Chapter Eleven #2
When we arrived at the hotel, she sat in the lobby while I got in line to check in with the rest of the team, then we made our way to the room. The moment I’d opened the door and she followed me in, I heard her gasp.
I’d expected that reaction, so I ignored her and threw my bag down on the bed, and that was when I heard her mutter something under her breath.
“Is there a problem?”
“What do you mean, is there a problem? Of course, there is a problem. There is only a king-sized bed in here,” she said, throwing her phone down onto the desk and placing her laptop bag on the chair.
“Sorry there, baby girl, I hate to break it to you, but this is a standing reservation when we come into town, and I normally stay alone. I also prefer room when I sleep.”
“Yeah, but you’re not alone this time.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I looked at her, seeing the flush on her cheeks as she looked at the bed and then around the room.
“Maybe the couch is a pull out,” she said, running to check.
“Nope, not a pull-out, and this hotel doesn’t provide cots. So I guess that means you’re sleeping next to me.”
“Colton, we uh, we can’t share a bed,” she said, looking at me.
“Why not? Whose bright idea was this? Certainly not mine. I offered to retire, remember?”
“It wasn’t mine either.”
“Well, I’m going to beg to differ on that. Guess you should have continued your search for your own room because I’m sure that would have given the media something else to talk about.”
She turned away from me and opened her bag, carefully pulling out the neat piles of folded clothing and placing them in the top dresser drawer.
I just shook my head, watching her, and opened my bag, pulling out handfuls of unfolded clothing and shoving them into the other drawer.
When I finished, I zipped up the bag and turned around.
She stood there in front of me, her mouth open and an appalled look on her face.
“What?” I questioned.
“Nothing.”
“No, baby girl, it is something.”
“I told you, stop calling me that, and it’s nothing.”
“You’re irritated because of the way I pack, aren’t you?” I asked, knowing full well it was exactly that.
She turned her back on me, pulling out her perfectly piled undergarments and placing them beside her clothing. “I just cannot understand how you can be like that.”
“Be like what?”
“Look at your drawer, now look at mine.”
“So?”
“What do you mean, so? It’s like you’re twelve. Everything is in a heap. Your clothes are a wrinkled mess.”
“I like things wrinkled. It helps with my unkempt appearance.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You may think I’m ridiculous, but it’s how I like things,” I said, throwing my bag to the floor and laying down on the bed.
I watched as Emma shook her head and continued to unpack her things while muttering under her breath.
“If you have something to say, it would be better if you actually said it out loud. I mean, I don’t want to pry, but obviously you have a problem with me, baby girl.”
“No problem,” she said, grabbing her toiletry bag and heading for the bathroom.
I flipped the TV on and began searching for the sports channel.
She came walking out of the bathroom and went right over to the coffeemaker, quickly ripping open one pouch of coffee and shoving it into the small machine, then opening a bottle of water and dumping it in the back.
Then she plugged it in and waited for it to brew.
I was focused on watching some highlights from the games the team had played last week when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
I glanced over and saw Emma looking a little flustered as she looked around, went to run toward the bathroom, but stopped and started mumbling, “oh no,” more to herself than to me.
“Problem?” I questioned.
“Oh god, oh god, please stop,” she cried, now fiddling with the button on the coffeemaker.
As I watched her in a panic, I saw something start to drip off the tabletop and onto the floor and knew immediately the coffeemaker was leaking.
I’d dealt with these stupid two-cup hotel room coffeemakers enough to know they never worked properly unless the stars aligned.
I ran into the bathroom, grabbed two towels, and then ran back into the room, gently pushing her out of the way.
“Oh my God, I’ve never seen…here, let me…” she said, trying to step in front of me.
“I’ve got it,” I said, pulling the plug from the wall to stop the flow of coffee, and dropped the towels down on the tabletop, soaking up the coffee.
“Colton, please, I got it,” she insisted, trying to grab the towel to help me.
Look, please, you’ve done enough,” I barked, soaking up the coffee with the towels. “If you want to be helpful, get me another towel.”
With her head down, she went into the bathroom and returned with another white towel, holding it out for me to take, which I dropped onto the floor and stepped on it, soaking the coffee that had spilled onto the rug.
The moment I was finished, I took the soiled towel and placed it in the bathroom on the floor and then came out to find Emma sitting at the small table, her face in her hands.
“I’m so sorry,” she cried.
Ignoring her, I walked over to the phone, called room service, and asked for a carafe of coffee to be sent to the room, then I requested some more towels. When I hung up the phone and turned around, she sat there looking at me with tears in her eyes.
“That is why you order coffee from room service. Those stupid little two-cup machines never work,” I barked, a little more harshly than I’d intended.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Being sorry has nothing to do with it. Knowing better does.”
She mumbled under her breath again and looked up at me, fire in her eyes. “You’re the same!” she yelled, causing me to take a step back.
“What are you talking about?” I questioned, frowning as she continued to glare at me.
The silence in the room was almost deafening. Then her phone vibrated against the table, and it was that moment I realized who had been messaging her every single time I’d seen her on her phone this morning. It was the only reason I could think of for her eruption a few moments ago.
His harassing ways weren’t doing her any good, and I’d had enough of it. She knew she was worth far more than that.
I walked over and picked up her phone and brought it over to her. She looked up at me with a questioning look.
“Open the message and tell him to stop messaging you,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Who do you think you are?” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Telling me what to do.”
“Emma, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out this guy is ruining you. This is fucking Heidi Pendalton all over again!” I yelled.
