Chapter 3: The Beast
1165 Words
Sebastien's POV
As the terrible snowstorm trapped scared travelers out in the cold, I was trapped inside my own head.
They were calling me The Beast again. Same old song. I figured people who have moved on from that name by now, but the media loves a monster story too much to ever let it go. And I was the best monster they'd ever had.
I held myself up on my hands and toes on the cold floor of my fancy room in my hotel with sweat dripping into my eyes and stinging them. The cold didn't bother me. The thoughts did. My muscles burned. My arms trembled, but I locked my elbows anyway because the burn in my muscles was the only thing that shut my brain up. It always has been.
"Forty-eight. Forty-nine."
Bzzzt. Bzzzt. My phone suddenly shook and rattled on the floor. Again. BZZZT. Ugh. Of course. It wasn't the first time tonight and I let it go to voicemail. Not tonight, I wasn't ready for that call. I pushed the phone away with my fingertips like it was poison. I just couldn't handle one more person telling me what to do.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac hotel, a bad storm was tearing through Quebec City. Snow buried the streets, the airport closed and I had nowhere else to go. Story of my life.
"Fifty. Hell." I fell while I was gasping for air.
I grabbed the phone. Three missed calls, it was my agent Arthur doing his usual panic dance. I jabbed the button hard as if it owed me something. CLICK. I tapped the voicemail.
"Seb, uh…look… answer the damn phone. I mean, the Team Owners are scared, Seb. The media wants a season-long ban. And, um, it's…it's getting ugly. But worse…Genevieve is using the video. She's talking to the rich owners and saying you're mentally unstable…like, seriously. She's basically trying to make people think you're broken, okay? So she can grab the trust fund."
Those words hit like a punch. My anger flared hot and fast.
Then the game flashed back into my head whether I wanted it to or not. Jax, our rookie, skating down the wing. He was just a kid. Twenty-two years old with bad knees and a whole career ahead of him. I saw myself at that age when I was scared and alone on a field full of people who wanted to break me. The dirty player wasn't trying to get the puck. He was going straight for Jax's bad knees on purpose. It would have ended the kid's career.
No. My body had moved before my brain even caught up. The horrible crack of my helmet hitting his jaw. I didn't just hit the dirty player, I made a point. I meant every second of it. And I'd do it again and again if I had the chance. I stood over the dirty player and whispered, “No. Don't. Don't touch him.”
But the cameras didn't catch the risk to Jax. They never catch the reason. Only the reaction. They only caught me, big, heavy, and completely out of control with anger, looking exactly like the thing everyone already believed I was. The Beast.
Genevieve had been sitting on this moment like a trap, just waiting for me to fall into it since the day my father was gone. Not that my father defended me but she'd been patient. I had to give her that. Twenty years of patience, all aimed at me. Every bad moment I ever had, she saved it up and threw it back at me, stacking up reasons to convince a judge I couldn't be trusted with my own money.
My phone buzzed again. Arthur again. I answered it this time. SWIPE.
"Look, tell Genevieve she can go to hell," I growled. I'd been saving that line since I got to Quebec.
"Seb, listen, she's building a legal case!" Arthur yelled. Then I pinched the bridge of my nose like I could hold my temper in place. "If the team drops you, then, uh, a judge will let her take over everything you own. Okay, you need to sit down somewhere and, you know, smile pretty, and make people think you're not a threat. You need some good PR to fix this,? You want a ban or you want a comeback? All I'm saying is just…just… don't give them more ammo."
PR. A mask. This was exactly another cage. Yeah, yeah. He always wanted me to smile for the cameras.
“No. I'm not…no… going around pretending to be sorry for something I don't regret. You know what, Arthur…" I snapped and hung up with the line going dead immediately.
I walked back and forth across the room. Twelve steps one way. Twelve steps back. I'd counted. They wanted me on my knees saying sorry. But the second I looked soft, Genevieve would move in and take it all.
The hotel room phone rang out no where. "What now?" I snatched it up. "Yeah? What?"
"Mr. St. Croix? I..I’m Gary from staff. So, um, the storm kind of broke the key card system on your floor. We, uh, need you to come down to the lobby, sir, so we can hard-reset your card on the master screen. If you don't come down, the backup power will die and you won't be able to get back into your room."
"Fine. Send someone up, can't you?"
"I…I can't, sir. The system is, well, completely down. You have to come to the front desk."
I slammed the phone down. I didn't want to leave my room because people plus phones meant trouble for me. The lobby was packed with bored and stuck people who all had cameras in their pockets. And nothing better to do. But I mean, if I don’t have access to the keys, I'd be stuck, wouldn't I?
So I pulled on my gray hoodie. I yanked the sleeves down over my wrists as if hiding my hands would hide me. The zipper scraped and snapped shut. It was the one Genevieve always said made me look like…well…like I was up to something, and then I pulled the hood down far enough to cover the scar above my eye.
I got in the elevator. I jabbed the lobby button. Once. Twice. Oh, come on!! Some bright and happy Christmas song was playing like the world had no idea what kind of night I was having. The numbers ticked down. Tick… tick… tick…
3... 2... 1. I watched them as though they were a countdown to something bad.
The doors slid open to the wild and well packed lobby. I looked straight at the floor and started cutting through the crowd. Head down. In and out. Easy. Don't look up. I was just trying to get to the desk and get out with the key card.
But then…well, my eyes landed on her.
- Writer
