I also have never hated it like I hate it today.
I slowly drag myself through getting ready like every motion costs me something. Brush my teeth. Stare at myself in the mirror too long. Consider faking an injury serious enough to bench me for a month.
I can’t avoid him forever. But forever would have been nice.
I get to the rink earlier than usual. Early enough that the locker room should be empty. Early enough to get on the ice and put distance between us before I have to see his face.
Sadly, it is not empty.
Rhys is leaning against the lockers with his arms crossed and that smirk already in place, like he's been there long enough to get comfortable and pose, as if he's been waiting specifically for me.
Which he has.
Which somehow makes it so much worse.
I stop walking.
He pushes off the lockers and crosses toward me and the distance between us closes in a way I feel in my chest before it lands anywhere else. He stops close — too close, always too close — and his hand finds my shoulder. My bad shoulder. Squeezes once.
His mouth drops to my ear. "It's so nice to see you again."
The tingle of his breath against my neck. The words landing right at the place where my pulse is already going. I feel the goosebumps before I can stop them — a full-body thing, immediate and involuntary — and I ignore them the way I ignore everything I can't afford to feel.
I look at him. Dark eyes glittering. That exact grin. The one that means he knows something and is deciding how to use it. I think about punching him again and weigh the consequences. The consequences are bad. I'm still thinking about it, though.
While I'm thinking about it he reaches down and pulls his shirt off.
One motion. Unhurried. Deliberate. Just for me.
The shirt hits the bench and he trails one finger slowly down the center of his chest — past the spaceship, past the snake tattoo, all the way down to the low waistband of his shorts where the tail of the snake and trail of dark hair disappears.
My eyes follow it.
I feel them follow it.
He watches them follow it.
The grin gets worse.
"What was it about the photo?" His voice drops into something low and sensual. "That got you so interested." I can't move. That's the thing. I'm stuck — a fly trapped in amber, every intelligent thought gone, every defense I've spent years buildingjust vacated — and he knows it. He can see it. He's standing there watching me come apart and enjoying every second of it.
He reaches up. Two fingers under my chin.
Tilts my face up until I have nowhere to look except at him.
"Focus, Jamie." Quieter now. Just for me. "What made you drive all that way? What was it that made you want to fuck me so bad?"
I slam the locker beside me so hard my hand stings. The sound cracks through the empty room. The distance between us disappears in one step — chest to chest, heat off his skin, peppermint on his breath, close enough that every nerve ending I have is screaming and I cannot make myself step back.
We always end up here.
"Stop." Low. Controlled. Everything I have left going into keeping my voice even. "Fucking. With. Me." My hands are shaking. I’m aware of that. I’m aware of everything and powerless over all of it. I close my eyes.
His fingertips find my chin again. Tilts it up slightly. A soft tsk. “Trust me,” he murmurs. “You’d know if I was fucking with you.”
Voices down the hall. Footsteps. The team arriving, getting closer. I step back hard and put distance between us.
Rhys looks down. Looks back up. Winks.
