Page 51 of Dirty As Puck
“Coach Reynolds,” she clarifies, her tone careful. “He wasn’t just a coach to you, was he?”
My jaw tightens. There it is, a question I should have watched out for, even if I didn’t expect it tonight. The air between us becomes colder, sharper.
“Where’d you hear that?” I ask.
“I told you. I’ve been looking at more than just the headlines,” she says. “He raised you, didn’t he?”
I take a step back, my hand curling around the strap of my gym bag. “This is the part where you write your tragic little side story? The Hockey star with the dead coach?”
Her face doesn’t flinch, but her voice softens. “No. This is the part where I try to understand you as a person, not just some hockey bad boy headline.”
Something inside me resists the approach. My instinct is to shut down, say nothing, walk away and let my walls swallow the moment. But her gaze stays steady, not sharp, not invasive. Just…waiting.
“You’re right. He was more than a coach,” I say at last, the words rough, reluctant. “He was the first person who ever gave a damn. Taught me how to drown out the noise and focus on the game instead.”
Rochelle doesn’t move, but I see her fingers twitch, like she wants to reach out, but is holding herself back. I really wish she wouldn’t right now.
“And how did you handle it when he died?”
I exhale through my nose, a bitter laugh slipping out before I can stop it. “When he died, everything went dark. Too dark. I didn’t know what to do with all the darkness.”
There’s a pressure building behind my ribs, the kind I hate, tight, crawling and strangely familiar. My pulse trembles once and hard.
“That’s when the panic attacks started?” she asks, so quietly it almost doesn’t echo.
My hand flexes against the tailgate. “Yeah,” I admit, staring at the floor now because her eyes are too intense for me. “After the funeral. The first attack hit me two days later. I thought I was having a heart attack at twenty-three.”
Rochelle’s expression shifts, less professional and more something else.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and I almost believe it’s not for the story.
The garage is dim, the air smelling faintly of oil and cold metal, and for once I’m not thinking about cameras or making the headlines.
I’m thinking about how vulnerable I feel around her, standing here cracked open, and how she’s making damn easy it to forget why that’s dangerous.
We stay quiet after that. Neither of us says much. Her hands shoved into her coat pockets. I’m about to unlock my truck when she stops me.
“Kai?”
I glance over my shoulder. Her voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it.
“You don’t have to be alone tonight.”
It’s not a plea and it does sound like a trap. Rochelle is offering me her presence.
I should say no. I should climb into my truck, drive off, drown this tension in protein shakes and tape reviews like every other night.
But the memory of her hand brushing my sleeve, the way her eyes softened when I mentioned the funeral, lingers like a hook.
She’s looking at me with a mix of desire and concern, making it so damn hard to resist her offer.
So instead, I clench my jaw and nod once. “Lead the way.”
In no time, we’re standing outside a hotel room.
Rochelle unlocks the door and steps aside, letting me in first. The room smells like cheap vanilla lotion and warm coffee. City lights spill through the window, throwing thin gold lines across the bed.
She shrugs off her coat. “You want a drink?”
