Page 6 of What If I Hate You
My eyes narrow. “Don’t flatter yourself. I was just demonstrating the quick reflexes of someone who actually won games in college.”
That gets him. His mouth flexes, half-smirk, half-threat, and I feel the weirdest flush of satisfaction at having poked a bruise. My dad always said I lived for the chirp—a player’s way of shit-stirring—which, okay, guilty.
We stand here, two idiots in a deserted parking lot, neither wanting to be the first to blink. I refuse to give him the satisfaction but fuck if I’m not making this into an Olympicsport. The wind picks up and whips my hair across my face, but I barely flinch. I hold his gaze, expecting him to fire off some dumbass comeback about my wardrobe or the fact that I nearly dislocated his sternum. Instead, he does something much, much worse.
He softens. It’s almost imperceptible, a twitch at the corner of his eye, a slackening of the jaw. Like something’s broken open behind the armor, and for a hot, punch-you-in-the-gut second, I wonder if I overplayed the bit. Maybe the standards are different for the ‘grumpy goalie’ when the only audience is the person who just called him out on national television.
He breathes in sharp, like he’s got a speech loaded and ready, to tell me to go to hell, to ask for an apology, who knows. But he just stands there, silent as an empty net.
“I’m not sorry,” I say, my chin raised but my voice shivering like a stick under pressure. “You want a softer question, go talk to a blogger with pink hair and a ring light. I don’t play it safe.”
He grunts, almost a laugh, or the closest he’ll get to a present-tense emotion, and then he takes another step forward, closing the gap between us to about three inches.
“You don’t play it safe,” he echoes, and there’s something odd in the way he says it. “That’s your thing, huh?” He tilts his head, trying to get a read on me, but for a second it feels like he's looking right past the makeup, the mannerisms, the hard-won lanyard with my name spelled correctly. Like Barrett Cunningham sees the guts under the skin.
“That’s my thing,” I confirm, daring him to flinch. “And you know what else? I don’t scare easily, even when you’re in full psycho alpha mode.”
He regards me for a long, second. His face is a study in stillness, but the hands at his sides flex, curl, flex again. He does this when he’s about to make a crazy save. Like he’s measuringwhether the world is worth catching. He leans even closer, so close I feel the heat of his breath on my cheek.
“You sure about that, Rivers? Because you looked pretty scared back there.” His voice is lower now, coated with something thick and impossible to pin down.
“Oh please,” I say, but it comes out a little more breath than bite. “If I wanted to take you down, I’d bring a heavier briefcase…or I’d just murder you in the press room.”
He nods, like he respects the escalation. “I’d expect no less from you.” Then, in a move so fast it almost knocks the air out of me, he leans in, hand braced against my car behind my head, cutting off every escape. “You think you know my weakness, but you got it wrong,” he says. “It’s not my five-hole, Rivers. Not even close.”
I can taste his words, the space between us so small it’s basically a rounding error. “Oh yeah?" I fire back, breathless from proximity, or pride, or some twisted chemical cocktail that nobody warns you about in gender studies. "Then what is it?"
He doesn't blink. His eyes don't flicker to my mouth, or my body, or anywhere a lesser man's would. They just bore right into mine, as if he's checking for hairline fractures. "Giving a damn," he growls, but it's not the bark of a pissed-off brute. It's soft like a confession. "And that's a lot harder to fix."
We’re both locked there, neither giving ground, neither willing to cut the tension. He waits, and it dawns on me that maybe I’m the only one with a play left in this game. The stadium wind hisses around us, smelling like ozone and latex and bruised ego. I should leave. I should open my car, slide in, and drive away before this gets spelled out in slow-motion regret.
But I don’t. I hold his stare and close whatever gap his intimidation left in the air. Either he wants to kill me, or—no, don’t even go there. I want to bottle the look on his face for therest of my career. Is it anger, respect, or the dark, ugly cousin of both?
“Guess what, Cunningham,” I say, my voice so soft it almost startles me. “I give a damn too. About the game. About the people who think I shouldn’t even be allowed to ask these questions.” I put a finger to his chest, where the suit jacket pulls tight over a body you could use as a battering ram. “And sometimes about assholes who are so scared to lose they forget how to win.”
His mouth twitches and his eyes narrow just slightly enough for me to notice. The air between us shudders, as if the moment wants to tip into violence or some other, equally dangerous place. I can’t move. He’s closer than I thought, or maybe the world’s just spun out from under me and my center of gravity is recalibrating for the first time since I was twelve and my dad told me I had a better slapshot than any boy in my league.
And for a split, insane, needlepoint of a second, I want him to say it, to name whatever this is so I don’t have to carry it around like a grenade with the pin already loose. But he just stands there, the glint in his eyes shifting from iron-cold to something else. Something molten and terrifying.
“We done here?” he asks, but he’s searching. For a flicker, a lie, a laugh. I don’t know.
We’re so not done here.
I nod anyway. “We’re done.” The words drop between us with the finality of a puck slicing across fresh ice right into the net.
He takes a step back. The smallest retreat, like he hates that he’s giving me an inch. “Good,” he says, and I’m sure it’s meant to sound final, but it doesn’t. His fingers drum against the roof of my car, like he’s itching for overtime. Then he turns the long line of his back rigid with everything unsaid and stalks off into the blue-black dark of the lot.
I stand there, breathing wet asphalt and regret, the inside of my head echoing with every word I didn’t get to say and every one I already regret saying. When I finally slide behind the wheel, my hands are shaking. I watch him recede in the rearview until the security lights swallow him whole.
The silence in my car is suffocating, so I flip on the radio, blasting whatever hair metal anthem the local station is still playing to death. I sit there, waiting for the adrenaline to ebb, trying to convince myself that what just happened was nothing more than another bad post-game interview gone sideways. I want that to be true, but the reality is, my body’s still humming with the memory of his voice and the fire behind his eyes, the scent of his cologne, and the proximity of his body to mine. I rest my forehead on the steering wheel and try like hell to forget the feeling of his hand braced on the car beside me. Like I said: I don’t scare easily. But tonight, something inside me is telling me I may have found my weakness too.
CHAPTER THREE
BARRETT
The smell of chicken and overcooked vegetables hits me the second I step into the kitchen at St. Luke’s. Not exactly the aroma I’m used to, but then again, this isn’t about me. Not today.
I adjust the apron that cuts into my ribs every time I move and step behind the serving line, grabbing the ladle like it’s my goalie stick. It feels clunky in my hand, but at least it has a purpose. Just like me on good days.
