Chapter 14 #2
I drop my bag on the chair in the corner of the room, then strip out of my dress shirt and pants, not even bothering to put anything else on. I’m just going to crawl right into bed and fall straight to sleep. I’m in the bathroom when I hear my phone rattle against the table. I ignore it.
It rings again, which sets me on edge. It’s late, and the only people who would call twice in a row are my parents or one of my siblings. But it’s not them.
It’s her .
I snatch the phone up before it can go to voicemail.
“Nessa?”
“Oh, thank gosh! I am so, so sorry, Gavin! I don’t know what I did!” she cries into the phone, a hiccup interrupting the last word.
“Nessa, calm down,” I tell her. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I… I…” Another hiccup. “He’s just floating there! I fed him the brine shrimp exactly like you told me to but he’s just floating and not moving and?—”
“Who is floating there?”
“It’s… I… Well, I don’t know. I can’t tell them apart.”
I grin. The fish. She’s panicking over the fish.
“Is it the big one or the small one?”
“Small. I think.”
“If small, that’s Rufus. The females are bigger. They’re the dominant fish.”
“Really?” She sniffles. “That’s kind of badass.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, it is. Okay, so what exactly is Rufus doing?”
She cries again. “He’s…floating.”
“Where at?”
“Huh?”
“Where in the tank is he floating?”
“Oh. Um, near the bottom. In the back corner. I actually couldn’t find him at first, so that freaked me out, then I saw him and I just… Did I kill him?”
I try not to laugh again, especially with how upset she is. “No, Nessa, you didn’t kill him. He’s sleeping.”
“What!” It comes out more of a screech, and this time I do laugh. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, pretty sure.”
“I can’t live with pretty sure . I’m putting you on video chat so you can see him with your own eyes.”
I hear the beep come through before she even finishes her sentence, and I pull the phone from my ear to hit accept. Her face fills the screen, and my first thought is, Fuck, she’s beautiful. I know it’s been less than forty-eight hours since I saw her, and I have no right to, but I miss her.
“Look!” She flips the camera around to show me my fish. “He’s just floating.”
She’s right. He is just floating. But I’ve had Rufus long enough to know that’s exactly what he looks like when he sleeps. He’s also in his favorite spot, which he likes to go to at night.
“Did I kill him?” she asks again, turning the phone back to her. She chews on her bottom lip, her green eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
“Nope. He’s sleeping, as suspected.”
Her shoulders visibly sag with relief, and she falls against the couch. There’s a blanket behind her that looks suspiciously like the one from my bed, but I don’t question it. I’m too busy looking at her.
“Thank god,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for your game to end so I could call you. Definitely didn’t want to give you that news during intermission.”
Does that mean…
“Were you watching?”
“Hmm?”
“Were you watching?” I repeat. “My game, I mean.”
“Oh.” She bites into her bottom lip again. “Uh, yeah. I was.”
My chest swells with excitement over that.
“That was a nice goal,” she says. “I mean, I don’t really know much about hockey, but it looked nice. The commentator guy said you went top shelf, where Mama hides the peanut butter , whatever the hell that means.”
I’m so used to the different hockey slang that sometimes I forget there’s a whole group of people out there who have no idea what we’re saying half the time.
“It just means I scored in the upper part of the net, kind of like a mom hiding goodies from the kids in an upper cabinet. I guess it’s sort of my signature move. Some hockey players have them, some don’t.”
“Oh. Okay, I guess that makes sense.”
“What do you mean you don’t know much about hockey? Your brother literally plays it professionally for a living.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Reed was already doing his thing when I came along, so it’s not like it’s something I grew up with.
I’ve been to a few of his games, and I suppose I understand the basic rules, but I don’t know all the phrases and sayings and the whosits and whatsits. I didn’t even know who you were.”
Just like that, I’m thinking of our night together again. Her hair fanned out over the bed as I slid inside her, the way she clawed at me and urged me on. How good she felt wrapped around me. Her crying in my arms in the middle of the street, confessing all her fears.
I’m thinking of all of it, and for the first time since I started playing hockey, I wish I weren’t on the road right now. I want to be there with her. Even if we aren’t really anything to each other, I still want that, and I’m not quite sure what to make of that.
She settles into the couch more, getting comfortable, and I do the same, climbing into my bed. She leans closer to the phone, like she’s inspecting my surroundings.
