Chapter 22
Gracie: Tough loss tonight.
I grimaced as I typed out my reply.
Me: Yeah. Sucked.
“Not looking too positive there, Captain,” Jay pointed out as we stepped into the elevator to take us to yet another pair of generic hotel rooms.
I arranged my features into a totally fake smile and he chuckled. “There you go. That’s the face to inspire confidence in all the rookies.” He glanced at the rows of numbers on the control panel. “Shit, I forgot what floor I’m on already.”
“Twelve,” I told him, looking back to my phone. Grace had replied.
Gracie: You’ll get ’em next time.
I only just managed not to snort. Yeah. That’s what we’d been saying ever since the home opener. And yet we just kept on losing.
In fact, that first exhilarating game felt like it had happened two years ago, not two weeks. We’d dropped the next two at home, managed a regulation tie in our first away game, which we ended up losing in the shootout, and then lost the next two games on the road.
Frustrated wasn’t the right word for what I was feeling.
I typed out a quick response to Gracie before the elevator doors opened.
Me: Heading into the room. Call you in a minute.
“I guess I don’t need to ask if you want to grab a drink,” Jay said, rolling his eyes at the phone clutched in my hand. “Looks like you have another method of cheering up in mind.”
“I’d be a lot more cheered up if she was waiting in my hotel room.”
Naked, preferably.
The thought had me biting back a groan. It’d been way too long since I’d seen Grace naked and my dick was suffering.
We reached my door first and Jay slapped me on the shoulder as I pulled out my key card. “That’s the beauty of being a single man on the road,” he said. “The ladies just appear in every city.”
“Someday you’ll get tired of the puck bunny scene,” I told him.
He snorted. “What would you know about it? You’ve either been married or practically celibate your entire career.”
I held up my phone, offering him a smirk of my own. “Not so celibate these days.”
He snorted with laughter before continuing down the hallway. “Tell Grace I said hi.”
“I can guarantee we will not be talking about you at all.”
His chuckle echoed down the hallway as I let myself into my room.
I dropped my bags, looking around the space. Pretty much the same as every other room I stayed at in my career. At least in the NHL we got our own rooms. We had to share rooms when I played in college and Jay snored like a chainsaw.
Which would have made what I wanted to do next a lot more difficult.
I shrugged out of my suit jacket, already pulling my phone up to my ear. Gracie answered on the first ring. The thought that she might have been waiting for my call made me grin.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Hey yourself.” Her soft voice in my ear was enough to send goosebumps up and down my neck, my dick twitching in my trousers. Good Lord, did I miss this woman.
I groaned. “Road trips suck.”
Grace’s musical laugh echoed in my ear. “Do you miss me?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Maybe the sting of being away wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been able to see her as often as I liked when I’d been home.
But it had been difficult to get our schedules to match.
With Josie at home, it was hard for me to get away in the evenings.
And Grace, of course, was working during the day when I might have been able to steal a few hours before or after practice.
Even worse, Grace continued to put me off every time I asked her about a date. I could have arranged for Evelyn and Peter to stay with Josie for a few hours so we could do dinner. But Grace was evasive, never really giving me a definitive reason but never agreeing either.
So I’d had to make due with a few stolen hours during the week of our home stand. And while the sex had been fantastic—better than fantastic, really—it was starting to grate on me that we didn’t seem to be any closer to getting our relationship to the next level.
“It’s still early in the season,” Gracie said, misreading the cause of my sudden quiet. “Still plenty of time to turn it around.”
I supposed I could say the same thing about our relationship. It was still early. She had some concerns, okay, I got that. Let her be a little skittish and take her time. Meanwhile, I would just keep trying to do everything I could to show her that I was in this for real.
“Wish you were here,” I mumbled.
“Well, I actually wanted to talk to you about that,” she said, voice hesitant. I sat up straighter on the bed.
“Talk to me about what?”
“The girls and I had dinner with Andy last night,” she said. “And when he mentioned that he was planning to meet the team in New York, Peyton got on his case.” She laughed a little. “Apparently, she’s never been to New York…”
“Yeah?” I was trying not to get my hopes up too much.
