“Are you kidding me?” I hissed as I attempted to pull the list back from him. “You’re not doing my shopping!” “You go get coffee with this handsome gentleman right this second!”
“You’re a fucking dick,” I spat at him. Sean and Cam were slack-jawed as they watched the exchange. I pushed the cart roughly at a cheeky Nate and wrapped my fingers around Sean’s bulging bicep. “C’mon, let’s get out of here before he pushes us together and starts making kissy noises like he does with his Ken dolls.”
A bark of laughter met my stupid comment, and I grinned at Cam. Sean shook his head and smiled at me before leading us toward the Starbucks at the front of the store. A few moments of awkward silence passed as I reflected on how well I managed to portray myself as a loose-lipped, foul idiot in front of the man.
“I’m not always so brash,” I said quietly as we joined the line of those hoping for a late morning pick-me-up.
Sean turned toward me with a smile and a laugh. “I’ve lived with Cam for five years; he’s foul. And I’m so on-board with a girl that can curse like one of my teammates. It’s hot in that ‘I don’t wanna bang my teammates’ kinda way.”
The flush that rushed up my neck and to my cheeks was uncontrollable. I turned my gaze to the menu board, and then out the window. I was desperate for anything to pull my attention away from the insanely attractive man standing next to me. A muffled chuckle sounded from behind me, and I closed my eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. You’re in over your head, Richmond. How in all levels of fuckery did I manage to catch this man’s interest? I’d hoped he would forget about me if I just didn’t ever text him.
My eyes sprang open at the feeling of his hand pressed lightly between my shoulders. The now familiar heat of all the blood in my body rushing into my chest, neck, and face returned at the sight of the barista staring at me with quirked eyebrows. “Sorry, I was in my own world! I’ll have a grande Veranda blend with two fingers of heavy cream.”
“Uh-uh, I’ve got it,” Sean said just as I began to dig into my purse for my wallet. He didn’t allow me the time to protest. He turned to the barista with a winning smile and asked, “Do you have anything with maple?”
“No, I’m so sorry, sir,” the barista replied with regret tinging her tone.
I wanted to tell her that I got it—the regret she felt at disappointing such an exquisite specimen. It was tough, though, when all I could do was laugh at Sean’s reaction to her words. His shoulders slumped, and his entire body sagged. A whine was evident in his voice when he asked for a large medium roast, and he seemed just a little hesitant to hand over the cash for our coffee.
“I take it Tim Horton’s never let you down quite this badly?” I asked once we settled at a small table in the front corner of the shop. Our position allowed us the vantage point of looking out into the store to see our friends approaching. I sat closest to the door, so I had an easy out if shit got bad.
Laughter racked his body. A wide smile pulled across his face before he shook his head and asked, “We’re already making jokes about me being Canadian, eh?”
The part of me that cared if I hurt his feelings was tiny in comparison to the part of me that was unwilling to let a golden opportunity to crack a bad joke lay by the wayside. “I mean, you’re literally crying over Starbucks not having a maple latte. If I dig far enough into my purse, I might be able to find some Loonies and Toonies to dry your tears with.”
“Okay,” he began, a serious note tinging his voice, “maple is way better than any of that gross shit you Yanks put in your coffee. And y’know that Loonies and Toonies are coins, right?”
“Yeah, I’m a total hoser, right?”
“Hoser?” His tone was dry, and I fought to keep a smile off my face.
“Isn’t that what all you Canucks call us Americans as you’re riding your moose across the frozen tundra?”
“Riding our moose?” My cheeks hurt from the force of holding back my smile.
“I mean, you are Canadian, right?” Sean nodded along with what seemed to be only the tiniest hint of reluctance. “I just assumed you came from a long line of Mounties.”
An unladylike snort exploded from my lips when Sean’s face morphed from slightly confused to downright bewildered. “I’m just fucking with you, man. I know there’s an equally fair chance of your family owning a sick poutine restaurant.”
“Nope.”
“Syrup dispensary?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Chesterfield store?”
