The Final Move

by Victoria Denault

  It makes me angry, but not as angry as it should. The anger is being diluted by desire. Once again, I want him so badly I can barely stand it—even though he’s clearly itching to get me away from Avery and any other guy I might possibly want to fuck. That, in the past, would make a guy so unattractive to me, but not with Devin.

  The song ends and Avery and I break apart. I take his hand and lead him back to the table. Devin’s narrowed eyes are burning a hole in me but I refuse to even look at him.

  “I think we need some shots!” I announce and head to the bar.

  I’m a foot from the bar when his hand grabs my arm. I don’t even have to turn around to know it’s him. I can tell by the way he feels against my skin. He pulls me off toward the corner of the bar.

  “I slept with Avery, remember?” I snap before he can open his mouth. “I’ve slept with a lot of guys. If that bothers you, then fuck you.”

  He doesn’t even seem bothered by my words. That perturbs me. He should be furious. He should be repulsed. I yank my arm out of his grip.

  “And he’s not the only NHL player,” I announce belligerently, shoving my hair off my shoulders and crossing my arms over my tight, lacy purple top. “When I was living in Los Angeles, I ran into a bunch of Milwaukee Comets at a bar who were in town for a game and I slept with Jude Braddock.”

  “Braddock? That dude’s a total tool.” He rolls his eyes. He doesn’t look angry, just unimpressed with my selection. I glare at him. He stares back with serious eyes. His full lips are straight, not smiling but not frowning, like he doesn’t know how to react yet. God, I love those lips.

  “Are you going to sleep with Westwood again tonight?” he asks point-blank.

  “That’s none of your business,” I snap back, instead of telling him the truth, which is no, I have absolutely no intention of touching Avery ever again. All I want is you, Devin Garrison.

  “Don’t.”

  I sigh and uncross my arms.

  “I’m not going to, but it has nothing to do with you,” I explain swiftly before he can look triumphant. “It’s who I am. I don’t do relationships. Even casual ones. I get what I want and I move on.”

  “Not always,” he counters and takes a step toward me.

  I take a step back and put my hand out to keep him from coming any closer. “What do you want from me, Devin?”

  “I want you to stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop having flings. Don’t move on from ours.” His hazel eyes are leveled on me with such a clear, focused stare that I get goose bumps. “I’m your final move.”

  I suddenly can’t make my lungs work. I can’t take a breath. I feel light-headed and dizzy and angry and confused. He takes another step closer to me despite my hand in front of me trying to block his way. He just simply reaches out and moves it down, out of his way. And then he wraps an arm around my back and pulls me into him so our bodies are flush against each other. It does absolutely nothing to help me regain my composure. In fact, my pulse starts to race even faster and my knees get weak.

  “I have never felt the way I feel with you with anyone else. Not Ashleigh. No one,” he whispers against my ear. “And you’d feel it too if you let yourself. I’m not asking for marriage. I’m just saying—don’t move on.”

  My body goes into full-on panic mode. I push him back, turn and walk away without even looking back. I head directly into the women’s restroom, into a stall and slam the door.

  I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been in there when I hear the bathroom door open and close.

  “Callie?” It’s Leah. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Thanks!” I call back, and it’s too loud and completely strained.

  “Can you come out?”

  I take a deep cleansing breath and open the stall door. She’s leaning against the sinks, her almost white blond hair swept off her face with a side braid. Her eyes are friendly and warm and she’s wearing a bit of a smile. She hands me a glass of water she must have gotten from the bar. I take it and take a sip. My hand is shaking.

  “So I guess this is the first time you’ve been in love,” she says softly and I glare at her. “Don’t get mad at me. It’s not my fault you’re so obvious about it.”

  “I never said I…” I shake my head. “I don’t want to be yet another Garrison victim. No offense.”

  She laughs at that. “Hey, if having a beautiful, smart, funny, talented man love me unconditionally for the rest of my life makes me a victim, then that’s what I am.”

