The teams lined up in position, and he saw Chelsea was playing in the first round. Bout. Tussle. Jam. Whatever. The women readied, and Sebastian got on the edge of his seat.
The whistle blew.
The women began to skate forward, and immediately Chelsea snarled, displaying a bright pink mouth guard. She flung herself bodily at the woman next to her, knocking them both down. The girl with the star on her helmet—the jammer—jumped over their fallen bodies and skated ahead.
“Damn,” Diane said at his side. “Chesty’s not wasting any time tonight!”
He watched, mouth dry, as Chelsea pulled herself up off the track and began to skate back after the pack again, then rejoined them. For the rest of the jam, she flung herself into the pack with abandon, body-checking and skating in front of others to block them. She got pushed. She got knocked around. She went down. She caught an elbow to the face and shook it off.
Then the jammer tapped her hands on her hips, and the whistle blew.
“End of the jam,” Diane told him. “They scored four points. Good one.”
For the first half of the “bout,” he watched as Chelsea endured more hits than a football player, more falls than a beginner ice skater, and kept getting back up to throw herself into the game. She was brutal. Utterly brutal. She didn’t use her elbows, but she was downright cruel on the track, getting in other girls’ faces and yelling at them, pushing them aside for her own jammer, and doing whatever she could—at whatever cost—to get her jammer through.
And the audience both hated her and loved her at the same time. They booed her whenever she attacked someone a little too roughly, and it didn’t faze Chelsea at all. She just got right back into things.
As she picked herself up after skidding five feet and out of bounds, he swigged his beer, unable to take his gaze off of her. No wonder she was covered in bruises. Jesus. She also got penalties, too, and had to sit out, which apparently pissed her off even more. He noticed some of her teammates were giving her unhappy looks.
He grew concerned.
No one else was playing as hard as she was. Even Diane commented on how dirty Chelsea was playing tonight. When the second penalty flew and both Chelsea’s teammates and the opposing team gave her unhappy looks, he grew even more worried that she was in a bad frame of mind.
This wasn’t fun. She was making this . . . well, war.
By the time the halftime bell rang, she looked supremely pissed and sweaty. And as the Rag Queens gathered and moved off the track to head to their locker room and cheerleaders took the center of the floor, he got up from the bleachers.
He needed to talk to Chelsea.
This wasn’t just playing the game for the sheer hell of it. This was her taking out some serious rage on the other team. Even her own teammates were a little concerned, shooting her pissy looks.
Something was going on, and he needed to talk to his wife.
“Save my seat,” he told Diane. “I’ll be back.” And he hopped down from the bleachers and sprinted across the floor.
As he headed to the backstage area, he saw Rufus tailing behind the crowd of women on skates. He followed the bodyguard and when the man parked outside of a room, Sebastian waited.
Rufus narrowed his eyes at Sebastian, as if he knew what he was doing there and didn’t like it.
Well, that was too damn bad for him. He was here to get answers. “Is Chelsea in there?” He pointed at the door to the locker room.
Rufus just stared at him.
“Damn it, I know I hired you to be her bodyguard, but . . .” His voice trailed off as the door opened and several women skated out, mopping their brows and chatting. Amongst them was Chelsea, her ponytails damp with sweat. She didn’t see him and skated right past. “Chelsea,” he called.
She stopped and turned, a look of horror on her face. “Sebastian?” She glanced around and then skated toward him. The horror turned to anger. “Are you fucking following me? What the hell?”
“I wanted to know what was going on,” he told her, and found his voice was raising to match her tone. “Why would you keep this a secret?”
“Because I’m not going to quit and you can’t make me quit!”
He shook his head. “Why would I ask you to quit? I think it’s awesome.”
She looked a little dumbfounded at that. “You do?”
“Ooooo.” A girl skated up to them and began to circle them. “You got a hot date, Chelsea?”
“We’re not dating,” she said flatly.
For some reason, that pissed him off. “We’re married.”
