Of course I know this. “Yeah, but that’s what the money is for,” and now it’s my turn to school him. “You’re getting millions a year so you can coast once this career eats you up and spits you and your battered body out.”
He nods in agreement, and then I half-jokingly add, “Are you not saving your money? Is it being blown on hookers, blow and gambling debts?”
“Hardly.” He rolls his eyes and squeezes my hands under his. “But I am not going to be the guy who sits around waiting for guest spots on sport shows to talk about what once was. I’m going to reinvent myself.”
“As an architect?”
He shrugs. “Maybe. All I know is I loved renovating this place so I followed that interest. Maybe another thing will interest me in the next few years and I’ll go after that.”
I stare at him and flashes of him in his uniform on the ice at my dad’s jersey retirement fill my head and then a montage on YouTube that I watched of him fighting joins it. They clash so hard with this person standing in front of me. I find myself whispering, “Who are you?”
His full lips pull up slightly and he whispers back, “I’m many things, but the one thing that should matter to you is that I’m the man who is crazy about you.”
He lifts my hands and kisses my knuckles softly. The kettle starts to whistle, and it snaps the thick rope of emotions that seems to be wrapping itself around me with his words and pulling me down a path I’m still not entirely sure I should take.
“I didn’t take you for a tea guy,” I say when I can finally find my voice again. He turns off the flame under the kettle and turns to grab something in one of the cupboards under the island.
He pulls out a French press and shows it to me before putting it down on the island and reaching for the kettle. “I like my coffee the way you like your men. Dark and rich and—”
“Cuban?” I add, and he stops what he’s doing and pins me with his eyes. I wait a couple heartbeats before I clarify. “I like my coffee Cuban.”
“Well, you’re stuck with French,” he returns and scoops some grounds from a fancy French roast coffee bag into the press. “In more ways than one.”
When the coffee is ready, he fills two cups, adds the amount of half and half and sugar I request and gives me one of the mugs before taking my hand and leading me toward the wall of windows on the front of the house that gives an unobstructed view of the water. There’s an incredibly long, low, tufted couch in front of it. He sits at one end, his wide bare back positioned against the arm, and I move toward the other end, but he still has me by the hand and he pulls me down so that his chest is my backrest.
“By the way,” he murmurs against the shell of my ear, “you look fucktastic in my team sweatshirt.”
I almost snort coffee through my nose at that comment. Fighting off a coughing fit and struggling to swallow, I glance down at the sweatshirt I grabbed and realize it’s got a giant white Winterhawks logo in the center of it. I manage to swallow and choke out, “I look like a puck bunny.”
“Puck bunnies wish they looked like you.” He laughs and I’m debating pulling the thing off my body, but I’m so comfortable against him, and he’s got his arm wrapped around my waist holding me in place, so I decide to just ignore it and sip my coffee again.
“I have a flight at one thirty this afternoon,” he says after a few minutes of comfortable silence. That news comes as a surprise.
“Where are you going?”
I swear orgasms kill brain cells because as soon as he says, “Playoffs,” I realize I’m an idiot. Round one starts tomorrow. If the Winterhawks are starting the series somewhere else, it means they’re playing a team that is seeded higher than them.
“Who are you playing?”
“The fucking Thunder,” he replies, and I feel him heave a heavy breath. “I fucking hate those douchebags. They knocked us out last year.”
I nod and sip my coffee. “So you’ll be gone for four or five days?”
“Yeah, but I’ll call and text…I just need your number.” I smile at the stupidity of this. He doesn’t even have my phone number. This is nuts. Seriously, the way this whole thing happened between us—it’s nuts. If there’s a path to true love, we’ve thrown away the directions and are careening down it in reverse, blindfolded. He squeezes me tighter around the waist. “So can I have your number, Shay?”
“Do you have any other siblings?” I ask. “Besides Stephanie?”
“Umm…two stepsisters,” he explains. “My mom remarried a couple years ago and he has two daughters.”