  I take another sip of water. The door to the bathroom opens again and Rose and Jessie slip in. Rose sidles up to the sinks and stands next to Leah, facing me. Jessie leans against the closed restroom door.

  “Look, I fell in love with Cole when I was just sixteen,” Leah tells me. “I didn’t know any better. So I’m not judging.”

  “I’ve been in love with Luc almost as long, but I am judging,” Rose tells me flatly.

  “Thanks a lot,” I snap back at her. “So much for that unconditional love siblings are supposed to show each other.”

  “Shut up.” She rolls her eyes and gives me a half smile. “I love you no matter what happens with Devin. But Callie, I don’t get it. The exact same people in life abandoned us both. I’ve been there too. Jessie has as well. But we never ever thought it meant that all love was evil.”

  “I’m not you,” I say lamely and put the glass of water down beside Leah and look at my reflection in the mirror. I’m a little pale and my eyeliner is a little smudged. I wipe at it carefully with my finger.

  “No, you’re stronger than both of us,” Jessie announces and gives me a small smile. “You’re the one that has always been the strongest. You handled Mom’s death the best. You handled Grandma Lily leaving us the best. You kept us from falling apart when things went sideways with Luc and Jordan.”

  “You know why I’m strong enough to do that?” I question, and before they can answer, I tell them. “Because I don’t let myself get hurt like you do.”

  I catch Jessie’s eye in the mirror. She is staring back at me with an unwavering gaze. She really doesn’t get it. I can tell looking at Rose that she doesn’t either. How can they forget how destroyed they got over Luc and Jordan? How devastated Mom was when Dad took off?

  “How is that so damn easy for you?” I rant and spin to face them. “How can you all just give up everything and just become a part of them and their lives without even blinking?”

  “See, that’s your issue right there,” Leah interrupts with a bright smile and a bit of a jump, like she’s just figured out a cure for cancer or something equally important. “You think falling in love with someone means losing yourself. Giving up who you are for someone else.”

  “Not falling in love. Being in love,” I correct hastily and sip down the rest of the water. “Falling in love feels like jumping out of a plane without a parachute and somehow landing safely and then wanting to do it again the next day.”

  Jessie suddenly gets teary eyed. “So you admit you’re falling in love? With Devin!”

  She hugs me. It’s lopsided and sloppy and so tight she’s just about cutting off my air supply. I untangle myself from her. “Stop putting words in my mouth.”

  “Callie, I haven’t given up any part of me to be with Cole,” Leah assures me. “Cole complements who I am.”

  I say nothing. I just stare at her looking for signs she’s lying. She’s not. Damn her.

  “I’ve only been here forty-eight hours, Callie, but you look like you’re enjoying the life you’ve worked out here with Conner and Devin,” Leah tells me.

  “I do. I love it,” I confess in an embarrassed whisper. “It’s so fun taking care of Conner and cooking for them. I forgot how much I love cooking. I may actually take some courses. I want to learn how to make homemade pasta.”

  “And, by the way, you don’t seem any different. You’re still the same cantankerou
s, blunt freak you always were,” Jessie says and winks at me. “Only now you have this warm smile on your face all the time.”

  “Well, except now. Now you look like you might throw up,” Rose explains, her dark eyes narrowed with concern.

  In a way I guess I can see how it might seem stupid. But then I remember waking up in our tiny San Diego apartment after our parents separated and hearing her sob. Every single night I woke up for that short time between their breakup and our mom dying, I could hear her cry. Love did that to her. Love wrecked her. He never came to see her when she was sick but yet the last time I was allowed to see her, two days before she died, I remember she murmured his name as she floated in and out of consciousness on her pain meds. I never understood it before and it made me angry. But right now I feel like I would murmur Devin’s name if I were on my deathbed.

  “Because what if I fail? What if Devin and I fail?”

  “Please.” Leah smiles brightly and laughs. “Have you not met the Garrison brothers? They fail at nothing.”

  Chapter 45

  Devin

  Are you about to just storm right in there?” Cole asks me cautiously. “Because you look like you might and you don’t need an arrest charge.”

