Page 80 of The Spice Play

“Nell?” I called out, dropping my shit by the door as hastily as I could, but the moment I looked up, I saw her there — standing in the kitchen, her arms crossed, her gaze lingering on me from across the space. Cartoons played from the living room, and I moved past the doorway, crossing the space without so much as saying hello to Matty.

I needed to check on her.

She didn’t move as I entered the kitchen. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and although she wore a shirt and pajama bottoms instead of the jeans she’d worn earlier, it was the only difference in her appearance from when I’d found her in the back area of the rink.

I crossed the space in the span of a second, taking her face in my hands. Fuck it if Matty walked in. I’d figure out a way to explain it. “Are you okay?” I breathed. “Luke told me?—”

“I’m fine,” she said. Her voice was flat, almost deadpan. But the redness around her eyes and nose told a different story.

“You’re not,” I retorted. “I should have been there. I’m sorry. I tried to run after you but by the time I was able to get my skates off, you were gone?—”

“You should have,” she agreed. Her jaw jutted out in defiance, but it wobbled, andGod, I’d been a part of this, I’d made her feel like shit again by not being there. I couldn’t let this get out of control like last time. “But you were far too busy withZoe.”

The muscles in my brow worked.How is Zoe related tothis?“I… I know, I’m sorry, she just actually knows quite a bit about how to manage scar tissue in a knee joint. Her dad has a similar issue so I was trying to get as much information as possible. I shouldn’t have let it distract me as much as it did.”

She scoffed and turned her head from me, breaking out from my gentle hold on her as she slipped a couple of feet away. “Convenient. You expect me to believe that?”

What didthatmean?

“Nell,” I said, taking a step toward her. But she blocked me with the fridge door as she opened it up. “I don’t understand. Help me out here, please, so we don’t end up in a stand-off again.”

“I mean that it’s clear something is going on between you two. And you trying to pass it off as gettinginformationabout your knee from some flame is fucking ridiculous when Isawyou leaving that room with her,” she said, her voice wobbling as she pulled out Tupperware full of leftovers. “Did you think I didn’t notice that? I’m not blind, Sebastian.”

I blinked at her, the realization slowly sinking in.Oh God.“She’s not a flame,” I said, my stomach beginning to twist as I imagined her here, stewing in worry, panicking that I’d… “I’m so sorry, I thought you’d met her. She’s one of our massage therapists, Nell, I swear.”

She shut the fridge door a little too aggressively and turned from me, putting them on the counter without so much as a single response.

“Baby, please,please, don’t shut down on me,” I pushed, coming up alongside her. I slid between the counter and her body, taking her face in my hands again and directing her vision to me. “You can ask anyone at the rink. I…”

I thought back to that moment, the one where I’d seenher at the end of the hall after my massage.Shit…it did look damning. I’d come out in my unbuttoned jeans in a rush to get to practice after, my shirt over one shoulder and my shoes barely on. And it wasn’t as though our therapists had uniforms.

“I understand how it looked,” I explained, the panic rising in me more and more as Nelly stayed exactly the same. It didn’t feel like I was making progress. “I get it. I can see it from your side. She’d been working on my knee before practice and I was running late. That’s all that was, I swear.”

Her eyes became glassy, a little bead of moisture building in the inner corner.

“Don’t you think I would have panicked when I spotted you like that if that’s what I was doing?” I asked, brushing the sides of her cheeks with my thumb. Behind her, in the doorway, a little mop of brown hair and wide blue eyes appeared around the corner. I bit back the urge to drop my hands, to step away from her, to shield Matty from that — it wouldn’t help the situation with Nelly if I did, and Matty would find out eventually. I could tackle that after. “That’s not who I am. It’s not.”

“I don’t know that,” she croaked. “You went all wide-eyed?—”

“I was just surprised you were back there on your own,” I insisted. I pulled her head toward me, pressing a kiss to her forehead, holding her there for a moment as I tried to breathe through the rising panic. I didn’t want her to leave again. I didn’t want this to dissolve into the chaos we’d had when I’d lost my temper with her. And I knew, Iknew, that this was pushing those same buttons for her, igniting fires where they didn’t need to be. “I’m not him,” I added, my lips moving against her forehead.

I dropped one hand from her face and wrapped it around her waist, pulling her body into my chest gently. A choked little sob broke from her, and all I could do was hold onto her, wishing I’d picked up on how that looked back at the arena. I watched over her head as Matty stood there, his eyes locked on us, his confused expression asking so many silent questions. I closed my eyes to block it out.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You weren’t there,” she whimpered. “I kept looking across and seeing you laughing with her.”

Fuck.I’d messed up. I’d messed upagain. “I swear, I have nothing to hide from you. Nothing, baby.” I pulled her head back, not giving two shits anymore what Matty saw, and pressed a kiss to her lips. “I know that’s hard for you to believe after what happened with him, I do, but I need you to trust me.”

“I don’t know if I?—”

“Daddy?”

Nelly’s watery eyes went wide as I held her head in place, staring up at me with her back going rigid. She went to move, but I kept her place with enough pressure that made it clear I wanted her to stay — but not too much that she felt unable to break free if she needed to.

I didn’t take my eyes off her. “Yeah, bud?” I said, making it explicitly clear to her that I didn’t have it in me to hide this from him right now. This was far too important to me to drop it.

“I don’t think Nelly likes that,” he said, his voice small but closer. An ache blossomed and burned in my chest.Fuck. He’d seen it at the rink.

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