Winning It All (Hometown Players Book 4) (12 page)

Shay is quiet as we dress and as we leave the fitness center. I try to take her hand, but she pulls away and stuffs it in her pocket. She stops in the parking lot. “Where’s your car?”

I point to the only car left in the parking lot, my Range Rover, and she looks confused so I elaborate. “The Aston Martin isn’t meant for the rain. I drive this or my Beemer most of the season.”

She makes a face, her adorable freckled nose crinkling up and her aqua eyes rolling upward. “Of course you do.”

I frown and roll my wrist, which is a little achy because of the whole shower sex thing. She’s dissing my cars? Or me because of my cars? It’s not like I collect and drive monster trucks or something. All of my cars are tasteful and, although expensive, reliable modes of transportation. I’m about to tell her that but she quickens her pace as I hit the remote in my pocket and unlock the doors, and she walks ahead without me. I try to open her door, because that’s what I do for women—all women, not just the ones I enjoy seeing naked—but she gets there first and is in the passenger seat pulling the door closed before I can reach it. I try not to frown, and I slide into the driver’s seat. I look over at her as she buckles her seat belt.

“So you know I like cars, why don’t you tell me something about you? Like your last name,” I suggest with a smile.

Her head spins to face me. “You don’t know my last name.”

“You never told me.”

She looks shocked but then shrugs defiantly. “It’s the same as Trey’s.”

“I don’t know Trey’s.”

“Ask your esteemed leader Avery Westwood,” she replies instead of just telling me. Then she promptly changes the subject. “I live at…”

“I know where you live. I’ve been there, remember?”

She shrugs, eyes staring straight ahead as I back out of the stall and move toward the exit. “I wasn’t sure you remembered. I mean, it was a while ago.”

I’m confused by that statement. “It was a week and a half ago.”

“Yeah, for someone like you, that could be a lifetime. You could have driven four or five other girls home since then,” she says casually.

“I could have?” I question back. This woman, no matter how beautiful or how good she is to my cock, is starting to show me the downside to liking a woman with a smart mouth. “You’re the one without a car. How many men have you invited in for impromptu sleepovers so you can catch a lift to work?”

The car gets deathly quiet. I know that was a borderline shitty thing to say, but so is what she said to me. Still, I shouldn’t have said it. I open my mouth to apologize, but she starts talking first. Her voice is hard, and her tone is biting. “I didn’t invite you to sleep over. You kind of just invited yourself. And for the record, I don’t have the opportunities you do. I’m just a lowly yoga instructor, not a hockey god with a collection of exotic cars so women know my dick is as big as my bank account.”

Whoa. That was beyond harsh. I glance over to her. “So can you just tell me why you hate my guts, please? This is getting tedious.”

“I don’t hate your guts. I don’t let guys I hate have sex with me,” she blurts back suddenly and with way less attitude than everything she’s said and done since we left the shower. She sighs, her eyes finally drifting to mine. “And I think this sex thing is…fun. And maybe we can keep doing it.”

“The sex thing? Only?” I ask, looking for clarification because I think she’s asking me to be her bed buddy.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s fun, right?”

She is asking me to be a bed buddy. “Yeah. It’s more than fun. It’s great, but I think a relationship would be too. And that’s what I want.”

She frowns, shaking her head so adamantly it’s almost offensive. “What makes you think I’m girlfriend material for you?”

I slow to a stop at a red light and turn to her. “You’re smart and smart-mouthed. You’re independent and strong-willed, which I love, even though most guys would think I’m nuts. There’s just something about you that makes me…happy every time I see you. And I want to figure that out. Oh, and you’re gorgeous as hell.”

She runs a hand through her damp hair, pushing it back off her face except for one piece that sticks to her cheek. I reach out and gently brush it back. I literally see her quiver at my touch, but she pushes my hand away anyway. “Frenchie, I just don’t want to be involved with a…”

She falters. I stare at her until the light turns green and I have to focus on the road again. “A French Canadian?” I ask trying to fill in the blank. “A guy with a dick as big as his bank account? A guy who makes you smile? Because that hot little mouth of yours turns up every time you see me. Like it or not.”

