Unfamiliar Heat

Chapter 4: Unfamiliar Heat

Cody Brennan

"I don't need another ice pack, Atlas, I need my actual clothes."

"You need to stay still," Atlas said, not even glancing up from the pill bottle he was reading like it owed him money. "The clothes can wait."

"I'm sitting in a hospital gown on your couch. Your very expensive, very cold leather couch." I shifted and immediately regretted it — the brace bit into my neck, and my collarbone lit up with a dull, furious throb. "This is humiliating."

"You'll survive humiliation. You might not survive tearing that shoulder open again." He crossed the room, all unhurried authority, and dropped two pills into my good hand along with a glass of water. "Take these."

I glared at the pills like they'd personally wronged me, then swallowed them anyway, because my ribs were staging a slow-motion mutiny and arguing took more breath than I had to spare.

The house didn't help. Ceilings that went up forever, glass walls, a kitchen island longer than my old apartment's entire living room — and somehow it all felt smaller with two enormous men taking up all the air in it. I couldn't stand without help. Couldn't reach the water glass on the table without twisting wrong. Every attempt at independence lasted about four seconds before one of them materialized to stop it.

"I can grab that myself," I snapped, reaching for the remote on the far cushion.

Atlas's hand closed over my wrist before my fingers got within a foot of it. "No."

"It's a remote, Atlas, not a loaded weapon."

"It's eight inches past where your shoulder should be moving today."

I slumped back, teeth gritted, hating how fast he'd crossed the room, hating more how it had barely registered as a threat and instead registered as something else entirely — heat, low and unwelcome, curling up under my sternum at how close he'd gotten before I'd even seen him move.

The front door opened before I could figure out what that was supposed to mean.

Hunter came in from a run, shirt soaked through, forearms slick, breathing hard in a way that filled the whole entryway with the smell of sweat and cold outside air. He looked at me on the couch like he was doing a threat assessment and I'd failed it.

"Why is he sitting up," Hunter said to Atlas, like I wasn't in the room.

"Because lying flat made his ribs worse," Atlas said. "He's fine."

"I'm right here," I said. "And I can talk."

"Then talk," Hunter said, crossing the room in three strides, close enough that his shadow fell over the couch, close enough that I caught the heat radiating straight off his skin. "Tell me why you tried to reach for something across the room by yourself."

"Because I'm not a child."

"You're one bad twist away from redoing surgery." He crouched slightly, forearms braced on his knees, gray eyes locked on mine with an intensity that had nothing to do with hockey. My pulse spiked, sudden and stupid, heat crawling up my neck that had nothing to do with the room's temperature.

"I can stand up by myself," I said, mostly to prove a point, and started to push up off the cushion.

Hunter's hand clamped over my good shoulder before my knees even locked. "Try it."

I sat back down. Fast.

Atlas moved to the other side of me without a word, two fingers pressing lightly to the inside of my wrist, checking my pulse with the kind of clinical calm that should have felt neutral and instead felt like a live wire under my skin.

"Racing," he said quietly, almost to himself.

"I just tried to stand up," I said. "Of course it's racing."

"Mm." He didn't look convinced. His fingers stayed there a beat too long, cool against my too-warm skin, and I felt my breath catch somewhere it had no business catching. "Your pulse doesn't usually do this."

"You don't know what my pulse usually does."

"I do, actually." He said it flat, like a fact filed away months ago, and something about that — the certainty of it, the months implied in it — sent another wave of heat straight up my spine.

"He's lying about being fine," Hunter said from across the room, arms crossed, watching me like he could see straight through the joke I hadn't even made yet. "Look at his face."

"I'm not lying about anything, I'm just—" I laughed, too fast, too high, an obvious deflection even to my own ears. "I'm just tired. Concussion stuff. Whatever."

"That's not concussion stuff," Hunter said.

I had no comeback for that, because he was right, and I didn't know what it was, only that I'd spent my whole life being one of the guys — locker room jokes, shoulder checks, nobody ever looking at me like this — and right now I felt like the only thing in the room two much bigger, much more dangerous men were watching.

By the time I actually needed to shower, my arms had officially given up negotiating with me.

"I can do it myself," I said, gripping the bathroom doorframe with my one working hand, glaring at both of them like glaring might make my other arm functional again.

"You can't get a shirt off with one arm," Atlas said from the hallway, arms crossed, watching with the detached patience of a man who already knew how this ended.

"I'll figure it out."

"You'll fall," Hunter said, and stepped past Atlas into the doorway, filling it completely, sleeves already shoved up, steam starting to curl out from behind him where the shower had been running.

"I don't need—"

"You do." He didn't wait for permission. His hand closed around my elbow, steady, immovable, guiding me forward into the heat and fog of the bathroom whether I agreed to it or not.

"Hunter—"

"Hold still." His other hand settled at my waist, warm even through the thin cotton of the gown, and every nerve in my body lit up at once, way past anything that made sense for a guy just trying to help me shower.

"I can balance on my own," I said, voice cracking slightly at the end in a way I hated.

Hunter looked down at me, steam curling around both of us, his grip tightening just slightly at my waist.

"You really think you're getting in that water alone with one arm?"