Page 103 of Undone

“Why the hell are you here?” His words are even sharper than his clenched jaw.

I flinch back, eyes wide as I realize my dad is right behind him, his eyes just as cutting.

Their combined disapproval, so different and yet identical here, makes my stomach hurt. I trip backward slightly, before the blond smiling one raises his hands. “Easy there.”

Toren looks like he wants to say something else, but the brunette player with the soft brown eyes stands and shakes his head with a beguiling smile.

“Sorry about that. Kane tends to be short on manners.” He gestures toward the locker rooms and Paloma falls in behind me. If she trusts him, then so do I. But it’s hard not to look back over my shoulder at Toren, to ask him what’s wrong.

“I’m Rhys.” His hand sticks out to mine. I shake it, after a too-long moment of hesitancy. “I think we met at the grocery store?”

If we did, I clearly don’t remember him, which is embarrassing enough.

“Lily,” I say. “I’m— I’m Coach LaBlanc’s daughter. I’m allowed to be here.”

Paloma squeezes my shoulder. “Relax, Lily.” Then to Rhys she asks, “Can you check that they’re all decent before we walk through there?”

He nods, heading in, before sending us a quick thumbs-up. Rhys smiles at me again as I walk through, apologetic and polite.

“Do you go to Waterfell? Or have you already—” A dark shadow appears behind me, a hand grasping my wrist to pull me away from him. Rhys stands, concern flickering across his face, but I turn away and tuck closer to Toren’s body. He turns the corner, and I see the familiar door of the storage closet, before he opens it and slams us both inside, shoving a hockey stick in the latch to lock it.

Chapter 41

Toren

She’s so fucking small, so goddamn beautiful, and it’s pissing me off.

And I don’t know why I expect her to be the first one to say something, when I’m the one who carried her off in front of my entire team and shoved us both into a storage closet.

I’m still in my skates and uniform, everything on but my cage, which I’d already slammed off and left on the bench, my skates giving me three more inches of height, which means I’m a solid six nine hovering over her five-foot-nothing form.

I try to look at Lily and calm down, let just the nearness of her coat me in relief like it always has, but nothing is working and my hands are still shaking.

LaBlanc’s smile is haunting me, his eyes bright as he watched Rhys step in to defend Lily, walking her back to the locker room in that stupidly chivalrous way that not a bone in my body has ever seemed capable of. But it was clear what LaBlanc was thinking, even if he didn’t spew his vile words in my ear.

“You could learn a lot from Koteskiy.”

Not once, even when I’d tried, had I gotten an ounce of her father’s approval. That pain should have been in the past. It shouldn’t have hurt now.

But it wasn’t. And it did.

“Why are you so angry?” Lily asks suddenly, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, scrunching her scarf around her neck, which fluffs her hair a bit messier. She looks slightly undone, messy in the way I prefer to muck up myself, but the effect is the same. The possessive need spills over me like ink.

“I’m not,” I snap.

Her brows scrunch further, because I am mad and she knows it. I’m practically fuming in this small closet, heart thundering and emotions so wildly out of my control I can’t say anything, only hoping she can find the words for me.

The gears are turning in her brain, her lip between her teeth before she cocks her head to the side.

“Is this about Rhys?”

It shouldn’t be. I know Rhys enough by now to know he’s obsessively in love with the spitfire figure skater Sadie Brown. He’s a well-adjusted, normal guy with a loving family. And I know Rhys was being polite, nice, while I was being an asshole in public to the girl.

My eyes close.

“He was just being nice,” she mutters.

“Nice?” I shove into her space. She doesn’t back away. She doesn’t flinch. If anything, her pupils widen as I close in on her, my body blanketing hers easily. I toss my gloves to the floor, the motion like I’m gearing up for a fight.