The Secret Hook-Up

So this is it.

This is how I die.

Death by suffocation from being wedged in a formal gown at an upscale boutique, my arms stuck over my head while I try to remove a dress with too-small armholes and absolutely zero give.

I should’ve known.

When the sales associate started using words like sheath and sleek, it should’ve been a clue that this was not the dress for me.

Dress shopping and I aren’t regular acquaintances, but I’m not a newbie at this either. I know better.

There’s a specific type of dress necessary for the woman who was once asked to sub in for the Beast when her high school did the Beauty and the Beast musical. You’re built right for it, Addie. You have the wide shoulders that fit the costume best.

I know this.

I do.

But the sales person held up that gorgeous shimmery eggplant-hued dress and said, “this will make men salivate at your curves,” and she was so excited that I decided maybe, just maybe, this would work better than the last time I tried a sleek sheath.

Making men salivate isn’t my primary goal.

But feeling fancy and beautiful?

Doesn’t every girl need that now and again?

I love how it feels when I find a dress that fits me right. When I can stand in front of a mirror and see everyday baseball-uniform-wearing Addie transformed into feminine Addie with strong curves and killer collarbones and good boobs and a secret soft underside that I generally stifle when I’m at work.

I grunt and try to get a grip on the slippery fabric again, succeeding only in turning in a circle in the small dressing room and banging my hands on one of the walls, the noise reverberating in the small space.

That high school memory doesn’t dissipate despite my work at visualizing myself in the dress that I wore to the Fireballs championship dinner a few months ago, when I looked absolutely fabulous.

“Hello? Ma’am?”

I didn’t ask the salesclerk her name.

Are they called salesclerks at upscale dress boutiques?

And why is it that while I’m rapidly losing my ability to breathe, I’m more worried about if the employees at dress boutiques are called salesclerks?

“Get it together, Addie,” I mutter to myself.

Bad idea.

Shouldn’t waste breath talking to myself.

The lower half of this dress is wrapped around my chest. The upper half is holding my arms over my head like it’s a straitjacket. Breathing is becoming harder and harder.

I twist.

I turn.

I contort.

I bang into the wall again, harder this time, and my breath whooshes out of me with another grunt.

The dress does not budge.

Now I’m starting to hyperventilate.

Only you, Addie, my oldest brother’s voice chuckles in my head, which is irritating as hell too. If women are allowed to have swagger, then that’s what I have.

Swagger.

Earned swagger.

I don’t get stuck in dresses. I don’t trip and fall into random men while walking to work like some romcom heroine. And I certainly don’t intend to die in this dressing room.

But right now, I’m having flashbacks to hyperventilating during an MRI, and I am not okay.

“Somebody? Help?”

No answer.

None.

Heat floods my cheeks as another memory from high school takes hold.

What are you wearing? Is that a dress? Since when do you even know what a dress is? And why do you keep looking at Jacob? Oh-Em-Gee! You have a crush on Jacob! Baddie Addie has a crush on Jacob!

Would you look at that?

Apparently when you’re dying of suffocation while trying to wrench yourself out of a formal gown, your last memories are the worst times of your life.

“Not today,” I huff to myself while I twist and contort myself again, trying desperately to get any kind of grip on the fabric. I slap at the wall, looking for one of the hooks. If I can get this dress anchored to something, I can use that to pull it off.

I’m Addie Fucking Bloom.

I eat professional athletes for breakfast. I hold my own with the rest of the coaching staff for the Copper Valley Fireballs professional baseball team. I can bench one-fifty and squat two hundred. I can run a six-minute mile.

And it was a long time ago that I realized it didn’t matter how other people judged me and my natural body shape and my honed athleticism. I get to wear pretty dresses too.

“I. Will. Not. Die. Here. Today,” I basically order myself as I bang around the dressing room.

Bad idea.

Need that oxygen.

And I can’t find a hook.

Why can’t I find the hook?

Also, banging around in here isn’t helping the oxygen situation.

“Ma’am?” I call once more. “Help. Please—help—me!”

For all that I can lift in the weight room, I can’t get myself out of a stupid dress.

I can’t rip it. I can’t shimmy out of it. I can’t pull it. I can’t tug it.

I’m stuck.

And I’m going to die.

Right here.

I fling myself at the door, my groan of frustration getting higher pitched than anything I let myself express when I’m at work.

Where the hell is the sales associate?ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

This is one of those places that’s supposed to have the best support staff.

“You should go to 118 Willowstone,” Cooper Rock said to me this morning when I ran into him at Fireballs headquarters. And no, that’s not the address. That’s what the boutique is actually called. “Waverly says it’s really great for personal attention. She shops there too.”

