In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (4 page)

Colesy had been my primary focus on that score. He was different than most of the guys, so I’d been making an effort to include him, even if I left everyone else to Soupy. He was kind of standoffish in a way. Had been since he’d first shown up in Portland. He was a good player, took care of his shit, never caused any problems, but he tended to keep to himself. I had started making extra effort with him once I noticed he wasn’t always coming along to hang out off-ice with the boys. I sometimes took him out to lunch, one-on-one, to get to know him better. Was he just shy or introverted, or did he feel like he didn’t fit in for whatever reason? I knew all too well the harm that could cause—feeling like you didn’t belong—thanks to my brothers. At least once we’d gotten a little older.

Being on a team, though, there’s no room for a guy to feel left out or as if he doesn’t fit. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Colesy.

That was how I started to figure out that he was gay. It was little things, but I recognized them. I mean, he wasn’t wearing bright pink and getting manicures and talking like a girl or anything like that. He wasn’t obvious about it; by all appearances, he was trying to keep it a secret. What gave him away was more how he would smile at the bartender at Kells when we’d have lunch there sometimes, or how he would force his gaze away from a couple of the guys we would see around town when we were out, as though he didn’t want to get caught staring at a guy he thought was hot.

I never said anything to him about it because he never said anything to me about it. It was his secret—his to reveal or keep hidden. But at the same time, I wanted him to feel comfortable enough around me that he would know he could tell me if he wanted to.

There wasn’t a single
out
guy in the whole NHL. Not one. There no way Colesy was the only one keeping it hidden, though. There had to be at least 800 guys playing in the league. I didn’t get the feeling that he was ready to be the ambassador, to wear that mantle and hope others got the courage to follow him, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to do a fucking thing to make him feel ashamed of who he was.

I’d already done enough of that for one lifetime, and it had cost me more than I’d had to give.

Colesy was only a couple of minutes behind the rest of us getting to the locker room. I took my time undressing and heading for the showers, allowing him a chance to catch up with me.

“Coming to Amani’s?” Soupy asked when I was almost done getting dressed.

Amani’s Family-Style Italian Restaurant was a favorite hang-out for the guys. The menu was full of things that made for great pre-game fuel, and we tended to go there a lot more often than just game days. It wasn’t
my
favorite, though. And I wanted to take Colesy out and talk to him, see what the coaches had wanted with him, that sort of thing. I shook my head. “Can’t do it today. My favorite waitress is expecting me at Kells.”

“Favorite hookup, you mean?” He had one brow lifted in question.

“Yeah, fine. Whatever.”

“Mmm-hmm. Whatever,” he repeated, rolling his eyes.

The guys all acted like I was taking a different girl home with me every night lately. Probably because I hadn’t been hanging with them as much as they were used to, so they were trying to figure out what was up with me. The truth was, ever since that night after Zee’s and Soupy’s weddings, when I’d been with Allison, I hadn’t really wanted to be with any other woman. I’d been pretty fucked up since then—thinking about finding
the one
. And some insane part of me kept wondering if Allison had been the one.

Not that I’d ever see her again. Even though we’d stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, talking between intermittent bouts of sex, sharing what bits of ourselves we could without delving too far into the truth of who we were, she’d left the next morning. Somehow she’d slipped out of my hotel room without me waking up. No note. No phone number. Not even her real name. It was as if she’d never existed, if not for the scent left behind all over me, the slight indentation of the pillow she’d used, and the pieces of her soul she’d inadvertently revealed more through body language than through anything specific she’d said.

She had definitely existed. She’d been as real as they come.

I could only hope that the night we’d shared had given her the boost in confidence she’d needed. I supposed I would never know.

Colesy came back into the locker room half dressed, still pulling a clean T-shirt on over his head while he was walking. I caught his eye and angled my head so he’d come over to talk to me.

Soupy started backing away. “I’m going up to kiss my wife before we head out.” He’d married Jim Sutter’s assistant, Rachel, so he was always running upstairs to sneak in a quick make out session whenever we were at the practice facility. And yet
he
was giving
me
a hard time about my sex life. He might as well have reverted to being sixteen years old with the way he’d been acting over the past several months.

“Later,” I called over my shoulder. Then I turned to Colesy. “Wanna grab a bite with me away from the rest of the guys?”

He gave me the side eye. “You don’t have to hang out with me all the time, you know. You can keep going with your life as usual.”

“I know. I want to grab some lunch with you, though.”

Plopping down on the seat in front of his stall, he glanced at his watch and then set to work putting on his shoes. “Yeah, I’ve got time for that, I suppose.”

“You suppose? Hot date after lunch?” I said it jokingly, trying to keep things light, but I was actually curious. Not that I expected him to answer me honestly.

“Not exactly.”

“Then what, exactly?”

He scanned the locker room, as though he was checking to see who all was still around and how close-by they were. It was nearly deserted. Other than the two of us, only Viktor Ellstrom and Liam Kallen were still here, and they were holed up in the opposite corner, having a conversation in Swedish. They were oblivious to anything around them.

“Bergy encouraged me to take some dance classes to work on my core,” he said finally. “I’ve been going to ballet lessons and ballroom dance, and I don’t want the boys to know and give me a hard time about it.”

As soon as he mentioned dance, something clicked in me. I got choked up and had to fight the old, familiar gut-wrenching ache back down. I swallowed hard to keep the bile at bay. “Yeah? Dance lessons, huh?”

“They’re helping. Clearly.” He got up and shoved his laundry into his duffel to take home with him. “But you know how the boys can be about these things.”

