Boldly by Elise Faber

Chapter Five

Oliver

Her expression was filledwith irritation.

And then it wasn’t.

As though one of the waves she loved had come to shore and washed a sandcastle away and left nothing but smooth, blank sand in its wake.

She was beautiful.

But he rather liked putting the befuddled look on her face, same as the irritated one. He didn’t like this blank bullshit, the careful professional distance she kept trying to erect between them—and yeah, maybe that professional distance was the right thing, considering he was supposed to be her patient for the time being, and then they’d be working together, at least in some sort of professional capacity in the near future, but he didn’t want any distance between them.

The only reason he hadn’t asked her out within about ten seconds of meeting her that first time was the giant diamond ring on her finger.

A ring that was no longer there.

He felt like he’d been existing in a vacuum since the injury—and maybe that was something he should be telling her, something he should disclose. But that vacuum, that sense of suspension, had disappeared the moment he’d walked into her office. It had cleared in the hospital room, too. Just for a moment before she ran. And even before that, upon their first meeting.

Because while he would like to say that his vacuum existence had begun after he’d been hurt, that would be a lie.

Separate.

Always separate. Always with careful walls. Always carefully curated.

He would bleed for the team—and had. He would give them everything—and nearly had.

But he didn’t take.

Because accepting meant gratitude, meant owing something back, meant…being vulnerable in a way he despised.

It was so much easier to be the one giving. He got to be the hero without any of the strings.

But you took the job, didn’t you?

He had.

Because…he needed it.

And taking the job, even the required sessions with Hazel. He’d needed them both, needed to feel alive and out of that fucking vacuum and—

“My ex is an ex because he fucked around during his bachelor party”—she met his gaze, her eyes steely—“and by fucked around I mean, literally, fucked around. He banged three girls in the club they went to and then got a blowy from another. Four times in one night”—a shake of her head, her lips turning up, trying to force a smile, trying to make it all a joke—“I never got that kind of stamina.”

But the hurt was there, and he found himself sitting up straighter, wanting to reach for her, but not wanting to break the spell.

Because he wanted to know everything about Hazel Reid.

Even the bad.

A deep inhale. A shaky exhale. But her eyes remained dry. Over it enough for it to still hurt but not enough to make her break down.

“He told me himself.”

Oliver felt his eyes go wide.

“Walked straight into our condo the following morning, sat on the edge of the bed and told me what he’d done. And then—” Another shaking exhale. “He told me he’d decided he wasn’t a one-woman man and that he didn’t actually believe in marriage.”

Silence.

On his front because he was trying to hold back his temper. He didn’t think it would be particularly helpful to tell Hazel that her ex was a fucking douche canoe. On her front, she seemed to be lost in thoughts that he wouldn’t be able to delve into.

A shrug, her voice markedly lighter.

“He still wanted to be together, wanted an open relationship. Yeah, like that was going to happen.” She laughed quietly, though it wasn’t in true humor. “It was good he told me before we got married, though. An easier…end.” She cleared her throat. “I gave him his ring back, left while he packed his bags, and then…that was it. Three years, and one night, and we were done.”

His heart pulsed. “It hurt.”

She blinked, as though coming out of a trance, and nodded. “Yeah. It hurt. I felt betrayed in any number of ways, not the least of which was the cheating. But there was no going back, and luckily I didn’t have to deal with trying to get a divorce if he hadn’t learned of his preferences that night.”

If he hadn’t learned of his preferences?

The man was an asshole.

He knew. He just didn’t care.

But bringing that up wouldn’t help anyone. “You dodged a bullet.”

She grinned. “I like to think of it as having dodged a grenade.”

The joke surprised him, and he was caught off-guard by his laugh, not because anything about Hazel’s situation was particularly joke-worthy, but because she was laying it out there so straight.

Calm. Her pain banked, her eyes looking forward.

Since that was Oliver’s motto, he respected it a whole lot. Respected her a whole lot.

“There,” she said, “now you know about my ex. Which is something I’d appreciate not circling the locker room if it hasn’t. It’s not like I’m trying to hide anything. I just…”

“Don’t want everyone up in your business?”

She nodded.

He chuckled. “That might be hard for this crew.”

Her eyes warmed. “Isn’t that great?”

It was. It was fucking incredible, especially considering the dysfunction they’d begun with the previous season—mostly due to He Who Should Not Be Named—okay, due to Mark Shelby.

Shelby had been a talented player, but he was a cancer in the locker room, eating away at the good things, returning it as bad shit. He’d fucked Marcel’s girlfriend, intentionally tried to injure people on the ice (even before his intentional hit on Oliver that had gotten everyone to this point), and he constantly undermined anything positive.

Someone commented on a good play. Shelby commented with something snide.

Someone had a date. Shelby tried to get in there first.

Someone needed time with the trainers. All of a sudden, Shelby’s “injuries” took top priority.

And that didn’t even include the fucked up shit he’d said about Conner (“Smithy” for his last name of, unoriginally, Smith), Luca (“Cas” for Castillo, also another unoriginal nickname from his last name), and Raph (short for Raphael, perhaps the most uninteresting nickname of all).