“When did your parents divorce?”
“When I was ten.”
“And you grew up in Quebec?”
I feel him shake his head behind me. “Mostly. But I was born in New Brunswick. I’m technically Acadian French. My great-grandparents actually settled in Maine from France and then my grandparents moved to New Brunswick. Then my mom and dad moved to Quebec for my father’s job when I was three. We stayed there after the divorce, until I was sixteen, and then I moved back to New Brunswick because I made a junior team there. I lived with my grandparents until I was eighteen and entered the draft.”
I stare out the window at the calm water as he speaks. When he’s done with his story he leans close to my ear again. “So? Do I pass whatever weird background check you’re putting me through? Do I get your number now?”
I laugh. Man, he must think I’m a nutjob. He slips out from behind me and walks over to the console table where he dropped his wallet, keys and phone last night. As I scoot back to nestle in the corner of the couch he vacated, he tosses me his wallet before picking up his phone.
“You can verify my name, age and date of birth, write down my DL and do an official background check if you want, but I’ll take those digits now.” He’s grinning again, holding his phone up ready for the numbers.
I give him my phone number and glance down at his wallet where it landed open on my left thigh. His driver’s license is glaring up at me. He’s a Leo. He’s almost two years older than I am. And…“Holy shit!”
He smirks and puts down his phone, finished entering my information. He knows exactly what I’m gawking at. “I know. It’s a lot of names.”
“Sebastian Gabriel Maxim Louis Deveau.”
“I think my parents knew they weren’t having any more kids so they just dumped all the potential names on me.” He shrugs. “What’s your middle name?”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
“Nope? That’s worse than Shayne,” he teases and I flip him my middle finger. He pretends to be offended. “Come on, I just vomited my life story.”
“I’ll tell you anything. Just not my middle name.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is, in fact, worse than Shayne.”
“It’s okay, Shay. It won’t turn me off. Nothing could turn me off.”
I ignore him. “What else did you want to know?”
“Trey your only sibling?”
I nod.
His blue eyes dim and he looks thoughtful, like he’s contemplating what to say next. “How come Trey doesn’t play hockey?”
“He did.” I pause. I don’t know if I want to tell him everything. “It didn’t work out.”
“How come?”
I pause and then shrug, not wanting to share my brother’s past with him because it’s not mine to share, so I decide to give a nonanswer. “I’m glad he quit because he would always be under my father’s shadow if he made the NHL anyway.”
Sebastian seems to think about it for a minute, and then that smirky, devious grin covers his sexy features again. “Or he could’ve just eclipsed the crap out of Glenn Beckford and his records. Like I’m doing.”
“There’s the Frenchie I know. The one with the giant ego.”
I get up off the couch and walk over to him. He smiles down at me. “What can I say? I’m confident in my abilities.”
I put the mug down, glad the conversation took a turn, and not ready to go back to
fifty questions about my life. So I do what I’ve wanted to do since he walked down the stairs looking all sleepy and sexy as fuck. I drop to my knees, taking his underwear with me, and say, “So am I.”
Chapter 36
Sebastian
The flight to San Francisco was painless. I text Shay as soon as we land. Nothing special, just a “thinking of you” type of text. I knew she had yoga and nutrition classes all afternoon so I didn’t expect to hear back from her right away. The charter bus dropped us off at the hotel and after I settled into my room, I got a text from Jordan asking if I wanted to go grab food.
As I leave my room to meet him and Chooch in the lobby, Westwood steps out of his room and into the hall. I’m dressed in jeans and an untucked button-down shirt. Avery is still in his travel suit. He glances up at me and a guilty look passes over his features, and I’m wondering if he still feels like shit for what he told us at Jordan’s last night. I hadn’t thought about it much, thanks to Shay, but now it comes rushing back to me. The fucker is considering leaving the team.
