Page 16 of Breakaway to You

“Shocker.”

Her dry response had me chuckling. “Why do you say that?”

She shrugged. “You’re a hockey player.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised by her answer. She had dated Tuvalo, after all.

Instead of disagreeing with her and arguing that not all hockey players were like her ex, I decided to roll with it. “Guilty as charged.” Easier to go with that being the reason I wasn’t interested in relationships than how I’d been dumped.

I took a large drink of my club soda and winced as I swallowed. “How do you drink this stuff?”

She laughed, her eyes sparkling with amusement at my disgust for her drink of choice. “Here, let me help you.” She flagged down the bartender and asked for some lime wedges.

He placed a plate of limes between us.

She pushed the plate toward me. “Squeeze some of these into your drink, and you’ll like it better.”

I gave her a doubtful look but did as she said.

I took a tentative sip. “Better, but not good. It still tastes like seltzer. Why don’t you just order a sprite?”

She remained quiet, keeping her eyes on her drink as she slowly spun the glass. I didn’t think she was going to answer me, but she finally said, “It reminds me of my dad.”

Her gutted expression made me want to reach out to her. I found myself wanting to comfort her, wanting to rekindle the sparkle that had been in her eyes only moments ago.

I nodded solemnly. “That’s a good reason to drink club soda.”

“Yeah, it is.” A small smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “I’ve actually grown to like it.” Her eyes got a faraway look in them. “He drank it almost every night. My sister and I would cuddle up next to him on the couch at night to watch whatever sporting event was on, and he’d have a can in one of his hands. He made a promise to himself and to us that he’d give up alcohol. Once my mom left, he started drinking heavily, and one night he realized he was the only parent me and Quinn had, and he couldn’t risk us losing him too. So he threw it all out and filled up the fridge with club soda.” She blinked a few times, bringing herself out of the memory. “Sorry. You probably don’t care to hear about that.”

“You never need to apologize for telling me about yourself and your family,” I assured her. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

Her eyes roamed my face as if she were trying to decipher any deeper meaning behind my words. I wasn’t sure what I wanted her to find, so I looked away, focusing on my club soda…which I had no intention of finishing.

“Which brings us back to why you are sitting here and not out with the team,” she said, taking us back to our original topic.

I had hoped to move us past that particular topic but maybe I should have known Piper wasn’t the kind of woman who would be easily deterred. She struck me as the kind of woman who, once she set her mind to something, wouldn’t back down willingly. And I had a feeling getting to know more about who I was behind the hockey player was part of it. I just had to figure out how to give her enough information to appease her but not more information than I wanted anyone to know—a fine line I was nervous to walk.

Although it seemed like all I did these days was walk a fine line with her. Piper was definitely someone I needed to be careful with. Between her being my physical therapist and my aversion to close relationships, nothing good could come from us getting to know each other better.

Which is why it didn’t make sense that I wanted to tell her exactly why I was alone in the hotel lobby. It wasn’t smart. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t the plan.

But that didn’t stop my mouth from opening and telling her more than I’d told anyone before.

Chapter7

Piper

The music in the hotel lobby seemed loud to me now as I waited for Zeke to respond to my earlier question as to why he was sitting by himself instead of out having fun with his team. As my eyes roamed over his face, I could see he was having some kind of internal battle, so I waited for him to speak. I didn’t want to say something that might make him keep his thoughts to himself. There was a craving inside me that wanted to know the inner workings of his mind. I’d watched him from afar for years, as stalkerish as that might have sounded, and in all the games I’d watched and all the interviews I’d seen, he’d always seemed so happy, so full of life, so carefree. The Zeke Lawson I thought I knew wouldn’t have been sitting alone looking somber, especially not after a win.

I continued to let my eyes peruse him. His dark curls were going in all different directions, even more than usual, as if he’d run his hands through it several times. His broad shoulders looked tense as he kept staring into his glass where it sat on the bar, his hands wrapped around it. His dark blue henley made his blue eyes seem even brighter, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the color combination of his dark hair and light eyes.

But underneath all that muscle and good looks was a man I didn’t know at all. One I was finding I wanted to know more about—and it actually didn’t have anything to do with his looks. There was something about Zeke that made my body hum when we were in the same room, that made me want to smile when I had nothing to smile about, that made me want to open up to him about things I didn’t normally talk about. Like my dad, for example. I wasn’t sure why I had told him that whole story about the club soda. I could have given him some flippant answer about how I just loved club soda, but I’d found myself wanting to tell him, wanting him to know the real reason. Which was odd since I didn’t like to talk about my dad, unless I was with Quinn. It was too painful. So why had I felt the desire to talk about him with Zeke?

Maybe it had to do with how I sensed a hidden pain inside Zeke that I hadn’t ever noticed before. But seeing him tonight alone, a heaviness wrapped around him, had my feet walking over here before I could overthink it. There was another side to him he didn’t show to the cameras, and I was beginning to realize there was more to him than his happy-go-lucky guy persona. And maybe just knowing that had me wanting to share something with him that I kept from people too. To let him know he wasn’t alone in whatever he was going through.

I wanted to reach out my hand and rest it on his arm, to provide him with some sort of comfort as he struggled with whatever he wanted to say, but I only gripped my drink tighter to keep my hands from wandering out on their own. It was one thing to talk about personal things with him, but it was a different thing entirely to break the physical contact barrier. The only time I should be touching him was to do my job as his physical therapist, not to comfort him.

In the dim light I could see him swallow before finally turning those blue eyes on me, a look of vulnerability there that I hadn’t seen in him before. “I only have a one-year contract with the Wolves. What’s the point of getting to know the team when my days here are numbered? Heck, my days in the NHL are numbered. You and I both know I’m on my way out. Eventually I’m going to have to leave hockey behind—to leave behind everything I’ve ever known.” He shrugged one shoulder and turned his gaze straight ahead, looking at the different bottles of liquor lined up on the wall behind the bar. “There’s nothing to celebrate.”

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