My first mistake today was taking advice from Cooper Rock.

My second mistake was taking advice from Cooper when it involves his wife, who’s an amazing person that I feel comfortable calling a friend, but also one of the biggest international pop stars to ever exist.

My third mistake was forgetting that sheaths and I will never be friends no matter how much I like wearing dresses.

“Let. Me. Out!” I shriek.

Am I hyperventilating? Are there dots dancing in my vision?

I do believe there are.

Where the hell is the sales person?

It’s time. It’s time to get out of here and go searching for help. I bang into the door with a crash that echoes through the fitting room.

No, that’s another crash. Then a bigger crash, and then a man’s voice.

“Let her go!” he barks as the door hits me right back, sending me flying backward against the opposite wall. “You don’t get to assault a woman in—oh. You’re alone.”

I can’t see him, but he’s definitely a man. Vaguely familiar voice.

Familiar enough that goosebumps break out on my arms.

Or possibly everything feels familiar when you’re about to die.

“Saleslady,” I gasp.

There’s a very, very long pause.

Or possibly it feels that way because every breath is getting harder.

“Where is she?” I ask.

“I—I don’t know. I’ve been looking for her too.”

Mother. Fucking. Fucker. “Get. Me. Out. Of. This.”

Morphing into Addie-in-Charge mode and issuing orders is second nature.

It’s what I had to do for years to survive coaching professional male athletes alongside professional male coaches all day long.

Give no quarter. Do not smile. Don’t let them think you’re weak.

I’ve loosened up after five and a half seasons with the Copper Valley Fireballs, but lately, I’ve been getting home just as exhausted as I was my first year here.

“You want me to go look for her again?” the man says.

That voice.

That voice.

It feels like a lifeline and an anchor, but also like danger. There’s something in the gruff way he’s speaking that’s lifting the fine hairs on the back of my neck.

“No.” I’m panting. Dammit. I can’t draw a full breath. And I’m not wasting it asking him to find out where she is when she’s clearly not close enough to hear me calling for help. “Just…get…me out.”

Modesty doesn’t exist inside locker rooms, so there’s zero chance in hell modesty will be the reason I die.

I want to get out of this dress.

I bend over so my arms are in the direction of his voice. “Tug,” I say. “For the love of championship rings, please tug me out of this.”

“Fuck me,” he mutters.

I tell myself his fuck me isn’t about the fact that a woman in granny panties with a dress trapping her arms and upper body wants him to help her. I try to peer at him, but actual pinprick dots of light dance in my vision and everything’s dark inside the dress.

“Hope you’re…strong,” I add.

He makes a noise I can’t interpret but that vaguely reminds me of a movie I watched recently with a cranky billionaire hero who catches a strange woman waxing her beaver in one of his many mansions.

“Please…get me…the fuck…out…of this thing,” I repeat, having to draw a breath between practically every other word.

I’m losing my no-nonsense edge and veering into panic territory. Next step is crashing out of the shop and onto the sidewalk to see if any random passers-by will help me out of this. Modesty might not exist in my world, but going out onto the street in only granny panties and a straightjacket dress is a bit far.

Plus, that’s the sort of thing that gets you fired.

But if my choices are getting fired or death, I will have to choose getting fired.

He blows out a massive, audible breath. “Yeah. Fine. Of course, I mean. Yeah, I can…tug here, right?”

I feel him grip the dress, and I almost tear up in relief. Which also doesn’t happen often. Generally only when my fellow coaches tear up as we either win the whole damn championship or are eliminated from the playoffs. Or when one of my brothers’ wives has another baby, which I only cry about in private. And those are tears of joy.

“Yes,” I say. “Right there. Hold it and don’t move. I can do the rest.”

I cross my fingers that he’s strong enough for this, and then I heave myself backward.

While half bent over.

Something twinges in my lower back and there’s a subtle rrrrrrriippppp noise from the dress, but I don’t care.

It’s working.

He grunts.

I grunt.

My arm gets stuck weirdly and I have to contort my upper body even more, but I twist and snort and groan and don’t care how unladylike I sound.

“Thing’s on really tight,” Mr. Cranky mutters.

“It’s not—built—for girl guns.” I’m panting and wiggling and it’s coming off.

It’s coming off!

Today is not the day I die.

I try to make my shoulders as small as humanly possible. Think tiny thoughts, Addie. Think tiny thoughts.

Right.

Tiny and I will never be acquainted.

I like my body. I’m strong. I’m fast. I’m capable.

And I will never be the kind of woman who should set foot in any dress shop except my normal boutique back home in Minnesota, where Mrs. Gerardi understands my body shape and has helped me with every dress I’ve ever bought.

