I was sore. My eyes moved behind my closed eyelids, and I searched my memories in an attempt to figure out what I’d done to make my muscles ache.
As soon as I opened my eyes, the night came flying back, and I popped up. My tangled hair rushed past my face, and I reached for my head. I had a pounding headache, and my stomach was uneasy. The Bexley U logo on my shirt caught my eye, and I vaguely remembered scrounging through a dresser drawer for something to wear other than my uncomfortable outfit. I didn’t have to look down onto the floor at the other human in the room to see where I was, because I knew if I had ended up with anyone, it would have been Aasher.
There was no way he was going to let me leave with anyone else.
My lips rolled as I stared down at his large frame lying perfectly still without any blankets covering his bare chest. The only thing he wore was a pair of comfy-looking lounge shorts with drawstrings outlining a very defined bulge against charcoal-colored fabric.
The night was a vague memory, and my eyes felt puffy against my shaky fingers. Shit, I cried last night. Mortification burned my cheeks, and I quickly crawled over his bed and scooped up my clothes, being as quiet as possible.
I was doing the ol’ dash-and-pass that Mya and I used to do our freshman year before I’d started dating Gray. Except, this time, I was leaving with my dignity intact.
If anyone caught me leaving the hockey players’ apartment looking like this, it would be bad. I was sneaking out of one of my father’s player’s rooms with his shirt on and my hair a mess. God.
I stole some toothpaste out of Aasher’s bathroom and used my finger to brush my teeth. I used the leftover Gatorade to erase the gross taste out of my mouth, but I was still a wreck. I tiptoed out of the bathroom and grabbed the doorknob, thankful he hadn’t woken up.
“Nope.”
I jumped and flung around, slamming my back against Aasher’s closed door. He jumped up from the floor, and it only took seconds until his weighty air surrounded me. “Do not go out there dressed like that.”
His raspy growl pulled my mouth closed. I swallowed and pressed further onto the door, wishing I could somehow push myself through it.
Per usual, being this close to Aasher made me feel things I wasn’t used to, so I tilted my chin and acted like I had the upper hand in the situation, even though we both knew I didn’t. “Afraid it’ll get back to your coach, and he’ll think you did more than shove me into a pantry and kiss me?”
Aasher’s entire face hardened, and I regretted bringing up the kiss. I should have pretended it didn’t happen. But it did, and I remembered very clearly how it felt to be kissed by him.
“Why did you transfer to Bexley U?”
I swallowed the taste of his minty toothpaste, and my cool breaths came out like crashing waves against a tide. One of Aasher’s hands gripped my chin, and he forced me to look at him. I didn’t like what I saw staring back at me. His mossy eyes caressed every curve of my face, as if he were trying to figure out an equation, and I prayed that he didn’t figure me out.
“It’s none of your business,” I whispered, trying to turn away so he would stop looking at me.
He gripped my chin tighter and kept me in place. “If you’re on the figure skating team, why haven’t I seen you skate?”
The room cracked like we were in a glass house. Of course he heard the conversation between Gianna and me.
“Why do you just stand there late at night and stare at the rink instead of skating?”
My chin wobbled, but I tried to act angry. “I’m leaving.”
I attempted to pull away, but he shook his head at me and kept a hold of my chin. “Not dressed like that.” He dropped his hand from my face, but it fell to the hem of his T-shirt. He fingered the threads and tugged on it gently while raising his eyebrow.
“Fine,” I said, pushing on his chest. I walked over to his bed and spun around in a fury of desperate anger, hating that he was trying to uncover shit that wasn’t his concern. I wanted to get back at him, so I smirked before ripping his shirt off my body. His jaw slacked with surprise.
“God damn it, Riley!” he cursed. “You’re such a brat.”
He put his back to me quickly, and I peeled my eyes away from his flickering muscles. After I was fully dressed in my clothes from the night before, I dropped his T-shirt at his feet and waited for him to move out of my way.
I jumped when he snapped to attention. I braced myself for the battle we were about to find ourselves in, but I knew my armor wasn’t nearly as tough as it should have been.
“Is it because you fell?”
My blood turned to ice, and the air through my nose was just as cold. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. How does he know about the fall? I mean, the figure skating community knew about it, and students at Rosewood did too. But Aasher? The guy who thought of hockey and nothing else except for the occasional puck bunny?
“Is that why you’re here?” He leaned his shoulder against the door and waited for me to answer.
I took a step back and shut my eyes, frustrated that they were growing blurry.
Keep it together.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d cried since my fall, but leave it to Aasher Matthews to push me over the edge and make me bend with one little question.
“It’s none—”
“Of my business. I know. But I’m still asking.” His voice was softer than before. A shaky breath left me, and when I felt his touch on the side of my face, I nearly cracked.
I preferred his crass attitude toward me over this.