Those guys were professionals, able to let it roll off their backs, a la water off a duck’s feathery spine, but taken all at once?

The spirit in the locker room had been grim.

Luckily, Luc had stepped in, and though Oliver knew he’d made a mistake not going to the GM with the issues and instead trying to handle them himself, Luc had guided him forward. Luc should have taken the captaincy from him because Oliver hadn’t handled the situation correctly. At the first sign of big trouble, Oliver should have gone to the coaching staff, to Luc, should have worked out something with the assistant captains, Smithy and Cas. But he hadn’t. He thought he had to handle it all himself, and the team had suffered. Despite all that, Luc had stuck with him.

Because Luc didn’t punish people for making mistakes.

Because he was a good GM and Luc understood that Oliver had been trying his best (even though it was a fucked-up best). They’d sat down together and figured out a way forward.

First step of that? Trading Shelby.

Next? Team building activities, including a plant growing contest that Lexi had begun them on. One he’d won, by the way, considering his plant, KiKi was still alive. Though he couldn’t reasonably take credit for the last after his injury, since Lexi had used her green thumb (hell, the woman had two green hands) to keep it alive while he was recovering.

Not that it mattered.

His plant had survived the rest of the season.

No one else’s had.

Come to think of that, he’d never gotten his spoils for winning the contest. He’d have to find Lexi and get her to give up the goods.

“It is great,” he said. “In fact, the entire team is great.”

They were.

They’d been there for him over the last months, the front office and support staff, too.

Food stocked in his fridge. His laundry done. His house cleaned. Company on his couch. A ride to doctors’ appointments. A plethora of dumbasses taking up every bit of floor space in his living room so they could all play Call of Duty.

He hadn’t been alone.

And that was why he was fine and moving on and focused on the future. No sense in looking back; that shit did no one any good, least of all him.

It didn’t help to wish his parents hadn’t OD’d.

To wish he hadn’t ended up in foster care because his biological family wasn’t willing to take him in.

To mourn his adoptive parents and wish he’d had them longer.

He was alone, but not by himself, if that made one fucking bit of sense.

To his brain, it did.

But maybe not to anyone else.

Because he was used to being on the periphery. Even as a player, as a captain, he’d been part of the team, but also had held a slice of himself back. That innermost piece he had to protect because if he gave that away and people left, if the rug was pulled out from beneath him again, as it had many times before, he wouldn’t have anything left.

Being captain made that slightly easier.

The leadership meant that he had to be aware of the example he was setting.

And it was easier to protect that little piece.

“You got quiet,” she murmured.

Not a question.

But still one anyway.

He met her gaze. “I think everyone keeps expecting me to lose it.”

She set her pen down. He’d been watching her twirling it, spinning it between her fingers, not clicking it, but pulling up on the little tab at the top then letting it go. Then repeating the process again. The only time she wasn’t playing with her pen was when she was spinning the glittering flower in her earlobe—around and around and around.

Not once had she actually written on the pad.

Which, perhaps, was why he said that.

Why he admitted it.

Hazel sat up a little straighter, held his eyes. “Why do you think that?”

He fell silent.

She waited.

So eventually, he continued admitting. “Everyone walks around me on eggshells. Everyone keeps asking me how I am and when I tell the truth, when I say I’m fine, they look at me in disbelief.”

More quiet.

Then, “You had something very traumatic happen to you. It would be completely understandable if you were not fine.”

Nine months of this shit.

Nine fucking months of people expecting him to react a certain way.

Nine fucking months of people tiptoeing around.

Even Luc, the person who’d been most straight with him, hadn’t pressed when he wanted to call Oliver out on something. He just let it go. Everyone let it go. And maybe that should make him and his sliver of armored, protected self feel safe. Secure. But instead, it just kept pissing him off. Because fuck, why couldn’t they see that he was doing fine?

The circumstances were shit.

But he was moving forward.

“I am fine.”

Brown eyes on his. Pretty with a breadth of colors he’d never seen before. Gorgeous, like some beautiful work of blown glass.

Except they held pity.

And sadness.

And were looking at him with the distinct impression that she thought he wasn’t fine.

It was as though someone had flipped a switch.

One second, he was fine. The next he was furious.

He burst to his feet, and the words just flew from him, bullets flying out of a gun, clipped before he could smother them.

“I am more than a fucking leg!” he roared.

Probably loud enough for the entire building to hear, but fury had his hands clenched into fists, his teeth grinding together, red hazing his vision and making it so that he could hardly see those beautiful eyes, that gorgeous face.

Red. Red.

He leaned down, not so far gone as to not notice the way fear crept into her face, how her eyes went wide, hating himself for being the cause of it and yet, unable to stop.

He wanted to shake her, to make her understand.

But he’d never laid hands on a woman like that.

And he wouldn’t start today.

Sucking in a breath, he turned, strode to the door, yanked it open, and got the fuck out of there.

Before he did something he might regret.

Like instead of shaking some sense into her…

Deciding he needed to kiss that sense into her.