by Sarina Bowen
“At least. She can’t go around calling people . . .” Slutty. He couldn’t even say it out loud. Poor Lauren. “But if I went in there right now we’d both say more things we regret. I shouldn’t have mentioned Shelly. That was a low blow.”
“Shelly would not like her behavior tonight,” Hans pointed out. “But if Shelly were still alive, Elsa would not be acting this way. She’s angry all the time. When one of her friends mentions she did this or that activity together with her mom, you should see Elsa’s face.”
Mike groaned. “I can’t fix that.”
“Of course not.”
“I just . . .” Mike rubbed his temples. “There’s no way for her to understand.”
“That her mother is gone?”
“Yeah. And that I’m going to get on with my life eventually.” Maybe soon. “She’s going to hate it.” Shit. He was still breaking hearts. It was never ending.
“I think you’re wrong,” Hans said slowly.
“Join the club.”
The other man chuckled. “No—I think she can understand a lot. She’s fighting you because she’s afraid of more change. But not all change is bad.”
“There’s going to be more change,” Mike admitted to himself as well as Hans. “A lot more.”
“I hope the hinges on her bedroom door are strong.”
Mike grinned into the bottle in his hand. “Let’s keep the beer stocked. We’re going to need it.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The following night, in a burst of optimism, Lauren went to watch Mike try to shut out Detroit in game four. She didn’t need a ticket. Her team credentials got her all the way into Nate’s box—voluntarily this time. Neither Ari nor Georgia so much as raised an eyebrow.
Even though it was empty, Lauren didn’t take the seat beside Nate, though. She was too nervous. Pacing back and forth near the cheese puffs was more her speed.
“Glass of wine?” Georgia asked. “You look like you could use one.”
She almost said yes, before remembering why she couldn’t. “No, thanks. Too nervous.”
“More for me! Tommy is handling the press conference tonight, so I can be the tipsy publicist.”
When the game was still scoreless at the end of the second period, Lauren let out a loud groan. “I think I’ve aged a decade in these two periods.”
“Honestly,” Ari agreed. “Civilizations have risen and fallen since the puck dropped. It’s torture.”
Nate, as usual, sat stoically in his seat, eyes affixed to the ice.
Lauren noticed that Rebecca was not present tonight, and she wondered why that was.
When Nate got up to refill his glass of Diet Coke, he gave her a Nate smirk. “Didn’t expect to see you here tonight. Look who remembered she’s a hockey fan?”
“Don’t be smug,” she grumbled. “I’m here in an official capacity.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “How so?”
“I’m here to remind you not to be smug.”
Georgia giggled.
And that was the last moment of levity that evening. The game ground on, scoreless through the third period. After the Zamboni cleared the ice one more time, Lauren watched her boys come back on for the overtime period. They looked tired, but determined.
So did Detroit.
Lauren fidgeted as play began again. She chewed ice cubes and rocked on her heels. Her eyes were dry from staring so long at the rink.
Overtime periods weren’t like regular periods, though—they were played with the sudden death rule. A goal ended the game. So one moment Lauren was watching Trevi try to get the puck away from his opponent, who passed it behind his body. One second later another opponent was flying toward Mike with the puck, unguarded on a breakaway. She saw Mike look for the deke and make his choice, positioning his body toward the left.
Then the puck flew right past his right shoulder and into the net.
Before she could had even make sense of the play, the game was over. Mike collapsed in frustration onto the ice, his head in his hands. And fifteen thousand Brooklyn fans made noises of frustration.
That was it. Time to hit the showers, boys. Nothing more to be done tonight.
Depressed, Lauren made her way downstairs, as if by habit. At a home game, with Becca covering the office again, there was no reason for her to stick around.
Except for one.
The corridor outside the dressing room was buzzing with journalists and family members. It was terribly crowded. Even as Lauren contemplated fighting her way through the scrum, she spotted Elsa and her babysitter down there, waiting for Mike to make an appearance.
Lauren hesitated. She hung back, trying to decide what to do. Whatever words of support she might offer Mike tonight would keep until tomorrow.
As she thought it through, the dressing room door opened and the man himself came through it, his hair wet from the shower. His daughter lunged. She threw herself at him, grabbing him around the neck and hugging him tightly.
Mike closed his eyes. He lifted his girl into the air and said something tender into her ear.
Lauren turned around then without another thought. The man had his hands full. She made her way out to street level, where she found a yellow cab with its light on and got inside.
I’m sorry, she texted Mike from the cab. Can’t win ’em all. Talk tomorrow?
When her phone vibrated a moment later, she looked for Mike’s reply. But the text wasn’t from him. It was from her father. I knew they’d choke, he said.
Nice, dad, she wanted to reply. The man was still bitter. Yet glued to the game. She could picture him in his lounge chair, yelling at the TV.
Lauren put her phone away and spent the rest of the ride looking out the window, watching the lights of New York City speed toward her on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was such a romantic view of a busy city that it was easy for her to imagine that she was the only one alone tonight.
Don’t go there, she coached herself. She was no more alone tonight than she’d been during her other single years.
