14. Sebastian

Chapter 14

Sebastian

I ’d lost count of how many times I’d hit the boards today, but the final one, spurred on by yet another clash with Bryan Addaway, had resulted in explosive pain from my bad knee after I’d failed to catch myself after the collision. The knee guards hadn’t been enough to mitigate the pain, and Coach had sent me off to the onsite nurse, who had sent me off to the team’s massage therapist.

I bit down on my knuckles as Aubrey worked at the muscle and sinew beneath the ragged scar I’d obtained almost twelve years ago.

“Does that hurt?” she asked, pushing in on a particularly tender spot as she looked across the massage table at me.

It didn’t bother me that I was half naked in front of her, laid out in my boxers and undershirt with half of my equipment still strapped to my body. But that , the poking at that specific spot, bothered me so badly that I nearly kicked her in retaliation. “Yes,” I gasped. “Fuck, ouch , yes, stop.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled. Her thumb dug in beside it, working the muscle there instead, but her face said she wasn’t getting anywhere with it. Her dark brown hair, straight as an arrow and braided behind her, fell over one shoulder as she pushed a little harder. “I need to work that spot. Can you try to talk through it to distract yourself? Or I can find you something to bite down on…”

I gripped the edge of the cushioned table. “Just work on it.”

“Are you sure?” Bright brown eyes batted in my direction, the worry on her face clashing horribly with the calm, serene music she had playing on a little speaker in the corner of the room.

I nodded once, and she started to get to work.

It felt like my fucking leg was being sawn off. “ Fuck ,” I bit out, desperately trying to keep myself from moving as she dragged the scar tissue around with oiled, deep brown fingers. “Okay, okay, shit — I need to talk.”

“Go for it, Seb.”

The first thing that came to mind was the only thing that had been on my mind for days — and weeks before that. I could keep it vague, surely, and just get shit off my chest. “I met someone,” I bit out, gasping as she pushed down even harder across a tendon, and the need for anonymity slipped. “And I can’t stop thinking about it, but they’re working for the team, and it’s, ah, fuck , unprofessional on a million different levels.”

Her hands stilled as she looked at me, her brows knitting uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”

I leveled a glare at her. “You can’t just push down on painful spots to get me to talk and then stop , Aubrey. You’re extending my torture.”

“Right, but…” Her eyes scanned across my body and settled on my knee, at her hand that rested on it.

I didn’t understand her hesitation to work on me, not when my knee was still screaming in pain and the constant onslaught of replays from the conversation I’d had with Nelly three nights ago was still running over and over in my mind. She’d avoided me like the plague since, keeping every forced interaction short and sweet and fake in front of Matty. I’d given her the day off last minute in the hopes that she’d use it to calm down from whatever panic I’d instilled in her, and Dani had been more than happy to handle drop off and pick up for Matty, but I had a sinking feeling that I’d crossed a line I shouldn’t have and fucked over the one thing I needed more than anything — childcare.

“Maybe I should get Zoe to do this instead,” Aubrey mumbled, staring down at my kneecap as her dark skin turned ashen.

Oh, fuck. “No—no,” I insisted, shoving myself upright on shaky hands. Zoe would make this ten times worse — she was our younger masseuse, freshly hired, and dear God, I didn’t want to freak her out with this, too. “It’s not you. Or Zoe. I’m sorry, I should have been more clear.”

She sat back in her wheeled stool with a sigh of relief. “Fuck, you freaked me out there,” she laughed, getting her hands back into position. “Sorry, you said working for the team, and I panicked.”

“No, no, I’m sorry. It’s not any of the women here.”

Her fingers dug in again, one dark brown eyebrow raising at me, and oh my fucking God , I needed to lay back down, needed to shove my knuckles back between my teeth.

“Fuck,” I hissed, the sound muffled from the back of my hand as she pushed down on the scar.

“They’re not a player, right?” she half-laughed.

I shook my head, not bothering to give that question any verbal response when my throat felt like it was closing up.

“Coach? ”

The tip of her finger touched something , and she dragged it, eliciting some of the worst pain I’d ever felt since I took a skate to that knee my first year on the ice. A horrible, gurgled shout of pain ripped from me, barely muffled from my hand, and she stilled. My breathing came sharp, ragged, angry , but I’d be a liar if I tried to say it didn’t feel a minuscule amount better.

“Sorry—”

“It’s not Coach.” I gave her a bitter laugh, my eyes bleary, but focusing on the square tiles of the ceiling.

