“Yes, I see your face. Pretty face,” he added. “So worried. Come here.”
As much as I knew I should run and remove myself from his life, I obeyed and got close enough that he could drag me over the railing and practically into his arms. I forced him to stop just short of actually pulling me into his lap.
“You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Already hurt. What a little more pain will do?” he murmured, brushing fingers through my hair. “What detective say on call?”
“Just that he can’t give me info, but he wants meto answer some questions. Fuck. I’m so fucking sorry. Did you see him last night?”
“No,” Vanya said. He stroked a too-tender touch over the back of my neck. “But my brother call. He find a tracker on my car. I was in parking lot trying to find it. He must have been waiting.”
“How the fuck did he get past security?” I couldn’t understand how this had happened multiple times. Who was letting him in?
“I think Tyoma know, but I can’t call right now. Head hurts too much.”
“Jesus,” I murmured. I turned toward him and gingerly felt around his face for any cuts. There were several scabs, but nothing that felt stitched and no lumps. But he was definitely worse for wear. “I’m so fucking sorry. This is all my?—”
“No. Enough.” He said something in Russian, then sighed. “Drugs making it hard to think in English. Give me time, I fix. Okay?”
“You don’t need to fix me?—”
“Someone need to fix you.” He tapped my temple. “Until you love yourself as much as I love you.” Then he dragged me into a morning-sour, nasty kiss which I fucking adored. “Go to detective. Tell them to send Hunter to go live with polar bears. They eat him. Problem solved.”
“I, ah, I don’t think that’s a sentence they can give out, but I’ll do my best.”
“Because you are best. Best face, best body. Best dick.”
“Wow, Mr. Maximov,” came a voice from a person I hadn’t realized walked in. It had to be his nurse.
“Now that I’m thoroughly humiliated,” I said, sliding away from Vanya, “can you point me to the bathroom so I can drown myself in the toilet?”
“Noooo,” Vanya whined.
“I need a piss,” I explained.
The nurse laughed and guided me to the door, which I firmly shut behind me, and then I relieved myself, washed my hands, then made a half-desperate call to the only other person I was going to be able to stand that day.
“Thank you for this,” I said as I hunkered down in Hugo’s car. “This is such a fucking shit-show. If Ben didn’t love me so much, I’d be first on the list of trades for next season.”
“Ben’s a good coach. He’s not going to lose his top talent because things got out of control,” Hugo reminded me.
That was fair, but a small part of me wished there was a way I could get fired because I felt done. I felt more than done. This wasn’t fun anymore, and it wasn’t just Hunter.
It was all of it.
The obligation, the fear, the hiding. Knowing I would have to rewrite who I was to everyone I knew—and the people I didn’t but thought they knew me.Hockey had been an escape, a way to flee my mother’s too-tight, unkind grasp she had on me and my brothers’ throats. But she was who the fuck knew where, my dad was dying, and suddenly, hockey didn’t feel the same.
“Are you okay?”
Everything I was thinking was probably playing out on my face, and it was easy to forget that a lot of the people around me could see it.
“No. But I will be.”
“Is Vanya…”
“He’s fine. Right before you got here, Jonah texted and said he and Alexio were coming by to see him.” I rested my head against the seat and turned my face toward the window. The sun was out, bright enough to be hot through the glass, and I felt a little like Jonah’s cat—fighting the urge to curl up in the rays and sleep.
“And you think they have Hunter at the station?”
