I heard her breath hitch.
“Evan…”
I stopped, only inches from those beautiful, full lips. I was closer than ever to finally finding out how she tasted, and yet I forced myself to pull back. Kissing her now while I was aching and vulnerable would have been a mistake.
“It’s late. You should get some sleep,” I whispered.
Bianca swallowed hard. I could see the disappointment in her eyes and about a million questions on her lips as she sat there, her eyes lingering on me. I knew she saw right through me; I knew she saw the wall I’d just thrown up to protect myself.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Okay.”
She stood slowly, and as she passed me, her fingers brushed my injured shoulder, deliberate and gentle. It was a message letting me know she saw me for me and she wasn’t afraid.
My heart pounded as I watched her cross the room and disappear down the hallway, not looking back. The heat from the heating pad was making me sweat. I reached down, grabbed the ice pack, and pressed it to my forehead. I was treading on thin ice. Bianca was the last person I needed to get involved with, for many reasons.
I sat in the dark for a while, listening to the silence and feeling the ghost of her touch on my shoulder.
I’d barely slept,and I was dragging my ass this morning. All I wanted to do was get my day over with so I could go home, lock myself in my bedroom, ice the shit out of my shoulder and torture myself by being inside my head.
Only what I saw when I entered the training area was like a punch in the gut. Tate Parker, our backup goalie, was standing there, talking with Bianca. She was leaning against the wall, head tipped back, eyes bright, smiling up at him as he stood with his arm pressed up against the wall, looking down at her. She never smiled at me like that, not that I’d ever given her a reason to lately. As I walked across the room, I heard her laughter float through the room at something Tate said, and then she swatted his arm playfully.
I inhaled through my clenched teeth and gripped my water bottle so tightly it threatened to crack. Tate was young, twenty-four, fresh-faced, and unmarked by the weight of bad choices and injuries. He was uncomplicated. Everything I wasn’t.
He didn’t have a shoulder injury that screamed with each hard check; he didn’t have a father who had taught him that needing someone was the same as becoming worthless, and most of all, he didn’t carry the certainty that everyone he needed would eventually leave.
Bianca was smart; she’d figure it out really fast. Tate was the easier choice.
I was about to back out of the room when Tate turned away from Bianca and glanced in my direction. “Hey, Evan…”
“Isn’t it time we got to warmups?” I snapped.
Tate looked a little startled at my outburst, and Bianca’s smile faded, her expression shifting as she rolled her eyes.
“Not for another ten minutes.” He shrugged.
“You should get ready then, not stand there and harass the woman.”
Bianca frowned at me as Tate said something to her and then took off toward the locker room to get ready.
Bianca moved closer to me. “Evan, he was only asking me about the new analytics system.”
“I don’t care.”
I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. Not when the only image I saw was her smiling at someone whole and uncomplicated. I left the room, got changed, and entered the practice rink, skating out to the center of the ice, meeting up with the other guys, leaving Bianca alone.
Just like everything else lately, practice was a complete disaster. I missed passes I’d never missed before. I skated too hard, too fast, and by the end of each stride I took, fire ripped through my shoulder. I could barely continue hiding the pain, it was so bad, but I tried. Every time I looked up and saw Biancaspeaking with a player, my chest tightened. I hated it, and I hated myself for hating it.
“Hey, Callahan…” I heard Tate call out.
“What?”
“She’s way out of your league, you know. A girl like that wants someone with a future, not a burned-out old guy a couple of years away from retirement.”
The entire team laughed, except for me. I dropped my stick and took off across the ice in a mad dash, grabbing Tate by the jersey, swinging him around until he faced me, and pushed him right up against the boards.
Dropping my gloves, I went after him, shoving him even harder into the boards. The want, the fear, and the pain that had been pulsing through me for weeks had now translated into violence. I needed to prove I was still strong, still dangerous, and that I still had value.
When my fist connected with Tate’s shoulder, debilitating pain ripped through mine, and I knew with a sick certainty that I was in fact making everything worse.
