24. Jax
Chapter twenty-four
Jax
Five to two. Aiden gets one. Two goals against — both flukes, both situations where I read it right and the puck found a way anyway. Neither the hand. I know the difference now.
I’ve been in road hotels for twelve years.
This one isn’t a hotel.
The Vegas team handles their visiting opponents the way Vegas handles everything — too much, on purpose, because too much is the brand.
The starting goalie gets a suite. The captains get suites.
The coaches get suites. There is a card on every nightstand from the GM personally welcoming us and a bottle of something nobody’s going to drink because we’re playing again in two days.
Brody read the card out loud on the bus and got a standing ovation.
Nova’s two rows back.
She got on at the arena with the rest of the press pool — laptop, camera bag, the same scuffed boots she always wears on travel days — and she didn’t look at me when she sat down and I didn’t look at her and that’s not what it used to mean.
I look out the window at the Strip going past.
Catch her in the reflection looking at me.
She drops her eyes.
The bus goes through an underpass and the lights kill the reflection and I don’t see her again until we get to the hotel and she’s at the elevator with the rest of the press and we don’t get on the same one.
That’s the protocol.
We’ve been on the road four days.
The protocol holds.
My suite is on twenty-two.
I open the door and stand in the doorway for a second because somebody decided the visiting goalies needed a living room.
A living room.
A sectional couch. A coffee table the size of a face-off circle.
Floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Strip — the actual Strip, not a sliver, the whole moving lit-up thing that Vegas does at night.
A bar I’m not going to use. A dining table that seats six that I’m not going to use either.
Beyond the living room: open doorway to a bedroom.
King bed. More floor-to-ceiling. Beyond that: the bathroom, doors propped half-open, and I can already see the marble.
I drop my bag inside the door.
Walk through the living room into the bedroom.
Stop in the bathroom doorway.
I have not stood in a bathroom like this in twelve years of road hotels.
Cream marble floor — heated, I can feel it through my socks.
A shower the size of my kitchen back home with cream marble walls and clear glass and dual rainheads mounted in the ceiling and a teak bench built into the back wall.
Separate freestanding tub by the window, the kind you fill up and lie in for an hour.
Two sinks. A toilet behind its own door.
A pile of towels folded into shapes I don’t have names for.
I stand there.
“That’s a lot,” I say to nobody.
Brick would have opinions.
I go back into the bedroom. Take the suit jacket off.
Hang it. Take the dress shirt off. Hang it.
Stand by the window in my undershirt looking at the Strip and run the second period in my head — the wraparound attempt I tracked across the crease, the breakaway in the third where I came out three feet and got the angle right.
Good game.
I should be asleep.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I look at it.
Nova:
I can’t sleep.
I look at the Strip.
Look at the phone.
Sit on the edge of the bed.
Me:
Why.
Nova:
I keep thinking about your hands.
I look at the phone.
I look at the wall—check my phone again.
Me:
Specifically.
Nova:
Specifically.
Me:
Where.
Nova:
You really gonna make me say it.
Me:
Yeah.
A pause. Three dots. Stops. Three dots. Stops. I sit on the edge of the hotel bed in Vegas with my phone in my hand and watch her decide.
Nova:
In my hair. on the back of my neck.
I exhale through my nose.
Me:
And the other one.
Nova:
Jax.
Me:
Where’s the other one Nova.
Nova:
lower.
I am no longer thinking about second period.
Me:
Say it.
Nova:
And I’m gonna do something about it if you don’t.
That gets my full attention.
Me:
Define something.
Nova:
use your imagination.
Oh, I’m using my imagination, and it’s a fucking problem.
Still half in my suit — undershirt, slacks — and there’s no hiding it. I’m straining the zipper, the outline of me pushing hard against the fabric, and one look down tells me exactly how this goes if I let it.
My hand’s already there. Palm flat, pressing down once, slow, and the drag of it punches the breath out of me.
I could get the zipper down. Get a hand around myself. Be done before the elevator hits her floor.
I don’t.
I don’t get myself off to a text when the real thing’s two floors down telling me she’ll start without me.
So I grip the edge of the mattress and sit with it. Hard. Aching. Every nerve I own pointed at that door.
Three minutes. She better run.
Me:
Don’t you fucking dare.
Nova:
then come do something about it yourself.
Me:
Where are you?
Nova:
In 2020
Me:
I’m 2204
Me:
Get your pretty little ass up two floors and through my door now.
Three dots.
