The Penalty Box: A Vancouver Wolves Hockey Romance

by Stone, Odette

  Why had I ever let her out of my sight?

  With her hand in mine, I turned and began to walk off the dance floor. We weaved through couples and I dragged her out into the hallway before looking for the elevators.

  She didn’t say a damn word. She just picked up her skirts in one hand and worked to keep up with me. We rode the elevator in silence, and then I yanked her into my suite and shut the door before finally working up the nerve to face her.

  She stood beside the couch. Her brown eyes were wide on my face and her freckles stood out, looking so sweet I wanted to drop to my knees.

  “I’m a fucking asshole.”

  She shook her head. “I understand what is going on.”

  I tried again. “I wanted to call you. I wanted to talk. I didn’t know what to say.”

  We stood there staring at each other.

  In a voice so soft, so gentle, she said, “Your mom told me everything.”

  If she had reached forward and stuck a shiv into my heart, I wouldn’t have felt more pain.

  “Charlie.” That was all I could manage.

  “You need to talk to me. You need to tell me what happened so I can understand your fear.”

  I shut my eyes, trying to shut out the images of that night. For years I had buried them. And for the last two weeks, I had done everything I could to block them.

  She held out her hand to me. Like a lifeline. I looked at her, and then I was walking towards her. She led me to the bed, and she crawled onto it, a vision in flowing purple. She tugged my hand, and I let her pull me onto the bed across from her.

  “Tell me about Nadia.” Her voice was so soothing, infused with so much love.

  I swallowed hard. This was it. This is where I needed to face everything I had been running away from my entire life. Moments passed before I managed to say, “I loved her.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she nodded.

  I looked down at Charlie’s hand, so tiny in my own. “I wanted to go out to the pond that day. My dad had the gardener clear off the snow, and I used to spend hours out there, skating.”

  She squeezed my hand.

  “Nadia had come out with me. When she fell, she laughed. And I fell beside her and we stared up at the sky. Big dark clouds were rolling in. A storm was coming. She looked at me and asked me if I was ready to come inside.”

  I looked up and almost drowned in the love in Charlie’s eyes.

  I pressed my lips together, because they were trembling. “I thought I was having a nightmare when I woke up to her screams. I didn’t know that I was waking up into my nightmare.” I took a deep breath. “The lights weren’t working. The phone was dead. She was crying. I was crying, and there was already so much blood.”

  I felt wetness on my cheeks, but the floodgates were open. I couldn’t seem to stop the words from coming. “Our nearest neighbor was over a half a mile away. I wanted to go, to run there, but she begged me to stay. She told me the baby was stuck, and she needed my help. She told me to be brave, that we could do this together. She promised that when it was over, I’d have a new baby sister or brother.”

  I took a deep breath. “I did everything she told me to. Everything. I got the towel. I disinfected things with boiling water. She needed me to try to turn the baby. So I pressed on her stomach like she asked until she screamed. I was crying. She was screaming, and the blood…”

  My voice broke. I took a deep breath and met Charlie’s eyes.

  “There was so much blood. When my little brother was born, he wasn’t breathing. Nadia was so weak. She told me to breathe into his mouth. I did everything she asked, but he never took a breath. Not a single one.”

  Tears streamed down Charlie’s face.

  “When I turned to tell Nadia that her baby had died, she was just lying there. Staring at the ceiling. She wasn’t breathing either.”

  “Mica,” Charlie spoke my name with so much pain and understanding, I almost lost it.

  I bent over Charlie’s hand, bringing it to my mouth. I held my breath, barely keeping it together. I lifted my eyes to hers. “I was alone with them for hours. I knew I should go find someone, but I didn’t want to leave either of them alone. So, I held my baby brother for hours until the day staff showed up. He was so sweet, so perfect looking, with these tiny little hands and feet.” I swallowed hard. “Nadia would have loved him. She loved me, and she would have loved him too.”

  Charlie’s shoulders were shaking with emotion.

  I needed to tell her the worst part of the story. “It was my fault. All of that was my fault. I wanted to skate that day. I never did anything when she fell. I never ran for help. I should have gone for help.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “No, Mica. You don’t believe that.”

  I did believe that. I had spent a lifetime thinking of all the things I should have done differently. “I might have been able to save her. When she fell on the ice, that was the moment I could have saved her life.”

  She kneeled in front of me and put my face between her two hands. “Mica, you were ten. You were a little kid. How could you have known that? She didn’t even know something was wrong.”

  My brain knew that, but my aching heart had never believed it. I took a shuddery breath. “I promised myself that night that I would never do that to a woman. I would never have a child. I would never go through that again. When you told me you were pregnant, I got so scared. Fuck, I’m beyond scared, Charlie. I’m fucking terrified. I did this to you.”

  She gave me a watery smile. “We did this together.”

  I voiced my darkest fear. “What if something happens to you?”

  “I’m safe. Nothing will happen to me.”

  I worked to speak through all the emotion, all the fear, all my love. “I never meant to do this to you. That night, I was drunk and so damn cocky. This is my fault.”

  She wrapped her arms around my neck. I put my arms around her, yanking her to me. I buried my face into her neck and felt so much relief to feel her fingers stroking my hair, my neck.

