by Amy Olle
She opened the door, and when her heart squeezed at the sight of his beautiful face, she understood her fear. She’d grown weary of disappointing him.
Without speaking, he stepped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. She retreated to the kitchen, and slowly, he followed her.
He’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and his super-amazing Jack smell reached out to her from across the kitchen island.
He eased himself onto a barstool. “You okay?”
She filled a glass of water at the refrigerator and gulped down a large swallow.
Then she faced him. “The Gazette published a story about Bryce’s trade.”
His gaze became instantly alert. “What did it say?”
As she told him about the possibility of a grievance, she had trouble meeting his gaze.
Maybe she was afraid what she’d see in his eyes if she looked too closely. Would there be accusation, like so many who’d seen her as the villain trying to ruin those athletes’ lives by destroy their promising careers? He was one of them, after all. Didn’t she have to consider the possibility that he’d side with his peers? Would he see her as the villain now, dragging the team under with her personal baggage?
“You’re worried.”
She shrugged. “A little.”
“He doesn’t have a case. The lawyers might play pretend for a while, but that’s all it’ll be. Make-believe.”
Maybe so, but that wouldn’t change the fact that the entire world would know about what had happened to her at the college party.
“You look tired,” he said softly.
Exhaustion seemed to hit her all at once. “I am.”
The leg of his barstool scraped the hardwood floors when he stood. “C’mon, let’s get you some sleep.”
He reached for her in his sleep. Finding only emptiness, he blinked open his eyes in the darkness. He lifted his head.
She was gone.
He padded down the hall to the living room, where the obnoxious glow of a computer screen cast an eerie light over the room. He tracked its source to the kitchen island.
She looked up when he approached. Her huge brown eyes brimmed with tears and notched a chunk out his heart.
He balanced on the barstool beside her. “What are you doing?”
She sniffled. “I wanted to see what they’d written.” Her chin trembled. “But then I started to read the comment section.”
“Oh, Haven….”
She wiped her cheek with the palm of her hand. “The women were the worst. They defended those boys. They blamed me. They said I shouldn’t have been at a party like that, and I shouldn’t have been drinking so much. I shouldn’t have been dressed like that. It’s not like I hadn’t berated myself already for all of that, and more.”
Devastated dark eyes clamped onto his face and threatened to blow his world apart.
“But now they’re defending me.” Her tears spilled over when she pointed at the computer screen, but they came too quickly for her sleeve to sop them up. “I can take their hostility, but I don’t think I can handle it if they’re nice to me.”
He knew what it was to look in the mirror and detest what he saw there. It destroyed him that she’d taken on their violence and hatred and turned it toward herself. Maybe it was an inevitable result of the helplessness. Hell, what did he know about it? He knew nothing at all, except the feeling of his heart breaking for her.
He reached over and closed the laptop. “Come away from the computer, Haven.”
The next morning, he left her in bed when he headed out for his run, and that’s where she was when he returned to the penthouse well past dinner, after the activity in the building had settled down for the night.
He crawled under the covers and lay beside her in the dark, thinking he’d give anything to hear her pop off her smart mouth.
After his morning run the next day, he returned to her bedroom to find she still slept.
He used her shower and when he emerged from the steam-filled room, she remained burrowed beneath the covers.
A towel wrapped around his waist, he sat on the edge of the bed, next to her bare foot sticking out.
“You going to work today?” He kept his tone conversational.
“I don’t want to.” The blankets muffled her voice, yet she sounded wide-awake.
He’d opened his mouth to tell her he understood when she threw off the covers and fixed grave, serious eyes on him.
“You think I should go.”
He picked his words carefully, but didn’t get the chance to share them because she rushed ahead without him.
“You think there’s a crap-ton of work to do, and without Darby there, who the hell’s going to do it?”
He scrubbed a towel over his wet head while she pressed her case.
“You think what’s happening with this team now is more important than something that happened over ten years ago.”
He stopped her there. “I would never say that.” Reaching out, he wrapped his hand around her ankle. “Please, don’t ever make light of what happened to you.”
Her dark eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “I can’t go out there,” she whispered. “I can’t… go through that again.”
His heart couldn’t take much more. “You don’t have to do, or say, anything. You’re doing a good job with this team, Haven. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing and let the chips fall where they may.”
“You think I’m doing a good job?”
With the pad of his thumb, he stroked the soft skin over her anklebone. “I do.”
She rubbed her forehead, as if massaging an ache. “I’m so tired. I can’t think straight and I can’t catch my breath and-and I just….” Her sad eyes pleaded with him to understand. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”
He squeezed her ankle. “I know. I’ve been there.”
“You have?”
“More times than I care to count. It’s late in the game. You’re down and momentum has swung to the other team. Their fans are going crazy, and their cheering is raining down on you, drowning you. You’re treading water, just trying to stay afloat.”
