Chapter 30: Confrontations
Kayden
"So... you were fine?" Rhys repeated, but I said nothing, just staring at him, wondering why he was asking such a question.
The silence in the room was suffocating. I stood by the vanity, my damp hair still dripping onto my shoulders.
Rhys looked exhausted, his jersey crumpled, his eyes dark with a mixture of betrayal and something that looked, painfully, like disappointment.
"So..." Rhys repeated, his voice dropping an octave. "You were fine?" He slammed his hands on the door suddenly. "Answer me!"
I swallowed hard, my throat feeling tight, and I was shocked by how he had reacted. Hearing him sound like that made my heart pound hard against my chest. "Rhys, I can explain..."
"Explain what?" He took a step into the room, the heavy thud of his boots sounding like a death knell. "You want to explain why I just spent an hour being a total joke to my teammates, and to everyone who watched the game? You want to explain why I got a call from my father calling me ’soft’ because I stopped the game for a teammate who was apparently..." He paused, giving me a long, lasting look. "Apparently just tired?"
Rhys gestured to me, his gaze sweeping over my pale skin.
To him, I looked perfectly healthy, but he had no idea what I was going through, how I had risked my life to play on the ice.
"The medics said you refused to go to the hospital; you refused a blood panel," Rhys continued, his voice rising. "They said you insisted on coming back alone. I thought you were dying, Kayden. I thought the stomach bug had turned into something fatal. But here you are, standing as if nothing happened."
"The stomach bug is real. It just comes and goes," I half-lied, hoping my words would convince him. "It’s just a terrible condition. I didn’t want the hospital to make a big deal out of nothing."
Rhys let out a harsh, dry laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. "A big deal? The whole world is already calling you a liability to the team, Kayden. They are calling me a failure for protecting you. If you were actually sick, I could handle it, but instead, I found you on the phone laughing to whoever that is." There was a hint of possessiveness in his tone, and I understood why he sounded like that, but he had no right to make it seem like I was pretending.
I tried to speak up and explain to him why it was like that, but he cut me off.
"You," he pointed toward me. "You made us lose the game. You made the entire Northern Avalanche look like a joke because I stopped everything to check on you. And here you are, perfectly fine, chatting away like it’s a day off."
"It wasn’t like that," I whispered, my voice thinning. "If you would just let me explain?"
He snorted, folding his arms tightly against his chest. "Explain what? That you are a better actor than a hockey player?" Rhys snapped, his voice trembling with a suppressed rage that made the air in the room feel heavy. "I was terrified that something had happened to you, Kayden. I have never..." He paused and ran a hand through his hair. "Oh, fuck this." He pointed toward me again.
"Maybe they are right about you," Rhys paused, his blue eyes turning ice-cold, looking at me as if he didn’t even recognize who I was. "You faked a stomach bug to get out of a tough game, and then you come back here to celebrate? Maybe you intentionally wanted us to lose. Maybe you are exactly what the headlines had said—a liability."
The words he uttered hit me like a physical blow. Rhys thought I was a saboteur. He thought I had thrown the game on purpose.
"Come on, Rhys," I said, taking a desperate step toward him, my hands reaching out before I remembered to keep my distance. "That’s not fair. You know how much I want this. I worked hard to..."
"I don’t know anymore!" Rhys roared, slamming his hand to the wall above my head. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the small room. "You know what I see? I see a soft boy who collapses under pressure and laughs about it when the cameras are off. If you are not sick, then what are you? Because ’liar’ is the only word I have left."
"How can you call me a liar?" I stepped back. The word was stinging worse than the needle I had shoved into my thigh minutes ago.
Never did I expect that Rhys’s words would hurt so much.
"Then what the hell is going on with you? Why did you have a stomach bug one time, and the next time you were standing perfectly fine? It’s just like that time in the bathroom stalls when you had fallen to the ground and then were perfectly fine later! What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of condition is that?"
"It’s just a normal stomach bug, Rhys! It comes in waves," I retorted, my heart feeling like it was going to burst through my ribs. "Why is that so hard to believe?"
Rhys scoffed, throwing his hands up. "Because it’s not possible. I don’t want someone who lies. I detest someone who can’t say the truth, and now, I have zero trust in you."
"What kind of truth do you want from me?" I screamed, tears welling up in my eyes, but I blinked them away.
I was a sensitive person, mainly when someone I was close to talked down to me, just like Rhys was doing now. "Why don’t you believe me after everything we’ve been through?"
Rhys let out a harsh, jagged breath, his face hardening into a mask of pure ice. "Why should I believe in someone who has done nothing but bring shame to the team today?"
I rolled my eyes in annoyance. "It’s just one freaking loss, Rhys!" I yelled.
A tear managed to roll down my face, and I wiped it off with the back of my hand. "We lost one game. It’s normal to lose. Even the best teams have bad games."