The woman’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit.” She looked over at Chelsea, and when Chelsea didn’t deny it, the woman gasped and took a step backward. “I gotta tell the others.”
Chelsea groaned as the woman skated off. She put her hand on Sebastian’s arm and began to steer him away from the main traffic of the crowded hallway, full of skaters, fans, and everyone else. “Did you have to tell Gilmore? She’s such a blabbermouth.”
“Don’t you think you should have told them?” Why did that piss him off so much that she didn’t?
“Look, it’s nothing personal,” she said defensively. “Relationships and derby don’t mix. It requires a lot of practice hours and commitment, and more than one girl has had to break up with a guy because he wasn’t into her spending so much time on the track.”
“Have I struck you as the crazily possessive or overly clingy type?”
“Well no, but this isn’t a real relationship.”
Again, that kind of irritated him. And again, he dismissed it as irrational of him. Because hell, he was being irrational. But there was something about all of this that wasn’t sitting right, and it was striking a nerve. “No one knows that but you and me, and if you keep secrets, this is never going to work.”
“Oh, really? You’re one to talk, Bluebeard.” She nudged his shoulder with a pointed finger.
“Bluebeard?”
“Yeah, the secret room of creepiness? The one that you swear is nothing at all but you still won’t let me see it?”
“It’s just a study!”
“And Dexter was just a blood spatter analyst!”
“It’s nothing, I swear.” For some reason, the thought of showing her made his skin crawl. He never showed his art to anyone. No one ever understood it. No one ever got his obsessive need to draw and explore through art. No one in his family ever had, and he’d learned to hide it long ago.
“Well with that attitude, I think we’re heading for a divorce,” she said, glaring at him. It was the same glare she used on the track, and it startled him to see it. Game-Chelsea was a whole different woman than the one he knew.
“You want to talk about attitude, then?” he challenged, gesturing back at the auditorium where he could hear music playing as the halftime show continued. “How about the one-woman wrecking ball out there?”
Her hands went to her hips and she scoffed at him. “You don’t know shit about derby. You’re supposed to be aggressive.”
“There’s a difference between being aggressive and frightening your own teammates!”
She licked her lips, seeming uncertain for the first time. “I’m just a little off this week. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. You’re going after everyone out there like you have something to settle.”
“He’s right,” someone called out and skated past Chelsea, swatting her ass with a towel.
Chelsea scowled and moved closer to Sebastian. Her voice dropped to a low whisper so no one would hear them. “Look. Derby is my therapy. I get a lot of stuff out of my system on the floor out there.”
“What the hell can you possibly need to get out of your system that requires attacking so many other people?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t make sense, Chelsea. I know we’re friends and all, but damn if you aren’t confusing the hell out of me. You want to be platonic but crawl into my bed. You leave the lights on like a scared toddler and have a stag
e name like a stripper. You hide something that’s totally awesome like the derby, but you attack your teammates. I don’t understand what all this is adding up to—”
She leaned in close, her teeth gritted, fists clenched. “I. Was. Raped. Is that what you want to hear?”
It was like a splash of cold water on him. He took a step backward. “You . . . you what?”
Her breasts heaved, her expression emotional. “You want to know what I need to work through? Three years ago, I was roofied at a bar and when I woke up, I was in a Dumpster. Discarded like trash. So if I seem a little too ‘aggressive’ on the track”—she did air quotes around the word—“you don’t know the fucking half of it, all right?”
“Are we going to jaw all night or are we going to fucking talk some strategy?” A man in a purple shirt called from the next room. “Get the fuck over here, Chesty. Potty break’s over! We need to have a team talk.”
“I have to go,” Chelsea said to Sebastian in a flat voice. “Still got half the bout to go through.”
“I’ll see you when you get home,” Sebastian said. “Then we’ll talk.”
She skated away, not answering him.
