Page 31 of The Spice Play

He pushed off the wall and shoved his phone into his pocket, his hair moving just enough to flash those blue streaks at me. “Well, Coach wanted me to check how you were doing, and then I heard?—”

“Figured.”

“Is she who you were drinking over?” he asked, waggling his shoulders as if he were a cat about to pounce. “Or do you have multiple women with multiple problems?”

My hands balled into fists, half from the pain and half because I just wanted to fucking deck him. But I loved Luke, and even though he could be annoying as hell, I knew he wouldn’t go off talking about it. “Can we please not talk about it out here?”

“Yeah, yeah, Iguess,” he chimed. “Just know you’re a loudmouth, and it was easy as hell to hear all that, so if you want to keep yournannya secret, maybe don’t talk about it at the rink at all. These walls are thin as fuck.”

I pursed my lips as I turned, beginning my slow, hobbling journey down the hall. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Chapter 15

Nelly

Walking in with Matty through the double doors that a security guard had blocked me from weeks ago felt somehow different, like I wasn’t stepping into a space that was completely unwelcoming, like I was doing something nice that wouldn’t result in an angry Sebastian accusing me of stalking him.

Seb had texted me that practice was running late today and that if I wanted to stop by with Matty after picking him up from school, I was more than welcome to bring him to watch. I figured it would be an easy way to entertain him, and considering it was public and he’d be surrounded by his teammates, I didn’t feel an overwhelming sense to run. There wasn’t anything he could do here.

“Daddy!” Matty shouted as I directed him into the lower stands, one little hand shooting up to wave excitedly at the men standing around on the ice. None of them were wearing their jerseys, so it wasn’t exactly easy to pick him out in their helmets, but the moment Matty’s voice carried across the stadium, a blue helmet turned toward us. Thosepiercing light blue eyes met us from across the ice, and Seb waved enthusiastically back at his son.

Coach Casey blew the whistle, and everyone glided into their formations, taking up their specific places across the ice.

Matty and I sat down two rows back from one of the exits on the ice, close enough that he could easily see and high enough that the walls of the rink didn’t impede his eyeline. He clutched a little stuffed phoenix in his hands, the same one he’d brought to the last game we’d attended, and I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how many times he’d slipped it into his backpack in the hopes he’d get to go to practice after school.

We sat and watched as the guys ran drills. Over and over, Seb took the puck, maneuvered it across the ice to the opposite side, and passed it off to someone else before they took a shot. He moved like lightning, but from the little bits and pieces I’d gathered from him, he wasn’t movingrightor fast enough. But I didn’t understand the game beyond the basicget the puck in the net.

Matty babbled endlessly, talking me through some of the plays, explaining lingo that made absolutely no sense to me. I wasn’t sure if it truly made sense to him, either, or if he was just parroting words his dad had said, and the more he spoke about it, the more I found my mind drifting, wandering back to that night in Sebastian’s kitchen, and getting stuck when his hand cupped my jaw.

I’d panicked.

I’d run back to the guest house, locked myself in my room, and had a full-blown anxiety attack.

I didn’t know what I wanted. Part of me, the stupid, longing, aching part of me that wanted to feel attractive andsought after, the part that wanted to touch and be touched in the ways I wanted, had screamed at me to stay or run back and fling myself at him. But the sensible part of me, the one that had gotten me through the breakdown of my relationship and carried me through life, told me that was the worst idea I could have ever imagined and I’d only be complicating everything — as well as embarrassing myself the moment it came time for me to do anything other thanreceive.

You’re doing it wrong.

Why do you have to be so fucking bad in bed?

Jesus, Nelly, it’s not difficult.

Morris’s voice had echoed through my mind over and over that night, and the sensible part of me had won out with his influence. Even if Sebastian wanted that, he had no idea what he’d be getting: the worst lay of his life.

So, I’d avoided him. For over a week now, I’d kept things short in the hopes that we could both try to forget about it and shove down whatever was tempting us.

But seeing him there, on the ice, covered head to toe in black, figure-hugging workout gear and padding, didnothelp with quelling temptation. Not when he was playing beautifully, not when he held his stick in the air with two hands and did a little excited shake for Matty’s entertainment, not when he had one leg up on the wall and wassquattinglike that.

That man’s ass was truly on another level.

The thoughts made it hard to focus and absorb what was happening in practice, but the overwhelming scale of it all was on another level. It was one thing to be here during a game, knowing I worked for one of the professional athletes sliding across the ice, but it was another to be able to come and go as I liked during closed practices, to be able to seethem likethis, laid back and without their game faces on, with almost no one else in the arena.

“Daddy’s forward cross-overs are getting better,” Matty said, pointing directly at Sebastian as he pushed his way across the ice with nimble feet.

“Ahh, is that what maneuver is?” I asked.

He grinned up at me and gave me a little nod. “Mmhmm. You’ve gotta put one foot over the other, andpush, I think.”

“Sounds hard. I don’t think I could do that,” I chuckled. “Your daddy is probably much better at that than I’d ever be.”

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