I definitely knew how guys could be about other guys who danced. And I knew what being bullied about something like that could do to a person. I’d done it, right along with everyone else, caving in to the peer pressure that kids put on one another. I’d done it to my own fucking brother. I’d picked on him, teased him relentlessly, called him
gay
and
queer
and
faggot
and
pussy
and
sissy
and a thousand other things I’d never meant and could never take back.

And he’d killed himself.

“Right,” I said slowly, trying to rein all my thoughts back in before I lost my shit in the middle of the locker room. I nodded. “I do know. Why don’t I come with you?” There wasn’t a better way I could think of to deal with all the fucking things running through my head than to confront it head-on.

“Yeah?” Colesy said.

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

I was going to take some fucking dance lessons. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe then I’d be able to put Garrett to rest.

“
Y
OUR FRAME HAS
improved,” I said appreciatively to Charlie Winston, one of my students in a class full of retirees. “Markedly,” I added under my breath, in the hope that it might hide the shock in my voice.

Only a week ago, he was barely keeping either hand in its proper position, his arms hadn’t even been an afterthought, and his footwork? He could have hardly been worse at stepping if he’d been
trying
to do poorly. That had meant that Madge, his wife and dance partner, had been forced to essentially lead herself around the dance floor. I’d rarely seen such improvement in someone his age, particularly in such a short amount of time.

“Been practicing, Miss Hayden!” he called out as he twirled Madge under his arm before taking her back into a proper closed hold.

“Brianna,” I corrected him. It was fine for my school-aged students to call me Miss Hayden, but it felt weird to have a man who was old enough to be my grandfather do that. “Or Brie, if you want.”

“Oh, he wants, all right,” Madge said, rolling her eyes, and all the other ladies in the class tittered right along with her. “Why do you think he’s been practicing so hard all of a sudden? Lord knows he’s not trying to impress
me
.”

Charlie flashed me a smile so wide he nearly spit out his dentures. He pulled his lips down over them, drawing them back into place, never missing a step.

I could only shake my head. A few years ago, men close to my twenty-six years were the ones hitting on me. These days, it was rare to come from anyone other than a man like Charlie—men who were far too old for me, married, and completely harmless in the long run.

Was it awful that I secretly wished someone less than harmless would hit on me every now and then? I mean, I didn’t want anything horrible to happen, but it would’ve been really nice to have a bad-boy-type flirt with me every now and then.

Someone kind of like that guy, Jacob. He’d done a heck of a lot better than simply flirting with me. We’d had an amazing night, and then I’d left just as I’d planned to do before I had shown up at his hotel.

I didn’t know why he came to mind right now, when I was nearly laughing over the idea of Charlie flirting with me. I shook Jacob clear of my mind, yet again, and closed the distance to Dan and Sharon, one of the other couples in my class.

“Chin up,” I said, gently putting a finger under Sharon’s chin and easing it into the proper position. She’d been staring at her feet again, which she tended to do right before losing her footing. She didn’t trust her feet to do their job even though they weren’t the problem. It was all in her mind. Actually, it was probably Dan, more than anything else, that she had a hard time trusting. She didn’t seem to think he could lead her properly despite the fact that she was the one who tended to stumble.

Once they were situated, I worked my way through the other pairs, correcting the occasional hand placement or counting time for a couple that was rhythmically challenged.

My seniors were one of my favorite groups to teach. They weren’t technically the best dancers—far from it—but they were here because they really wanted to learn. They enjoyed themselves. They weren’t here because someone else was pushing them into it, and they weren’t here because of some intrinsic drive to be the best. They were here to have fun. To enjoy one another. To keep themselves fit as their bodies started to give out on them.

Like mine had.

At least they had the excuse of age. I was twenty-six—way too young for my body to be the problem, and yet it was.

I glanced up at the clock over the entry to the Rose City Ballroom Dance Academy, the school that had brought me across the country to join their staff a couple of months ago. We’d run a little over today, probably because I was enjoying myself with them a bit too much. “Time’s up, folks,” I called out. “Don’t forget to stretch, and I’ll see you next week.”

“You might see Charlie sooner than that if you’re not careful,” Madge said.

I could only shake my head, but there was no hiding my smile. “Don’t forget to keep practicing your box step and under-arm turn. I expect to see improvement when I see you all again.” I grabbed my bottle of water and headed up to the front office to prepare for my next class.

The receptionist, Tanya Dennison, looked up when I came through the door. “Four of your ladies for the next class called to say they were sick and not coming.”

“You mean I might actually have enough men this time?” It was a beginner ballroom dance class for the average adult, and most days I had about twice as many women as men. That wouldn’t be such a big deal in some other forms of dance, but everything in ballroom required a partner. I’d been forced to teach some of the women to lead in recent weeks, which only made it harder for them to follow whenever they
did
have a male lead since it was all so new to them.

“You might have
too many
men today,” Tanya said with a grin. “Cole Paxton brought a friend—Keith Burns. Big guy. Fit.” Tanya paused dramatically, waggling her eyebrows at me. “
Hot
.”

“That’ll be a nice change of pace.” I might even be able to take one of the men as my own partner today and use him to demonstrate for the others.

“Honey, you have no idea how nice. Keith Burns is like sex on a stick. I wanna lick him up.”

I did my best not to get too excited about having another good-looking man in my class. He wouldn’t be looking at me, after all. He’d undoubtedly do the same thing most of the other men in the class always did and trip all over himself trying to get paired up with Alexis or Jenni, two college-aged girls who came dressed to impress each week. “He’s already here?”