“Where are you?” she asks.
“Anaheim. We’ll have tomorrow off after practice, probably some press stuff, then an optional morning skate and play the next night.”
“What do you do with your time off?”
“It just kind of depends on what I’m feeling that day. Sometimes I’ll hit the links with a few of the boys, sometimes I’ll just chill in my hotel room trying to escape Lawson.”
She laughs. “I’ve only met him a few times, but he seems like a handful.”
“Oh, you have no idea. I honestly don’t know how his girlfriend puts up with him.”
“He has a girlfriend?! No, wait. I knew that. It’s Auden’s sister, right?”
“Yep, her twin, Rory. Which means if they get married, he and Hutch will be family.”
“Oh, I’m sure Reed will love that. Then he’ll have a brother and a sister to hate.”
She says it so flippantly, but I can tell her dynamic with Hutch bothers her. It makes me want to sit down and have a talk with my captain about that, but there are far more important things I need to discuss with him first, like her living in my penthouse, for starters.
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“No, he just thinks I’m evil.” She rolls her eyes. “But whatever. I’m great, and he’s just a grump. His loss.”
“It really is,” I agree, meaning every word.
Her cheeks redden at that, but she covers up her discomfort with a yawn.
“Oh, gosh. Sorry. The ‘I think I killed a fish’ adrenaline must be wearing off. Long day at the bar.”
“And that’s going okay still? Are they treating you right?”
She snorts. “You say that like you’re going to barge in there like some jealous boyfriend and beat them up if they aren’t.”
Her eyes widen as if she realizes what she said, then she shakes her head.
“Sorry. Forget I said that,” she mutters.
“I would.”
“What?”
“I would barge in there like some jealous boyfriend. I’d do anything to make sure you’re treated right because that’s what you deserve.”
She stares into the camera, mouth agape, eyes shining with…
Well, honestly, I’m not even sure what. Surprise?
Appreciation? Who knows, but it still annoys me all the same.
Wanting to protect her shouldn’t be an unusual thing.
It should just be standard. Makes me want to track down her ex for the hundredth time and get rid of the bastard who made her feel like she’s not worthy of that.
It’s clear his cheating did a number on her, and I wish she could see it wasn’t her fault.
“It must be late there,” she says after a while. I want to point out that we’re on the same coast, therefore in the same time zone, but I don’t. She knows. This is just her excuse to go, and I let her use it.
“Right, and I have practice in the morning.”
“Right,” she echoes. “Well, good night, Gavin.”
“Good night, Nessa.”
We both stay on the phone for a few more seconds, and she’s the first to hang up. I miss her the second the screen goes black, and I try not to think about that too much.
Eventually, I flip off the bedside lamp and get under the covers. I lie there far longer than I should, tossing and turning, sleep evading me. When I finally do succumb, I dream of her…and what would have happened if she hadn’t run.
This crowd is electric, far more than Anaheim during our last game.
I’m not surprised. San Jose finished at the bottom of the league last year and picked up a damn good draft pick who everyone is excited about. I’ll admit the kid has some sick hands and can skate like nobody’s business, which is probably why he’s made the opening roster tonight.
The rambunctious crowd just makes everything that much sweeter. We’re up 4–0 in the second, keeping not only the rookie off the scoreboard, but their veteran guys too.
“What a beauty, Locke!” Hutch says as he settles onto the bench next to me.
I nod at him, the guilty feeling I’ve had since his sister came to town settling into my gut.
I’ve talked to Nessa every night of the road trip.
Every night, we’ve found one reason or another to talk.
Sometimes it’s on video, and sometimes it’s not.
Either way, it’s become like a routine, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t just feel like the old guy on the team—I’m like everyone else with someone to call at the end of the night.
Sometimes our conversations last only five minutes, and I sit with a grin on my face as she tells me about her day.
Other times, they last an hour or more, talking about our childhoods and telling random anecdotes.
No matter what, they always fill me with something I didn’t know I needed so damn badly—joy.
The only problem? Her brother. If Hutch has noticed I’ve been avoiding him, he hasn’t said anything.
I even skipped out on dinner with the main crew last night, feigning the need for extra sleep.
Lawson took a few shots at me for being old, Hayes joining in on the fun, but it was the way Keller looked at me with those knowing eyes and how even Fox raised his brows that got me.
They were looking at me like I was guilty, and they were right.