He pushed my hair behind my ear, and I hated how comforting the action was. Aasher was the last person I’d ever expect to make me feel comforted. Aasher Matthews was strength wrapped in a hockey jersey, and I was supposed to be repulsed by him and his annoying need to watch my every move. I was supposed to be repulsed by all hockey players, especially after knowing what they truly thought of me.
“It’s only fair I know,” he pressed.
I opened my eyes and was ready to argue, but his intense stare threw me off as he rattled off more questions.
“Why did you fall? Were you sick?”
It was in our human nature to assume things. To judge. And although Aasher was warm in all the right places, one wrong assumption and I’d freeze him out, and then we’d be right back to our exhausting sparring in the fickle war we kept clashing in.
“Were you hungover? That would explain why your dad told me to look out for you at parties. Were you a party girl?”
Anger skimmed the surface, and I wanted him to stop assuming things.
“Why do you care?” I asked, trying to get around him to leave his room.
He grabbed my hand as I tried to leave. “Who said I do?”
“Let me go.” My voice quivered, and I wanted to rip my hair out.
Aasher’s hand disappeared, and he took half a step back. I should have bolted for the door, but something stopped me. It wasn’t that I wanted to tell him, but I wanted the assumptions to stop. I wanted everyone to stop asking me when I was getting back on the ice and what led to the potential end of my career before it even started.
“I can easily figure it out, Duster. But I’m asking you.”
I snapped. Something hot bubbled in my chest, and my mouth was moving before I could stop it. “You know what, if everyone would just back the fuck off, maybe I wouldn’t be so concerned about being a perfectionist and just get back on the ice!”
Aasher’s eyes widened, but he recovered quickly, smoothing out his features and staying ramrod still against the door, blocking my escape.
“So, you’re a perfectionist,” he repeated, shrugging. “Me too.”
I rolled my eyes. It went so much further than just being a perfectionist.
Aasher bit his lip as he studied me. When it popped out from being trapped beneath his teeth, he crossed his arms and poked me some more. “So you fell because you were a perfectionist? That doesn’t make sense.” He crept closer, but I didn’t move. I wouldn’t let him intimidate me into telling him all my secrets. “Did something happen to you? That made you fall? Was it your ex?”
Stop.
“Did something happen at a party? Sully obviously wanted you drunk, and I can only assume he had a reason. He’s trying to win that bet after all.”
My limbs shook. Why does he keep pushing?
Aasher pushed off the door and walked over to his dresser. “Did you and your boyfriend have a bad fight that day?” I refused to look him in the eye. Instead, I stared at the shirt in his hand and decided it was about to become a noose if he didn’t stop assuming things that were outlandish.
I attempted to shift the conversation elsewhere because the more he poked, the tighter my chest became. “How do you know about my fall?”
“Did someone do something to you?”
“Stop it,” I barked, stomping my foot. “Why do you even care?”
I wanted to leave his room, yet my feet remained unmoving.
Aasher rolled his eyes before pulling his shirt on. Thank you. I was getting pretty sick of his stupid abs moving right along with his annoying accusations.
“I don’t care, but you were the one who was crying in my bathroom last night. You said you weren’t okay, and I’m just trying to help.”
“Or you’re trying to weasel yourself into my pants by getting me to trust you,” I mumbled, crossing my arms.
“What was that?” Aasher stopped mid-movement. He was stripping the sheets off his bed because God forbid my scent be on them.
“Nothing. I’m leaving,” I said, sighing. He pissed me off, but he did take care of me last night, so I attempted to wave a white flag, too exhausted to keep arguing. “Thanks for…”
“Carrying you home, helping you while you threw up in my bathroom, letting you sleep on my bed, and not calling your dad the second you stripped off that leather jacket and showed your tits to a house full of horny jocks?” He scoffed. “No problem, Duster.”
I gritted my teeth and turned around. I was fully prepared to put our sparring to rest, but then he flung another insult at me.
“Don’t come to any more parties if you’re just going to get wasted and make stupid choices. I’m not always going to be there to save you.”
“Save me?” My heartbeats were like punches against my ribs. I breathed out like a dragon, and I wished fire came out of my mouth so I could burn Aasher in his spot. “I do not need saving.”
He was winning our game, and I hated him for it. The next thing he said pushed me off the ledge. “Oh, and if I wanted to weasel myself into your pants, I could. You’re just not my type.”
I froze when the realization came to light. “It was you.”
Unbelievable.
“You were the one who said cold and detached wasn’t your type in the locker room that day while the rest of the team was scheming to get in my pants.”
Why did it bother me knowing it was him?
Aasher’s sighs were becoming as normal as blinking. He was so composed leaning against his dresser while I was sweating from anger.
“Fine,” I snapped. “You want to know why my dad is so protective over me?”
“I actually want to know why someone as talented as you can’t seem to take a blade to the ice even when she thinks no one is watching, but sure, I’ll take that explanation too, considering I’m the one who has to deal with your behavior.”