“You know what a Chesterfield is?”
“You don’t?” I queried.
“My dad’s an oral surgeon, and Mom sells real estate.”
I heaved a mock sigh. “Well, that’s boring.”
Sean shrugged as he took a sip of coffee. “Yup, we’re just the boring old Tremblays from boring old Unionville. What about your parents?”
I shrugged. “Couldn’t tell ya. I was raised by my Great Aunt Enid.”
I could see the questions behind his eyes; the same questions I refused to answer for most people, including Mason and even Nate in some cases. What happened? Was it a tragedy? How old were you? Did you have teenage parents? What about your siblings? Did your aunt treat you well?
“Any siblings?” I asked quickly, hoping to deflect his mind from places I didn’t want it to go.
“Yeah, a couple of kid brothers: Spencer and Derek. What about you?”
“Nope, only child. How old are your brothers? What do they do?”
“Derek’s 27; he’s married with a couple of kids and works some finance job in the city. He’s fucking miserable. Spence is 20 and doing something with lit at the University of Toronto.”
“Oh yeah? What does he want to do with a degree in literature?” I leaned across the table, totally engaged by the conversation. I always found it interesting to see the differences and dynamics within sibling groups—how fascinating was it that three children from a stable home could grow to love such different things? I yearned for siblings in my formative years—other people that would love me unconditionally and commiserate over our lot in life.
“Fuck if he knows; kid just likes to read. He’s fine, though, because I’m definitely my parents’ biggest disappointment.”
My jaw slackened. I didn’t know what to say. Sean pretty quickly laughed at what I could only imagine was my horrified expression. “I’m just fucking with you. My parents are great. I was scouted my senior year of college, and they were fine with me taking the opportunity instead of finishing college. I thought I wanted to run the family maple farm, but I loved hockey just as much as syrup, y’know? And let me tell you, the only downside to moving to America to play hockey was leaving Bullwinkle, my pet moose, in the care of my Inuit ex-girlfriend.”
I shook my head with a sigh and rolled my eyes. “Touché, Tremblay, touché.”
“What about you; what do you do for a living?”
I couldn’t stave off the grumble in my voice when I replied, “Mostly telling ghost stories at a job I detest.”
His response was cut short by a buxom brunette that walked into Starbucks squealing his name at an octave that should have been outlawed. “Sean, oh my god! I haven’t seen you in ages; how are you!”
“Uh…”
“And who’s this?” She asked with a smile that suggested she was both confused and less than happy to see me with the man. I’m sure we looked like an Adonis figure and his dumpy hanger-on. This woman looked more his speed—size two, massive tits, long brown hair, and a golden tan. I hated her. Immediately.
“Hi, I’m Charlie, and you are?” I asked, an equally false smile spreading across my face.
“Sean, is this your girlfriend?” She asked, pointedly ignoring my introduction. I rolled my eyes as he seemed to come to life next to me.
He shook his head no, almost emphatically, and I fought to keep my groan quiet. “No, she’s just a friend, Cassandra. How have you been?”
He pronounced her name “Cass-ahn-dra” like she was
some kind of fancy bitch, and the heat of visceral hatred spread through my veins. Wherever this conversation was headed was a place that I didn’t intend to explore. I stood abruptly.
“Yeah, this is never going to work. Thanks for the coffee,” I said before stalking off, ignoring his protests behind me.
Chapter 6
— D —
“I’m sorry, can you just explain to me one more time how you convinced her to come over? I thought she’s been ghosting you since Target?”
Sean rolled his eyes and tossed the roll of paper towels back across the bar to me. About a week had passed since he last spoke of Sexy Librarian, and I was silently celebrating. It was definitely immature of me, but I was seriously stoked that she saw straight through his bullshit.
Cam’s head popped up from where he was pulling an old pizza box from under the couch. A wicked grin spread across his lips as he flung the box across the room like a frisbee. Sean laughed as he caught it and headed into the kitchen to snag the beer boxes that littered the floor near the trashcan. “I ran into Emily’s sister after practice a couple of days after the Target incident and got Charlie’s number for him. Lindsey’s as invested in them boning as we are. They’ve been texting hot and heavy ever since.”