“A hockey player.”

“Why?”

I turn onto her street and slow down because I know when I get to her place she’ll jump out and leave this whole conversation behind her. And I’m not ready to let her off the hook yet. “Your brother was a hockey player, right? He seems like a great guy.”

“He is, because he doesn’t play anymore.”

“Come on, that’s ridiculous.”

“He used to fuck around all the time on his girlfriends in college. In fact, when he suffered the injury that ended his chances at going pro, three girls showed up at the hospital all claiming to be his girlfriend. Because the profession breeds arrogance and self-entitlement,” she states flatly. “And that doesn’t foster healthy relationships. I want a healthy relationship. I want a man I can trust.”

I glance over at her, pausing at a stop sign much longer than I need to. “And so now, thanks to injury, he’s not untrustworthy, arrogant, self-entitled anymore. He can suddenly have a healthy relationship? And that’s because he stopped playing, not because he grew up and matured, like we
all
do?”

She frowns like she’s annoyed, but something flickers in her eyes that’s more melancholy than annoyance. I want her to tell me why but she’s doesn’t explain it. “Not everyone does, Sebastian. Not all hockey players do.”

Okay. I see where this is coming from. I pull away from the stop sign, smiling softly at her. She looks at me like she doesn’t want to like it, but she does. I can tell. “So just because your brother was a bit of a manwhore in college you’re not going to give me a chance?”

For the briefest of seconds, I can see her register the stupidity of her own reasoning. But then her face grows dark and stalwart. “It’s not just my brother,” she says as she turns her face away from me to look out the window. Her hand reaches for the door handle. “I can walk from here. Just pull over.”

“Shay,” I start to protest but pull the car over anyway because, knowing her, she’ll jump out of it whether I stop or not. “Shay…
ma belle
.”

“No. Don’t,” she snaps and glares at me while she undoes her seat belt. “I’m not falling for that French crap. I told you that. I’m not your usual puck bunny. I don’t want your bank account or your fame, and I’m not about to get sucked into a world I’ll get trapped in.”

“What are you talking about?” I blink. I’m not asking this woman to marry me. Hell, I haven’t even technically asked this woman on a date.

“There’s too much temptation in your world, too many easy ways to hurt the person you claim to love,” she babbles on. “It’s just not what I want. Ever.”

I stare at her. She’s fucking insane. Of course she is. Because she’s sexy and smart and quick-witted and mind-blowingly perfect around my cock, so of course she’s insane. Thanks, Universe. “I’ve never fucked around on a girlfriend.”

She doesn’t even look the least bit contrite, even though it’s clear from my tone that I’m offended. “When was your last relationship?”

Her smoky eyes are narrowed and her eyebrow is cocked, like she’s a cop on an episode of
Law & Order
or something. It makes me defensive. And angry.

“What difference does that make?” I demand because there is no way I’m telling her I broke up with Dawn the day before hooking up with her. She’ll think that makes me a player. It doesn’t. I don’t control timing; fate does. I don’t believe in a mandatory mourning time for relationships anyway. When it ends, it’s over. I didn’t expect to find someone else so soon, but I wasn’t about to ignore a bona fide connection with someone because of some abstract rule about how long you should be single in between relationships. “If there’s a connection, I am going to go after it. That’s not because I’m a hockey player; it’s because I want to find someone to share my big bank account and big dick with. One person.
Forever
. That’s what women want men to want, isn’t it? That makes me a fucking catch,
n’est pas
?”

She rolls her big, beautiful eyes. “Oh, enough with the French, Frenchie.”

“I’m not doing it to impress you,” I explain and sigh. “I think I’m done trying to do that at all.”

She opens the car door but turns back to me before she gets out. “Look, you’re a great lay. I won’t lie about that, but that’s all this was. It was fun and satisfying, but I won’t date you.”