And that was just fine. Because he couldn’t really put together coherent words at the moment. She’d leveled a grenade at him, an emotional grenade that had torn through his scaffolded hopes for what their relationship might turn into.
The derby he could handle.
The thought of Chelsea being traumatized and roofied? When who knew what happened to her?
It made him feel helpless. Angry. He understood why she skated like she was on a mission now. Why she flung herself at others, heedless of her own safety. Why she body slammed herself through every jam.
He felt like doing the same at the moment.
But he couldn’t, so he turned around and stalked out of the stadium.
He needed to think. To process.
Something.
Chapter Thirteen
Sebastian lay in bed, awake, staring at the ceiling as Chelsea arrived home. He heard her come up the stairs, but instead of heading to his bedroom, she went into the shower and he heard the water running for what felt like forever. The scent of soap and cherries filled the hall, and he rubbed a hand over his face for what felt like the thousandth time that hour. Tonight, he wasn’t sketching. It brought zero relief, because all he wanted to sketch was Chelsea.
And every time he pictured her face, he saw her dark, tortured eyes as she confessed her secret to him, over and over again.
I was roofied and left in a Dumpster.
He hated himself, but he needed to know more. What had happened? Did she know who’d done it to her? Was this why she wouldn’t date? Why she looked at men with fear and anger when they approached her? The questions ate at his mind.
The water turned off and he sat up in bed, waiting. Was she going to spend tonight with him after all? Or had his careless, pissy words scared her off?
Fuck, he hoped not. Maybe he needed to make the first move, to tell her he was sorry. Sebastian got out of bed—
—just as Chelsea knocked on his door. She poked her head in, her normally cheerful expression gone. “Can we talk?”
“Hop on in,” he said, gesturing at the bed he’d just vacated.
She slid into the room, wearing nothing but a pair of tiny boy short panties and another tank top. This one was purple and had her derby team’s logo on it. She came and sat cross-legged on the bed, clearly unwilling to lay down until they got it all out of their systems. All right, then, he could meet her halfway. He sat down across from her and sat cross-legged as well, his sleep pants tight on his knees. He was shirtless, and rubbed a hand on his chest. “Would you be more comfortable if I got dressed?”
“What?” She waved a hand, dismissing his words. “Pff, no. I’m totally fine. I’ve seen you more unclothed than that.”
“I just wasn’t sure after . . .”
“After I told you I was raped?” The look she gave him was patient. “We can talk about it, you know. I’m terrible with sharing things, but the more I think about it, the more I think this is a good thing, the sharing.” Her hands twisted in her lap. “So maybe you should let me talk for a bit and not interrupt, okay?”
“I can do that. Just one question before you start. Did you guys win tonight?”
She looked surprised and then pleased. Her mouth pulled into a grin that showed a swollen lip, and he could already see the shadows of bruises on her legs and one arm. Her eyes sparkled with delight. “We wrecked them, thank you for asking.”
Sebastian chuckled. Whatever else came out of this, it was clear she loved her sport. “I’m glad.”
“You were right, though. I was playing ruthless and unkind. The coach called me out on it.” She grimaced and looked down at her hands. “Thing is, when I get rattled, I tend to go into combat mode. And I’ve been a little rattled lately. First, my friend Pisa moved to Austin. She was my roomie and my best friend. I called her my derby wife. She would have got my ass back on track and told me to get my head in the game, but she’s not here anymore.” A small sigh escaped her. “Between that and the marriage and sleeping in a new place, I guess I feel a little more ‘off’ than I thought I would. But that’s not what we really need to talk about, right?” She blinked rapidly and looked at him as if waiting.
“You told me not to interrupt,” he reminded her.
