“You want my attention? Well, you fucking got it, Sage. I’m shooting my puck. Are you blocking it, or letting me in?”
Heat spreads through my body at the hockey metaphor, at the raw honesty in his voice. I want to let him in. I do.
But then the memories crash over me of what happens when you let someone in. Tyler… the blindfold, hearing his voice in the distance while someone else’s hands and lips were on me. A dick inside of me that didn’t belong to my boyfriend. Begging for the blindfold to be removed, only to see him filming everythingwhile jerking off in the corner. The way he tried to force himself into my mouth afterward, how I bit him hard enough to draw blood and the slap that followed. It turned darker after that.
The thoughts become too jumbled, too overwhelming. All the threats. Tyler’s best friend’s laugh. It all becomes too much.
I look at Slater, trying to focus on him. Focus on the now. But he’s being impatient, wanting an answer. I can see it in his shoulders.
I can’t give him a fucking answer because I both do and don’t want to.
I see how unfair that is, but what else am I supposed to do? I shake my head. I can’t fucking do this.
What if he turns out to be like Tyler?
I shake my head again, backing away.
I can’t give Slater what he wants, but I can’t explain why either.
Instead of trying to explain anything, I storm off with tears burning my eyes.
I make it to the hotel elevator with him following quietly behind me.
As soon as the doors close, he says, “What was that?”
I don’t answer, wiggling my toes impatiently as I wait for the doors to open again.
When the elevator opens, I race down the hall to my room.
I fumble with the keycard, my hands shaking.
He catches the door before it can close all the way.
“Sage,” he says when I don’t answer, moving fully into the room and letting the door click shut behind him.
“Drop it,” I mumble, tossing my purse onto the desk with shaking hands. The simple action feels monumental, like I’m trying to hold myself together through the most basic of movements.
But Slater isn’t dropping anything. He grabs my arm, his grip firm but not painful, turning my body toward his. The contactsends electricity through my skin, even as my mind rebels against it.
“No,” he says.
I glare up at him, noting how his eyes are blazing with something dark and unrelenting. There are still remnants of whatever consumed him during the game—that energy that made him untouchable on the ice.
“You don’t trust me, is that it?” he asks, like trust is something I should just hand over without question.
The fucked-up part is that it’s not even about trust. Not really. I shake my head, unable to find words for the mess in my head.
“Then what the fuck is it?” he demands.
He moves closer, and I find myself backing up until the backs of my knees hit the bed. But I don’t sit down, don’t give him that advantage. I stand my ground even as my heart hammers against my ribs.
He continues, “Because from where I’m standing, it seems like you’re fucking terrified and pretending you don’t feel what’s really going on here.”
“It’s better this way,” I whisper, the words barely audible.
He gets even closer, close enough that I can smell his soap, see the depth in his dark eyes. “Why?”
My mind races at a million miles per second while my body screams conflicting messages. Part of me wants to close the distance between us, to stop rejecting him because of my past and let this man be my future. To indulge in whatever this magnetic pull is and see where it leads.