Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
T ressy
“Mommy, I’m not sleepy. I wanna go to the pawty.”
“You can barely keep your eyes open.”
The game had ended almost fifteen minutes ago, and Krista stood in a corner outside the locker room, little arms crossed over her chest and the most adorably stubborn expression that nearly made my heart melt.
But my little girl was dead tired after a long day, and I was trying to be a good mom. Krista needed to go to bed. No matter how much I wanted to go to the after party.
My inner bad girl, who was slowly awakening from a self-induced coma, really wanted me to go to the party. That girl hadn’t been out and about for years. She didn’t want me messing things up.
Would it hurt to have a little fun? Just for one night? In a town where no one knew who I was?
Apparently, it would .
“I can so…” loud yawn, “keep my eyes open.”
Except, no matter how hard she tried, Krista’s eyelids kept falling lower and lower.
Looks like that bad girl would need to go back to her coma for now.
“Come on, baby. Let’s get you—” I almost said home then remembered we were nowhere near home, “to bed.”
I picked up Krista, who immediately did her wanna-get-down wiggle. My daughter was normally a good-natured kid, but she could throw a tantrum like a champ, especially when she was tired. I could sense it coming, could feel Krista gathering her remaining strength to begin crying when Raffi walked up to us, seemingly from out of nowhere.
“Hey now, what’s the matter, sweet girl?” Raffi leaned in to speak to Krista, still trying to wriggle out of my arms. “What do you need?”
For a second, I held my breath, wondering if Krista would start to scream bloody murder, and everyone would think my baby was a monster, and they would judge me as a bad mother, and no one would want to be around us.
And then I realized that was my mom’s voice in my subconscious. I thought I’d evicted her from living rent-free in my head years ago.
“I wanna go to the party.”
Krista’s voice was ratcheting up, and I winced, trying to reposition Krista so I didn’t drop her on the floor in front of a gathering crowd that I was sure was staring at us.
“Well, I’m not going to that party, so maybe you and I could have our own.”
“Oh, no, Raffi, you don’t have to?—”
Krista stopped wriggling. “We could?”
I shook my head, looking at Raffi with complete and utter mortification.
“Well, of course, we could, sweetheart. How does you, me, a couch and ‘The Little Mermaid’ sound? That’s always been my favorite.”
“Raffi, I can take her ho—back to the house myself. You don’t have to?—”
Raffi’s smile was directed at both Krista and me. “I can think of nothing I would like more than spending time with Krista.”
She sounded so sincere that I almost caved immediately. But what kind of mom would that make me if I did?
The kind of mom your mom is?
“I really don’t think you want to deal—uh, spend time with her when she’s like this.”
Krista looked at me with slitted eyes and pursed little lips and still looked adorable even if she was about to have a full-blown tantrum.
“Like what?” she asked, though it took a second for me to understand what she was saying. My girl was too smart by half and maybe not as far gone as I’d thought.
I chose my next words carefully. “When you’re tired, sweetheart.”
“But Miss Raffi wants to watch movies and that’s what we do when we’re tired.”
Now Krista sounded like cotton candy wouldn’t melt in her mouth. My lips started to twitch, trying to curve into a smile.
“Hey, Mom, you heading home? Sure you don’t want to come out with us tonight?”
My stomach caved in on itself, and heat made the top of my head tingle. As well as some other places on my body. I turned and looked over my shoulder.
Rowdy stood in the door to the hallway, arms crossed over his broad chest, messy hair still wet and curly (curly!), and wearing a white t-shirt that stretched over that broad chest like a lover after she’d been satisfied twice and was asking for more.
And that smile on his face for his mom made my heart melt. Like seriously, it was just a squishy little ball of goo in my chest .
“You know I haven’t gone to the first-night party for years. Too much noise for me.”
So Raffi really had been going home? Does that mean I’m off the hook?
“I wanna go with Miss Raffi.”
Still, I hesitated. Krista was my daughter. I should be taking care of her. What if?—
Oh, hell, it’s just one night. Let’s go have some fun.
I didn’t honestly know what do here. But obviously, my mouth was working faster than my brain. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Not one bit.” Raffi sounded like it was the absolute truth. “Come on, Krista. Let’s go watch some movies.”
Raffi stretched out her arms, and Krista jumped ship faster than sailors on a sinking boat.
