by Lane, Stacy
A part of me really believes she is my friend, even though I’ve made it seem more as a joke. But I find truth in it mainly because I’ve never been friends with a female before and she beats every exception. I’d be an idiot to not find her attractive in more ways than looks alone. That’s how I picked every woman before, as shallow as it is. Yes, Jo’s beautiful, but she’s only grown more stunning the longer I’ve gotten to know her. She’s opened up to me about her vulnerabilities, and how unsupportive her family can be.
I find idle conversation boring without Jo’s sarcasm.
As soon as my feet hit the ground this morning I scrambled to find a way so it wouldn’t end the second she woke up.
I never expected her to show up at my place. To follow me home to tell me she wanted one night together, and then everything else had to end. I understood better than most. It was a rule of mine to not get too close. I respected her so much more than I already did for her honesty. In my field, it was hard to meet honest people, friends or otherwise. But as the sun rose this morning the knots in my stomach worsened.
Jo would leave soon, and I would have to make myself stay away.
After last night I didn’t know how in the fuck I was going to do that. Jesus that woman rocked me to the core. I could have spent all night exploring her body, ravishing her to the point where she begged me to never stop. I still wanted to do just that.
She’s wrecked me.
The elevator opens and I step out, lips twitching at the lopsided painting in the foyer.
I glance down the hallway leading to my room. There are no sounds of movement. I turn the opposite way, stepping down into my living room and crossing toward the kitchen. Setting our coffees and muffins on the counter, I backtrack to my bedroom.
A smile spreads across my face when I find Jo still passed out in my bed.
If she expects that one night to result in me playing a platonic role this morning, she’s about to find out how far that word is buried in my vocabulary.
I sit at the edge of the bed by her hip. She’s turned on her side, one hand twisted and tucked beneath her cheek. Placing my hands on the bed on each side of her, I lean forward to nuzzle my face in the exposed skin at her neck.
Damn, she smells good. Like fresh cut flowers and sex.
I place soft kisses along her pulse, moving upward to nip at her earlobe. She rustles, though I don’t think she’s aware of anything.
“Stop the tiger,” she mumbles in her sleep.
I press my lips together to suppress laughter but somehow speak. “What’s the tiger doing?”
“In my closet. With my favorite shoes.”
“Naughty tiger,” I mumble with humor.
“So bad.” Her eyebrows furrow.
“Angel,” I whisper into her, kissing the dip between her jaw and neck. “Leave the tiger and wake up.”
“I am up,” she tuts stubbornly.
“Hm.” I trail my mouth down, sucking on her creamy shoulder. Taking one hand, I glide my palm over the silky sheets covering her body, up her hip, dipping in the curve of her waist, and brushing the side of her breast. I use my thumb to swipe over the peddled nipple and then cover it with my mouth.
“He’s got my shoe in his mouth,” she rambles on.
“He’s got something in his mouth, but it ain’t a shoe, babe.” The damp white sheet turns transparent, revealing a delectable pink areola.
Jo moans, arching her back. I bite down and suck hard.
“Agh.” Her body turns open to me, eyelids fluttering. “Brooks?”
“Am I the tiger?” I ask, not stopping the torture on her nipple.
“What?” she responds with confusion.
“The tiger eating your shoes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Her groggy voice grumbles at me.
“So you’re really awake this time,” I smirk. “Good.”
“I was talking in my sleep again?” she breaths heavy with distraction.
“Absolutely adorable.” I lift my head, placing a kiss on the wrinkle between her brows. “Good morning.”
Jo bites down on her lip. “Morning.”
“I have coffee and muffins in the kitchen.”
“You left to get coffee and muffins and I never woke up?”
“Has no one told you how hard you sleep,” I laugh.
“Never.” She sits up after I lean away, holding the sheet to her chest with a firm grip.
“There’s a small coffee shop down the street. They have the best pumpkin spice lattes.”
“You and your pumpkin cravings,” she shakes her head with a smile, eyes dropping to my mouth.
I’m willing to let the coffee go cold if I can sit here and stare at her all morning, although doing a lot more than staring sounds even better. Her long blonde hair is mussed and cascading down her back. The bright green eyes I’ve always admired are more vivid after she wakes up. My insides tug, that feeling growing more familiar but now moving higher up.
“I’ll meet you out there. I need to get dressed,” she says.
“Your clothes are at the end of the bed. I picked them up before I walked down to the cafe.”
“Right,” she nods. “Forgot about that. Were my phone and keys nearby? They were in my pockets and I wasn’t thinking about them when you started pulling my jeans off.”
“I saw keys. No phone.” I move off the bed, standing and searching the floors. When I don’t see it, I walk to my nightstand and pick up my cell to call hers. It rings, I follow the sound and find it beneath my large dresser. “At least it’s not cracked again.”
I shut the door behind me so she can get dressed. A couple minutes later she joins me in the kitchen.
“Wow. This is good,” she says after taking her first sip of the latte.
“Told ya. It’s the best one around.” I open the paper bag, pulling out the four muffins I purchased. “I bought banana, blueberry, and two pumpkins. Wasn’t sure which you’d like. The pumpkin is my favorite, shockingly, so I grabbed two just in case.”