Lost in his memories, he stared at the floor. “There’s no logic in those moments. No reason. Only chaos and pain. You have to trust yourself, and quiet your mind, and then you’ll see the way through it. Not all at once, not clearly, but little by little, you’ll see it. An opening.
“So you make your move. You try to make the play. It might not lead anywhere, but it’s a chance, so you take it. And you take the next one, too. You fight, and you keep on fighting until you see the edge of the chaos, because the only other option available to you is defeat.”
He brought his gaze back to hers and smoothed his hand up her calf.
“But defeat is not an option. You can’t give up. You can’t just give the game to the other team. Make them beat you. Give it everything you have, and then, even if you lose, you know you did all you could do. You fought, and even though that day you lost to a better team, you’ve learned a lot about yourself. Those are the moments where you grow. You work harder. You get better. You live to fight another day, and the next time the storm comes and you’re down late in the third period and all seems lost, you’re ready for it. The storm doesn’t break you. You become the storm.”
For a moment, she was quiet, but then her hand came out to cover his. “Thank you, Jack.”
He felt her smile in the center of his chest.
Yet, she didn’t get out of bed.
Instead, a ripple of doubt puckered her brow. “Any way we can just get rid of the media? I mean, what do they even really do?”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew. We might love the game, but we don’t love all that comes with it.”
“I don’t love the game.”
“Yes, you do.”
She didn’t argue.
Holding the towel in place at his waist, he stood. “You ready?”
“For what?”
&
nbsp; “Time to get your game face on, baby. We got a hockey team to save.”
With a huff, she kicked her legs free of the sheets and climbed from the bed.
His heart sang.
Chapter Twenty
The final horn sounded on another Renegades win, this one on the road in Tampa Bay.
Adrenaline flowing, Jack hit the tunnel and followed his teammates into the visitors’ locker room. He smacked Milo on the top of his helmet. The kid was playing his best hockey the past two weeks, and he was a big reason for their six-game win streak.
A six-game win streak. An incredible feat in the highly competitive league.
The team was clicking. Personnel changes and a few line adjustments had altered the team’s chemistry and given new life to their power play. The young guys were getting better and more confident every day. They’d bought in to what Coach Chambers was trying to do. They were focused, and now they’d clawed their way out of last place.
Jack matched their enthusiasm, but not with his sights set on a Stanley Cup run, for that remained an outside possibility. No, this time he derived his motivation not from within, but without.
It resided with Haven, and if Haven wanted this team to win, then win they would. She got him, and for that, he wanted to help her. He wanted to win for her, though his reasons were less than noble.
He wanted revenge on everyone and everything that made her feel helpless. That robbed her of her self-worth. Stole her peace and gave all women a reason to be suspicious of all men, but most especially men like him. Men revered by society for no reason other than their ability to play a game, and giving them all but a free pass for doing so.
Someday, he’d get his vengeance. Somehow.
But for now, he’d focus on Haven.
On making Haven happy.
Whole.
They’d begun their affair almost three weeks back, and the more he had her, the more he wanted her. Already he’d grown weary of their need to sneak around, as though what they were doing was dirty or wrong.
Being with Haven didn’t feel dirty or wrong to him. It felt right, and it hurt, being so close to her and yet being unable, forbidden, to be with her, to ask her simply how her day had gone, for fear he’d talk too long, or too familiarly, that his gaze might linger, or that he’d do something that’d somehow tip somebody off to the truth about them.
He had eight weeks until the playoffs. They’d need to win more than half of the games remaining on their schedule, probably a lot more if another team got hot down the stretch.
But he now believed this team could do it. They had the talent and the drive. Whether or not they had the stamina remained to be seen.
He would do everything in his power to get them there. He’d push and claw, harass and nag his teammates all the way to the end. With nothing but the sheer force of his will, he’d get them there.
For Haven.
Haven cracked open one eye. She caught a glimpse of Jack’s incredible backside before he pulled a pair of jogging pants over his hips.
She turned her head to read the digits on the clock. 6:22 a.m.
Rolling to her side, she watched him finish dressing for his run.
He’d returned from a road trip late the night before, and during lovemaking, she’d discovered his newest battle scars. A small cut on his cheekbone. An angry bruise over the left side of his rib cage.
She marveled at his drive. “How do you do it?”
He turned his head. “Do what?”
“Stay so motivated.”
A lazy smile pushed up one corner of his puffy mouth, but he didn’t provide her with an answer.
“It must come from having four brothers. Did you guys always try to one-up each other or something?”
He shoved his arms through the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “I’m not busting my balls so this shitty team can be slightly less shitty for my brothers.”
He crossed to the nightstand and worked at fastening his activity monitor around his wrist.
She rose up on her elbow. “Then why are you doing it?”
Without lifting his head, moss green eyes latched on to her face.
“I think you know why.” Bending over, he dropped a kiss on her forehead. “But if not, I’m not going to tell you.”
Then he disappeared through her bedroom door.
The Renegades continued their solid play, and with the poor play of late of several other teams in their division, by the end of the second week of February, nearly seven weeks after Haven had taken over ownership of the club, they were set to claim the wild card spot.
