“Here’s lies Caden Kelly,the idiot who denied he had a massive crush on his assistant coach for ages.
(Seriously, an Ice Age arrived and receded in the time it took for him to admit he wanted to f—k his too-hot-for-words-assistant-coach.)
He would have been miserable if his brilliant best friend, Kait, hadn’t told him to get his head out of his ass and admit that he wanted to act on his attraction to the sexiest man in the world.
I hope he’s still cringing in the afterlife.”
“Yeah, so. . .” I rubbed the back of my head, pretending to smooth down my now too-long curls, as if a few seconds’ delay would make me any less self-conscious. “Ash offered to drive me up.”
“From Belleville!” she screeched, and the high pitch of her voice echoed in the—thankfully empty—hallway. “Oh my god, I wassoright. You do have a thing for him! But also, I was beyond right. Like, a ‘pre-psychic’ kind of right, where I would already have called his feelings for you if I’d been able to lay eyes on the man. He wants you too! Damn, I’m good. I have a psychic ability to be right even before I think about it! I should charge money for my advice.”
Kait bounced subtly with each word.
I couldn’t even unpack the ridiculous idea of being “pre-psychic,” as I was busy trying to force air into my lungs. Kait’s words had literally punched the oxygen out of my body.
The thought that Ash might have feelings for me was something I’d never, ever imagined.
No way! This crush, or whatever it was, had been a few particles of thought that I’d shoved so deeply to the back of my mind to keep it a secret, even from myself. While I couldn’t force it from my thoughts, I’d cleared out a quiet, dark space to set the idea that I could possibly have anything beyond a platonic, pleasant player-coach rapport with Ash.
But my damn feelings for Ash refused to stay buried and were now racing along the surface of my skin, and probably all over my face, like some Road Runner of desire.
Kait would say it was healthier to let the attraction out into the open, at least to myself. But little did she know, the fragile seed of my crush had been given government-banned level growth hormones on the trip from Belleville. That seed had become a Venus fly trap of feelings, salivating while it waited to swallow me whole.
Having my own body and heart work against me would make it infinitely harder to keep pretending that I had any remaining professional feelings in relation to Ash.
I’d have to fake it because nothing could happen between us.
Not because he was a guy and I had zero sexual experiences with men. But because on top of all the things I didn’t know about attraction and sex when it came to men,I did knowthat Ash was Asher “The Ace” Landry, NHL Superstar and now, assistant AHL coach for a team having a breakout season.
And I was no one. A guy who’d betrayed his own dreams because he wasn’t brave enough to tell his asshole father to go to hell. A guy who burdened his best friend with stopping in to care for his mom a few times a week because he played semi-professional hockey for shit money, not allowing anything to change in his life for fear that everything would just get worse.
Ash was a superstar NHL player, did amazing things for charity, and was now coaching. He had everything going for him.
And I was just me. The kid from a smallish city in Northern Ontario with a shitty dad and a job I should love, but instead, I had to force myself to perform every single day.
Could Ash really feel. . . No. I couldn’t entertain the thought. He’d driven me here because he was one of my coaches and simply a good human being.
There was nothing more to read into the situation, regardless of Kait’s wishful thinking.
As hard as I tried to force my mind to the conversation we needed to be having, the whisper of “what if” would not stop echoing inside me.
I checked the time on my phone in my hand. I needed to get to the ER fast if I was going to see her before all the pre-op stuff they had to do.
“Yeah right, Kait. He’s just a nice person. It doesn’t meananything,” I emphasized and waved the whole topic away. Ididn’t have the luxury of freaking out right this moment over what it meant if Ash did have any sort of feelings for me. “Please tell me what happened when you found Mom?” My voice shook slightly with the question.
Kait flattened her lips like she didn’t want to drop the subject of Ash, but relented, probably hearing the worry in my voice.
“Fine. But when everything calms down, you need to think about it.” She poked me in the bicep to punctuate her point.
She took a deep breath before continuing.
“So, I went over to your place between my afternoon and night classes like I always do a of couple times a week. Your mom had physio yesterday. I just wanted to make sure she was okay for dinner because the accessible transport service she uses can take a long time, depending on the day.”
I nodded, beyond grateful that Kait was helping my mom out of the goodness of her heart when it was my job to be there for her.
Yet another reminder that I had a person in my life I didn’t deserve.
“When she didn’t answer the door like usual, and no lights were on in the kitchen, I got nervous. Her favorite umbrella. . . You know, the one with the rubber ducks you got her as a joke for her birthday, but she ended up loving? It was propped up on the porch, still damp from the rain we’d had yesterday. I knew she wouldn’t risk getting soaked and having to sit in wet clothes for her appointment.”