“I like banana with my coffee.” She pulls out the barstool next to where I stand at the island and sits, setting her phone and keys on the counter.
I take a seat next to her, swallowing a gulp of my coffee before saying, “Can I convince you to stay for a while? I have the day off so there’s no rush.”
Jo chews a bite of her muffin, casting her eyes at me and then looking away too quick. “I think it’s best if I just go after this.”
I nod even though I didn’t agree at all. I knew this was the end, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. That realization should have had me pushing her away faster, but it was the exact opposite. I wanted to prolong this as much as possible.
I’ve lived a secured life. Always myself around everybody, nothing changes who I am. But since meeting Jo it’s like I’ve also met a new version of me. A better me. I see the world differently. Colors are brighter, days are longer, conversations have more value.
We’re discussing her walking out my door and never coming back and already I can see the colors fading and the day closing in.
But it’s for the best in the long run. These strange emotions won’t last. And I never want to hurt Jo. I can’t string her along for my personal entertainment if it’s going to cause her pain eventually.
Her phone chimes and we both look down to where it sits between us.
I catch Noah Werner’s name before she picks it up.
Jaw hardening, I set my coffee cup down carefully and ask, “Why’s he texting you?”
She reads the text and then sets her phone back down. Picking a piece of her muffin off, she responds before popping it in her mouth. “I text him last night. Well, Chelsea did but I was right there.”
“My agent got with his so you wouldn’t have to speak with him at all, Jo.”
“Yeah, but that did me no good. You saw his tweet.”
“So what did you text him?”
“I wanted to know why he didn’t
mention his brother. Why he lied by saying we were old friends.”
“And?”
“He says he did that for his parents. Mason’s death is still pretty fresh for them and he didn’t want to drag his brother’s name into his mess and hurt them.”
I lean on the counter, thumb brushing over my lip, back and forth. “Sounds like decency, except he doesn’t have a decent bone in his body.”
Jo finishes her muffin in silence. I leave mine forgotten on the marble.
“Brooks.” Her soft voice caresses my ear. “Thank you for last night. It sounds really weird to thank someone for sex, but it’s the only right way of saying it in this case. I’ve never…my mind never shuts off. I doubt everything and it’s exhausting and with all that’s going on with Mason, and then my mom making the situation worse, I needed one night to be able to press pause. And whenever you’re around my worries fade.”
God, I want to do more for her than make them fade. I want to take them away altogether.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I nod once, saying nothing.
We walk to the elevator in silence. As the doors retract I speak. “Will I see you around? I hope you keep hanging out at Triplets. Or the games.”
“I’ll be around,” she murmurs. “Chelsea and I are still friends, but I’ll probably pull back from the bar for a little while.”
She steps inside the elevator.
“Guess it was never really your scene,” I smile.
Jo shakes her head slowly. “I only went for one reason.”
I step forward, stretching my arms out on either side of the frames around the elevator. My face inches away from the shutting doors.
“Goodbye, Brooks.”
• • •
We’re on the road for the next five days playing three northern teams. Tonight we played New Jersey and won, but I didn’t feel like celebrating.
Reclining with a pillow propped up behind my back, I sat on the hotel bed in the room I shared with Vic. He was downstairs with the rest of the guys in the lobby bar. Channel-surfing, and starting the second rotation from the lower numbers, my thumb didn’t let up as my cell rang and I reached blindly beside me for my phone.
“Yeah,” I answered with a clipped tone. Scrolling through the channels was sort of therapeutic. I saw a few movies I wouldn’t mind watching, but I just kept going without purpose.
“Am I interrupting something,” Alex retorts, his bored voice seeping into my ear.
“A whole lot of nothing and I’d like to get back to it.”
“What’s got you so cranky?”
I sigh, brushing a hand up and down my face. I toss the remote aside, the mindless action therapy ruined by my brother. “What’s up, Alex?”
“Good game.” He comments the obvious and it puts me on edge more so.
“Is this how it’s going to be next year? I’ll have to hear from you as my brother after hearing from you as the boss?”
“Wow,” he laughs bitterly. “I think I’m gonna hang up now before I fly out there just to knock you down a peg.”
“Sorry,” I grumble.
“Yeah, that sounded real sincere.”
He should be happy he’s getting any emotion out of me even if it’s me being an asshole. The last couple days I’ve been ambling around emotionless. My teammates were starting to notice. I’m always the jokester of the group, stirring up trouble on the ice, and pulling stupid shit like drawing on their faces while they slept on the plane.
“I called to see if you wanted to vent about Noah before you play against him Saturday night. You’re a bruiser on a good day. No one needs you getting suspended if you let any of this new shit get under your skin.”
Noah Werner was the last fucking person I wanted to discuss. Watching his name pop up on Jo’s phone the morning she left had planted infested seeds in my mind. I wondered if she responded to that text. I obsessed over her continuing to text him and becoming friendly with the enemy. I stewed even more when I found out he would be in the net on Saturday and it was our job to study his skills and traits in the video room.
