So why does the silence hurt?
Chapter Fifteen
Owen
“R’my?” I rub my eyes as I drag myself back to consciousness. I try to wrap my arms around her and pull her closer, but the room is cold, and part of the cushions have been shoved aside.
I sit up and look around. It’s early morning, barely dawn, so it takes me a couple of minutes to piece together the evidence: Her side of the couch is empty. The room still smells like her. Vanilla and coffee and something warmer underneath that my body immediately recognizes before my brain can catch up.
Fuck.“Her side?” Remy doesn’t belong here. Clearly, she doesn’t even want to be here. That shouldn’t hurt this much after one night. It absolutely does anyway.
“Stupid.” I cover my face with both hands. “Stupid!”
Because apparently all it takes is one woman touching me gently, and suddenly I’m out here building emotional attachment like a golden retriever.
From the floor, Shutout chimes in with a sympathetic howl.
I hate that this devastates me. I hate that I even care, when she didn’t care enough to stay.
By the time I get to the arena, I’ve convinced myself I’m being dramatic.
People leave after hookups all the time. Especially smart people. Professional people. People who realize sleeping with their client was a terrible idea sometime between the orgasm and sunrise.
Remy leaving doesn’t mean anything except that she has common sense. If anything, it probably means she has better instincts than I do.
So why does it feel like somebody hollowed my ribs out with a spoon?
I shove the thought away as I head for the ice.
Cold air hits me the second I step through the tunnel, sharp enough to sting my lungs. Usually that helps. Usually, hockey burns everything else out of my system until there’s nothing left except instinct and movement and the next save.
Today, my brain refuses to cooperate. Which feels vaguely threatening, considering hockey is usually the one place my head shuts the hell up.
“Rourke!” Coach Metcalfe barks from center ice. “You planning on joining us this morning, or should we send a search party?”
“Depends. You paying overtime?” I skate out toward the crease, trying to sound normal.
The guys laugh. It buys me maybe thirty seconds of camouflage.
Pucks start flying during warmups. I stop the first few automatically, muscle memory carrying me through movements my head barely tracks. Butterfly. Recover. Push left. Glove save.
Easy.
Except my timing is off by just enough that I can feel it.
“Holy shit,” Bowen quips after one shot slips under my arm. “You drunk?”
“Your mom wore me out.”
Weak chirp. Even I hear it. Remy really did break my brain.
Knight skates backward past the crease and gives me a longer look than I want. “You good?”
“Fine.”
Lie.
Everything in me feels scraped raw this morning. My body’s exhausted in that deeply satisfied way that should feel incredible, except every good memory from last night comesattached to the image of Remy sneaking out before dawn like she regretted touching me at all. That thought lands somewhere behind my ribs sharp enough to make breathing annoying.