“Yeah. And Peyton can be very convincing. The girl is tenacious. I swear to God, she would make a good D-man if she knew how to skate.”
“Gracie,” I warned, wanting her to get to the point.
“Yeah, so anyhow,” she sounded a little shy now. Fucking adorable. “Andy offered to fly us out with him on his private jet. For the weekend.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Still with that same shy tone. “I mean, I know you’ll probably have a lot going on, with the team and all, but I’ll definitely be at the game. And we could, you know, see each other. If you wanted.”
If I wanted? I would have been thrilled to see Gracie at any of our road games, but the match up in New York would be the first time I’d be facing my old team. The idea that she would be there in the crowd, cheering for me, made something ease inside my chest.
And then there was after the game.
“Of course I want to see you, are you insane?” I asked, laughing out loud at the rush of excitement and happiness the idea caused. “Are you staying in the same hotel?”
“That’s the plan. Peyton was very excited about the prospect of all those hockey hotties in the same building.”
I laughed. Her friend Peyton sounded like a trip. I wish I knew her, wish I knew all of Gracie’s friends. Wished she would spend time with Jay, that I’d be able to invite her over to hang out with me and Josie at the house.
I wanted more, plain and simple. And I was ready to ask her for it.
“You’re not staying with your brother, are you?”
She snorted. “Peyton convinced him to let us girls use the suite he had booked. He’s going to be slumming it in a regular old room.”
“Remind me to ask Peyton for tips on how to weasel free shit out of billionaires.”
“Just be absolutely shameless, to the point of obnoxiousness. That seems to work for her, anyhow.”
We were quiet for a moment. “I can’t believe you’re really going to be in New York. I’m going to see you in just a few days.”
“I’m looking forward to it, too,” she whispered.
“I wish we had more than one free night. I could take you out in the city, show you some of my old haunts.”
She sighed wistfully. “Even if we had more time, it probably wouldn’t work. Andy will be there.”
I tried not to let that sentence bother me. She was looking out for me and my career. But there was a part of me that couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t something deeper. Would she be embarrassed for her brother to know she was dating a guy like me?
“You’ll stay in my room?” I asked, the sudden surge of doubt and anger coursing through me making my tone sharper than I planned.
“I was hoping you would say that,” she replied, her voice all sweet excitement, and I forced myself to push any negative thoughts away.
“This is going to make it even harder to get through these next few days,” I told her. “Now that I know I’ll be seeing you, I can’t wait.”
“Would it help tide you over to know I’m going trip shopping with the girls after work tomorrow and I definitely plan to pick up some new underwear?”
I groaned, the sound long and pained. “You’re killing me, Gracie.”
She giggled and I basked in the sound. I loved flirty, confident Gracie.
“Hey, what’s my reward if I score for you in this game?” I asked, anticipation growing in my belly as I remembered the insanely good blowjob she’d given me after the first game.
This time I had a very specific prize in mind.
“I can tell from your tone that you already have something planned,” she said wryly. “So just tell me.”
“I want you to sext with me during the next away series.”
She groaned loudly, and I laughed. I’d been trying to convince her to send me racy messages and photos every single time we’d talked while I’d been away. So far, she had firmly refused, insisting that she was way too shy to do something like that.
But I really, really liked to push Gracie to explore outside her comfort zone. So I wasn’t going to abandon the idea unless she told me to.
“I’ll probably be so bad at it,” she whined.
“Not possible,” I said immediately.
“Liam. Have you met me? I’m awkward and shy, not a good combination for the sexy talk.”
I laughed. “I love that you’re shy. I happen to find it very sexy.” My voice dropped lower. “Particularly when I make you so crazy that you forget all about being shy.”
She sighed. “You do seem to possess an uncanny ability to make me forget just about everything.”
“That’s right, sweetheart. This weekend, I plan to make you forget your own name.”
I would have been happy to keep up the flirting for hours, but Gracie started yawning into the phone just a few minutes later.
Knowing she had to get up early for school, and had probably stayed up later than normal to be able to talk to me after the game, I said my goodbyes.
It was easier putting the phone down, knowing I was going to be seeing her in a matter of days.