Cade: Fire And Ice: A Second Chance Hockey Romance (10 page)

"Ellie!"

Cade looked distraught and he tried to reach out for me but I pushed his hand away, shaking my head because I wasn't able to speak and pressing one hand to my chest in a useless attempt to try and control myself.

"Cade," I finally managed to say, my voice choked, "why the fuck did you leave?!"

It wasn't quite what I meant. I knew why he'd left. What I wanted was an explanation for why he'd done it the way he did, why he'd never made any attempt to contact me. My thighs were slippery with his cum and my neck was still burning with his kisses as I sat there beside him on the couch fighting to get a hold of myself. I'd never felt more vulnerable in my life.

"I had to, Ellie. You knew I was leaving. You knew I was going to get drafted. I wish you could have come with me. I think about you every single day, you know."

I looked into Cade's jewel-like blue eyes.

"Then why didn't you tell me? Why did you just leave like that? It was so hard for me, Cade. You just...you left me behind and I never heard from you again. Why did you do that to me?"

"What? Ellie, are you joking? I sent you letters for months. I wrote to you almost every week. I admit I'm not the best letter-writer in the world but you didn't have an e-mail address or a phone. What was I supposed to-"

"Wait," I said, holding up a hand, "you wrote to me?"

He nodded. "Yes. Every goddamned week. And when you didn't write back I just assumed you didn't want me to keep sending them."

"Cade. Wait. I never got a single letter from you. I never heard from you again. What are you talking about?"

He reached out and grabbed my shoulders. "Ellie. I wrote you a ton of letters, that whole first year after I left. Do you really think I could have just left like that, with no explanation? I sent them to you, with your name on them, to your mom's trailer."

Was it possible that my mom, in her drunken stupor, had managed to intercept every single letter? It didn't seem likely. Then again, I had sensed her jealousy at the time, her abject fear at even the tiniest possibility of me managing to escape the life of poverty and desperation that had consumed her?

"Cade. Did you really? I mean, you sent lots of letters? Because I didn't - I didn't get a single one. Not one."

He was angry. "Yes! Ellie, yes. Goddamnit, are you serious? You didn't get ANY of them? What happened? Did your mom take them?"

I leaned back and tucked my hair behind my ears. "She must have. There's no other explanation. I mean, unless someone at the post office...?"

"Nah, that's illegal. It had to be your mom. What the fuck, Ellie? Why would she do that?"

"You don't know my mom, Cade."

"I know I don't. You never let me into your home life."

His tone sounded slightly disapproving.

"I know. There was a good reason for it, too. My mom is an insane drunk. I was too embarrassed to let you meet her, to let you see how bad everything was."

He visibly softened as I teared up again and I let him pull me in close.

"I know, Ellie. I'm sorry. I'm just so pissed that you didn't get any of those letters. I thought you were ignoring them. We both spent five whole years thinking the other one didn't care about us. It's messed up."

I pulled back a little, so I could look at him. "It is messed up, Cade. This whole time I thought you had forgotten about me."

He chuckled ruefully. "I didn't forget about you, Ellie. I tried to, because it hurt too much to think about never seeing you again or about you hating me for how I left, but nothing worked. And believe me, I tried a lot."

"I know. I used to read all the stories about you online. I saw that photo in the sports magazine of you and your...girlfriend."

I reached out and ran my fingers over his cheek, still not quite believing he was actually there with me, and then let my hand slip down to his chest. That's when I saw it. The tattoo. It was still there, and it
was
my initials. Cade saw the expression on my face.

"What? Does that bother you? I went out with some of the guys and they all got Kings tattoos. At the last minute I changed my mind and got this. They still give me shit for it."

I traced a finger over the letters E and H on Cade's smooth, California-tanned skin.

"No, it doesn't bother me. Actually, it's funny. I saw it in a photo of you online. Then in that shot with your - with that woman - it was gone. I thought you had it removed."

"No. They airbrushed it out. It would have looked odd in the photo with Jessica."

A pit formed in my stomach at hearing that name come out of Cade's mouth.

"Is that her name? Jessica?"

"Yeah, Jessica Ray. And she's not my girlfriend, Ellie."

I shot him a skeptical look. "Come on, Cade. I'm not stupid."

"No, really." He brushed my hair off my forehead. "She's not my girlfriend. It was an arranged thing, our publicists set it up. I have to go to certain events with her so she gets into the celebrity magazines and she, uh, well, I guess she makes me look more stable or something. She's gonna be on the
InStyle
cover in two months, so I think it worked."

"You sound really close to her."

"I am, Ellie. She's one of my closest friends but that's all it is. I'm not going to lie, I haven't been a saint, not by any means, but it's strictly friendship with Jess."