Then my little girl gave me the biggest smile, as if she hadn’t just been about to melt down spectacularly.
“Night, Mommy. Love you.”
Raffi gave me the look every mom knew and understood. It was the “I’ve got this. No worries,” look. And I felt tears begin to well. It’d been so long since it’d been anyone but me and Krista. Sure, I’d hired babysitters when I needed them, and our neighbor at home, Mrs. Santiago, was always there to lend a hand. But most of my friends in New York were single and childless. And kinda miserable most of the time if you asked me. They worked all the time. And if they weren’t working, they were attending parties or gallery openings where they hoped to make business connections. Or they went to off-Broadway shows to support friends who’d managed to get cast.
And with my mom and sister living a continent away, I didn’t have a lot of women I could talk to about being a parent. I’d become one at such a young age, with no one to help. Not even my mom, who’d been too busy managing Tiff’s career. The same way she’d managed mine once upon a time .
I nodded at Raffi, swallowing down the lump in my throat before I could speak.
“Thank you. I…” I didn’t know what else to say.
“No worries, hon. Have fun tonight.” Raffi spoke like it was no big deal, like she was used to caring for stranger’s kids. Then she turned her gaze on her son. “But not too much, Rowdy. I don’t want to have to drag this baby out of bed in the middle of the night to pick you up at the police station.”
Rowdy winced. “Damn, Mom. You make it sound like I was arrested. Hell, I was just there because Dougie thought it’d be hilarious to make you pick us up there.”
“At least you were smart enough not to drive when you’d been drinking. Make sure you make good choices tonight.”
Raffi gave him a look that made Rowdy’s grin widen even more. “I plan to make great choices tonight. Love ya, Mama.”
Shaking her head, Raffi turned back to me. “Have a good time, hon. Enjoy yourself. Krista and I will be just fine. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
I nodded, feeling free in a way I hadn’t in a long time. Not free from a burden, but free to have fun. Bad-girl fun.
“Be good, Krista. Love you.”
“Bye, Mommy. Miss Raffi, can we have more popcorn with the movie?”
“Didn’t you already have some tonight?”
I didn’t hear the rest of Krista’s conversation with Raffi because they moved out of earshot, but my daughter was all smiles now.
“You ready to have some fun?”
Rowdy’s voice was raw meat to that bad girl I’d had to suppress for years. It called to me, seduced me. Made me want to be that girl again. Even if, when I’d been that girl, my life had been heading toward disaster. A disaster I’d narrowly averted.
But I was older and wiser now. And I knew how to control myself .
“Yes, I think I am.”
Rowdy’s smile returned. It’d been missing while he waited for me to respond. But now it spread like wildfire over his face, which had a distinct bruise forming below his left eye.
“Does that hurt?”
His smile turned into a smirk. “Oh, it hurts. But the face, not so much.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but I refused to give him everything he wanted. Because I knew he would want everything. And there were things I couldn’t give him.
“Then I guess maybe you should go home and take care of it.”
I realized I’d crossed my arms over my chest in an exact mimic of him.
“I plan to. Later. First, I’m gonna celebrate our first loss of the season with my teammates.”
Walking up to my side, he held out his hand, which also looked swollen. I hesitated a second before taking it, gently.
“Do you always celebrate the losses?”
He didn’t answer right away, leading me down the hall toward the exit to the parking lot. A few of the other guys began to file out of the locker room now, saying “See you there,” as they passed.
I did a double take when I realized a few of those guys were from the other team.
“Sometimes that’s all you’ve got. In this league, we’ve learned to celebrate everything. Hell, sometimes we celebrate the fact that we made it on the ice without a major incident.”
“What kind of incident?”
“Hey, Rowdy. You buying the first round?”
Rowdy stopped and turned, his smile morphing into the one I recognized as for friends. “Of course. Tressy, this is Brian Fiskers, otherwise known as Mr. Whiskers.”
The player I recognized as the assistant captain of the other team held out a huge, battered hand. The guy was taller than Rowdy, with auburn hair that hung below his shoulders, hazel eyes that nearly disappeared when he smiled and a face that showed a matching bruise to Rowdy’s from the fight they’d gotten into in the second period.
