Page 47 of The Spice Play

“I play because I love the game and I love this team,” I clarified. I unstrapped my helmet, peeling it from my dripping hair in one quick motion.

“And the rest of us play because we fucking have to.” Spittle flew, seeping out from between his teeth with each word. “So, the next time you can’t manage to do something as simple as a goddamn cross-over, just keep in mind that ifanyof the rest of us were struggling with the same thing, we’d be sick to our fucking stomachs with fear about being removed from the team and sent back to the AHL with noway to make up for lost income, you sack of fucking useless?—”

“Enough,” Coach said, but this time there was something else in his words, a hint of venom that I didn’t often hear, even when he was furious at me for messing up time and time again. He appeared almost out of thin air, as if he hadn’t been standing near my narrowing tunnel vision that had focused entirely on Bryan, and put an arm between our bodies. “Separate before I make you both do fucking laps in front of the crowd.”

“We both know Blue needs that more than me,” Bryan scoffed, his eyes rolling. He grabbed for his helmet roughly, scraping it across the cold metal bench. “Why don’t you go practice your cross-overs?”

“Addaway,” Coach growled.

Bryan held up both hands, his helmet clutched in one, in mock defeat as he took a step around Coach toward the exit for the locker rooms. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, his tongue hooking on his canine as he watched me with his mouth open, his feet walking backward. “I shouldn’t say that in front of your plaything.”

What?

I spun on a dime, my tunnel vision narrowing on Nelly’s small form as she stood off to the side of Coach, her hazel eyes wide and her hair up, a jersey I was positive was mine hanging loosely around her body. But Matty wasn’t with her.

Coach grumbled something too quiet to be heard over the noise of the crowd and stepped away. The adrenaline pumping through me from the win of the game hadn’t stopped, and coupled with the anger and irritation from Bryan in all his forms and the fact that I’d spent over half the game on the bench, it only grew, only reached newheights that I hadn’t felt in months, years maybe — and an all-encompassing frustration that I didn’t know how to deal with became overpowering.

Why thehellhad any of that happened? Why, when I’d worked so goddamn hard to be here, did it matter that I came from money and could afford to live without this? Why was I being punished consistently for Bryan’s awful behavior, and why,whywas I the one who had to clean up that mess at the end of the game?

Nelly took a single step toward me, her eyes flicking between mine and the direction of the locker rooms, and I didn’t take the time I should have to process anything. I didn’t take the time I should have to parse over the words that came out of my mouth before I said them.

“Where the fuck is Matty?”

I didn’t even control my tone. They came out angry, bitter,vile, as if I didn’t trust her to watch my kid, as if I had zero faith in her whatsoever. I could hear it in myself, and with too much going on, I couldn’t control it.

Her brows shot up as her mouth opened, her eyelids blinking too quickly, her head shaking just slightly from the surprise. “He’s with Luke?—”

“WithLuke?”

Forcing myself to take in the larger view behind her, I looked over the top of her head, spotting Luke on the ice speaking to a player from the opposing team. Below him, Matty skated circles around his legs, his legs a little wobbly from the stiffness of the new boots.

“For fucks sake, Nelly, he’s going to get run over,” I snapped. I shoved my stick up against the board with enough force to make them both shake, abandoning it, and popped my blade covers off with one hand. “No one’s expecting a goddamn kid on the ice after agame. Are you insane? Just because you were fucking late and missed the free skate doesn’t mean he can just go on the ice whenever.”

The space between her brows scrunched as she reeled back in shock. “Well, that’s incredibly rude?—”

“Why are you even back here? You’re supposed to wait in the family room like everyone else. We went over this.” Scolding her felt like scolding Matty, but ten times worse andwrong. And from the look on her face, from the way she watched me almost in horror, it was plain enough to see that she wasn’t happy with me, either.Great. Another name on the list of people who are angry with me.

She opened her mouth to respond, but then it closed, and her head was shaking with a look I could only describe asdisappointmentflickering across it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice barely loud enough for me to hear it. “Get him off the ice, and I’ll take him home, Sebastian.”

Chapter 19

Nelly

This wasn’t okay.

I knew that much. I’dlearnedthat much over the last few years. The way he’d spoken to me, whether it was on a professional level or a personal level, wasn’t something that I could just easily let go. Not when I’d dealt with it time and time again from Morris, not when I’d left clients for less.

Are you insane?

It played on a repeat in my mind as I stood there in the darkness of Sebastian’s kitchen. He’d said that to me, out loud, in public, in front of his coach and half of his passing teammates. The only saving grace was that he hadn’t said it in front of Matty, but I had a horrible sinking feeling that if it was anything else I’d done and Matty had been by my side, it would have come out of his mouth anyway.

It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.

I wasn’t foolish enough to think that we were more than just friends—if I’d even gothatfar—just because we’d slept together twice, now. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that there was any chance he was interested in me for anythingmore than pleasure and childcare, and I wasn’t foolish enough to think that if I had any sort of feelings for him, they’d be reciprocated.

But maybe I was foolish enough to think we’d connected on a human level enough that things like that wouldn’t happen. Maybe the overabundance of care that he’d given me willingly the night I’d ended up teary-eyed in his bedroom had been out of obligation and lust, and not because a part of him cared at least a little about my well-being.

I wanted you there. Both of you.

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