Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
GABE
“So kind of you to be in a photo with Mabel,” Frankie says, tucking a blanket over our legs as Natalie and I squish into the two-person sleigh. Or one-and-a-half person, if one of them is me.
The bonus is that the entire left side of my body is pressed against the entire right side of hers, and I’ll take that any day.
“Is this okay on your shoulder?” Natalie asks, reaching up to touch it.
“Yeah, it’s actually felt a lot better lately.”
“All that specialized rehab must have done it some good.” She raises her eyebrows.
“That’s the kind of rehab I can get on board with.” Christ, I want to kiss her. “And I should not have mocked your qualifications.”
“What’s this?” she asks, elbowing the bulge at my chest that’s probably pressing into her right boob .
I unzip my jacket enough to reveal the head of the pig toy.
The delighted laugh that bounces out of her is unimaginably sexy.
“What’s so funny? Just letting him breathe.” And I know how it feels. Despite being fully in the open air, this proximity to Natalie makes my breaths come short and fast.
And if my lips don’t get to be on hers sometime soon they might shrivel up and die because there’s no other point to their existence.
“Here we go, folks,” Frankie calls back to us from the donkey’s head. “Trot on, Mabes.” Mabel takes a step and the sleigh lurches forward.
I lean into Natalie on the pretext of a whisper. “I could have just walked you back home.”
She playfully slaps my thigh with the back of her thickly gloved hand. Immediately my mind is thrown back to the giant bunny hands she was wearing that first night—the night she came crashing into my life like a wrecking ball disguised as a rabbit.
“This is tradition,” she says. “It’s fun. And it helps raise awareness of the donkey sanctuary for Frankie and her grandpa.”
On the basis of creating more space—and for absolutely no other reason whatsoever—I ease my crushed left arm out from between us and rest it on the back of the sleigh behind Natalie.
Did she move a bit closer to me or just breathe out? There’s so little room it’s hard to tell the difference.
“Your love of this town and its wacko traditions is really quite something,” I say.
“Have you never felt like that about a place?” Her voice is quiet, barely audible over the crunch of the donkey’s hooves and the swish of the sleigh on the snow.
Have I? Maybe. “Do the Apollos count?”
“Of course. That’s kind of like a family, right? Just like Warm Springs kind of is.” She shifts to look up at me, the blue of her eyes clear in the streetlights as we pass them at the speed of a strolling donkey.
“Oh,” she says like she just remembered something. “Is that what broke your friendship with Wyatt when he moved to the Ironmen? Because you were pissed off he left the Apollos?”
My body tenses, the way it does when the dentist says, “Open wide.” Now is not the time or the place for that story.
“What makes you say that?” I ask as a delaying tactic while I try to find a way to change the subject.
“I looked up your and Wyatt’s names,” she says, “and found an article that said even though you only played together for two seasons you were one of hockey’s great partnerships. So it just occurred to me that when he moved to a rival team, you might have felt let down or betrayed or something.”
Betrayed. Now my insides are as tense as my outsides.
Does she have a sixth sense? Like animals that can feel a storm or an earthquake coming before it happens? Or is it that we have such a connection that she can somehow see into my mind?
I tear my eyes away from her and focus on Mabel’s tail swishing from side to side in front of us. “I didn’t feel betrayed by him , no.”
I’ve never talked about this to anyone before. Not even my parents. I didn’t want to worry them. And I’ve always feared that if I discussed it with anyone else, they might sell me out.
Yet the same instinct that tells me exactly where the goal is without even looking up from the puck, tells me that Natalie would never betray me. She’s so unlike anyone I’ve ever met it’s like she’s from a different universe—a universe where the same wacky legend is acted out every year, where there are pigs instead of Christmas trees, donkeys instead of reindeer.
“Honestly, things were rocky before he moved,” I hedge. It’s a small step into the story. Small enough that I can still retreat.
“You fell out while he was still at the Apollos?” She dusts something off my shoulder, sending a frisson up the back of my neck.
“Yeah.” I empty my lungs, a white cloud hanging in the air for a second before the sleigh drags us through it.
“You don’t have to tell me.” Her voice is soft and warm. “If you don’t want to.”
Should I?
There’s actually one excellent reason to tell her—to clear my name.
Because right this second, the idea of Natalie thinking badly of me because of the tabloid stories she’s read, plus the things that Wyatt said, feels like the worse thing that could happen.
Not just because I so badly want to sleep with her. But because I want her to like me when she does.
“I’ll tell you.” I turn the quarter inch toward her that the confines of the sleigh allow. “It’s better that you hear it from me than Wyatt tells you the whole thing from his side first.”
My guts tighten. They’re not used to being spilled. “ When we had our…disagreement…I was already in a raging ball of fury about a couple of other things.”
“Things that Wyatt had done?”