“You’re not telling me something. What is it?” I ask, but she just gives me a small, awkward wave and then gets out of the car. As she starts down the dark, damp street the half block to her apartment, I follow slowly in the car. She may have gone from the girl of my potential dreams to the biggest bag of crazy I’ve met in a while, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon her. I told Trey I would get her home safe and I will. She turns once and glares at me, but I just ignore her and idle outside her building until she’s unlocked the door and is safely inside.

As I do a U-turn and begin back toward my townhouse I can’t help but feel like I’m going to miss her. I barely knew her but I still can’t help but feel that we had something that was more than just physical. I was going to miss getting to know her, as weird as that sounds.

I’m waiting at the bus stop, annoyed that the bus isn’t on time and annoyed with myself because I should have gotten out here early. The sun is fighting to make its way out of the heavy cloud cover. Every now and then it wins the battle, and I get a ray of sunshine to warm me, but it doesn’t last long. Where is the damn bus? I have a nutrition class to teach in forty minutes. I’ve been late twice this week already. Trey’s ready to fire me, no joke.

I had called Audrey last night and told her about what happened—and the conversation on the car ride home. She ate it up like it was a recap of her favorite soap opera.

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. On his way home, I guess,” I said and sighed into the phone. “I am not an expert in the migratory patterns of hotheaded French defensemen.”

“Key word in that was hot,” Audrey had replied. “You think he’s hot.”

Yeah, so she was no help in my quest to stay hockey-free.

“He turned down my bed buddies suggestion.”

She sighed into the phone. “That’s because he’s not a chicken shit like you. He knows this is more than sex. I was just trying to convince you to pretend it was all about sex so you’d at least keep seeing him until your brain caught up with your heart.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was lying about the orgasms,” Audrey confessed. “You’re attracted to him as a human being, but you won’t admit it because of your prior trauma.”

“Please stop using your psych degree on me.”

“Shaynie, he’s good for you, not just your clit. Try to come to terms with that, will you?”

I hadn’t answered her. I just told her I had to go and hung up. I had thought about Audrey’s little psychoanalysis all night long. I did like Sebastian. But I had liked Dustin too, and all that got me in the end was a twelve-day cycle of antibiotics. And Dustin wasn’t even a professional athlete. My dad was, and he probably slept with hundreds of women behind my mother’s back.

Besides, even if I liked Sebastian, after my little cryptic tirade on the drive home, I’m sure he is done with my crazy ass. For all I know, he could easily forget about me. Maybe that connection I felt, and needed now to ignore, was one-sided this whole time. That would make sense because my father was the same way. I watched my mom struggle for a connection to him my whole life. Sure, they are married, but he didn’t seem to really love her. He loves himself, for sure, and maybe Trey, but if he loved his wife, he rarely showed it. And although Trey has been slightly better with his emotions since rehab, I still thought I saw a glimmer of longing in his wife Sasha’s eyes sometimes. Trey isn’t one for outward signs of affection.

Sebastian may seem outwardly affectionate right now, but that’s because this is new and we are drawn to each other like bunnies in heat. Last night, to try to cure myself of the lingering longing I have for him, I surfed the Tumblr account dedicated to wives and girlfriends of NHL players and found his thread. In the last year he’s been photographed with three different women the blog called his girlfriend. I bet he was drawn to them too. And where are they now? I am not going to be girlfriend number four.

I sigh and crane my neck, looking down the street for any sign of the damn bus. I contemplate giving up and calling Uber or a cab, but I’m trying to save money. My car is toast. There was no saving the engine, so now I need to figure out how the hell to afford a new car. I am drowning in school loans and although Trey pays me well, Seattle is expensive and I just don’t have a lot in my savings. Certainly not enough to buy a car. Not one that’s worth owning, anyway.

A car horn honks and I look up. There in front of me is an all-too-familiar silver Audi. I contemplate turning and walking away, but she’s staring right at me through the windshield and I’m staring back. I can’t pretend I didn’t see her. She pulls right up to the bus stop and rolls down her passenger window.

“I thought that was you, Shaynie!” my mother says brightly, leaning toward the open window. “Are you heading to work? I can give you a lift! I wanted to check in with Trey anyway.”