“Hey,” he says tentatively as I pass, and he falls in step next to me. “You going for food?”
I nod. He rubs the back of his neck and then loosens his tie a little, thinks better of it and tightens it again. “I have to do press in conference room C, wherever the fuck that is.”
Avery swearing is a rarity, so I know he’s rattled. It weakens my resolve and I suddenly don’t want to give him the cold shoulder anymore. “Any new developments from last night?”
“Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Manhattan are interested,” he tells me, and I’m startled by how honest he’s being. Avery never talks about his business affairs with anyone, ever. “Winterhawks are willing to throw everything they have at me to get me to stay.”
I swallow. I know what that means. That means they’ll tie up all the money they can in him and others will be traded to keep the club under the monetary cap enforced by the league. Jordan, Chooch, and I all make almost as much money as Avery currently makes. If they want to give him more, they’ll most likely trade one of us or combine two other players. He’s staring at me waiting for a reaction. I just nod again.
We reach the elevator bank and I punch the down button as he keeps talking. “It’s not about the money. I mean, it’s not about my salary. It’s about a higher profile.”
“You’re the face of the entire league,” I remind him. “The only one of us that I’m betting ninety percent of North Americans could name. How much higher a profile can you get?”
“I mean for business opportunities and endorsements,” he mutters, and it sounds rehearsed and robotic, and I know he’s just regurgitating his father’s words.
I try so hard not to roll my eyes that it makes me grimace. I may think he’s being a fucking asshole right now, but he’s still my friend. And more than anything, he’s still my captain, and I can’t start an argument with him the day before we start our Cup run.
The elevator arrives and we both step in. I punch G and he scans the panel and then hits three, muttering, “I think they said three,” as he runs a hand over his dark hair, smoothing it.
Then he turns his dark eyes back to me. “Look, I know you probably hate me over all this shit. But I want you to know that no matter what’s going to happen in the future, I’m going to give this team one hundred percent right now.”
“I know that,” I reply and meet his eye. “But honestly, Avs, I keep wondering when you’re going to give yourself one hundred percent.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means when are you going to stop doing what your management advises, what the team needs, what looks good? Just do whatever the fuck makes you happy. Do you even know what makes you happy, Avery? Do you know what happy is?”
My words are harsh, but I mean them as a friend. I am honestly worried about this guy. He’s always walked around like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders—I noticed that long before the NHL—but lately it’s like his shoulders are literally sagging from the pressure. He just isn’t handling it well anymore.
I clap a hand on his shoulder as if to prove I’m saying this from a place of love. His eyes are clouded, his brows drawn, his mouth set in a tight line, but I can see he isn’t angry with me. “Yeah. I know what happy is,” he replies, his voice deep as always but not steady. “It’s something other people feel.”
The elevator dings and the doors open on the third floor. He gets off with nothing more than a wave at me as he disappears down the hall. Wow. I actually feel bad for the bastard. Jordan is sprawled across a couch in the lobby staring at his phone when I get there. Chooch is standing next to him. When they see me, they both walk over and we head out the front floors. There are a few fans standing on the sidewalk; we pause long enough to take some photos and sign a few autographs but duck away quickly.
San Francisco feels colder than Seattle, and I zip up the front of my jacket as I tell the guys about my conversation with Avery. They both look grim. Jordan swears under his breath. “I can’t believe he’s really going to leave.”
“Well, if you think about it, he’s not happy anywhere, so what difference does it make?” Chooch says as we wait for a light to change. “I mean, at least if he does what his manager asshole father wants, he’ll have one less thing making him miserable. If he stays, it’s one more thing keeping him from being happy.”
“The only thing keeping him from being happy is himself,” I add.
Jordan gives me a crooked, smartass grin. “Look at you all wise and shit.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been one to deny pleasure or happiness.”
We cross the street and Chooch asks, “Speaking of…how’d things go with Bendy McTwisty yoga girl? You never came back last night.”
