Chapter 35 Zane
ZANE
Ispent the return flight from Boston trapped in a whirlwind of thoughts. What to tell Jakob, what not to tell Jakob. My boyfriend consumed my every thought while my teammates carried on like the hooligans that they were.
Maybe I should say nothing at all, I thought. Doing zilch had served me just fine up until now. But I’m a realist, not a dreamer. The laws of common sense say you can’t keep up that charade forever. We could pretend the game didn’t matter when in truth it meant everything.
When we reached Buffalo, I headed straight to Jakob’s place and, you know…
Look, we’d both exercised a crazy level of restraint lately and had to let loose sometime. Besides, it allowed me to work off the nervous tension that’d mounted during the flight.
After, we ordered a pizza from La Nova, despite knowing that neither of us needed anything so heavy in our stomachs.
I watched my boyfriend from the corner of my eye, unable to deny how insanely sexy he looked just sitting there, for God’s sake.
Even when devouring a slice of pizza, Jakob Martin looked like a god.
The sex we’d just had couldn’t quench the fire for him that burned within me.
But I couldn’t let myself keep thinking that way.
I needed to focus on the task at hand, which was beating the Larkin Lions in the championship game…
which meant beating Jakob Martin, sex god extraordinaire.
“Jakob?” I asked.
My boyfriend kept his eyes glued to the television on which we were streaming Who’s the Boss?. He acted like I wasn’t even in the room.
“Jakob?”
Nothing. Just the sounds of Tony Danza paired with the disgusting noises Jakob made when he ate.
I didn’t have to put up with this, you know. I might’ve made some concession to that lunkhead in the bedroom, but I meant to stay in control of everything else, thank you very much.
I reached over and pinched Jakob’s nipple, giving it a good, hard twist. My boyfriend scrambled out of his seat, nearly dropping his pizza slice on the floor, before punching my arm.
“That get your attention?” I asked.
“What the hell did you do that for?”
“What do you think? If you’d answered the first time, I wouldn’t have had to do that.”
My boyfriend scowled at me like I’d committed an act of treason. Then he fell back onto the couch as if finally ready to hear me out.
“We’ve really got to talk.”
“About what?”
My hands lunged forth, ready to strangle him, greasy fingers be damned. Worse than that, I felt seriously stupid. Like, had I spent months fucking someone this dense?
“The big win,” I said. “We’re going to the championship game. The Riptides, I mean.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Silence settled over us. I waited for him to congratulate me on my accomplishment, but he didn’t. Fair, I guess, considering I hadn’t showered him with praise over the Lions’ advancing to the big game.
“I think this is something we need to talk about,” I said.
He set the pizza slice down. God, I hoped that meant he was ready to listen.
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about hockey,” he said. “I mean, like, at all.”
“I still don’t. That rule was mostly for when we—”
“When we had next to no chance of facing one another in the championship game?”
“That’s right.”
I felt sort of stupid but shouldn’t have. Low chances don’t equate to zero possibility, I understood. My luck was just bad enough that the worst possible scenario would actually come to pass.
“You should cut me some slack,” I said. “I didn’t see this coming.”
“What do you mean you didn’t see it coming? How could you not?”
“Well, I didn’t honestly expect you guys to make it to the game.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Honestly, I expected you guys to get bounced after the first round.”
Jakob sputtered loudly enough to spray me right in the face. I wiped the spittle away from my face and steeled myself for action because I wasn’t done with him.
“What the fuck would make you think something stupid like that?” he asked.
“Well, for one thing, you were lucky that you even made the playoffs.”
“Um, excuse me, but the Riptides only made it in by the hair on your balls.”
“Lovely analogy, Jakob. You should write poetry.”
He rolled his eyes. Despite our history, we hardly ever argued, and he must’ve been missed that I was coming out on top… just like in the bedroom.
“Look, we both knew from the start that playing one another was a possibility,” he said.
“Well, yeah. But I was thinking more that there was only a possibility that we would reach the title game. I wasn’t expecting nearly as much from the Lions—sad but true.”