My anger was fiery, but instead of burning Aasher, I burned myself. “I wasn’t some slutty party girl like you’re assuming, and it has nothing to do with Gray. I didn’t put that much stock in a stupid hockey player to give him the ammunition to turn me into this! It started years before I even met him!” I threw my hands up, and I knew I was acting crazy. My voice was shaky in all the wrong places, and by the look on Aasher’s face, he thought I was acting crazy too.
“Turn you into what?” he finally asked.
“A failure.”
I cracked. I was tight all over. My shoulders bunched, and my arms went around my unsettled stomach. “I can’t even step foot on the ice without panicking.”
The warmth of Aasher’s body surrounded me, but I wouldn’t look at him because I was afraid to see what was on his face. I was afraid he’d assume something else, or worse, feel sorry for me. “You’re not a failure because of one fall. Do you know how many times I’ve fallen on the ice? You just have to get back up.”
He said it like it was easy, and his presumptions of the simplicity of my fall egged me on until I was stepping on his toes and peering up at his stern face. “You don’t get it.”
“Then explain it to me,” he said matter-of-factly. His arms brushed mine as he crossed them over his chest, and when I looked away, I saw our reflection in the bathroom mirror. We were head-to-head. Toe-to-toe. He was towering over me with his dark features and arrogance, but he was about to rethink every thought he had ever had about me.
“It wasn’t just a simple fall. I didn’t trip or slip on the ice.” I looked away, unable to fathom what his expression was going to show. “I fell because I hadn’t eaten a full meal in weeks and was so malnourished that I fainted. Sleep was nonexistent, and I worked my body so hard that my muscles were too weak to hold me up.”
Aasher’s arms dropped abruptly, and he took a step away from me. It wasn’t the reaction most people gave, but I kept going.
“I developed an eating disorder because I thought the thinner I was, the lighter I would be on the ice. I lost sleep because I spent so much time in the rink, perfecting my twists.” My lip trembled, and my throat grew tight. “I was out of control, and it was all because I needed control. There was an incident with a guy, and it—”
I stopped talking the moment I realized what I was saying. This wasn’t part of the careful explanation that I had planned over and over again in my head. I didn’t tell people this part. In fact, I didn’t tell most people anything.
“Don’t stop now.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper, and I knew if I backed down, he’d never leave it alone.
“A hockey player…” I glanced away, and I wasn’t sure if I could keep up my façade, but suddenly, Aasher’s finger was on my jaw, and he pushed my face back toward him. His eyes were soft around the edges, and they made me feel safe, despite the fact that I was jaded when it came to guys like him.
“Your ex?”
I shook my head. “It happened in high school. The hockey players and figure skaters shared a rink. They all used to watch me practice after theirs ended.”
The hockey team always got first dibs when it came to their practice times. Hockey players took precedence over figure skaters, unfortunately.
“Let me guess. One of them didn’t leave?”
For once, someone’s assumption was correct.
“Yeah.” I turned away, ready to run back to my apartment and away from Aasher because I felt naked in front of him, even though all my clothes were on. “I got over it. I am over it. But in the midst of trying to get over it, I formed an unhealthy obsession with being perfect. He took control from me that day, and in order to take it back, I controlled the only thing I could…”
“Being the best at skating.”
I nodded.
“I controlled my eating habits—losing weight that I couldn’t afford to lose. I stopped sleeping and stayed in the rink after hours to work on turns that Olympian skaters couldn’t even hit. I developed terrible coping mechanisms. If I couldn’t control what happened to me in that locker room, I was going to control what happened on the ice.”
It took a long time to get to that conclusion. A year of therapy—a requirement of Dean Chiffon if I wanted to attend Bexley U and join their team, courtesy of my father pulling strings—and we’d finally connected the dots.
Aasher was quiet, and the more time that passed with an ugly truth in between us, the worse I felt. I can’t believe I just told him all of that.
My face was on fire, and I wanted to run to my apartment and pull my blankets over my head. I rushed into the hallway, leaving Aasher in his room alone to digest everything. My psyche was shaking her head at me for spilling the truth.
My breaths were rapid bullets, and if any of the other guys were in my way, I was going to run right through them, but before I even had a chance to take in my surroundings, a tight grip pulled me backward. I was lifted off my feet and suddenly back in Aasher’s bedroom.
“What the hel—”
Words slipped from my tongue when his hand cupped the side of my cheek, pressing it into his chest. Aasher’s strong arms wrapped around my body like a blanket, and I felt the warmth all over. My chin trembled, and I squeezed my eyes shut, unsure of what to think. The beating of his heart matched mine. A painful thump every half second.
When his hand crept up my back and his fingers tangled in my hair, keeping my face pressed against his body, I felt something I never expected.
Safe.
And how ironic was it that I felt safe in the arms of a stupid, arrogant, overprotective hockey player that I refused to trust.