  Her arms felt so good, if she held me for eternity, it wouldn’t be long enough.

  “Thank you for sharing with me,” she whispered against my neck. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  My fear was real, but somehow, she had absorbed some of my pain, relieving some of the pressure around my heart. “I’m scared, Charlie. I’m really scared.”

  “I know.”

  She pressed her lips to mine.

  I spoke against her mouth. “I love you, Charlie.”

  “I know.”

  “Forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  She leaned back and took my hand to press it to her belly. She looked up at me, looking so vulnerable. “So you’ll do this with me?”

  I didn’t have a choice. This woman was my life. She owned my heart. She was my everything. The last two weeks had just proven that life was meaningless without her in it.

  “I will be a fucking wreck, but I’m going to be with you every step of the way,” I promised.

  She lifted one hand to wipe the tears from my cheeks. “It will be okay. We have the best doctors in the world here. The best medical system. I’m strong and healthy. And nothing will happen.”

  You don’t know that. “What if something does?”

  “We’ll deal with it. Just like we deal with everything.”

  Chapter 27

  CHARLIE

  I lay beside Mica and watched him sleep. He looked so peaceful, so calm, it belied everything we had endured in the last few weeks.

  That night after Mica had shared, we packed up his stuff together, and without speaking I brought him home. The dogs were ecstatic to see him. The feeling was mutual. We crawled into bed together and we talked.

  He opened up, telling me happier memories about Nadia and his childhood. We talked about my job and hockey. We didn’t talk about the baby.

  One day at a time.

  I knew he was afraid, b
ut he was facing his fears with courage. One night he called his mom and talked to her for hours out on the deck. When he came back inside his eyes were red, but he seemed more at peace.

  I tried to hide everything pregnancy-related from him, working to not freak him out, but one morning he came into the bathroom where I was silently hanging my head over the toilet.

  “Jesus.” He kneeled down beside me. He gathered up my hair and rubbed my back while I barfed. Then he crouched in front of me and pressed a cold compress to my face.

  “Thank you.” I sat on the floor, looking up at him.

  “Is it always that bad?”

  “Not always. Some mornings are better than others.”

  That night, when I came home from work, there was a pile of saltine crackers, ginger ale, hard lemon candies and an array of herbal teas sitting on the island.

  Mica was doing everything possible to keep me safe. He went on walks with me. He went grocery shopping with me and carried the bags. One night I found him researching portable fetal heart rate dopplers. Another day he came home with a portable blood pressure monitor. He bought me a smartwatch so he could track my heart rate on his phone. When he left for away games, Zoey would show up the night of, suitcase and cat cage in hand.

  “You don’t have to keep on doing this.” I opened the door wide for her and Ikea. “We could just tell him you stayed over.”

  She reached up and gave me a hard hug. “He thought you’d say that, and he made me promise we wouldn’t do that.”

  “Well, what about your life? You can’t keep babysitting me.”

  She gave me an impish smile. “You have better food at your house.”

  “Is that your party line?”

  “When my life went to shit and nothing was right, it was Mica showing up at my place, helping me build furniture and checking me for a pulse. I would do anything for him. Ryan would too.”

  That made me misty-eyed.

  So, at the end of the day, I didn’t say a word. The guy was dealing with his fears the best he could, so I didn’t tease him or fight him on any of it. I took all his requests seriously. If he asked me to take my blood pressure every morning, I obliged. If he filled my water bottle for me, I drank the whole damn thing. If he wanted to carry my grocery bag that weighed only two pounds, I let him. He was by my side, and that was all that mattered.

  The only thing Mica refused to do was touch me. Every kiss I tried to deepen, he kept chaste. When I snuggled too close, he eased his hard body away from mine. I tried to entice him by prancing around in lingerie. His eyes tracked my body, and his hard-ons were more than evident, but he would not come near me.

  He hugged me, held my hand, cradled me while I slept, but he was as chaste as a nun when it came to any more baby-making business.

  I knew what was going on. He was afraid of hurting me or the baby. I didn’t want to make him talk about it, because the guy had already been stripped emotionally in the last few weeks. Forcing him to talk about more of his feelings was exactly what he didn’t need.

  What he needed was some hot, intense sex. A lot of it.

  * * *

  I decided to rely on my old friend, vodka. I invited Ryan and Zoey for dinner and I poured a lot of wine. Then, when I served a blueberry cheesecake—because lately, I seemed to love anything cake—I brought out the vodka. Ice cold, a premium brand.

  My sober self enjoyed watching Mica loosen up and relax. He and Ryan told story after story about hockey, each of them getting funnier and more outrageous. When I sent them home in a cab, Zoey’s cheeks were flushed hot pink and Ryan was so shit-faced he could barely walk.

  Mica wrapped his arms around me and kissed my forehead. “Mmm, thank you for tonight. I needed that.”

  That wasn’t all he needed.

  I felt like a villain about to take advantage of my prey. I waited until he was fast asleep, snoring softly beside me, before I slipped out of bed. I changed into a racy teddy made of sheer black lace with a tiny see-through thong designed to showcase the goods, not hide them.

