Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Claimed by the Rival Hockey God novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Guest Room

At midnight in Cillian's kitchen he blocks Dario's forty-one messages on her phone and cooks her eggs; then Gianna calls, sweetly asking her to come home.

At midnight I gave up on the guest room bed and went looking for water.

The penthouse was dark except for one light over the stove.

Cillian stood in front of it in gray sweatpants and nothing else, cracking eggs into a pan with one hand.

I stopped in the doorway.

He had a long scar down his ribs and a bruise the size of a plate on his shoulder.

"You can come in," he said without turning around. "I can hear you breathing."

"I was after a glass of water."

"The cupboard's on your left."

I took a glass and filled it at the sink, and I kept my eyes on the tap.

My phone sat on the counter beside the toaster, where I had left it face down at dinner.

It lit up through the wood.

Then it lit up again.

Cillian looked at it over his shoulder.

"That's been going since nine," he said. "Every five minutes. I counted."

"It's Dario."

"I figured."

"I don't answer."

"I figured that too."

I turned the phone over.

There were forty-one messages.

The first ones were jokes.

Nettie, you're being dramatic.

Come on, I'll make it up to you.

By ten they were angrier.

You're making me look bad in front of my sponsors.

By eleven he had gone back to sweet.

I'm sorry, okay? Ma says come home. We'll fix it.

I read them all standing in the light of the stove, and I felt the old pull in my stomach.

Dario hadn't been a bad boy.

He had been the only boy who let me sit at his table.

The phone buzzed again in my hand.

Cillian put the spatula down.

He crossed the kitchen in two steps and took the phone out of my fingers.

His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist.

It was only a second, and it was nothing.

The skin there went hot, and I stood very still.

"Give it back."

"No."

He held it above my reach, which was not hard for him.

He tapped the screen with a thumb the size of a pen cap.

"What are you doing?"

"Blocking him."

"You can't just block my best friend."

"He called you a net in front of nine hundred people," Cillian said. "I can block whoever I want."

"It's my phone."

"Then take it."

He held it out, and he did not let go.

We stood, the phone between us, his hand wrapped around mine.

He was very warm.

I could smell soap and cold air and something under it that was just him.

A muscle jumped in his forearm, and he looked at my mouth and then up at the ceiling.

I told myself it was the eggs burning.

"They are burning," I said.

"I know."

He let go, turned around and took the pan off the heat.

The eggs were black on one side.

He slid them onto a plate anyway, added toast and set it in front of me.

"Eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"You pushed your dinner around and ate three bites."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I was watching."

I sat down and ate.

They were not good eggs, and I ate every bite.

He leaned on the counter across from me with his arms crossed, and for a while neither of us said anything.

"You didn't ask me why," I said finally.

"Why what?"

"Why I stayed with him that long."

"It's none of my business."

"Everybody wants to know."

"I want to know too," Cillian said. "Just not tonight."

I looked up at him.

He had a scar through his left eyebrow and gray eyes that never moved off my face.

"Thank you," I said.

"For the eggs?"

"For the phone."

"Annette," he said, and his voice was lower. "Anything of his that comes through this door, I stop at the door. That's the deal."

My own phone buzzed again.

This time it wasn't Dario.

The screen said Gianna, with the little heart emoji I had put beside her name when I was nineteen.

Cillian read it upside down and said nothing.

I picked it up.

Gianna was crying.

"Annette, bella, forgive him. He's a boy. He doesn't think."

"Gianna, it's after midnight."

"I know, I know. Listen. Come home tomorrow. We'll have dinner. And I need you to sign something for the accountant, just a little form, for the account. He's been asking for weeks."

I rubbed my eyes.

"I'll do it later," I said.

Across the kitchen Cillian went very still, and he didn't take his eyes off my face until I hung up.

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