When her cab arrived at her apartment building, she paid the man and got out. Inside her lobby, she gave Jerry, the night doorman, a wave on her way to the elevator.
“Hot date, maybe?” he asked as she waited for the car to descend. “Please don’t tell me you worked late again tonight.”
“Not this time. I was at the hockey game in Brooklyn.”
He leaned forward in his seat. “Yeah? I didn’t take you for a hockey fan, Miss Lauren.”
She laughed, because that was hysterical. Her whole life had been hockey until the minute she moved into this building. “For the record, I didn’t take you for a hockey fan, either. But I used to work for the team. Before I moved to Manhattan.”
His eyes popped wide. “Shut the front door! You know all the players?”
“Pretty much.” The elevator doors parted in front of her.
“Stay cool, Miss Lauren!” Jerry yelled as she stepped inside.
“You too, big man!” she returned.
Upstairs, her apartment was dark and quiet. She changed into a nightgown and took a prenatal vitamin. Then she got in bed, wondering if the game had left her too keyed up to sleep. She was just drifting off an hour or so later when the doorman’s buzzer blared through her small apartment.
She almost ignored it. Nobody ever knocked on her door at midnight.
But it buzzed again.
She got up and padded to the handset on the wall. “Jerry?” He never rang her this late.
“Sorry to ring you so late but you have a visitor. Mike Beacon is here to see you.” He said it as if announcing the pope.
“He is?” She failed to keep the surprise out of her voice.
“That’s what I said, too,” Jerry whispered. “It’s one thing to drop this bomb on me that you know the team. It’s, li
ke, a whole other level of gossip when the goalie shows up asking for you at midnight.”
“Send him up already.”
“Go on, sir,” she heard Jerry say. “Apartment 12B.” But the doorman didn’t hang up yet. After a beat he whispered into the handset again. “We are going to have to discuss this later.”
“We are?”
“Most def. And do you know how a guy could get an autograph for his little girl?”
“Angelique is a hockey fan?” Hockey fans were just coming out of the woodwork tonight.
“She has a poster of Castro up on her wall. She said, ‘Look, Daddy, you can play hockey even if you have brown skin.’”
“Oh, man. I’ll have to hook that girl up with a jersey.”
“You are the coolest resident of 251 East 32nd Street, Miss Lauren.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
There was a tap on her door.
“Gotta fly, Jerry. My visitor is knocking.”
“Don’t let me keep you!” He hung up laughing.
Lauren opened the door to Mike wearing his game night suit—the tie loosened haphazardly—and a haggard expression. Her smile slid off her face. “Hey. You okay?”
He shrugged. “No gold star on my phone tonight.”
“What? Gold star?” She stepped aside, motioning him inside.
“When we win, our Katt Phones all have gold stars on the login screen.”
“Okay. So, uh . . . How did you know where to find me?”
He dropped his gym bag on the floor and pulled her against his suit jacket. “Got your address from Becca when I sent you pickles and ice cream.”
“Mm.” She inhaled his scent—a mixture of shower soap and wool gabardine. “And you just decided to stop by for tea and crumpets at midnight?”
He pushed her hair aside and kissed her neck. “It’s been eleven days since I held you and I couldn’t take it anymore.” He kicked her door shut and then pushed her up against it. His mouth found her jawline, where he began to drop soft open-mouthed kisses. “I used to come home to you after a game.” He tongued the sensitive hollow between her neck and her shoulder. “Didn’t matter if I won or lost. You were happy to see me either way.”
She made an ineloquent noise of pleasure, but they both knew he was right. Lauren placed her hands on his chest, pushing the lapels of his jacket apart. His skin radiated warmth beneath his shirt. It was late, and it had been a long night. But when his hands skimmed down her bare arms, landing on her scantily covered hips, her libido woke up and offered to take his coat, and every other stitch of fabric on his body.
For starters, she loosened his tie and tossed it on the floor. “Won’t your family wonder where you are?”
“They don’t wait up,” he murmured against her skin. “Tomorrow’s a school day.” He cupped her jaw in one hand and raised her chin.
She waited, expecting to be kissed.
He only studied her instead, his dark eyes intense.
“What?” she breathed.
“I miss the hell out of you, that’s all. I miss you so much it hurts.”
When she threw her arms around him a second later, she knew she was in trouble. She was tired of playing it cool. “I miss you, too. But everything is just so complicated.”
He chuckled into her hair. “It’s like we invented complicated.”
“I love you, Mike.” In for a penny . . .
“Love you, too, Lo. Never stopped.”
She believed him. But that didn’t make things any easier. “Come to bed.” She stepped back. “It’s late. It’s been a long day.”
“You’re telling me.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Lead the way.”
Threading her fingers into his, she led him through the darkened living room and into her bedroom. “The bathroom is right here,” she said, flipping on the light in there. “Make yourself comfortable.”
She gave him a little nudge and then left him, climbing into her four-poster bed. She’d bought her bedroom furniture with her first paycheck from Nate. It was white—a little girly, maybe. But she’d been trying to cheer herself up.