“Yeah? I thought she was pretty pissed about your ex-girlfriend,” I said as I moved on from wiping the bar down and toward a pile of disheveled shoes. My jaw clenched. I focused on shoving the tennis shoes into the closet by the door and then said a silent prayer that our jackets would still be wearable the next day when we left for practice.
Sean emerged from the kitchen with two bulging bags of garbage and a smirk. “Nah, she wasn’t pissed, just jealous. I texted her and said sorry that Cassandra was a bitch to her. Then I let her know I wanted to get to know her. She doesn’t have to know that I only want to get to know her carnally.”
I rolled my eyes as he passed and couldn’t stop the internal ass-kicking that I was dropping on myself. If I wasn’t a complete asshat, I wouldn’t be watching my teammate pursuing the only woman that had seriously caught my attention for the first time in a couple of years. I grumbled to myself as I jogged to my room to grab a candle. Regardless of who she was coming to visit, I wasn’t gonna make her deal with an apartment that smelled a little bit like the inside of a jockstrap. I lived there, too, and I didn’t want her to associate that kind of nasty with me.
Sean raced back into the apartment as I was lighting the candle and yelled, “Cam, order a couple of pizzas! She’ll be here within the next half hour or so, and I don’t want to have to wait around for the food—this should be awkward enough as it is. Devon, what the fuck? Why do you have one of those granny-ass candles out here?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I snapped back as I dropped the candle on the bar and moved into the kitchen to start loading dirty dishes into the dishwasher, “because it smells like balls in here? I assumed you wouldn’t want your lady love to know just how gross you actually are.”
“Dude, fuck off,” was his laughing reply as he sprayed the beige couch down with Febreeze and cleared beer bottles and someone’s practice jersey from the coffee table. He disappeared into the darkness of the hallway, and I heard a door slamming at the end of the hall.
Sean appeared once more, a bit less disheveled in clean jeans and a green henley. It looked like he might’ve thrown a little pomade in his hair. I didn’t need Charlie’s maybe-gay friend Nate here to tell me that Sean looked pretty damn good with his scruffy beard and tousled hair. Women fawned over him wherever we went, and I was certain that Charlie wouldn’t be able to focus on anything other than him either. God. Damn. It. I fucked up.
We spent a few more frantic minutes straightening the apartment until the food arrived. Sean dropped the pizzas on the coffee table with some paper plates and napkins while Cam went to the kitchen to grab us some beers. We settled around the TV, clicked it on, and began to drink. Cam bitched about not being able to eat, Sean bitched about being polite, and I rolled my eyes at the toddlers as I watched Will Smith kick some major alien ass on the massive screen.
I may have been a little salty that Sean was the one getting to know her, but I was still curious. “So what do you know about her?”
“Charlie?” He asked, and I nodded. Cam reached for the remote and muted the TV as Sean continued, “she’s from Ohio originally, no siblings. Not sure what happened with her parents, but an aunt raised her.”
Interesting. “She came to Charleston for college. I think she got a degree in history or something boring like that. She has a job doing something for the city, and she really fucking hates it. She doesn’t really have friends outside of Lindsey and that guy Nate we met.”
Made sense, she was kinda an asshole. “Uhm…” he paused to take a deep pull from his beer continuing, “she’s 24 or 25, I think. Her last boyfriend dumped her sometime last year, and she hasn’t dated anyone since. She’s got some self-confidence issues; she seems pretty thirsty for some dick, so this should be real easy for me.”
I was torn between wanting to throttle him and wanting to throttle myself for fucking up whatever small chance I could’ve had with her. “Have you ever gotten down with a thick chick?” My curiosity was morbid. Sean shook his head. “It’s completely different than a real skinny girl. An ass like that and a set of tits to fill your hands with, ungh. A girl like that is going to give you a workout and fuck like a superstar.”