The crowd had loved it, banging on the glass, stomping their feet and egging them on. Both men had looked seriously intent on killing one another as they fought. But then, after the referee broke them up, they each skated around their end of the ice, on their way to the penalty box. The theme to “Titanic” played as the crowd cheered Rowdy and booed Fiskers. And, when Rowdy got to the box, he picked up the championship belt waiting there and made a production of putting it on, to the delight of the crowd. I could honestly say I’d never seen that at a hockey game before.
While Rowdy had been beaming at the crowd, Fiskers had continued to call him out, which the crowd loved even more. And when they left the box after serving their penalties, they knocked gloves on the way to their benches, and the game continued as if nothing had happened.
I shook Fiskers’ hand. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”
He nodded, his gaze meeting mine for a brief second before sliding back to Rowdy. “Same. See you at the bar, later?”
Okay, not a talker.
“Yeah. We’ll see you at the game, right, Tressy?”
My tummy tightened then did a happy little jig. “That sure of yourself, huh?”
His grin slowly disappeared, until just the intensity of his eyes was all I could see.
“Not at all. Just hoping like hell that if I say it enough, it’ll come true.” He paused long enough for me to take a deep breath. “Wanna have some fun?”
Absolutely. Yes. Just…yes.
“What are you offering?”
Beside us, Fiskers huffed out a laugh. “I’m just gonna… Yeah, I’ll see you later. ”
Rowdy’s intense gaze never left mine, making me feel like there was no one else in the room, even though I knew we were gathering a small crowd. Hockey players and a few of the Devils’ Angels had stopped to watch us, not even bothering to pretend they weren’t.
Leaning closer so the crowd couldn’t hear him, making them groan in disappointment, he spoke directly into my ear. “As much fun as you’re willing to let me give you.”
His words weren’t dirty, but my brain immediately translated all those innocent-sounding syllables into “I will make you hot and sweaty and come so many times, you will want me to stop, but I won’t until you pass out from the pleasure.”
When I pulled away, my expression must have given me away because his gaze dropped to my lips, a slow slide that felt like a promise of things to come.
“Is that a guarantee?” I spoke barely above a whisper.
“Absolutely.”
“Then I guess we should get started.”
He waited a beat, staring into my eyes like he could read my mind. Then he winked and took a step back. Any other guy and that move would’ve been cheesy. I would’ve rolled my eyes and written him off. But Rowdy…
“Brace yourself. We don’t party like fancy people in big cities.”
He had no idea how hard I used to party. And how hard it had been to drag myself out of that pit. But when you become a mom at twenty-one, your life isn’t just your own anymore.
“And how do people in big cities party?”
I realized I’d put my hands on my hips and raised my eyebrows. Challenging him. Letting him know I wasn’t going to be a pushover.
Unless he pushes me over a chair and fucks me until I can’t see straight.
I really wanted him to do that .
“Like they’re more worried about how they look than how they feel.”
That was so not what I’d been expecting him to say. But I couldn’t really say he was wrong.
“When we party,” he continued, “we make sure everyone’s having a damn good time.”
Why did everything he said sound like word porn? Like we were alone in a dark room and were about to?—
“Hey! If you two are finished flirting, the rest of us are ready to blow off some steam.”
I don’t know who spoke, but the masculine voice bounced off the concrete walls around us. The next voice belonged to a female.
“Jesus H. Christ, Rebel, shut your damn mouth, or we’ll never get out of here.”
Rowdy held my gaze for another long second, his eyes sparkling with laughter. How did he make them do that? I’d only known the man for a day, but it felt like decades.
I liked him.
I didn’t know if it was the circumstances, or the fact that he wasn’t a city guy, that he had a few rough edges, and I was sick of smooth. Or maybe it was because, for the first time in years, I felt free enough to let go, if only for a little while.
No one knew me here. I could be whoever I wanted to be. Tonight, I wanted to be just a little bit bad.
“Are we done flirting?”
Now his grin was wider than the one he’d had when he’d skated off the ice after the fight.
“Oh, hell, no. We’re just getting started.”
“Then finish it at the damn bar.”
Rebel again, but the crowd gathering behind us added their two cents. Most of which was grumbling about wanting to get a drink .
“I guess we better get out of here before the heathens get even more restless.”
Rowdy nodded, grabbed my hand, then turned to the crowd, which consisted of both hockey teams and both team’s dancers.
“Let’s go have some damn fun.”