Or I should acknowledge that I’ll once again wear the same dress I’ve worn for every other formal event since I arrived in this city just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Virginia.

Yes, it’s fabulous, but I wanted something new for the auction.

Something different.

A girl deserves more than one dress that makes her feel like a queen, doesn’t she?

“Does that hurt?” the dude asks, still gruff. “This looks like it hurts.”

“I’m…fine.”

I heave one last time with a massive shimmy, pulling one arm free, but also pulling something in my upper arm that makes me yelp.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Not again.

I drop to my knees, barely registering that I’m gasping for breath, free of the dress, as pain radiates through my shoulder.

This is not a good day.

This is not a good day at all.

And that’s before the guy squats in front of me, his grim face coming into focus through the dots in my vision. “Thought that sounded like you.”

Fuck.

Me.

Fuck me upside down and sideways and over a barrel and inside a fish tank.

No.

No no no no no.

I hope he’s strong.

Of course he’s strong.

He’s Duncan Lavoie. The curly-brown-haired, bright-green-eyed, smiling-at-everyone-but-me goddamn captain of Copper Valley’s hockey team.

It feels like three lifetimes ago that our friends-with-benefits situation went sour. But with him squatting in front of me, grim-faced, while I suck air into my lungs and cradle my left arm, the slash to my heart feels brand new.

“Thank you for your assistance,” I say as I realize I’m flashing him.

My boobs are hanging out.

My boobs and my white granny panties.

“Shoulder dislocated again?” His voice has a dead feel to it, like he doesn’t want to be using it but he has to because he’s Duncan fucking Lavoie. If there’s a problem in a five-mile radius, he thinks it’s his to solve, no matter how competent the people with the problem might be at solving it themselves.

“No,” I lie.

My shoulder is absolutely dislocated.

I need to get to the ballpark. Today’s a rare summer day off—no baseball game—but the medical staff will still be in working with the players on the injured list. They can handle me too.

But I need to get dressed first.

And call a ride.

And figure out how to pay for the dress that definitely ripped while I was taking it off.

“Looks dislocated,” Duncan says.

He’d know.

Professional athletes see a lot of injuries.

Plus, he was there the last time my shoulder dislocated.

It’s the whole damn reason we called it quits on our secret fling.

I drop back against the mirrored wall, still cradling my dangling left arm and trying to convince myself it’s just a little strained muscle when I know that’s not the case at all.

Go get a new dress for the charity auction, Addie, I said to myself this morning. You have the whole day off to be a girl.

“What are you doing here?” I’m stalling while I catch my breath and contemplate the likelihood that I can get dressed on my own.

“Picking up a dress for my niece. Can you put your shoulder back in place, or do I need to get you to a doctor?”

“I’ve got this.”

He snorts.

I actively ignore him and order myself to quit feeling the pain in my left shoulder. To not remember how long it’ll take before I can use my arm fully again. To not wonder how difficult my job will be one-armed for the next few weeks. To not think about how I’ll be interviewing for the manager position with my arm in a sling.

Dammit.

I can’t put this back in place myself.

Correction: I know that I shouldn’t put this back in place myself.

I tried the first time it happened.

It didn’t go well.

And he knows that because I told him so on our way to the hospital the last time it happened.

Heat and hurt and guilt that I cannot convince myself I shouldn’t feel gather in my chest.

I liked him.

I liked him more than I knew was safe. More than I knew was healthy for me.

I knew better than to like him as much as I did.

He did me a favor when he got mad after I refused his suggestion that we move in together so he could take care of me. He didn’t like that I didn’t want to define what we were and that I still didn’t want anyone I worked with to know we were hanging out, so he left my apartment telling me if I was so damn determined to do everything on my own, then fine, I could do everything without him.

Unfortunately, that favor came with a very sharp reminder that I’m not built for relationships, and all they do is cause pain.

Duncan grabs my pile of clothes off the small bench in the corner of the room. “You want your bra or not?”

“You can send in the sales associate.”

“If I could’ve found any sales person to send in, I wouldn’t have come in here myself to stop someone from beating up a woman in the dressing room.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Those green eyes snap to mine.

If I were at work and he was one of my players, I’d stare right back at him until he blinked.

But I’m not at work.

My lungs are still working to catch up on all of the air I missed while I was stuck in the dress on top of how someone has now also ripped a scab off of my heart.

My arm hangs uselessly at my side.

And seeing Duncan again hurts, dammit.

I duck my head and squeeze my eyes shut, and then I swallow the dregs that are left of my pride. “Yes, I’d like my bra, please.”

I don’t know what I did to today to make it hate me, but it was clearly something.

As soon as I figure out what, I’m never doing it again.