A win in Milwaukee in regulation over Chicago combined with a loss by Winnipeg in their matchup against St. Louis would move the Renegades into the last remaining playoff slot.
Though they remained more than a month from the end of the regular season, that they were even in contention to squeak into the playoffs amazed most pundits and analysts. To be honest, it amazed most everyone within the Renegades organization, including Haven.
All the winning had the added benefit of making certain the fans and media remained focused on the team and not on her. So far, no grievance had been filed, and she’d secretly begun to hope it was all behind her.
To start the game, the Renegades came out playing fast and frenzied. Her heart in her throat, she tracked Jack’s movements at all times, whether he was in the game, taking and delivering punishing hits, or on the bench, where his mouth moved constantly as he coached and cajoled his teammates.
Midway through the first period, Jack buried a one-timer in the back of Chicago’s net and the crowd erupted. They continued making noise and, at the first intermission, sent the team to the locker room on a wave of deafening cheers.
In the second period, Chicago struck first, tying the game at 1-1. Shortly after, the refs whistled the Renegades for a penalty. Down a man, Jack, Gabe, and the Donovan twins formed a defensive front before Milo. Jack inched out to challenge the Chicago forward, who attempted to sneak a pass across the ice to his teammate. Anticipating the move, Jack had a step on them. He picked off the pass and charged up the ice.
All alone on the breakaway, he faked left and put the puck in the net behind the goalie’s right side.
Haven thought the crowd’s cheers might bring down the rafters. The energy in the building remained impossibly high, and every time Jack touched the puck the crowd roared with unruly abandon. Or maybe it was the dollar beer promotion running that night.
With three minutes to the close of the second period, Chicago evened the score at 2-2.
In the owner’s box, Haven’s nerves wound tight. She sipped Diet Coke compulsively and kept her eye on the TV over the bar where Winnipeg was down a score as the third period got underway.
When the puck dropped in the third, the Renegades went on the attack. They beat Chicago to the loose pucks and played more physically against the boards. Kai scored on a pass from Gus, but Chicago answered with five minutes remaining in regulation.
Just as the game in St. Louis ended with a Winnipeg loss.
Haven stood staring down at the ice, murmuring encouragement to the team as though it could somehow help them get the win.
For the next five minutes, both teams played with breath-stealing urgency. Her heart thundered as the tension ramped higher with every second that ticked off the game clock. As the time left to play slipped under the one-minute mark, it appeared the teams were headed for sudden death overtime.
Then one of the twins fired a shot at the net. The Chicago goalie knocked the puck down and every man on the ice lunged at it. The black disc squirted out and Jack, with a short windup and swift strike, slapped it with enough force to send it hurtling past the goalie and into the net with 3.4 seconds remaining.
The horns blared. Wild, drunken cheering from the crowd released the tension in the building as hats began to litter the ice. Jack returned from the tunnel and skated out on the ice to collect a cap thrown to honor his incredible three-goal game. A hat
trick.
He removed his helmet, pulled the baseball cap over his head, and with a wide smile, lifted his stick in the air. With the crowd’s answering roar, all the pent-up nervous energy in Haven erupted.
She fled the owner’s box, flinging open the door and charging down the corridor.
Though breathless from her sprint through the arena, she pushed on, desperate to get to Jack. In the hall outside the locker room, she spotted the back of his jersey. Nolan, number seventeen, stood beneath the glare of camera lights, giving an interview to the Renegades’ broadcast network.
Players and team personnel congregated in the hall, the atmosphere lively as they mixed with reporters and family and friends.
His interview complete, Jack turned from the camera. He looked in her direction and a broad grin split his beautiful face. All white teeth and bright eyes in his dark features.
Her heart ballooned, filling with all the pride and joy in his smile.
Just then, a mass of bodies surged into her path. She tried to move around them but found no space, so she squeezed between them. A shoulder bumped into her, knocking her off her course to Jack.
He held up his arm in a wave, and she struggled forward.
Only a few yards from him, which might as well have been a canyon, she realized his gaze fixated not on her, but on some point behind her. She turned, just as a blur of blonde hair streaked through the crowded corridor and launched into his outstretched arms.
He lifted the woman off the ground while her light laughter speared Haven like poison-tipped darts. Watching them, her feet grew roots to the spot while bodies bumped against her.
Jack returned the woman to her feet and smiled down at her. Haven recognized her then. The woman from the elevator. Sutton.
The balloon in her chest burst, her heart deflating as if it’d suffered a betrayal.
Someone called out his name, and Jack lifted his head.
That’s when he saw her.
His smile cracked and faltered. The already heightened color on his cheeks deepened.
Sutton extracted herself from his arms and pressed a cell phone to her ear. “Omigosh, Dad, did you see it? Yes. I know, I know,” she said, laughing. “I can’t believe it. I’m with him now. I will. I’ll tell him.”