Sean opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by our doorbell ringing. Cam moved to unmute the television, and I got up to answer the door. I pulled the door open and my mouth went dry as I smiled at our guest for the evening. The woman must’ve had an endless supply of blue jeans that made her ass look phenomenal. Her maroon softball tee fit her like a glove, the team logo straining against the pressure of her tits stretching the fabric. She held a six pack of beer under one arm and sneered at me.
“Fucking seriously?” She asked as the sneer devolved into a glare. My dick stirred in my pants, and I briefly wondered when the hell I became such a masochist. “You couldn't have waited to surprise me with your presence inside?”
“Nah,” I started while I held the door open wider, inviting her in with a smile that she damn sure wasn’t returning. “I thought I’d get all of the unpleasantries out of the way quickly tonight.”
Charlie moved further into the apartment, and I allowed myself to follow her slowly enough to catch a solid peek at her ass. She paused somewhere between the threshold of the living room and dining room and examined the apartment. Cam and Sean stared at her with thinly veiled interest, and I moved around her to flop back down on the opposite end of the couch as Sean.
She indicated to the pizza sitting untouched on the table before us and said, “I appreciate that you waited for me, but you really didn’t have to.”
Cam clicked his tongue against his teeth and three sets of eyes fell on him. He glanced at Sean with narrowed eyes before saying, “Sean made us wait. He said something about ‘not being a dickhead’ when I tried to grab a slice earlier. I mean, shit, it’s just sitting there getting cold, right?”
Charlie laughed as Sean ran a hand down his face, momentarily marring his features into a mask of near-ugliness. She began to head confidently in the direction of the kitchen as she said, “I’m going to go put my beer in the fridge. Go ahead and start eating; I won’t be held responsible for cold, gross pizza.”
I fought to keep my groan private when Sean got up to follow her a couple of minutes later.
— C —
My heart hammered in my chest as I entered the kitchen. Could that exchange have been any more awkward? I dropped my six-pack on the counter and began to rustle through the drawer next to the fridge. I needed a beer, and I needed it fast. A throat cleared behind me, and my poor overworked heart jumped to beating quadruple-time in my chest.
“Shit,” I exclaimed as I turned. Sean was leaning against the kitchen counter opposite of me, his arms crossed over his chest.
/> He quirked an eyebrow and asked, “Whatcha looking for?”
I motioned to the beer that sat on the counter. “I don’t have my handy-dandy Swiss Army pocket knife on me, and I didn’t think you would appreciate me opening a beer on your kitchen counter.”
With a wink and a laugh, he said, “You could try it with the counter; it’s been a while since it’s seen some tough love, or you could just use your teeth.”
I turned back toward the drawer and began to rifle again, if nothing else than to at least hide the damn flush that flooded my cheeks at his wink and use of the term “tough love.” Get it together, Richmond, he wasn’t insinuating that he fucks like a superstar on those counters. I forced a small laugh and said, “Nuh-uh, with my luck I’d chip half of my damn teeth in the process.”
I stopped rifling through the drawer when Sean’s hand appeared in my line of sight. I turned in time to see him pulling the beer from the countertop. “In that case, allow me,” he said before bringing the beer bottle to his mouth.
I was vaguely aware of my own mouth dropping at the slight ping the beer cap made when he spat it onto the granite countertop near the sink. Sean held the beer out to me, and I took it with a shake of my head. He resumed his leaning position as I took a quick sip of the beer.
“It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been that impressed by the work of a man’s mouth,” I said, and a half-smile crooked on his lips. A wave of heat rushed to my face. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as he began to chuckle. I took a deep pull from my beer before asking, “Oh God, I really just said that, didn’t I?”
His hands gripped the countertop behind him, and the muscles in his arms tightened as he threw back his head to laugh. I chewed my lip momentarily before raising the bottle again. The last of the beer was washing down my throat by the time Sean calmed down enough to speak, “Oh, it’s going to be fun having you around. C’mon, let’s head to the living room to get this movie started.”
Breakaway: A Hockey Romance Page 6