  I kneeled beside him, debating where I wanted to start. I delicately pushed his boxers down and sucked him into my mouth. He moaned.

  His cock grew hard in my mouth and his hips were moving in his sleep. It didn’t take much to make his poor, deprived cock rock hard. I sat up and straddled him, looking down at how perfect he was. Never had I seen such a beautiful man. I stroked him until pre-cum dripped onto my hand.

  He awoke with a start, his eyes wide and on my face. I raised my hips and slowly drew his cock along my apex, pushing aside the flimsy fabric so we could touch sex against sex. He moved so fast, flipping me onto my back and pushing into me with one long thrust.

  I could see his eyes widen as he became more conscious, so I wrapped my legs tight around his waist and tried on my best dirty talk.

  “Your wife needs to be fucked, Mica. I need you so bad.”

  He growled, unable to fight himself, and he thrust into me a few times.

  He shook his head. I could tell he was trying to stop. Trying to get himself under control.

  “My pussy needs your cock so bad. It’s so lonely and horny. And it wants your big crazy cock to do crazy things.”

  I never said I was good at dirty talk.

  But my words seemed to drive him right over the edge. This was no gentle lovemaking, where he treated me like spun glass. This was some good old-fashioned fucking.

  I egged him on. “Harder, faster. I need you to fuck me like you mean it. Pound into me, Mica. I need your cock.”

  And my husband obliged. The guy was built to fuck. It seemed a shame to waste that on tender kisses and slow, shallow thrusts. I came three times. Then he flipped me onto my hands and knees and made me come a fourth time. Only then did he let himself come.

  He shouted in Russian when he came before landing on the bed beside me.

  He was breathing hard. I was breathing harder.

  “We shouldn’t have done that.” His eyes were on my breasts.

  “Wrong. My body needs sex. A lot of sex.”

  And there came that smile. The one that curled my toes.

  * * *

  “Charlie, are you ready?” Mica called.

  I stood at the balcony doors. “Sasha won’t come in.”

  He came to stand beside me. “Sasha!”

  Sasha panted. Mica took off after him. Sasha thought it was a big game. Over the hot tub lid, through the hedge, knocking over deck chairs. They had a fast-paced game of chase before Mica conceded defeat.

  “Get the dog treats.”

  “The trainer said we’re just rewarding bad behavior.”

  He was out of breath. “We are, but we’re already late.”

  “We’re failing as parents,” I whispered as we tempted Sasha with a dog cookie.

  He laughed. “Yeah, but look how cute he is.”

  It took a lot of cajoling, but we finally got Sasha inside.

  * * *

  We arrived at the rink for the annual kids’ charity skate. I wanted to put on skates, but Mica forbid it. So, I sat on the edge and watched him skate around the ice with all the little kids. As usual, when he moved on skates, I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off him.

  He bent down on one knee and took pictures with the kids. He led them in a long conga line. He skated backward, just out of their reach, and made them chase him.

  A little girl wearing a purple snowsuit valiantly tried to keep up to the group, but despite her best efforts, they were lapping her. In frustration, she sat down on the ice and started to cry.

  I watched with interest as Mica stopped in front of her, kneeling to her level, talking to her quietly. She was explaining something intently to him, pointing around the ice, and he was listening seriously. He said something to her and then she agreed and stood up.

  I watched as he bent down and put his big hands under her arms. He started to skate, pushing her around the ice. When she wobbled, he steadied her. When her feet got tangled up and dr
agged behind her, he lifted her and righted her on her feet. She laughed so hard, you could hear her clear across the ice.

  My heart expanded big in my chest and my hand rested on my belly.

  That’s your daddy out there. He will be the best dad in the world.

  “You’re still hanging in there,” a cool voice said beside me.

  I glanced up at Sabrina. She looked picture-perfect with her red hair in a long swinging ponytail at the top of her head and a puffy white ski jacket.

  I ignored her.

  She leaned down and spoke quietly in my ear. “You’re such a fool. You realize your husband has been fucking around on you for months.”

  “Shut up,” I said, angry at myself for even indulging her.

  She smiled at me. “Not that long after your wedding, he came crawling back to me.”

  “Mica’s faithful.”

  She gave me a knowing little smile. “Is that why he buys me tickets to all his away games? All those little phone calls he makes at night to you? I’m usually sucking on his cock when he talks to you.”

  I didn’t have to listen to this. “You’re so pathetic.”

  I started to walk away, but she grabbed my arm. “He told me how gullible you are, how you fall for all his lines. He said that he can feed you any line and you eat it up, hook, line, and sinker, but he’s tiring of playing house with you.”

  I shook her arm off. “Leave me and my husband alone.”

  “He’s the one who can’t leave me alone. He can’t get enough of fucking me. He told me I’m his little addiction.”

  * * *

  “Did you have fun?” He smiled at me as we walked out.

  “I did. Those kids were adorable.”

  Sabrina, not so much.

  “The little one with the purple snowsuit—she was a cute one, hey?”

  I smiled up at him as he took my hand.

  I imagined him lying on a hotel bed, phone to his ear, asking me about my day while Sabrina worked her mouth over his hard cock.