The remark sounded enough like a joke to me, but I knew damn well that I wasn’t really joking.
Not completely, at least. Not that I ever thought Jakob or the Larkin Lions were the shits or anything.
They had talent and coaching. They had desire and drive.
Even at the worst time, I knew enough to always respect my opponent.
Getting too cocky was a sure way to get beaten.
Then we would be totally fucked.
“Okay,” he said, “so, we’re playing each other. It is what it is. We’ve played each other lots of times, right?”
“Right.”
But it wasn’t really right. Not completely.
We would face off against each other for the hundred thousandth time, but the stakes were now too high to pretend like they didn’t matter.
Before we could just promise to not talk about it.
No friction, no animosity, no competition.
Just fun times with plenty of hot sex. Now, we had to address the elephant in the room.
When I gazed at Jakob, I fell in love all over again. Not that I would admit that to him. Fuck no. I never liked admitting it in the first place, but that didn’t make the facts any less true.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t want to get into this.”
“But you have to. You brought up the topic, didn’t you?”
I rolled my eyes, hating to admit anything. I wanted to escape this but couldn’t find an escape hatch. And wouldn’t you know it, Jakob Martin crossed his arms like he had all day to await a response.
“It’s just that I don’t want there to be any hard feelings when the Riptides win,” I said.
Jakob’s eyes almost bulged right out of the sockets.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second,” he said. “Time out. When the Riptides win?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I know you were dropped on your head when you were young and all, but this is ridiculous. What in the name of Wayne Motherfucking Gretzky would make you think you’ve got a prayer?”
“History m’boy.”
“M’boy? Give me a fucking break. And history? Dude, the Lions have beaten the Riptides more times than you guys have beaten us in the time both of us have been on the rosters.”
“I don’t give a shit. We’ll always beat you guys when it counts the most.”
I can’t lie. I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about there. My competitive nature demanded I say and do whatever necessary in order to stay ahead. I meant to win this argument and didn’t care that there was no referee to raise my hand.
“That’s the problem with you and the primates you call teammates,” he said. “You’re too big for your britches.”
“We’re too big for our—what?”
“Your britches, you dope. It means you’ve got really swelled heads, and I definitely don’t mean the ones in your pants.”
I realized I’d already balled my hands into fists, probably after that dope quip. Now, I’d probably made crescent-shaped wound in my palms with my fingernails.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve talking to me that way, you know that?” I stated.
He half-smiled, which told me he’d been at least partly kidding. My boyfriend was nothing if not a smartass. But this seemed far too serious to screw around.
“Look, you know how much this means to me, don’t you?” he asked.
“Of course I do. I’m a hockey player, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I know, but…”
I wouldn’t get anywhere by basically telling him that my same hopes and dreams were more important than his. And not basically either. I would be presenting them as bigger.
I could predict Jakob’s response. He would say something stupid, maybe worse. Instead of bracing for it, I decided to mow right over him.
“You do realize that, when the Lions win it all, I’ll expect you to kiss my ring.” He displayed his hand as if already bedecked in jewels.
“I will not kiss your ring.”
“It’d beat kissing my ass, wouldn’t it?”
He rolled over half-way, exposing his backside, and brought a hand down on one ass cheek.
I nearly choked on the words that threatened to lunge out of my mouth and squeezed my fist. Jakob didn’t take me seriously and never would, and his smart mouth landed him on my last nerve.
“I guess you think you’re funny, huh?” I asked.
“I’m fucking hilarious.”
“You won’t be laughing when the Remington Riptides are hoisting the trophy and dumping champagne over each other.”
He snorted like I’d said something funny.
I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. Part of me wanted to keep arguing with him, but I wouldn’t. That would be so fucking desperate and totally beneath me. Besides, it would be so much more moving when my teammates and I kicked the hell out of the Lions.
Jakob might not have taken me seriously at his place, but he would when we met for all the marbles.