Nova:
give me five minutes.
Me:
Three.
I put the phone face down on the nightstand.
Stand up.
Walk to the door of the suite.
Unlock it.
Walk back.
She knocks at four.
Not three. Not five. Four.
I open the door and she’s in the same jeans she had on at the arena and a different shirt and her hair down. Her eyes on mine and we look at each other for half a second and then she’s inside and the door is closing and her bag is on the floor and her hands are on my face.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
She kisses me.
I get one hand under her jaw and the other in her hair and kiss her back and we are not doing the slow version — not tonight — she has her hand in the back of my hair and I have her against the suite door and her hip is up and I’m pulling her shirt out of her jeans and the kiss is going somewhere it usually takes us forty-five minutes to get to.
She breaks it.
Breathing hard.
Looks past me into the suite.
Sees the living room. The Strip through the windows. The doorway to the bedroom. The doorway past that to the bathroom.
“Jesus.”
“I know.”
“Vegas went all out.”
“They did.”
“Jax.”
“Yeah.”
“Show me the bathroom.”
I take her hand.
Walk her through the living room. Through the bedroom. Stop in the bathroom doorway and let her look.
She looks for a long time.
The marble. The dual rainheads. The bench. The tub. The whole excessive Vegas-ness of it, lit gold by the under-cabinet lighting somebody installed because somebody decided that was a feature.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay what.”
She turns around. Faces me. Hands going to the hem of her shirt.
“Okay get in.”
She pulls her shirt over her head.
I get my t-shirt off.
She drops her bra. Steps out of her leggings. Underwear with them.
Stands there in the middle of the marble floor.
I have seen her naked enough times by now and I will never, ever get used to it.
Her shoulders — the way they go a little forward when she’s not sure of something. The military-kids posture relaxing one degree at a time. Her hand goes to her stomach in that small unconscious way it does when she’s letting herself be looked at.
“Jax.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re staring.”
“Yeah.”
“Turn the water on.”
I get the water on.
Both rainheads. I’m not going to be the man who only uses one of two rainheads in a bathroom this size. The water comes down hot inside of three seconds because Vegas isn’t going to let visiting teams wait on hot water like animals. Steam starts immediately.
I get my belt off.
Pants.
Boxers.
She watches.
I don’t rush.
She steps into the shower first. Pulls the glass door open and steps under one of the rainheads and tips her head back and her hair goes dark immediately and the water runs down her back and I am standing in a Vegas hotel bathroom watching this woman get wet in slow motion and my body is going to file a complaint with whoever’s in charge.
I follow her in.
Pull the door shut behind me.
She turns to face me.
Steam rising. The bathroom outside the glass already fogging at the edges.
She steps into me and puts her mouth on my collarbone and the water is running down both of us and her hand is sliding down my stomach and my body is registering all of this faster than my brain can keep up.
I get a hand on her hip.
Pull her against me.
She makes that sound — the low one, the one I learned in Pittsburgh — and her hand finds me and wraps around me and I make a sound back that I can’t control and the water is in my eyes and her mouth is on my throat and this is —
I don’t have language for it yet but my body knows and my hands know and my mouth is on hers and I am pushing into her hand and she is biting down on my lower lip and I am about thirty seconds from losing every plan I ever had.
She backs me toward the bench.
Not pulling. Just stepping into me until I have to step back and back and back again and the back of my thighs hit the teak and she puts her hand flat on my chest and pushes once.
I sit.
The bench is warm. Everything in this fucking bathroom is warm.
She’s standing between my knees.
Looking down at me.
I look up at her.
The water is hitting her shoulders and running down her chest and the steam is rising around her and her hair is dripping down her back and she has both her hands on my shoulders and I have my hands on her hips and we are not in a hurry.
She drops to her knees on the marble.
“Nova — get up — your knees —”
“Jax.”
“The marble —”
“Jax. Shut up.”
I shut up.
She has me in her hand. She looks up at me with water running down her face and her hair stuck to her shoulders and the steam rising off her skin and she takes me in her mouth.
I lose the back of my head against the marble wall.
She works me — slow first, hand twisting at the base while her mouth does something on the head, the kind of thing that has me pressing my palms flat against the warm wet teak to keep from grabbing her — and then less slow, deeper, her hand finding my hip and pulling me into her, and the water is hitting my chest and running down my thighs and she is on her knees in a Vegas hotel shower swallowing me and I —
“Baby —”
She hums.
“Baby — fuck — Nova —”