Many of those early nights she’d lain here, just wishing Mike Beacon was here in the apartment with her.
How weird that he actually was.
He emerged from her bathroom a couple of minutes later, shutting off the light behind him. In the glow of the ambient light shining through her windows—Manhattan was never dark—she watched him strip out of his suit, dropping the pants and shirt over the upholstered bench at the end of the bed.
“Nice apartment,” he said huskily. Off came his boxers.
“It’s dark. You can’t even see it,” she teased.
He shrugged. “You’re in it. That’s what makes it nice.” He walked around to the side of the bed and tugged the quilt aside. He slid into bed and rolled to face her. “Come here, sweetheart. Let me hold you.”
She went willingly. Greedily, even. She laid her head on his chest, lifting a hand to sift her fingers through the silky hair dusting his pecs and thickening over his abdomen into the happiest of happy trails. His chest hair was her secret fetish. She regarded it as evidence of his abundant supply of testosterone.
Lying there in silence, she was gripped by a powerful déja vu. So many nights they’d gotten into bed together after a game, both of them tired, yet kept awake by the thoughts spinning through their respective brains. The comfort of skin on skin was what eventually put them to sleep.
“I had a terrible fight with Elsa last night,” he said eventually.
“Oh, I’m sorry! Was it about me?”
He didn’t answer right away. “It’s never really about you. It’s always about me.”
“I understand. But she didn’t like it that I showed up to have dinner with you.”
He sighed. “It’s just going to take her some time to accept her mother’s loss. She’s angry, and any little thing that changes makes her jumpy. But life is full of change. It doesn’t stop to let you get your bearings.”
“Did you make up with her yet?” she asked, picturing their hug in the corridor tonight.
“Sort of. We both apologized. But lately she’s like a grenade with the pin pulled, you know? I never know when she’s going to blow. I can’t tell which parts are grief, and which parts are just plain thirteen-year-old girl.”
“Is there someone she talks to?”
“Like a shrink? She had one for a year on Long Island. But then we moved. The doctor told me she’d be happy to find us someone in Brooklyn if I thought we still needed it.”
“Maybe you do,” Lauren suggested softly.
He groaned. “I’ll call tomorrow. I feel like a shit dad all the time. Shelly did all these things as a full-time job, you know? She also needs braces, probably.”
“In three weeks you’ll be available full time for her.”
“Three weeks, huh?” He gave her ass a friendly squeeze. “You’re taking us to the finals in your little calculation. That’s a jinx, missy.”
“You can blame me if it all goes wrong in game seven.”
They fell silent for another moment. His hand trailed down her ribcage, then onto her tummy. He pressed his palm against her lower abdomen, then rubbed gently. She closed her eyes and sank into the sensation.
“What’s the countdown now?”
“On?”
“Our secret project. When am I allowed to ask how it’s going?”
“You’re asking right now. That’s against the rules. The ref just gave you a two-minute bench minor.”
“So I can ask in two minutes?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
He laughed into her hair.
“Give me a week at least.”
“That’s too long.”
“Mike!”
“You want me to stop asking? Come up here and shut me up, then.” He grabbed her hips and pulled her body onto his, and then kissed her.
She relaxed onto his big frame, like a cat taking up residence on its favorite lap. He obviously didn’t understand her reluctance to speculate about a pregnancy. He was so sure it would succeed, and she was somehow positive it wouldn’t.
And if it didn’t . . . then what? Would he still be here in her bed thinking optimistic thoughts?
His long fingers threaded through her hair. “I’m so tired. Kiss me again before I fall asleep.”
What was the saying? It takes fewer muscles to smile than to stay up all night worrying about the future. So she kissed the man again as he closed his eyes.
TWENTY-FIVE
Beacon woke to the sound of an unfamiliar alarm tone.
Beside him, Lauren cursed and fumbled for her Katt Phone, silencing it. Then she snuggled closer to him, her back to his chest.
He tugged her little body closer to his, then wrapped an arm around her waist, letting his fingers drift on a slow tour of her body. She was wearing a gloriously skimpy nighty. He smoothed the silk down her belly, then lifted the hem to palm her bare belly.
When he’d showed up at Lauren’s door last night, it hadn’t been for sex. He’d needed to lie in the dark with someone who loved him. When they were together, she had always been a steadying force in his life. Hell—she was a steadying force before they ever held each other in bed, or even kissed for the first time.
His wife . . . wasn’t. Shelly had been attracted to him once. But the whole hockey wife thing had worn thin for her when Elsa was still a toddler. She was angry at her lot in life, and she felt free to take it out on him. When they argued over anything, she would remind him that he was just a “dumb jock.”
He felt like one, too, every time she said it.
Last night he’d taken a cab to Lauren’s place after losing a big game. Then he’d proceeded to admit that he didn’t have a clue what to say to his own kid. Yet Lauren didn’t pander or praise him. Neither did she judge him. She just held him instead.
Slowly, he dragged his fingertips between her hip bones, discovering that she was not wearing panties. This revelation caused him to let out a shameless little moan, and he wasn’t even embarrassed.