“Nothing to do with him at all.” I take a long inhale of the cold night air. “It was over the same trash that you read about me.”
“So, the things that woman said were lies?” she asks.
As I look at her, she faces forward, taking over the monitoring of the donkey’s swishing tail.
“Yes,” I state. “Total lies.”
Then there’s just the sound of the hooves and sleigh on the snow again.
And I have no idea if she believes it.
She needs more from me. And, strangely, I’m willing to give it.
“I should never have gotten involved with her. She was a walking red flag. Desperate to get married and have kids from week one.”
“Married?” Natalie’s head recoils as it snaps to face me.
“Yup. So desperate that I’d flush the condoms down the toilet to make sure she couldn’t access the ammunition. So to speak.”
“Good God.” It’s the first time I’ve seen her shocked. “Why would you continue to see someone who made you feel like that?”
“I’ve tried to figure that out. I think it was because when I met her at the end of my first season at the Apollos, I was ready to stop all the wild partying. My head had really been turned in those first few months in New York. Wyatt and I instantly clicked on the ice and were this phenomenal force that everyone was raving about, and outside the game I was at all the best bars and clubs and there were…women.” This story is not making me look good.
“So at the end of that first season I think I just wanted to have an actual relationship. And I kidded myself it was working.” I shrug. “Then during the offseason, when I had some headspace to come to my senses, I ended it. But she threatened to go to the media and sell stories if I didn’t marry her.”
“So she just made up that you’d cheated on her with her best friend?”
“Yup. And those stories were published right before the start of my second Apollos season. Perfect timing to throw me right off balance.”
The sleigh jolts with such force that Natalie’s backside lifts off the seat and she lets out a little yelp.
Instinctively I latch my arms around her in a protective hug.
“Shit, sorry,” Frankie calls back to us. “Couldn’t see the pothole in the snow. You both okay?”
“Are you?” I ask Natalie as I loosen my embrace but keep a firm grip on her shoulder with my left hand.
She nods. “We’re fine, thanks,” she says to Frankie.
Natalie pushes herself upright and out of my arms. The thought that she might not want to be there makes my stomach heavy. I could hold on to her all night and never get tired of it.
I return my left arm to rest on the back of the sleigh where at least it’s close to her.
Natalie adjusts her jacket and turns as far as she can to face me.
Her eyes meet mine, searching them. “And you didn’t sleep with her friend?”
“Never touched her. ”
Does she believe me now?
Look at her open and honest expression.
She takes a breath and her shoulders drop a little. Is that a sign that she’s accepted my truth?
“It’s all still affecting you though, right?” she says. “The lying woman, the falling out with Wyatt.”
Man, this woman sees me.
I’m not as good with words as she is. So I just take hold of her pig ears and straighten them.
She lets me.
“There’s more though,” I admit. For her to understand the Wyatt thing, she needs the full picture of what I was going through.
“A few weeks after those stories came out, right at the start of the season, I found out my agent had fleeced me for a bunch of money.”
Her face takes on a pained expression, and she shakes her head in disbelief at the bad luck.
My muscles start to release. Not completely. But these tiny signs that she might trust me enough to believe me allows them to slacken. “Turned out he’d been taking a bigger cut of my pay than he should have. And on one big sponsorship he’d screwed me over completely.”
“Jesus.” She rests a caring hand on my injured shoulder.
“I’d worked with him since I first started, when I felt lucky any agent would take me on. And I never checked the numbers. Just trusted him.”
“Right.” Her expression shifts to that of someone who’s just figured out the solution to a tricky math problem. “So you don’t trust anyone. No women. No businesspeople. And isolate yourself because if you get close to no one, no one can betray you.”
She’s not wrong.
“Aunt Lou would have a field day with this,” she adds with a gentle laugh.
“Yeah, but she’d also get that I’m not just an asshole for shits and giggles. I have reasons.”
The donkey takes a right turn and the sleigh swings out a bit on the slick road. Natalie clutches my thigh to steady herself.
“That’s a lot to deal with all at once. No wonder you were stressed and upset.” She lets go of my leg, as if she’d only grabbed it by accident. “But what does that have to do with you and Wyatt?”
And here’s the part she might really hate me for.
“I let all that shit get to me. And he kept telling me it was affecting my game, that I was ruining my second Apollos season. That I wasn’t his magic partner anymore. And that just riled me up even more.”
“He can be a bit persistent like that,” Natalie says.
“Yeah, guess I kinda bottled it all up, and, well…” I have to trust she won’t judge me here. “One day Wyatt just wouldn’t shut up about it. And I slammed him against the lockers.”
Her body stiffens against my side.
Am I about to blow it? But I have no choice. If I don’t tell her, Wyatt will. And it would sound way worse coming from him.