“Oh, right. I tend to ramble when I get nervous. Okay. Where should I start?” She pursed her lips, thinking, and then blew out a large breath. “Right. Okay, so about three or four years ago, me, Gretchen, Greer, and Asher all roomed together.” She nodded at his confused look. “Yep, that Asher. It was super platonic, though. He never dated anyone in our little group. We were just college friends hanging out together.” She shrugged. “Eventually we lost the lease on our place and split up. I forget where Asher went, but I think Greer and Gretchen kept rooming together. I was seeing a guy and got an apartment over in Brooklyn with him, only to have him dump me before he moved in. I couldn’t get out of the lease, so I decided to stick it out on my own. Turns out that was a bad idea.”
Sebastian’s entire body tensed, waiting for her to continue. His gut felt tight, uncomfortable. He felt the intense need to . . . fuck, punch something. Maybe that was where she got it from.
She licked her lips and continued, gazing down at her hands. “About a week after I moved in, I went to the local bar to meet a few friends. I hung out there on a regular basis and I think the bartender had a crush on me, because he always had my favorite drink fixed and waiting for me when I came in. I didn’t think anything of it, you know? It was like Cheers. You went there and hung out, and everybody knew your name.” She sucked in a deep breath and then paused, thinking.
He held his own breath, waiting.
“And because I always got the same drink, and I felt comfortable at the place, I guess I didn’t pay attention to what I was drinking,” she said slowly, staring at her knee. Her wet hair dragged across her shoulders. “I don’t know if it was drugged before I got there or if someone slipped it in when I wasn’t paying attention. I just thought I was kind of . . . bulletproof. Like nothing could hurt me. And all I remember after that was downing my drink and talking to some guy who was flirting with me.” Her voice got distant. “I don’t remember anything after that. Just that I woke up and I was sore all over and it was really dark. So dark. I couldn’t breathe.”
God. He was such a shit stain. He was making her relive all this just to satisfy his curiosity. She didn’t have to tell him anything. “Chelsea, you don’t—”
“No, I do,” she said, voice faint. She looked up at him and her gaze was glassy, distant. “My therapist told me that if I talk about it more, I can help normalize the emotions, you know? So I need to.” She swallowed again and shrugged. “The good thing is that because I was drugged, I faded out. I don’t remember anything. I just remember being scared and waking up in a dark place.” Her hands clen
ched spasmodically. “It was hot, and smelly, and I couldn’t move. I felt so sick, and I hurt. I think that was the worst—the utter confusion and the feeling of helplessness.” She spread her hands, and he saw they were trembling. “I . . . I don’t like to think about it.”
That must have been where her fear of the darkness came from. He remembered her terror. I can’t breathe.
“Someone found me and helped me out, and the police came and took me to the hospital. I gave a statement. Stayed with family for a few days. I got the usual ‘You’re a stupid girl for leaving your drink unattended’ spiel and they made me feel like I was at fault. Maybe I was. I don’t know.” She rubbed her arms.
“You weren’t at fault,” Sebastian interrupted hoarsely. God, that she would even think that. He wanted to wring the neck of every man who had made her feel that way.
She chewed on her lip and continued. “I couldn’t stay at my place anymore. I didn’t even know if I’d brought the guy up because I thought I was drunk instead of drugged. It didn’t feel like my place anymore. Not my bar, not my apartment. It was like everything I knew was no longer trustworthy. I broke my lease on my apartment and got a new one in a building with a doorman. Well-lit neighborhood. I drained my savings and the only time I left my apartment for about six months was to visit my therapist and to get my anxiety prescriptions refilled. And while I was coming out of the pharmacy one day, a girl skated past me on the sidewalk. She was handing out flyers for the local derby tryouts. And she just looked so strong and fierce and tough that I wanted to be her for a moment, you know? Because I thought someone like her could take a licking and not let life destroy her. So I went. And I was so scared I shook the whole time. I went to practices, and the moment I got on the track, it was like something inside me changed. It was like . . . here it was okay to fight back. Here, it was expected. And I started to tear things up.” Her soft smile became proud. “I’m not joking when I say derby saved me. It gave me a reason to get out once more. To stop being a hermit. To stop being afraid.”
The Billionaire Takes a Bride Page 10
