Crew (Hockey Royalty #3)

13. Crew

Chapter 13

Crew

I wake up to the sound of Olivia hitting the door frame and cursing. I open my eyes and the room is bathed in sunlight. There's a gentle murmur outside the open window like people are on the patio below. Olivia is clinging to the doorframe trying to shove her foot in one of her shoes. She’s got that red dress on again and her hair is all over the place. It got soaked in the shower and dried wavy while she slept.

“What time is it?” I ask. “Why are you panicked?”

“Tenley texted me. She knows I didn’t come home last night!” she explains, finally getting her foot in her shoe and righting herself. “She’s freaking out. She messaged me but my phone was on silent so when I didn’t answer she put it in the family chat. My mother has called three times in the last ten minutes and I can’t answer. Tate is asking if he should skip practice his afternoon and look for me. I have to be… not here when I answer my mom. She’s FaceTiming. She can’t see the hotel.”

“Oh shit. That’s a lot.” I scrub my face with my palm trying to wake up. “What time is it?”

“Almost ten.”

“Ten?! In the morning?” I jump out of bed and grab my phone off the nightstand. Yeah. It’s nine-fifty-four. I have four missed calls from Nash, who I was supposed to be meeting at eight-thirty. Shit. How did I sleep so late? “Fuck. I had to be somewhere an hour and a half ago”

“We’re both fucked.” Olivia sighs. “I hope it works out for you.”

Her phone starts ringing with the distinctive FaceTime chimes. “Fuck. I gotta get out of here.”

“Okay. Good luck!”

She’s already rushing down the hall and disappears out the door without another word. Not even a goodbye. I don’t know what I was expecting after last night. I don’t do a lot of formal goodbyes after hookups, to be honest. I usually just leave a nice note on the night table while they're still asleep. With guys, I'm even less subtle. I just say goodbye and walk out, but that's mostly because a lot of the guys I've slept with are not out of the closet so they know the drill. Olivia is the first hookup that I've had a bath with. The first one where I worried about what to say the next day. Well, thanks to her cousin, I don’t get a chance to say anything.

I immediately call Nash but he lets it go to voicemail. That means he’s pissed. I get dressed and check out. We have practice at one and knowing Nash, when I stood him up he just went straight to the arena for some extra time on the ice or in the gym. I head straight there.

I see his Mercedes EQS SUV in the player parking. Hard to miss because he's the only player here this early. I park right next to him hop out and head straight for the elevator, digging my pass out of my wallet.

I walk into the team gym but he isn’t there so I head down the tunnel to the rink. Nash is super pissed off judging by the way he’s hurling pucks at the empty net in front of him. I slow my gait and watch. He doesn’t miss a single shot. I think he does for a second but no, that puck just broke through the netting. Shit, well at least he’s improving his slapshot.

He catches me out of the corner of his eye as I approach the boards and lean on them. He doesn’t skate over though. He just stands there in the middle of the ice glaring. I give him a guilty smile.

“I owe you one of those insanely priced smoothies from Erewhon. I’m sorry.” He keeps staring. I keep talking. “I forgot to set an alarm. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I went by your house on my way here. You weren’t there.”

“I wasn’t,” I admit. “I slept elsewhere last night.”

“So you overslept at your hookup’s house?” Nash cocks his head and it says everything he isn’t saying. He’s judging me. He’s also skeptical. “Since when do you even spend the night with randoms?”

“It’s not a random,” I reply and try not to be mad. He’s just hurt I ghosted him. “It’s a regular, and like I said, it was an accident. But I’m here now and ready to listen or talk or whatever you need.”

“A regular?” He looks more skeptical than before. I try not to take it personally, or feel weird about calling Olivia a regular. We’ve had more than once, which is regular for me, I guess. So even if we never have it again, which I guess is our plan, it was regular for a second there. “So you have, what, like a… girl… a partner?”

My twin brother sounds so uncomfortable. Why? Because he had to correct himself and use the term partner? Because if I am dating, it could be a man. Is that it? Holy shit, that’s it. I feel nauseated. “Who told you? Mom or Dad?”

His face gets so pale it’s like the color of the ice under the skates he’s balancing on. “It was Dad because he assumed you'd already told me. Because you're my twin brother and you're supposed to confide in me."

“I must have skipped that chapter in the twin handbook,” I snap. I hate the way Nash has been acting since my marriage ended, and now I know why. He’s found out I’m bi and he doesn’t approve.

“Look, I was no fan of Anne-Marie’s and I think you’re better off without her but…” He pauses because I think he knows he should just shut the fuck up, but he’s Nash and he never just shuts the fuck up. He swallows and starts to glide closer to the boards, to me. “You shouldn’t let what she did to you turn you into…”

“Turn me into what, Nash?” I prompt through gritted teeth when his voice fades. “Are you seriously about to slut shame me?”

"No. I… look, I'm just worried about you," Nash huffs out like he's the one who should be offended here. "I don't know why you have pushed me away since this all happened. I haven't done anything to?—"

“You haven’t done anything. Full stop,” I interrupt. He’s right up against the boards now and between the higher level of the ice and the skates he’s on, I’ve got to tilt my head up to look at him. “How long ago did Dad tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“That I’m bi.”

His eyes flare and then he starts looking around behind me, at the empty stands to make sure they are, in fact, empty. He’s petrified someone heard me say that out loud. He’s embarrassed he’s got a bi-brother. I really do want to puke. "This past summer. Like I said, he thought you told me. And then he shut the hell up and didn't explain anything else that went on with Anne-Marie that night. He just said we should talk so I've been waiting for you to confide in me."

“And that’s why you wanted to talk at your fancy fucking grocery store?” I bark and give him a floored look before I slide my sunglasses from the top of my head to my face. I really don’t want him to see an ounce of the hurt I’m feeling. And besides, I’m leaving. I turn to walk away.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about one of my problems,” Nash snaps. “But you were too busy getting your dick wet to care about making time for me.”

“Fuck off,” I tell him because he is not the victim here. I didn’t prioritize Olivia over him, but I will from now on. Because my twin brother is embarrassed I’m bisexual.

“No, fuck you! You selfish prick.”

“Boys!” The voice booms from the other side of the ice.

We both turn and see Coach Braddock standing at the end of the visitor’s tunnel. I don’t know how much of that exchange he caught but he definitely caught the part where we told each other to fuck off. “Can I ask why my future co-captains are screaming at each other like scorned lovers?”

“Just some brotherly bickering, Coach,” Nash replies, the bitterness and anger evaporating from his tone. "Sorry, you had to hear it. Won't happen again."

“Good.”

I give the coach a tight smile. “See you at practice, Coach. Later, bro.”

I storm away without looking back.