Melting the Ice

Seven.

~Lynlee~

“I don’t know what’s in it, but I was told this was good for you between practices,” I said, pushing the weird green, blended concoction over to Nathan Seguin as an apology. “I’m so, so sorry about missing our appointment this morning.”

He smiled brightly. I was already taking an inventory. He had that whole boy next door charm. Blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Smile lines were starting to form near his eyes. Thankfully he was freshly showered, so he smelled great. “I told you it’s totally okay. Based on how you guys were throwing drinks and wings back before you left the bar, I assume your night was eventful. We shouldn’t have scheduled something so early. Is your card thing fixed?”

“Oh, yea,” I blushed. I waited another ten minutes before one of the athletic trainers arrived and took mercy on me. Apparently, all my fruitless swipes had also notified security, but they hadn’t made it down to me until I was walking inside. That created this whole thing, and I missed my interview with Nathan.

The only good thing? I had extra time to down some more carbs and another coffee, warding off the hangover headache I woke up with. “Good. Happened to me on my first day, too. The system had just been upgraded. It was a mess. Half the staff couldn’t get in,” Nathan smiled. The tilt of his mouth was genuine; it made you feel at ease. He was quickly falling into my ‘golden retriever’ prediction.

“Then I don’t feel so bad,” I laughed. “I am sorry, though. I knew I had to get up, and there was an accident on the highway. It’s really unprofessional of me. I was only out last night because my friend Penelope works worse hours than Lotti and me, and she got a night and morning off. No more for a while, though.”

“Is she the one that was fan-girling?” he laughed.

“So you didn’t miss that?” I scrunched my nose.

“Nope,” he said. “She seems cool, though. You should bring her up here sometime. Maybe I can give her a tour.”

“You’d do that?” I asked seriously.

Nathan shrugged. “She’s clearly a fan. When I was a kid, I was lucky and got to meet some of the players from my favorite team. They signed my shirt and stuff. Those experiences are the things that stick. It’s probably the day I decided I wanted to be a professional hockey player.”

“Tell me about that. The decision to be a professional athlete,” I said, diving in as I pulled my notebook toward me.

Nate (he insisted I call him Nate instead of Nathan or Mr. Seguin) and I talked for almost 90 minutes. He told me story after story about growing up in the Midwest and being smaller than all the other guys until high school. He told me about the other teams he played for before coming to Harthford. He told me a little about his girlfriend and how he planned to propose at the end of the season, promising to tell me more later.

The conversation flowed so easily that I completely forgot to take notes. When Nate ran off for his next practice or something, I started to organize my thoughts. I dumped out my pen case, looking for my highlighters to categorize everything. While getting bios and snapshots of these guys’ lives was helpful, I also needed to get into their minds. I needed to learn how they thought and how that changed when they went to play. Characters needed to have backstories and motivations to be believable. That was what I needed to get to. Nate had been so talkative and willing to spill that I hadn’t gotten to dive too deep with him.

As my pen scribbled furiously over the blue lines of my fresh notebook, I already knew my MMC couldn’t be based on Nate. He was just too sweet and loveable. My readers would swoon quickly, but I couldn’t imagine he was a guy anything less than adoringly attentive to his partner. He would make for an awesome secondary character, though.

Without looking, I reached for my pink highlighter and sent things rolling to the floor. “Shoot,” I sighed. I slid out of my chair in the small cafeteria area the players and staff could use and dropped to the floor. I wasn’t looking when my head collided with someone else’s.

“Ow,” I groaned, grabbing my forehead as I jerked back. Head butts were not conducive to keeping away hangover headaches.

“f**k,” a familiar voice ground out. “You’re a mess, you know that?”

I blinked at Sebastian Kingsley. “No, I’m not,” was all my brain could conjure. He swiped up the pens and highlighters I had dropped and stood to his full, overbearing height. I wondered if his PR people ever told him scowling like that was bad for wrinkles. He probably just growled at them. I had found his social media accounts, but they were clearly maintained by someone else and weren’t very old.

He dropped my stuff back on the table with an unimpressed eyebrow raise. “Whatever happened to black pens? Does everything you touch need to vomit rainbows?”

“Excuse me?” I scoffed, pushing up to my feet. That was more than a little insulting, especially after he was so rude earlier.

He pointed to my notebook. “It’s childish.”

“There are entire stores dedicated to paper, pens, markers, and other stuff like that. It’s not childish. It’s my system,” I argued. Why did I feel the need to defend myself to this grumpy wet sock?

“All the lines are different colors,” he pointed out.

“And the highlighting indicates different categories for reference later,” I said. I stopped myself before I could justify anything else I did for my job. He didn’t care, and I was beginning to think he took freakish joy in aggravating me. “Since you have graced me with your presence and there isn’t a security door between us, can I ask why you haven’t signed the disclosure yet?”

There were four names on the entire roster that hadn’t signed yet. Only one of them was the Captain and told directly to be helpful.

“Because I’m not going to,” he answered.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to figure out his game. I wasn’t even sure what he was doing near the table I was sitting at because he clearly disliked me.

“Fine,” I said. “You’re an overplayed archetype anyway.” I started gathering my stuff back into my pen case. I wouldn’t be able to focus with his overbearing, angry-bear aura in the room. There were extra offices upstairs I could use, although I didn’t do my best work without a little bit of casual or comfort in my space.

Sebastian grabbed my wrist and stopped me. “Excuse me? Overplayed archetype?”

A shudder ran through me. But not one of those first touch, tingles in the best way shudders. No, this was all anger. How dare he? I ripped my hand from his (admittedly) loose grip. Hands as big as that could definitely hold someone down. Big, strong hands were great for many, many reasons.

When I spun around, my fists went to my hips. “Yes, overplayed. If I recall, your stats claim you’re 6’2’’, which is pretty average for your position but overall tall to the normal populace. At best, every media package photo of you had a neutral expression on your face, but most of them were scowling or serious. Your tone is clipped and dismissive. The facial hair and undercut thing you have going on. All of that is so typical of the brooding, angry-at-the-world anti-hero.” I was starting to ramble but still got to my point.

Sebastian snorted. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“And I won’t, apparently,” I smiled at him. I had always been a nice person. Dark and broody had never quite been my thing. I knew dark and broody didn’t have to equate to bad or ugly inside, but Sebastian Kingsley wasn’t proving himself to be a good guy. For the most part, it usually worked out to avoid people insistent on being unhappy or mean.

But this man was testing my patience. He was a dark cloud trying to block out my sunshine. For some reason, his attitude, while consistent, was annoying me more than it should.

I collected my notebook, planner, and pen case and shoved them back into my backpack with my laptop and tablet. I slung it over my back and turned to the brutish slug still staring at me. “I hope your favorite TV show doesn’t get renewed for another season,” I said to him in fair well. I stepped around him and walked away, not even sure exactly where I was going as long it was where Sebastian Kingsley wasn’t.