  “I’m not going to storm in there,” I reply calmly. “I just want to talk to her as soon as she gets out. Before Jordan’s shitty captain can get to her.”

  “He’s the best player in the entire NHL,” Jordan mutters and then shrugs as I glare at him. “But let’s just call him Shitty Captain anyway. I’m good with that.”

  “So, like, what the fuck is going on, Dev?!” I glance at Cole quickly. He looks completely pissed off and confused. I realize that, although I finally talked to him about the whole divorce, I never mentioned the Callie stuff to him.

  “Devin and Callie are banging,” Jordan pipes up helpfully as he hands both of us fresh beers and sips his own.

  “You’re kidding, right?!”

  “You saw us kissing.”

  “I know. I just thought she was being Callie.”

  “It wasn’t Truth or Dare, Cole. We’re not fourteen.”

  He gives me the bird. “When did you start sleeping with her?”

  “Long after my marriage fell apart. I promise.”

  “But Callie doesn’t do relationships,” Cole reminds me.

  “See, that’s the problem.” Jordan nods and points at me. “This one here is hell bent on changing that.”

  “Wow…” Cole shakes his head sadly and sips his beer. “You’d have a better chance at winning a wrestling match with a polar bear.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, asshat,” I bark.

  Leah, Rose, Jessie and Callie all emerge from the women’s restroom. I start toward Callie but Jessie cuts me off by standing in front of me and putting a hand on my chest.

  “Give her some space, Dev,” she insists, so I just stand there helplessly and watch her make her way back to the table of NHL players.

  An hour later I can’t stay away from her. I’ve been watching her the entire time. She’s been smiling and chatting with everyone but she looks guarded and tense. Avery is sitting beside her again and his arm is across the back of her chair again. And it’s making me lose my mind again.

  I walk up to the table and stand across from her. Avery looks up at me right away but I ignore him and wait for her to acknowledge my presence. She finally turns her chocolate-brown eyes on me, batting her long, thick eyelashes.

  “I’m going home,” I tell her, trying to sound calm and unaffected, even though inside I’m tense and quite frankly freaking out at the possibility that she’ll sleep with Westwood again just to spite me.

  “Okay. Drive safe.” She turns back to Avery. I lean on the tabletop in front of her.

  “Are you going home with him?” She looks back at me with shock. Avery also looks stunned. Neither of them say anything so I just keep talking. “Because if you go home with him, Callie, then we’re really done. I won’t play those games. And if you come home, you better be coming home to me. Not to my house. Not to my guest room. To me. Those are your two options.”

  I turn to Avery. “If she chooses you, I will fucking wreck you next time we play each other, so sorry in advance.”

  Before anyone can pick their jaws up off the table, I turn and storm out of the bar.

  Chapter 46

  Callie

  Cole and Luc find me pacing on the sidewalk in front of the bar. They both walk right up to me and stand in front of me like a wall while Leah and Rose continue past us.

  “I love you, Callie!” Rose is looping her arm through Leah’s and wandering down the sidewalk back toward the hotel they’re staying at. “Do the right thing!”

  “That’s Devin, by the way!” Leah adds as she waves, blows me a kiss.

  “Did my wife just call my brother the right thing to do?” Cole makes air quotes around the words “right thing” and “do” while making a horrified face.

  “Yeah. Sucker,” Luc jokes back. Cole pretends to shiver in horror and then turns to me and puts his hands on my shoulders to stop my incessant pacing.

  “He told me that if I went home with Avery then we were over,” I explain in a helpless voice.

  Cole nods. “Makes perfect sense.”

  “And then he said that if I don’t go home with Avery and I go back to his house—where I freaking live—then that means I’m coming home to him and a relationship. Like I have to start dating him if I want to sleep tonight.”

  “If you’re dating him, I doubt you’re sleeping tonight,” Luc pipes up with a goofy grin and his eyebrows wiggling.

  “Shut up, French Disaster,” I snap.