“Two of the guys had to pull me off him.” My guts twist with shame. I am not worthy of having this beautiful, trusting woman sitting next to me. “The least proud moment of my life. Throwing my weight around on the ice is one thing. Getting physical with a teammate and best friend is another.”
She leans forward, elbows on her knees, and cold air takes her place next to me. My stomach clenches. Me basically assaulting a member of her family might be the thing she won’t be able to forgive. But what’s the point of any of this if I can’t be honest with her?
She looks at me over her shoulder. “Is that why he left the team?”
“No. Unrelated. The offer just happened to come at the end of that season.”
“And you haven’t spoken since? Not till he showed up earlier?”
I shake my head. “Well, we were still playing together, so there were times when we had no choice. But we only talked when it was absolutely unavoidable. Then at the end of that season he moved to the Ironmen and, no, we haven’t spoken since then.”
Nat blows out a long breath.
“But before the start of last season I’d worked my way out of whatever mental pit I’d been in, and really fucking missed him. So I tried to get a hold of him. But he wouldn’t pick up my calls. Didn’t answer my texts. In the end I sent him a long email apologizing.”
“And he didn’t reply to that either?” Nat’s brows pinch.
“Nope. Nothing. And that was over a year ago.”
She looks away, gazing at the mom-and-pop storefronts on Main Street as we slide by. The pig ears on top of her head bob with the rattle of the sleigh.
My chest tightens. This is it, the part where she tells me that her family loyalty trumps everything.
Her shoulders rise on a deep breath. “Wyatt can be such a dick sometimes.”
I run that sentence through my head again just to confirm it’s not me she’s saying is a dick. And it isn’t.
She turns back to look at me, her perfect face framed by the baby blue hat that matches her eyes and the yellow plaid scarf.
“He’s been like that since he was a kid. I hated playing with him. He always had to win, no matter if it was supposed to be just a meaningless game of cards or a board game. And he’d storm off in a huff and not speak for hours if anyone challenged him. He was basically no fun.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say he’s no fun.” For some reason I feel the need to stick up for him. “He was my wingman. And we were an incredible team on the ice. We just gelled, you know? That indefinable something that makes you click with someone even though on paper none of it should work.”
Her eyes hold mine, searching them, as a warm, flirtatious smile spreads across her face, making the apples of her flushed cheeks pop.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I think I have some idea what you mean.”
The significance of her words makes my heart swell and my head swim a little. She might not want me, but we’re on a ticking clock here, so I don’t have a whole lot to lose.
“Jesus Christ, Natalie.” I take her cheeks in my hands. “I know I’ve only known you for a week, but you?—”
“Oh my God,” She screws up her face and slams her hands over her nose and mouth.
My stomach twists at the obvious rejection.
Then the stench reaches me.
“Fuck me.” I shield my face too from what smells like a combination of rotting garbage that’s been left out in the sun for weeks and decomposing flesh .
“Oh, God,” Frankie says from the front end of the donkey. “Did you get a fart?”
Natalie and I both nod.
“Sorry.” Frankie grimaces. “We had some visitors at the sanctuary this morning and one of the kids snuck her more fruit than she’s used to. It’s made her a bit gassy.”
Natalie’s shoulders shake as she dissolves into giggles.
And because not even a farting donkey can make me keep my hands off her, I pull her to me and kiss the only available bit of skin—the sliver of forehead between her eyebrows and hat. “And I thought a giant glowing pig with a flashing revolving star on its head would be the most ridiculous part of this evening.”
Natalie removes her hands from her face and the pure unadulterated glee, combined with utter revulsion, that’s taken hold of her expression is a delight to behold.
“Hey, Frankie,” I call out.
She turns to look at us again. “I’m so sorry.” She’s biting her lip and trying not to laugh.
“Could we get out here, please?”
“Oh no, is it that bad?” she asks, slowing down Mabel. “I’d have thought it might have dissipated in the fresh air by now. You should smell it when she does it inside, in the stable.” She makes a dizzy face. “Quite the experience.”
“No, it’s fine. Nothing to do with Mabel at all. And I’ll pay for the full ride back to the retirement village.”
The sleigh glides to a stop, and I pull the blanket off our laps and climb out.
“What are we doing?” Natalie asks.
I offer her my hand. “Walking back to my car, so I can drive you to my place.”
This woman has my brain working in all kinds of off-the-wall ways it’s never done before. She’s crawled under my skin and given me thoughts, ideas and desires that were unimaginable just seven days ago.
If any of the guys on the team told me they were acting like this, I’d tell them to get a fucking grip.
But here I am, about to show this woman a spontaneous thing I’ve done for her. While also hiding how crazy I am about her, in case she’s not crazy about me.
“I have something for you,” I tell her.
She makes a suggestive wiggle with her eyebrows and takes my hand.
My chest lurches with anticipation as I squeeze her fingers and help her out of the sleigh. “Okay, maybe two things.”