Marcel was sharing.
She just prayed that if the guys continued to go, they wore their safety goggles, no one slipped on the mess on the floor, none of the players were impaled with flying shards of porcelain.
A girl could hope.
Hazel just hoped that her hope was powerful enough to keep Sam away.
Because things were good.
Really good.
Such a weak description, but it was an apt one.
She and Oliver had fallen into a pattern, waking together, sleeping together, eating together. Being together. And it was easy, effortless, as though she’d been waiting her whole life for this man, and they were meant to be together.
Peace.
That was what she’d found.
But this morning, she only had pain.
She should have known better. Her headache had been brewing the night before, throughout dinner with Lexi and Luc, during which Luc had told her he’d hired a night nurse—about freaking time, even if Lexi had protested at first. They were both human again. Baby Noah was fine. And they’d all decided to have a couple of drinks to celebrate Luc and Lexi’s descent from zombie-dom into humanoids again. The night had gotten a little weird when they gave Oliver a creepy blue stuffed toy called a Fuggler—apparently his prize for winning a plant-growing competition, of all things, the players had competed in last season—named Mac. It had plastic, human-looking teeth, maniacal eyes, and was wearing tighty whities.
Luc had been so excited to give it.
Lexi had been, rightfully, horrified he’d followed through with the giving.
Hazel had shuddered.
Oliver had busted a gut and then started plotting whom he was going to give it to next.
It was late when she and Oliver had made it back to his place, and he’d gone up to bed after showing her KiKi, the plant he had still managed to keep alive. He’d tucked Mac next to the pot, kissed her on the cheek, and headed to the bedroom. She’d stayed downstairs, a documentary (about meerkats) on TV and her laptop open.
A friend from college was working on a paper and had asked Hazel to read through it for her.
The pain had begun in her temples, and it had taken her a bit to realize the fan on her laptop was whirring again and that the alcohol at Luc and Lexi’s had left her brain primed for a headache. By then, her temples had begun pounding and the ache had crawled its way through her scalp, squeezing her brain, making the backs of her eyes hurt until she could barely concentrate on the words.
Which was when she’d given up, blearily typing an email to her friend to explain, and had headed to bed, to Oliver, who was already sleeping.
A couple of migraine pills.
A glass of water.
And hoping she’d staved off the worst of it—or at least slept through the worst of it.
But…
&nb
sp; Now it was morning, and her head was pounding even worse than the night before. She wanted to do nothing but stay in bed, take more medicine, and go back to sleep, hoping that when she eventually woke, it would be gone. But she had a session with Marcel that morning, so she was doing her best to get ready for work while protecting her eyes from the sunlight streaming in through the windows.
Which meant that she was wearing sunglasses inside.
She wasn’t a cool celebrity or musician, and she didn’t look the least bit cool with her giant sunnies and dim lights, but she had clothes on, had managed to shower, and was slapping some makeup on her face.
The scent of coffee wafted up the hallway, and normally Oliver making coffee for her in the morning was perfection.
This morning, with her migraine fully upon her, it was torture.
Her stomach churned.
Her tube of lipstick was forgotten, and she barely made it to the toilet in time.
“Babe?”
Oliver’s voice was too loud. So was the sound of her own heaving, for that matter.
God, it was all an echo through her brain, making everything worse.
The pounding increased; nausea flared.
She puked again.
Not that anything came up. She was full-on empty.
“Babe?” Oliver asked again.
“Shh,” she murmured weakly. She just needed a minute, just needed to settle her stomach, breathe through her pain. She would be okay. She wouldn’t miss her time to check in with Marcel. He was in a good place. She needed to make sure that he stayed that way. But even her sunglasses were adding to her agony, squeezing on the sides of her head. She yanked them off, dropped them to the bathmat, and kept her eyes firmly closed.
The coffee cup clinked down on the counter, and she knew Oliver had set it down quietly, but it was still gunshot loud in his bathroom, making the nausea flare again.
Then the noise of her retching once more had the cycle starting over again.
“Coffee,” she breathed, when she got herself under a semblance of control.
“You want it?” he whispered, so quietly she could barely hear it.
A shudder “No.”
She felt him move away on quiet feet, and then the smell disappeared.
Thank God.
Now, if she only could summon the strength for a cool towel and to brush her teeth. But she didn’t have it, so she just sat there, eyes closed, hugging the toilet.
Fun times.
Oliver didn’t immediately come back, and she lay there for a while, breathing, breathing as the pain ramped up. Then soft footsteps. A crinkle.
“Gum,” he murmured.
A good man. She didn’t have to summon the energy for brushing her teeth right at that moment. She could just open her mouth, chew for a few heartbeats, and everything would be peppermint and good and—
He slipped the piece of gum into her mouth.
She chewed.
The bitter taste faded.
Then he laid a cool cloth on the back of her neck, and—oh fuck—that was heaven, cooling her clammy skin, settling her stomach further.
“Can you stand, babe?” Another whisper, still so quiet it barely penetrated.
“In a minute,” she whispered back and winced because, God, that was loud in her own brain.
His hand settled on her shoulder, rubbed lightly up and down.
Up and down.
And then his arms were around her, lifting her with a slow, deliberate curl she knew couldn’t be easy with his prosthesis and her changing his center of gravity.
