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For a moment the expression on her face was easy to read. Worry. She’d seen the fight with Morgan.
“You all right?” She lifted her right hand but didn’t touch me. I wanted to grab her hand and put it on my face. Force her to do what we both wanted. Needed. But instead, we stood there like strangers with two feet of distance between us. “That was some fight.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s going to bruise,” she said, like she wanted me to feel worse.
“He looks worse,” I said, on edge. Pissed off. Mad that she was just standing there looking at me and I was just standing there looking at her.
“What can I do for you, Captain?” she asked, stepping back like she was going to put the desk between us. Behind her on the wall she had a big calendar and a bulletin board. On the bottom corner she had a picture of her family. I didn’t like the way her father was looking at me. Like he knew what I’d done to his daughter and what I was about to do to his daughter.
“I ah…” I cleared my throat. “I don’t know about you, but this isn’t working for me.”
“Fighting? It doesn’t work for a lot of people.”
I shook my head. “Don’t play dumb. You won’t even look at me.”
“I’m looking at you now.”
“Stop. You know what I’m talking about.” Morgan was right, and of course I picked up on it. The few times we’d talked, her eyes were locked on the spot right above my left shoulder.
“It makes my stomach hurt when I look at you,” she admitted.
Yeah, okay. That was fair. Sometimes my stomach hurt when I looked at her too. Or was it my heart? I wasn’t sure.
“I didn’t think you’d notice,” she said.
Of course I noticed. I noticed everything. She painted her nails two days ago and the red on her thumb was already halfway gone because she chewed on that nail during scrimmages. Her hair slipped out of her ponytail at the end of the day and she would take it out, gather up all that thick honey blonde hair and pile it on her head, securing it there with magic. In the cafeteria she always asked for a grilled cheese sandwich with ham and tomato and she’d only eat half of it.
She stayed late. Came early. Worked so hard.
But I wasn’t here to talk about that.
“There’s a rumor going around you got a phone call from Montreal. They offer you a job?”
Her cheeks went pink and her eyes went back to that space over my shoulder. “No, they want to meet me though. I was going to wait until my contract was up.”
“Don’t wait. That’s not how it works in this business. Coach Renaud is a good guy,” I said. “The team is a bunch of assholes.”
Her lips lifted and she ruthlessly flattened them. “You say that about every team.”
“You should go,” I said. “When they offer a job, you should take it.”
She licked her lips and stepped back. Hurt flashing across her face before she could hide it. I didn’t want to hurt her, but weren’t we already doing that? Wasn’t this situation already cutting us to pieces?
“Ready to get rid of me that quickly?” She tried to make a joke, but it fell flat.
Yes.
Never.
“You need to leave,” I said, as honest as I could be. It felt like shit. She blinked at me, her eyes wide like I’d just punched her right in the chest.
“This isn’t some bullshit plan so you and I can-”
“No,” I cut her off. “This isn’t about you quitting so we don’t have a conflict at work. This is about you messing with my focus, which is messing with my game. I don’t do relationships for exactly this reason. I am the team captain and right now I’m useless to them because I can’t get you out of my fucking head.”
“And that’smyproblem?” she asked.
