Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

LEMON

W e lose in the playoffs. My team was definitely bummed about it, but Hansley was right. It had been twelve years since we’d made it that far. Instead of being discouraged, my team is already determined that next year, we’ll go even further. We haven’t reached our peak. We’ve just had a taste and now we’re ready to fight for the trophy.

Even with a quarter of my team leaving next year due to graduation and taking into account that I will likely see some go to the NFL, their motivation is loud and encouraging. They’re not ready to take the off season sitting down. They’re ready to keep pushing.

Me? I’m sitting in the office that the University of Michigan has for their visiting hockey team after the game. I have no idea what’s going on at least half the time as I watch the game. My mind usually flits between noticing how cold I am and wondering how they’re keeping their eyes on the puck when it moves so quickly.

We lose tonight but only by one. This time I can’t say I think the refs had anything to do with it. Michigan is just fucking good. Even only knowing what’s going on like 30% of the time, I could see that.

When Hansley asked if I wanted to tag along to their away game, I nearly dropped to the ground. Honestly, I have no business being here. None at all. And this is probably the opposite of staying out of the public eye.

The day after the photos of Hansley and his mysterious woman were splattered all over the internet, it’s been tricky getting from any starting point off campus together. Houses can be traced back to who lives there, so picking me up at home has been a challenge when they follow him from Alka’s.

But Hansley’s been doing my suggestion and always wears the same hoodie and black jeans he’d been wearing in the picture. And I’m always wearing my leggings with my gold jacket. Whenever we ride together, this is what we’re in. Sure enough, pictures stopped popping up after a few days because they were all the same.

The only place the paparazzi continues to try to get pictures is at school, but between our campus security and the local police on campus for some extra numbers, we’ve been safe there so far. I’m thankful for the support we’ve had from the administration regarding campus security and privacy. Since we’re technically a private college, RDU has the right to restrict access to campus. Something that the media has been absolutely up in arms about.

When Hansley asked me to join him, I knew it was because we haven’t had an opportunity to do much lately because of the cameras. They’re not abundant, but he really is trying to keep my face from being plastered everywhere in association with his divorce. The whole thing would become media ugly if that happened. At least right now.

Here, we’re off the grid, so to speak. Sure, there are cameras here, but no one can truly claim the reason I’m with them is for any other reason than support. Even as I sit here in the office, wrapped up in Hansley’s hoodie as I wait for him. From here, we’ll get on a bus that will deposit us at the hotel and then we’re alone for the night.

The office isn’t bad. It’s a little plain, but there’s comfortable furniture that’s clearly not just cheap hand-me-downs. There’s art on the wall—hockey but not specific to the Michigan team. There are, however, a couple Michigan hoodies. Just in case someone gets cold and forgot their own. It makes me smile. Can you imagine someone from the visiting team coming out wearing a Michigan hoodie? I’d crack up.

The door opens and I look up. Hansley is always hot, but when he wears a suit, it melts my panties! I’ve been behind many desks waiting for him since I’ve met Hansley. I kind of want him to bend me over this one, just because.

He offers me his hand and I bound to my feet to cross the room, placing mine in his. Hansley bends, his lips brushing mine. “You cold?”

“Warming up,” I tell him. “I’ve played my fair share of games in snow, so I’m all right.”

Hansley nods. He presses another quick kiss to my forehead and pulls me out of the room. The team is meandering down the hall and I receive smiles when we come out.

“Hey, Coach,” Damari says, offering me his fist.

I give him a bump and he grins.

“Cool having you here to watch.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not nearly as secretive with my games as Lemon is,” Hansley says, glancing back at me with a teasing smile.

“It was a practice you were spying on,” I mutter, rolling my eyes.

“I’m not sure standing in the open to watch can truly be considered spying.”

I huff, and there are chuckles all around.