Before she could protest, she was cradled against his chest, the towel had been slid to cover her eyes—thank her blessed darkness—and they were moving. Something soft—the bed—beneath her back, cool sheets tugged up and over her.
Quiet.
An empty room.
Then a slight rattle, a pillow under her shoulders. “Meds, babe.”
She hadn’t told him where they were, he didn’t know the dosage—though, she supposed he could easily look in the obvious place (her purse) and read the label—and anyway, she was in too much pain to worry.
Oliver would take care of her.
“Says with food first, you think you can keep crackers down?”
Probably crackers were the only thing she’d be able to keep down.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
He adjusted the cloth, keeping it over her eyes and forehead and spent the next few minutes feeding her a couple of crackers and then a few sips of water. Then just holding her, lightly stroking her arm as they waited to see if she would keep that down.
When she did, he put the pills on her tongue—two of them (the right dose)—and let her sip some more water.
They waited a couple of more minutes.
No puking commenced.
He coaxed her back down, flipped the towel so the cool side was against her skin. “Rest, babe,” he murmured. The bed dipped like he was going to get up, and she found herself reaching for his arm, halting him.
“I have a session with Marcel today. I can’t miss—”
“I’ll call him.”
“But—”
“Rest. You’re not working. I’ll call him.” The last was said so firmly, even in a whisper, that she didn’t argue.
Plus, she was finally accepting that he was right. There was no way she’d be able to get herself into any sort of shape for work. Even opening her eyes seemed like it would be impossible, not when they felt as though they’d been weighed down by concrete, when her mind was fuzzy and swirling from the meds.
A brush of his fingers over her cheekbone.
“Rest, babe.”
She gave in.
And let the blackness come.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Oliver
He’d done his best to work but knew he hadn’t made much progress.
Even though Kailey had sent him a beta version of the program he’d asked her to create for tracking player development. Even though it looked awesome, and he wanted to dive deep into it. He couldn’t concentrate when he tried to.
Because he was sitting on a chair he’d carried into the hall, staring into the darkened room while Hazel slept.
As she’d been sleeping all day.
In the hall because he knew light was a trigger, and he didn’t want to add to her pain with the glare from his laptop screen.
He’d called Marcel, let him know about Hazel’s headache, and he’d been periodically checking in on her all day as she slept, making sure she was sleeping—she was—and that she wasn’t in pain—the lines creasing her face even as she slept told him enough about her pain level, even unconscious, that he was ready to punch a hole in the wall.
But that would make noise. Another trigger.
And he wasn’t going to do anything else to hurt her.
Now the sun had gone down, he still hadn’t turned on lights, and he was considering making another quiet trek to her side just to ensure that she was still breathing.
Nearly twelve hours she’d been out.
Part of him was glad of that. He knew his fair share about pain, both from the normal wear and tear on his body that came from being a professional athlete before he’d lost his leg, and in the time afterward with all the surgeries, the rehab, the phantom pain.
Her sleeping through this was a gift.
On that thought, he saw her body shift, the sheets sliding over her legs as she rolled. He shut the laptop and quietly made his way to her, studying her face, seeing the towel had slipped and her eyes were open.
“Babe?” he whispered.
“I’m okay,” she whispered back.
He took in the tired eyes, the skin that appeared pale with only a sliver of moonlight illuminating the space through the narrow strip of curtains he’d opened once the sun had gone down. But the grooves lining her mouth, digging into her forehead, creasing the skin next to her eyes were gone. “Need more meds?” he asked almost silently.
“No,” she said, starting to sit up. Her voice approaching normal. “I’m really okay. It’s gone. I just…need to eat something, stay away from screens, go back to sleep, and I’ll be good.”
“Okay. I’ll make you something to eat. Any requests?”
“Cereal?” she asked. “I—it always makes me feel better,” she added when his brows rose.
“Got it.”
She moved to adjust the pillows behind her, but he reached in and helped her. Then tugged the covers up for good measure. Then went back into the bathroom and wet the towel for an additional good measure. Then placed it on her head. Then tucked in the covers a little tighter. Then—
“Honey,” she said, her voice a little rough, though her fingers were gentle on his arm. “I’m really okay.”
He nodded.
“And I’m sorry I ruined your day. I—I should have known better than to try to keep working when I felt it come on, but then I didn’t realize the fan was whirring on my computer, and I shouldn’t have had those last drinks with Luc and Lexi, and…” She swallowed. “I’m just really sorry I inconvenienced you.”
Fuck.
One, he needed to sort out that fan.
Two, he needed to understand why she thought that she was inconveniencing him because she got a headache. Even if it was because she’d had too many drinks—which wasn’t too many from his experience with her. They had drank that and more many times without issue. If anything, it was his fault because his fix for the fan didn’t stick, and that he’d let her work when he knew she was tired.
Yes, he knew letting her do anything sounded douchey, but also, he’d known she was tired, so he could have found a way to “encourage” her into bed.
Barring that, he could have stayed up with her.
Upon which, he would have noticed the fan, or at least noticed that she wasn’t feeling well.
So, this was on him, too.
And her being sick wasn’t an inconvenience. God knew she’d gone out of her way for him many times, too. They mostly stayed here because everything that made it easier for him to get around was here. But she’d also bought an extra pair of crutches and a seat for her shower for her place. Without a word, without commenting.