So Cade wasn't with the beautiful blonde whose photos I'd used to torture myself during the first painful years of his absence. The warm flood of relief I felt at that news was so strong I glanced down, self-conscious about Cade noticing it. He had a cast on one of his wrists, I'd noticed it as soon as I opened the door to him but there hadn't been time to mention it yet.

"What happened?"

"Oh, that. It happened in a training session. I'm out for three months."

"Three months? Is that why you're here?"

He hesitated as I examined the cast. "Uhh...yeah. I mean, I think so. I dunno, Ellie. I've wanted to come back and see you for so long, but I never had the balls to just do it. I was too afraid you'd tell me to fuck off. It was actually Jess who convinced me to fly out - she's getting sick of listening to me talk about you."

He lifted his hand up to my face and ran his fingers over my lips so I could kiss them, one by one.

"Really? You talk about me to her?"

"Yeah, apparently way too much. She actually called me out on it a few times. "

We sat there cuddling and chatting and basking in the sheer sweetness of being with each other again for a long time before I thought of Bill. He wasn't going to be home for a few more hours but I knew I had to tell Cade about him.

"You know," I started, a little awkwardly. "I, uh, I had a relationship, too. I mean, it's kind of on and off but-"

"Are you with him now?"

I shrugged and gave the only answer I could think of. "I don't know. He lives here, with me and the boys and his little girl. It's not, I mean, we're not always together but..."

"Ellie, he lives here?"

"Yes but, Cade, it's not like a normal situation. I mean, I still don't have a lot of money and I need someone to watch the boys while I work."

"Are you fucking him?"

For the first time in maybe ever, I saw a flash of something I didn't like on Cade's face.

"When we're together, yeah. He actually broke up with me earlier today."

"So he's not coming back?"

I stood up and walked into the kitchen to get us glasses of water before answering. When I came back, Cade was hunched over, rubbing his forehead.

"Cade, we live together. I can't afford to pay anyone to watch the boys and I can't leave them alone, either. And Bill has a daughter. So he usually watches the kids and I work."

"So this guy lives off you?"

I looked down at my feet, embarrassed.

"You know that not everyone has the kind of success you had, right Cade?"

"What does that mean?"

I threw my hands up, exasperated.

"It means just what I said! I can't work without someone to watch the boys. And if I don't work, we don't eat. I know you've never been in a situation like this before but it's not actually that difficult to understand."

"I wouldn't sleep with someone just so they would babysit for me, Ellie."

Everything about Cade had seemed the same. Sex with him had been as electric and intimate as it had been five years ago. But I was seeing a side of him I hadn't before, back when we were high school kids. His comment about sleeping with the babysitter made me angry.

"I'm not sleeping with him so he'll babysit the boys! We were in a relationship before he moved in here, but now he's here this is just how it worked out. Why are you acting like this, Cade? What have I done wrong here? What have I done that you haven't done ten times over in Los Angeles? I've been with one man since you ditched me! How many women have you been with?"

I could hear my voice rising. What the hell was I being accused of? Why did this mood of Cade's just come out of nowhere like that?

"Cade, what the hell? Why are you being this way?"

He stood up slowly, not looking at me, and started to walk towards the front door.

"What? Cade, are you leaving? You're just going to show up like this out of the blue, fuck me and then leave?"

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He opened the front door and turned back to me, although he still wouldn't look me in the eye.

"Ellie. I think I'm just tired from traveling or something. I'll - what's your number, I'll call you tomorrow?"

I felt like I was being pranked. The old Cade would never have pulled something like that. Just leaving me upset with no explanation, no reassurances. But here he was, doing it. I could feel a hard, bitter lump rising in my throat, I knew I was going to break down any second.

"Get out, Cade. Either tell me what the fuck is going on right now or get out."

He got out. And I stood in the middle of the living room and watched him through the window as he walked to his car and drove away. When the only thing I could see were the tail-lights of his car, I sank down onto the floor and curled up into a ball, sobbing. It had gone badly so fast and so completely that it almost felt deliberate. Was I being punished? That's what it felt like. He just shows up unannounced after five years, makes love to me and then has a meltdown over the fact that I have an on-off relationship with a man? Especially after he's spent years doing anything but remaining celibate in Los Angeles?

I curled my fists into the rough carpet and sobbed silently. What Cade had just done was crueler than if he hadn't showed up at all. I went to bed that night completely emotionally exhausted after sitting on the sofa for hours, wracking my brain trying to figure out some reason he could have had for acting the way he did. I couldn't do it. There was no good reason. Cade Parker had changed.

I don't have any kind of excuse for leaving Ellie the way I did that night. She told me later, a long time later, that it felt like I was trying to punish her and the worst part of it is, I think it was. Something had snapped in my mind when she told me about her sometimes-boyfriend and the fact that she was sleeping with him. I thought I was prepared. Ever since leaving North Falls I'd tried to force myself to be OK with the fact that Ellie's life was going to move on. That she was going to have relationships. That some other man was going to experience her hot, breathy sighs in his ear as she gave him the sweet little pussy that no matter how much I tried, I could not convince myself did not belong to me.