  “Wow.” Cole laughs in amazement. “I gotta give you credit, Callie. The brother I thought I knew would be hate-fucking his way through women for years after having his wife rip his heart out. But a few nights with you and he’s not only willing to hurl himself back into a relationship, he’s willing to do it with the most commitment-phobic woman in the history of the universe. You must be something in bed.”

  “If she’s anything like her sister, she totally is,” Luc adds.

  “Shut up, French Disaster!”

  “So what are you going to do?” Cole wants to know.

  “Get a hotel room,” I inform him quietly. “And then quit my job and move back to L.A. and change my phone number. Maybe dye my hair or get plastic surgery. Change my name.”

  Cole laughs and hugs me. “Or maybe you should do something really crazy like start dating a great guy who is crazy about you and makes you happy.”

  “I hate you,” I tell him.

  He lets me go and Luc comes over to hug me. I cuff him upside the head.

  “Ow! What the fuck?!”

  “We live in the same city now and if you hurt my sister, I will be able to do that to you every day for the rest of your life,” I inform him and then hug him as he’s still rubbing his head. “She better not regret moving here. You better be serious about this, Luc Richard.”

  “She’s not just a roommate, Callie.” He shrugs off his winter coat and then lifts the hem of his shirt underneath until his well-defined torso is visible.

  I see the tattoo that he got a couple years ago, except now it’s finished. Before, in the top half of the large, ornate fleur-de-lis was an intricate drawing of four boys playing hockey on the frozen lake in Silver Bay. In the middle were the French words for “More Than My Own Life,” but the inside of the bottom of the tattoo was empty. I once teasingly asked him if he’d decided it hurt too much halfway through. Now it wasn’t empty. There was a flower—a rose—inked in that space and the word Fleur in script at the bottom.

  “That’s about Rose.” I blink and suddenly feel teary. “Fuck, Luc! That’s going to be with you forever.”

  “So will she. That’s my plan at least,” Luc assures me seriously as he puts his coat back on, then gives me a wry smile.

  My mouth hangs open as they both kiss my cheeks and foll
ow their significant others down the street. I stand there alone, leaning against the building for support, and watch the snow begin to fall. I close my eyes and try to take deep, calming breaths. I’m fairly certain almost an hour goes by and I still don’t move.

  People come and go from the bar. No one seems to notice me, until Avery walks out of the bar with Chooch. They both hesitate when they see me.

  “Hey.” Avery smiles. It’s warm, inviting and completely ultimatum-free. He says something quietly to Chooch that I can’t hear and then walks over to me as Chooch walks the other way and starts dialing his phone.

  “So, you and Garrison have something going on?” Avery asks tentatively.

  “Sort of,” I admit. “It’s complicated.”

  “Considering he had a wife a few months ago, I can understand that.” Avery reaches out with both hands and rubs my shoulders soothingly.

  “They broke up before I got involved with him,” I blurt out quickly.

  “I figured,” Avery assures me in his sexy, soothing baritone. “You’re too honest a girl for that nonsense. And Devin is like Cole—he’s too good a guy for that.”

  I nod and almost smile. Devin really is an amazing human being. And he wants me. Me. How the hell did that happen?

  “So are you going to Devin’s house?” he asks me with a sweet, sexy little smirk. “Or are you coming back to my hotel room?”

  Avery doesn’t want me to change. Avery doesn’t want me to be in a relationship. He just wants me for simple, clean, fun sex. Avery is the easy answer.

  Chapter 47

  Devin

  As the clock hits two a.m., I let the realization hit me. She’s not coming. I don’t know if I should punch something or cry. I want to do both. I sit up in bed and grab my cell phone off the bedside table. I want to call her and scream at her. She healed my heart just to fucking break it again. Why the fuck would she do this to me?!

  I close my eyes and bump the back of my head gently, over and over, against the headboard. I’m so angry I spend the next half hour just sitting in bed thinking of all the things I want to scream at her. You’re a coward. You just gave up the best thing that will ever happen to you. I hope you’re happy alone. What the fuck is wrong with you?