It’s late when we step outside, and I shiver. The night air is cold way up here in the north. Hansley releases my hand at the bus door and I climb on while he waits for everyone to load their gear under the bus and file on. As his team passes me, they hold their hands out. Waiting for me to bump their fists like I had Damari’s. Even his assistant coach does with a wide smile.

I’m grinning by the time Hansley climbs on last and takes a seat next to me. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me close. My nose is cold, but I feel all kinds of warm right now. I’ve always had this kind of community with my team and, to a lesser extent, with my coaches. While the other athletes, and students, seem to like me and always say hi on their way by, it’s never been to quite the same degree as my team.

This is different. This feels… accepting. Like I belong here.

The ride to the hotel isn’t long. Hansley tells me to head up and he’ll meet me once his team is settled. So I climb into the elevator with a few of his players and head up. They’re chatty. Happy. They try to include me in their conversation until it’s clear that I don’t understand what they’re saying. To which they laugh and try to explain it.

By the time I’m in the hall on my floor, I’m smiling broadly. I didn’t know people could be quite so nice. Genuinely. I don’t get the impression at all that this is because of Hansley telling them to be nice. In fact, when I climbed onto the bus at school to head to the airport, they were all surprised to see me. Hansley hadn’t told anyone I was joining them. So I’m inclined to believe that they weren’t warned to be nice. They just are.

Not that I think hockey players aren’t nice. It’s people in general that make me wary.

I let myself into the room we’re sharing and strip off the layers. It doesn’t take me long to freshen up and get ready for bed. I’m sitting on the foot of the bed in my underwear when Hansley finally joins me twenty minutes later. Did I say he’s sexy in his suit, because fuck.

His eyes remain locked on mine as he peels off his suit down to his underwear too. He’s all sorts of muscles that make my skin hot. When he disappears into the bathroom, I climb further up the bed and turn on the light next to it. When he comes back into the bedroom area, Hansley turns off the bigger, brighter one and joins me.

We wrap around each other, our mouths immediately pressing together. For a minute, that’s all we do. Just taste each other.

“Thanks for coming,” he says against my lips.

“I’m not entirely sure what’s going on most of the time, but I swear, more times than not, I can tell because of the crowd’s energy. In this case, it was the opposite of the crowd’s reactions.”

He chuckles. “Michigan is a good team. A fucking hard team to beat. They’re consistently in the top five in the conference. I’m really proud that we only lost by one point.”

“They’re really good kids,” I agree.

Hansley nods. “They are. And they’re doing so damn good this year. I really thought that first loss this season was going to fuck us up because they were mentally beaten. But I’m happy to see that they pulled out of that.”

“Losing is just part of the game,” I say.

“Yes, but we won the first seven games. Almost easily, though that’s not fair because the other teams played hard. They were flying high and I think it felt like someone clipped their wings when they lost. Thankfully, they came back from that.”

“They played well tonight.”

He smiles. “They did.”

“You’re a great coach.”

Hansley chuckles. “I’m totally fucking winging it.” I laugh. “Honestly, I’m just scraping together everything I found effective from past coaches, everything I hated from past coaches, and leaning heavily on Denis. It seems to be working.”

“There isn’t really a program in school for coaching, exactly,” I say. “There’s some in coaching administration, but I don’t give a fuck about that. I was a sports management and exercise science major. And quite frankly, they’re for every sport. Like, one degree covers every sport. It’s kind of B.S. because swimming is very different from hockey, though you both have water as a primary component of the sport, even if in different forms. You probably got more valuable, specifically applicable information from being a player with a bunch of coaches than I did in my programs.”

“I didn’t think of it that way.”

“Now I think I should have taken courses in fundraising,” I admit, thinking of all the shit that Zarek told me. Hansley laughs. “OH! I didn’t tell you! I received an anonymous donation. A really big one.”

He leans back to look at me with a big smile. “Yeah? I really want to ask from whom, but you just said it’s anonymous.”