When I got back to the hotel room, I promptly put my fist through the wall like a petulant teenager. I knew Ellie didn't belong to me. I knew she wasn't my property. Well, part of me knew it. It was some other part, some lizard-brain throwback, that refused to accept it. Ellie Parker belonged with me. That's what my lizard brain said, anyway. That's what it insisted upon.

I went down to the convenience store next to the hotel, bought a six pack of crappy beer and took it back to my room to drink, alone and brooding. I wanted to call Jess but I was too ashamed to tell her how badly I'd acted. I wanted to call Ellie and beg for her forgiveness, but I'd seen the anger and hurt in her eyes before I left. She didn't want to talk to me.

The next day, when I woke up, I felt sick. Sick at how I'd treated Ellie, sick at having so badly screwed up our first meeting after so many years apart and sick at the fact that I still couldn't bear even the briefest moment imagining her with someone else. I wanted to hunt down her 'Bill' and tear him to pieces. I stumbled into the bathroom and looked at my unshaven, bleary-eyed face in the mirror.

What the fuck was I thinking? It was almost as much of a shock to me as it probably had been to poor Ellie the night before. I'd never really experienced anything like it before - that boiling, automatic sexual jealousy that seemed to bubble up from out of nowhere. After a shower and a shave I collapsed onto the bed and thought about what to do. I could call Jessica and get her advice. I could slink back to Los Angeles like the guilty asshole I was. Or I could try and apologize to Ellie. It had to be option three. Even if she told me to fuck off, there was no other way to live with myself if I didn't even try. I hopped into the cramped front seat of the rental car and drove over to her trailer, filled with dread at what she might say. When I got there, a man with greasy-looking hair and rounded shoulders was standing outside. He turned to see who it was when he heard me get out of the car.

"Is Ellie in?"

He peered at me through eyes that looked even redder and more bloodshot than my own.

"Who are - holy fuck, you're Cade Parker!"

The front door opened and Ellie appeared, arms crossed over her chest and eyes darting back and forth between me and the other man.

"Bill," she said, warily, "it's alright, I've got it."

But Bill wasn't about to leave Ellie alone with me, which didn't surprise me at all.

"Holy shit, Ellie, you weren't kidding. Cade Parker. Damn." He turned to me. "What do you want?"

I could feel the hostility emanating from Ellie's boyfriend - or whatever he was - but I could also feel him holding back a little. It was more than obvious who would win a fight if it came to that, which I hoped it didn't.

"I don't want any trouble. I just want to talk to Ellie for a few minutes," I said, trying to keep the surprise that Ellie would ever be with a man like that out of my voice so as not to offend her.

"Ellie's got to go to work, she doesn't have time."

I looked at Ellie. Her expression was distant. "Ellie. Let me drive you to work. Please. I only need five minutes and then I'll leave you alone."

She let me drive her to work, but I knew it was probably more out of a wish to avoid any ugliness between Bill and I than it was interest in hearing anything I had to say. As soon as I pulled back onto the road and I knew Bill was out of earshot, I turned to her.

"Ellie, I'm sorry. I'm just completely and totally sorry for last night. I acted like a total asshole and just, I wanted to apologize to you in person. It had nothing to do with you. It was all me."

She looked down at her lap where she was fidgeting with the cuff of her jacket. When she spoke, her voice was cool and resigned.

"I know it was all you, Cade. I don't even know what to say. You're sorry, that's fine, I accept. What else do you want?"

What else did I want? I wanted to pull the car over and grab Ellie by the shoulders, look her in the eyes and tell her that I wanted everything. Her. That it had only ever been her and that the self-loathing I felt over how I acted the previous night was matched only by my certainty that we belonged together.

But I couldn't tell her any of those things. First of all, because it just would have looked like a cheap attempt to get out of my behavior the night before but also because, in spite of the passage of time, nothing had really changed about either of our situations. She was still tied to North Falls. And I was under contract to the Kings. We couldn't be together then any more than we could five years before.

"I don't want anything, Ellie." Well, that came out wrong. I could feel myself starting to scramble. "I mean, I don't mean that I don't want anything. I mean that I'm just trying to apologize here and I know you don't owe me anything."

She looked at me coldly for a second. "I know I don't owe you anything, Cade."

"That isn't what I meant. I just meant that-"

"What, Cade? What?! Why did you even come back here? Did you spend any time at all thinking about how it would make me feel to see you again? Do you know how long it took to feel like a person again after you left the first time?"