“Shay. Her name is Shay.” I smile. “Things are good. I think.”
I pull out my phone. Still no response to my text. But that doesn’t mean anything other than that she’s busy. I think.
“So are you two official?” Jordan inquires as we pull open the door to one of our favorite Italian places in the city. “Jessie asked me to ask you if you had ‘the talk’ yet.”
He puts the words “the talk” in air quotes and rolls his eyes. “You tell that nosy woman of yours that I’m so smooth I don’t need a talk.”
“Yeah, she’ll love that.” Jordan smirks. “She’ll call you a dumbass.”
We settle in, pulling off our jackets and taking seats around a round table with a red tablecloth. “We haven’t really had a talk, but she’s in this. It scares the shit out of her, but she’s in it.”
“I’m out of it,” Chooch suddenly mutters, and we both turn back to him. “I broke up with Ainsley. Officially. Completely.”
Jordan and I exchange looks. Chooch runs a hand over his shaggy hair and sighs. “She actually offered to have an open relationship. She thought it was random sex that I was missing, not, you know, a caring, loving partner who doesn’t act like a vicious bitch to everyone I know.”
Jordan’s face darkens. “So is she moving back to Alberta? Back to her family?”
Chooch shrugs. “Eventually. Probably. But until she figures it out, I’m letting her live in the house and I’m at the Four Seasons.”
Jordan and I exchange glances again. Having our goalie’s life in upheaval and living in a hotel during playoffs is a recipe for disaster. Especially when you combine it with the bullshit already happening with Avery. I’m opening my mouth and making the offer without even thinking about it. “When we get back to Seattle, you are moving in with me.”
Chooch looks genuinely surprised. “You don’t have to…” he starts.
“I have a huge three-bedroom house that is pretty fucking spectacular.” I grin immodestly. “It’s better than the Four Seasons and I’ll enjoy the company.”
“What about Yoga Shay?”
“She doesn’t come with the offer,” I joke and he laughs. It’s the first real laugh I’ve hea
rd from him in a while. “We’ll be in lockdown mode anyway and I probably won’t see her all that much. When I do, I promise to try and keep the screaming to a minimum. But it’ll be hard because my mad skills make her vocal.”
Jordan and Chooch both groan; I smile and open my menu. But I can’t help but notice that my phone isn’t buzzing. Why isn’t she getting back to me?
Chapter 37
Shayne
As soon as he walks into the police station my heart clenches. He looks absolutely frightened. The kind of pure, deep-rooted fear that grips every part of you. His shoulders are tense, his eyes are wild, and his jaw is clenched so tightly I’m scared he’ll break his teeth. I stand up from the uncomfortable chair I’m in across from a detective, and when his eyes land on me I can see a wave of relief flood him, relaxing every part of his body from his toes to his face.
He crosses the room in a blur and has me by the shoulders, shoving my face into his chest and crushing me to him. “Are you okay? You look okay, but are you?”
I try to nod but there’s no room against his torso. I place my hands on his chest and push. He gets the hint and stops hugging me, but his hands stay clamped on my shoulders. “I’m fine, Trey. I swear it was no big deal.”
“You were fucking mugged at knifepoint. That’s a big fucking deal,” he barks, and the detective arches an eyebrow at him. He shoots him an apologetic glance. “Sorry. I just…I told her she shouldn’t live there.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I argue calmly, even though I’m rattled to my core and I have to work really hard to keep my voice steady. “He cornered me, showed me the knife and demanded my wallet.”
“Your sister was smart. She handed it over and didn’t cause a scene,” the detective pipes in.
Trey looks down at me with approval in his eyes and he rubs my shoulder. “Well, if you’re finally going to listen to instructions and not talk back, this is the right time to do it. Thank God you figured that out.”
“I did, however, hurl my wallet at him and run like a bat out of hell,” I confess. “Because I’m brave like that.”
Winning It All (Hometown Players Book 4) Page 22