I want to tell her I’d rather take the bus. I really would rather take it and if it had been on time, I would have, but the bus isn’t here and I am late. Very late. And I know my mother won’t take no for an answer anyway. So I pull open the passenger door and climb in.

She leans over the console between the chocolate leather seats and kisses my cheek. “So good to see you, sweetie.” She pulls away from the bus stop and toward downtown. “I feel like you might as well live in Malaysia with the amount of times we see each other. I mean, you’re literally less than twenty minutes from home, but you’d never know it.”

And the guilt trip has started before we even manage to move a mile. Fabulous. I try not to frown, or sigh, or groan or do anything that she can latch on to and use to become more of a martyr. “My car died and I’ve been working a lot. A ton, actually. I barely see Audrey, and the only reason I see Trey is because he’s at the gym.”

She nods and reaches over to pat my hand, which is resting in my lap. “I know, honey. Not judging. Just saying I miss you, I guess.”

Yeah, right.

“Is your cell phone working?” she asks, and here is layer two of the guilt trip. “Because I left you a couple of messages.”

“You know I don’t listen to messages,” I reply because I’ve told her a million times I never check them and that it’s a waste of time for her to leave one. I’ll see her number on the missed call list and call her back, no need for voicemail. Only this week, I haven’t called her back. “And again, I’m crazy busy. I was going to call you back tonight.”

“Well, now you don’t have to,” she says, her tone light even though I know she’s ticked she had to hunt me down. “I can tell you in person.”

“Tell me what?”

“Daddy is being honored at the Winterhawks game Friday!”

When I don’t say anything, she glances over at me and smiles expectantly. I stare back passively so she elaborates, her hands flailing wildly for emphasis. “They’re retiring his number! You know what a big deal that is? The Winterhawks are yet to retire a jersey. This will be the first one. He’s been doing interviews all week. I’m surprised you haven’t heard one. He’s very proud.”

“I don’t listen to sports shows, Mom,” is all I say in a calm, flat voice even though I know what she’s going to do next, and I’m already angry about it.

“So we need to be there on Friday night, obviously,” she says, and my blood pressure spikes. “There’s going to be a video tribute and they’ll raise his banner and he’ll drop the puck for the game.”

“I’m not going, Mother.”

I don’t know why she bothers making a completely hurt and stunned face. She knew I was going to say that. Still, my mother is the queen of hurt and stunned faces. The world, it seems, has been wounding her and taking her by surprise her whole life. She’s the person who would tie herself to some train tracks and then be startled by the locomotive’s headlight when it barrels toward her. Her complete refusal to live in reality is the thing that makes me most crazy.

“Shayne, this is getting ridiculous and, quite frankly, embarrassing.”

“Nobody cares if I attend Dad’s stupid ceremony.”

“Everyone knows he has two children,” my mother replies in a clipped tone. “We were a very high-profile family in this city when your dad played, and you and your brother were media darlings.”

She says that a lot. All I remember is being dragged to arenas to sit in the family box with a bunch of other glammed-up housewives and their bratty children. And my mother always made us go down to the locker room when the media was finishing their postgame interviews and basically shoved us at my dad. He’d bend down and swing us around or hug us and at first I used to love it, because I was young and starved for his affection, and this was the only time he gave it. Then I got older and realized that the only reason he gave it to us after games was to entertain the media and impress his fans. Then that’s when I started hating it. I was eight.

“I hate hockey. I’m not going.”

Here’s the part where she tells me how I owe my life to hockey.

“You always forget, but your father’s career gave you a very comfortable life,” she lectures sternly; her thin lips, painted a pink that’s way too light for her skin tone, are turned down in a hard frown.

“More comfortable than a history teacher’s salary, right? I mean, that’s why you never went back and finished your own degree,” I mutter.

“Being a hockey player’s wife is a career, Shayne,” she retorts. “I’ve told you that.”

“Because Dad told
you
that when you wanted to go back to college,” I remind her, even though I know she hasn’t forgotten.