“I have a buddy on the Boston roster,” Alex continues to prattle. “He says the recent hot water Werner’s in is true. He’s been known to brag about it in the past.”
Taking my eyes off the TV, I focus for the first time on what my brother is saying. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alex.”
“Jo hasn’t told you?”
“We’re not…” I stop short, jaw ticking. “I haven’t talked to Jo lately.”
Alex pauses and it puts me on edge. “An old girlfriend came forward after she saw the picture with Jo. There are no allegations, she’s not trying to sue anybody, she just went on social media and stirred the pot.”
“Get to the fucking point, Alex.”
I swear I hear his teeth grinding.
“Noah and his brother Mason used to share women—girlfriends. This is coming from one source, but a friend of mine who plays with Werner says he used to brag about him and his brother hooking up with the same woman.”
“And you’re saying Jo is one of them?” I grit out through clenched teeth.
“Absolutely not,” he fires back. “I assumed you had spoken with Jo to see how she’s holding up now that there’s more shit coming out of the woodworks about her ex.”
“I’m not her bestie. Why would I know how she’s holding up.” My attitude stirs the pot for my own shit-storm.
“Something’s happened between you two,” he says like an epiphany.
Swinging my legs off the bed, my head falls into my hand. “Yes, but I don’t want to get into it. Why are you worried I’m going to do something to Werner Saturday?”
“Because there’s a second half to this woman’s story. She dated them a little over a year ago. Planted the seed that she dated one of them for a little while before the second was introduced, and they could have been swapping since the beginning and she would have never known.”
Jo would have been with Mason-Kason around that same time.
They could have been swapping places.
“I’m going to fucking destroy him if they pulled that shit on Jo,” I seethed, standing. Roughly, I run a hand through my wild hair.
“Well fuck,” he mutters. “I wish I would have kept my mouth shut now.”
“I can’t call her Alex. I’m making myself stay away and that’s hard as it is. You have to find out how she is for me. If she thinks both brothers played her.” There’s a desperation in my voice that shocks me. I need to hear she’s doing okay. I feel like I’m partly to blame for all of this mess. If I stayed away, she likely wouldn’t have come around the bar so much and never met Noah. She could have blissfully stayed unaware of the crap her ex did behind her back before he died. “Remember that smug look from Noah that night at Triplets? What if that comment was meant as a veiled indication that he knew just how lovely she is. He said luckily his brother’s secrets were dead and buried.”
I paced the room like a caged lion.
“Brooks, why are staying away from her? What happened between you two?”
“It’s all fucked up, man. I slept with her and I can’t get her off my fucking mind,” the truth rushes out. “She knows I’m not a long-term guy so she pulled back. I never want to her hurt, Alex. She made the decision and I had to let her. For the both of us. She has more willpower than I do.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you shouldn’t let her pull away at all? Jesus, Brooks, you’re not a long-term guy because you’ve never met the right woman. You’ve never tried having a relationship so how would you know you can’t do it.”
“I’m not like you, Alex. I don’t want the wife and kids one day. I don’t live for the future. I live for the now.”
“Jo knows this?”
“Yes. That’s why she ended it. She wanted out before more feelings got involved.”
“Sounds to me like yours are already involved.”
“Whatever, bro.”
It’s not like that. It didn’t get that far.
“If you live for the now, then why did you let the one thing that was bringing you happiness go?” I open my mouth to answer, but he keeps going. “You’re a chaser, Brooks—dreams, career, a good time. If it’s not about the future, then I think you not chasing Jo is more about your fear of falling for her too. She’s more than another carnal desire. You two had chemistry, and that’s not going to go away just because you think you got her out of your system.”
“I’m hanging up. I need a fucking a drink after talking to you.”
Alex chuckles. “I’ll see if I can find anything out about Jo after this latest crap.”
I nod, even though he can’t see it. “I’ll ask Vic to have Chelsea check on her when he gets back.”
“Where is he at?” Alex asks.
Not even the GM yet and he’s already checking on us.
“Lobby bar.”
“This late?”
“Am I talking to my brother or the future boss?” I grumble.
“Never mind. Don’t drink too much.”
“You can’t tell me what to do yet.” I smile, my cheek muscles confused by this sudden action. Leave it to my brothers to know how to get me out of a funk.
I check the clock, finding it after one in the morning. Most of us guys sleep on the plane, but should all be in our rooms by now, which is why it’s odd Vic hasn’t returned.
Alex knew it too, but I have a duty to protect my teammates also.
So I lay back down on the bed after getting a drink from the mini-bar, and wait for Vic in the pissy silence of my room.
NINETEEN
Jo
It’s Chelsea’s last weekend in town before she flies home to Vancouver for a month. Vic is on the road for an extended trip of away games, and she wanted to hang out with everyone one last time this year.
She’s one of those cheesy people who jokes “See ya next year!” on December 31st and literally sees you the next day. Luckily, she’s pretty and a lot of fun. I won’t hold it against her.
Hosting a get-together at her house, because she’s also one of those people who looks for any reason to throw a party, a good amount of us was here. A few WAGs, including the two moms, Kate and Mila, I liked a lot. Taytum and Nick were here too.