“Well, I need to pull that tendon a little more, so you can either tell me so you can talk freely, or we can keep playing the guessing game.” She took her hands off me, the sound of the little bottle of oil popping off telling me she was relubricating her fingers.

I swallowed and tried to calm myself down, taking a deep breath in and holding it for five seconds before releasing it. “If I tell you, will you keep it to yourself?”

Her hands met my knee again, but she didn’t push in just yet. “Of course,” she said. “Think of it like going to the doctor or seeing a shrink. I won’t tell anyone what you say in here. It’s confidential unless it’s, like, illegal.”

“Is it actually confidential?” I asked, looking down at my body where she perched by my leg.

“I mean, I’m a licensed physical therapist and a massage therapist, so yes,” she grinned. “I like to gossip, but I’m more than capable of keeping my mouth shut if I need to. So, go on, let it out.”

She started up again, and I could have sworn little dark spots tainted my vision. I closed my eyes to keep them at bay while she tortured me. “Fuck, okay, it’s Matty’s nanny,” I said through clenched teeth. “She’s living with us.”

“Ooh, that makes more sense. I didn’t know she was contracted by the team,” Aubrey said, glancing up at me to make sure I wasn’t about to pass out. Pain spread throughout my upper thigh, rippling, all-encompassing, and I knew I should have taken painkillers before this.

“Yeah,” I gasped. “I… I met her at Smokey’s a few weeks ago before we hired her. Went— fuck —went back to her apartment with her. I took her number, but I didn’t call, and now she’s living in my fucking house.”

“Wait, you didn’t call her?” Her hands paused again, and I wanted to shout at her, wanted to tell her to just get this over with so I could stop feeling the pain, but she started again as she spoke. “I thought you were into her?”

“I am. But I didn’t know if she was just a flame or if she was some random girl who happened to be at Smokey’s, so I didn’t risk it. But she—oh my God —wasn’t a flame,” I explained. The backs of my eyes burned as she pulled the tendon again, my chest heaving while I tried to steady each breath. “I can’t… fuck, I can’t stop thinking about her though, and I can’t escape her. I don’t want to fuck up the situation with Matty, but it’s like I’m surrounded by temptation every moment I’m at home and surrounded by stress every moment I’m— shit —here.”

“Big, deep breath for me, Sebastian,” she said, and I followed her instruction, taking in air until my lungs screamed at me and holding it there. She pulled, and something snapped, and a wailed, choked shout bellowed from me, using up every bit of oxygen I’d held. “There we go.”

I didn’t bother opening my eyes. I was positive all I’d see was black, anyway. Something told me I was going to be off the ice for the rest of the day. “Fuck,” I croaked.

“That seems like a sticky situation, Seb,” she said, her stool creaking as I assumed she lifted herself out of it. Her voice moved across the room, and the sound of the faucet switching on told me she was fully done and was washing the oil from her hands. “One of those things where something is already a problem, so working out the issues in it becomes even harder. Like your knee.”

“Yeah,” I grunted. I threw my arm over my eyes, content to just lay there in the low-grade pain that wouldn’t seem to stop.

“You should ice that tonight and skip leg day tomorrow if you have it scheduled. I’ll let Coach Casey know that you need a couple of days off from any leg-specific maneuvers.”

“Great, he’ll fucking hate that.”

She tossed my thick pants onto my stomach, a deep, audible sigh coming from her. “I’ll give you a few minutes to calm down and get dressed. I’ll be in the breakroom if you need anything else, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks, Aubrey. For the knee and for listening to me.”

————

Fully dressed and limping, I hobbled to the door, still lightheaded from the pain. I’d made absolutely zero headway on what I was going to do about Nelly in the fifteen minutes I’d laid on that table with my eyes closed, and I couldn’t imagine I’d come up with anything between that room and my car, but I could try.

But the moment I turned the handle and opened the door, a smirk-covered familiar face stared right back at me. Fuck .

Luke leaned against the wall opposite Aubrey’s room, his phone in hand, smug as could be. With his tongue caught between his teeth, he grinned at me, wide and unabashed — he’d heard it. He’d heard it all.

“Have you seriously been waiting out here for the last twenty minutes just to smile at me like that?” I groaned, shutting the door behind me.

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, I guess ,” he chimed. “Just know you’re a loudmouth, and it was easy as hell to hear all that, so if you want to keep your nanny a 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.”