She doesn’t respond to that. Her lips are pressed tightly together and her grip on the steering wheel is making her knuckles turn white, so I take a deep breath and return to the original conversation, which is only slightly less unpleasant.

“I haven’t attended one of his events in years. No one will make a big deal out of it if I miss this one too.” She turns into the parking lot of Elevate. “And I’m not just being difficult. I teach flow yoga at seven on Fridays. Sorry. But thanks for the lift.”

I expect her to pull over at the curb by the door, but she turns left and starts scanning the row for a free spot. “I’m coming in to check on your brother and make sure he’s still going to be there for your father. Make sure we can count on one child.”

I wait impatiently as she slowly noses into a vacant stall. I just want to get out of the car and away from the guilt trip. She turns off the car and opens her door. I do the same and as soon as my feet hit the pavement, I turn to her with a smile and a wave. “I have to run ahead. I’m late for a class I’m teaching. But thanks for the lift. Have fun Friday.”

She mutters a good-bye, and I know she’s still upset with me. I just don’t care. I made it clear to my father five years ago that I would not be a part of his career again—and I would never take another dime from him. And I hadn’t. That money was blood money and it was the blood of this family that it shed. I was not going to be a part of it.

I rush straight to the nutrition class, shoving my coat and bag in the corner of the room and lecturing in my street clothes, which I know Trey would hate. He wants us in his Elevate Fitness gear at all times. But hey, at least I got here in time. When the class is over, I head toward the changing room to get into the right clothes and start my shift at the juice bar. Trey calls my name across the foyer and stops me dead in my tracks. I turn and find him standing by his office door, a scowl on his face. He waves me over.

I walk over and squeeze past him into his office. He lets the door close behind me and says firmly, “You’re going.”

“Where?”

“To the Winterhawks game on Friday. To Dad’s ceremony.”

“Trey.”

“Shayne. You are going.” He crosses his giant arms across his huge chest. His chin juts out defiantly. “I canceled your yoga class and I’ll drive your ass myself. You. Are. Going.”

I glare at him. “You know how I feel about him. About his career. About that fucking sport.”

“Yeah, I know. I just don’t care,” he returns harshly. “Shayne, I’m the one who had issues because of hockey. Dad is the one with concussion syndrome, not you. If we can go, you can go.”

“My issues with what hockey has done to this family aren’t just about your drug problem and Dad’s health, and you know it,” I reply hotly.

I turn to leave because I am done with this conversation, and he can cancel all the classes he wants, but I’m not going. I reach for the door and he says, “You know how I deal with it? I choose to believe that Mom and Dad’s marriage would have been a joke even if Dad were a car salesman or a doctor. That they’re just fucked-up people in general and would be no matter what he did for a living.”

I stop and turn back to look at my brother. He runs a hand over his shorn head and rubs the back of his neck. He’s trying to chill himself out. He’s done that since he was a kid. “Look, Shaynie. I know you hate the things that have happened. I’m not a big fan either. But he’s your fucking father. We’re your family. Sebastian Deveau is going to eclipse Dad’s scoring record and this is the Hawks giving him his last hurrah. Just suck it up and give him a few hours, okay?”

“Can we talk about how you clearly knew Sebastian played hockey and didn’t tell me?” I change the subject and cross my arms angrily over my chest.

“That’ll teach you for having one-night stands in my laundry room.”

And shower room,
I add silently.

“And let’s talk about how hypocritical it is that you keep banging him.”

“Let’s not. And that’s over. For good.”

Trey unfolds his arms and sighs, his massive shoulders heaving up, then down. “It’ll be easier for me at this ceremony thing if you’re there.”

I can’t deny him now, and he knows it. I sobbed a promise to him when he woke up from his coma that I would help him through, and I meant it. I would help him through life without hockey. Life without drugs. So if he needs me, I have to be there. “You’re serious? You mean that?”

He nods. I want to scream but instead I nod back. “Are you picking me up at my place or do you want to leave from here?”

“From here.”

“Fine.” I turn to leave, but he puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls me back into his wall of a chest for a hug.

“Thank you, Shayne.”

“You’re welcome.”