Nothing was going how I had intended it to go. She wasn't wrong, either, about me not thinking about how she would feel to see me again. I'd just been clinging to the fantasy of being with her again, of feeling the things we felt for each other in high school. It wasn't entirely selfish, either, despite how it looked. Ellie Hesketh had needed me, once. She'd looked at me with a smile in her eyes, clung to me when she couldn't and wouldn't cling to anyone else. I wanted to be that person for her. It never went away. And everything I said seemed to make it less and less likely she would ever understand that.

I drove slowly, crawling along the road at less than fifteen miles per hour, but we still got to the salon way too soon. I was desperate.

"Ellie, please. Please have dinner with me. I need to say some things to you."

She put her hand on the door handle and turned to me. In the morning sunlight I could see circles under her eyes.

"What do you need to say Cade? There's nothing to say. I still have to be here and you still have to be there. What did you think was going to happen? Did you think I was just going to fall into your arms and everything was going to magically work out?"

I had kind of thought that. And now she was suffering - the one person I didn't want to ever feel hurt or pain - because I was a fucking fantasist. I hated myself.

"I don't know," I said, rubbing my forehead in frustration. "I just missed you so much, Ellie. You have no idea."

She cut in, her voice icy. "Actually, I think I do have some idea. Other people exist, Cade. I exist. I'm a person. I'm not just a thing who made you happy once, a long time ago. I haven't been in a suspended animation chamber this whole time."

"I know! Ellie, don't you think I know that?!" I knew she was about to get out of the car and the voice inside my head was screaming at me that this was it, that this was the last time I was ever going to see Ellie Hesketh.

"Please. Please. Ellie." I could hear my voice starting to crack. "I just want you to know that I lo-"

"DON'T!" She screamed, shoving the arm I was trying to wrap around her away, perfectly aware of what I'd been about to say. "Don't, Cade. Do not fucking show up here without any thought whatsoever as to how it would affect me, act the way you did last night, and then try and say that to me!"

She started sobbing then, burying her head in her hands and violently shrugging my hand away again when I tried to touch her.

"Ellie..."

"No, Cade. No." She turned her flushed, tear-stained face towards me. "Just go away. Don't come to my place again. I don't want to see you...again."

She barely got the last word out before another sob wracked her body. I watched, surprised I couldn't hear the actual sound of my heart breaking as she opened the car door, got out and walked slowly across the parking lot to the salon and then went inside without looking back. Never in my life have I felt the kind of panic I felt that day, watching her walk away from me. The biggest enforcers in the NHL had nothing on Ellie Hesketh. I would happily have submitted to being repeatedly slammed into the boards if it meant avoiding the awfulness of the pain in her eyes and the knowledge that it was me who had caused it.

I drove back to the hotel in a daze of hurt and called Jessica the minute the door to my room was closed behind me. As soon as she picked up, the last little bit of resistance inside me crumbled.

"Cade?"

I couldn't speak. I broke down crying and sniffling like a kid.

"Cade, oh my God. What's wrong? What's going on?"

"Jess. I'm in...I'm in North Falls." My face was burning with embarrassment at my uncontrollable display of emotions.

"Oh," Jess replied, gently. "I take it it didn't go well."

I shook my head back and forth, still unsuccessfully fighting for control. "No."

"Oh, Cade. I'm so sorry. Are you sure it's that bad?"

"Yeah," I said, my breath hitching in my throat, "it's that bad. She doesn't want to see me again."

"Alright, OK. Are you coming back to L.A.? I'll come pick you up at the airport and take you for drinks, OK?"

Jess's kindness just made me cry harder. She waited, all kindness on the other end of the phone, until I'd calmed down sufficiently to talk like a normal person.

"Yeah, I'll go to the airport now. I can't stay here. Everything about this town just makes me think of her. Everything about everything just makes me think of her."

"Cade, promise me you'll call me and let me know what time your plane lands. I'll meet you at the airport, OK? I'm worried about you. Promise me."

"I promise, Jess. And thanks. I didn't mean to just call you like this and dump all my emotions all over you."

Jess made a dismissive noise. "Cade, it's cool. You're my friend. I'm here for you. And if my show ends up getting cancelled, you better be there to listen to me freaking out, too."

After the call ended, I walked down to the hotel's reception room and paid them, including for the cost of repairing the wall I'd punched the night before. Then I drove to the airport as a feeling of total bleakness settled over my heart and flew back to Los Angeles. Jess was there, waiting for me at the arrivals area. She took me straight to our favorite bar for drinks and let me talk about whatever I wanted to talk about. Surprisingly, it wasn't Ellie. I was embarrassed about my earlier breakdown and the initial shock of Ellie's words was starting to wear off. I could feel the masculine wall of emotional denial lowering itself down over my psyche and I welcomed it. Fuck talking about it. I didn't want to feel anything, not then anyway, when it was all so raw. Jess sensed it and didn't push me. When she dropped me off at home later that night I went straight to my bedroom and passed out fully-clothed on my bed, grateful for the soothing oblivion of alcohol-induced sleep.