Emma looked like she’d seen a ghost and the shock that lined her eyes almost scared me.
I paused, not knowing where that had fucking come from. I hadn’t thought of Heidi Pendalton in years, or the exact moment I’d met Emma, but as I looked at her, it all came flooding back.
“You remember that?” she gasped.
I said nothing. Instead, I made my way over to the door and pulled it open.
“Where are you going?” she questioned quietly this time and with no anger in her voice.
I needed to get out of this room. I needed a moment to breathe, to focus.
“I forgot, but I have to meet the team at the arena,” I answered, looking back at her to see her grabbing her purse. “Whoa, where do you think you are going?”
“With you.”
“No way, you are going to stay here and get this shit with him under control. The team isn’t paying you to be bullied by your ex-boyfriend.
They are paying you to fix my issues, and that, baby girl, is exactly what you are going to do.
Sit down, figure your shit out, and get to work.
Your coffee should be here within the hour. ”
I opened the door to the room and pulled it shut behind me, leaving her standing in the middle of the room, and made my way down to the lobby.
It was after eleven when the team returned to the hotel. I was going to join Dylan and Knox for some drinks but then remembered my stupid drinking ban, so I said good night and made my way up to the room.
I had hoped Emma would be asleep by now, but when I opened the door, the lights were on, as was the TV, and Emma sat at the small table, papers scattered all over the place.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I questioned, really not in the mood to talk to her right now.
“I told you, I work late.”
“Well, since you’re working late, did you tell that jackoff to back off?” I questioned.
“I’m not answering that, and as for working late, I do most of my best stuff at night.”
“I bet you do,” I muttered, grabbing my boxers from the drawer and heading to the bathroom.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Not a thing,” I muttered.
“Wait, don’t you want to see the article I wrote?” she said, just as I got to the bathroom door.
I stopped, stood still, and glanced at her over my shoulder.
“Baby girl, it’s almost midnight. What I wanted was to have a couple of drinks with the boys and come up here to silence, crawl into bed, maybe watch a little porn, jerk off, and go to sleep.”
I wanted to laugh at the disgusted look as it washed over her face.
“Ugh, seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. Don’t you dare tell me you don’t rub one out occasionally. To be honest, you should probably do it a little more often than you do. You’re so uptight. It would probably help with that and ease a lot of the stress you are carrying,” I said, looking her right in the eyes.
“You know, being a difficult ass isn’t a personality trait,” she said, getting up and shoving a piece of paper into my chest.
Her eyes met mine, and I couldn’t help but smile as I took in the look of disgust on her face once again.
I honestly loved getting under her skin because I knew that the woman she portrayed wasn’t the one she was.
The only glimpse I’d seen of the girl I’d once known was that night in my living room, the night we’d kissed.
“Read it.”
She shoved me out of the way and shut the bathroom door. I glanced down at the paper she’d given me, reading the first few lines, but I immediately stopped when I noticed the mention of the cancer foundation.
How the hell did she know about this? Only a handful of the guys, Pamela and Kent knew about the foundation named after my mother. I stared at the words, all of them blurring together. I could barely tear my eyes from the sheet of paper as she walked back into the room.
“Well, what are your thoughts? I think the interview and photoshoot at the house when we return and the things in the article will really help things. I mean, think about what the Puck-Lit-Love girlies will say when they find out the hockey hero has a soft spot for cancer patients.”
“This isn’t going out. In fact, it’s never going to see the light of day, so I don’t care what the Puck-Lit-Love girlies are going to think,” I barked, ripping the paper into pieces, sprinkling them onto the floor.
She crossed her arms in front of her, and I watched her chest rise and fall as she looked at me.
“That’s mature, rip it up. Do you honestly think I don’t have another copy?”
“Have as many copies as you want. If you publish that article—”
“If I publish the article, what?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her. “I’m sure you want things to get better for you, so I’ll leave?”
I turned away from her, dropping the boxers I’d held in my hands down on the bed.
“What did I do?” she questioned. “I’m simply showing them a side of you—”
I whipped around to find her right behind me. She looked up at me, and I looked down at her.
“Listen, I’m telling you, that is not to be printed. I mean it.”
“I don’t understand. If you’d just allow this side of you—”
“If I’d just allow this side of me what?”
“If you’d just allow people to see the real you—”
“Look, I won’t tell you this again. You can do your best to fix this situation for me, but I’m going to ask you to stay out of my personal private life and keep your mouth closed when it comes to it. Got it?”
“But, Colton, you don’t get it—”
“No, you don’t get it. I’m in the light enough. People don’t need to know every time I take a fucking breath. They don’t need to know about my personal struggles.”
I had no clue what had come over me, but as I stood there looking down into her face, I saw fear in her eyes for the very first time, and that look said it all.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I was just like him, and if that were the case, that meant I was just like my father, because this anger, this attitude I had, was exactly how my father would have reacted.
I slowly backed up, making room between us, and then I grabbed my wallet and my keys.
“Colton, please stay and talk to me. I don’t understand,” she said, taking a step toward me.
“No, Emma,” I said, shaking my head.
“Where are you going to go?”
“I just think that maybe we need some space. Have a good night.”
I pulled the door open and allowed it to slam shut and made my way to the elevator.
I didn’t care what she thought or what her rules were.
There was no way in hell I wanted any of that information getting out, nor did I care if she didn’t want me drinking.
I was going to wind down and enjoy my brothers’ company, and I knew for a fact that the beer was going to go down well tonight.