I shrug. “Really, I don’t know. I keep trying to think of who I might know with an extra 20k lying around and one day thought, ‘oh, Coach Frost is short exactly that much this year so I might as well let him spend it.’”

“They took 20,000 from your budget?” he asks, incredulous.

I’m feeling a little sheepish when I say, “Yes, but I have a very big budget so while I felt it, I’m not begging for equipment or anything.”

“And that’s why you hated me,” he muses as if all the pieces just fell into place.

Sighing, I agree. “Yeah. I chose to blame you instead of just dealing with it. The thing is, I know what I’m good at. Asking strangers for money when I’m a very divisive individual isn’t a successful plan.”

“You don’t ask for it. You let your students be the faces. The money goes to benefit them.”

“Yes. I’ve recently had a lesson in asking for money. I have some ideas now but like, that shit would have been useful to know eons ago.”

“I bet someone would have told you if you’d asked.”

I give him a demure look, to which he grins.

“For the record, I’m sorry. For the way I treated you. Though I can’t say I’m sorry for kissing you and… all the other things. But I am sorry for always yelling at you like you were out to get me.”

He hums, a pleased smile on his lips. “Thank you,” he says. I expect more because I know I’d have a lot to say, but Hansley doesn’t expand. “I’m not sorry for you kissing me, either.”

“Really? Even though I wrecked your marriage?”

Hansley sighs. “You didn’t, though. Remember? Jess is totally willing to make this work. It’s me who’s not.”

I nod, trying to push the guilt away. No matter what he says, I definitely fucked up their marriage.

“Retiring changed me. Everything that came after that changed me. I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t think that it’s entirely dependent on you, Lemon. I really do think that absolutely any path I chose after hockey was going to alter me in some way that made me grow independently from my wife and that was always going to end up in divorce. Even if I’d taken this job and you weren’t here, being at RDU was going to make me realize that maybe I’m not meant to be with a woman. Maybe I’m meant for a man.”

“Really?” I ask, skeptically.

He laughs. “Yes, really. I love Jess. I’m always going to love Jess. But…” Hansley trails off as he tries to think of the words he wants to say. “There’s something different about the feeling of this. The… Wow, I’ve never tried to say this out loud. Every way I think of to say this sounds not how I mean it, but I can’t get the words right. Anyway, I’ve considered that maybe it’s just a you thing. Me and you. And maybe it is. Maybe it’s just this thing between us specifically. But I think without you, I might not feel this which would suck, but I think whatever path I went on would have been away from my wife and toward a man.”

“Weird,” I tease. “You’re a phantom gay.”

Hansley grins. “I’m going to pretend that’s a compliment.”

I laugh. “Didn’t know you wanted a man until you were surrounded by an entire rainbow of differences.”

He hums. “I suppose. I might be entirely wrong, though. The one thing I’m sure about is that something was always going to put me on a path toward divorce. It’s not your fault. This was always going to be the result.”

“If it hadn’t been me kissing you, it’d be some other guy.”

“Maybe,” he says as his hand tangles in my hair and he brings my mouth to his. “But I also think that we’d have found each other, eventually.”

“We have nothing in common except our place of employment.”

“On paper, sure. But that doesn’t matter.” Hansley rolls us so he’s on top of me. His big body bears down, crushing me into the mattress. It’s one of the best feelings in the world and always leaves me breathless. “But I’m also convinced of one more very important thing.”

“What?” I ask, trying to keep myself from trying to get his underwear off.

“That you’ve been waiting for me to tear down your walls, Lemon Frost. You needed someone to show you that you’re lovable, even through your grump and anger and thorns. That someone was always going to be me.”

I swallow. “How do you know?”

“You can feel it just as much as I can, Frosty.” I roll my eyes at the nickname. He’s smirking, so I know he’s trying to lighten the mood so I don’t have to get emotional right now. But his smirk softens and he kisses me gently. Lingering. “I know because I’ve been waiting for you just as long as you’ve been waiting for me.”