by Amber Lynn
He knew she hated the name, so using it was a dig against her. It was one thing to use it in a proposal, but during an argument it had a very different meaning.
“I understand. But I hope you understand why I couldn’t say yes when you asked me to marry you. It wasn’t about being dramatic. It was me trying not to take away your freedom.”
She wanted him to understand more than that, but it was hard to put all of it in words. Knowing that the time he needed meant it was time for her to leave, she moved to stand. Nelson’s hand reached out and stopped her.
Before she knew what was happening, Nelson’s face was closing in on hers and his lips brushed against hers. The tentative first touch was quickly replaced by an urgency that frightened Annie. Their tongues touched briefly after Nelson prodded her lips open with his tongue.
When whatever Nelson was trying to prove was over, he sat back, and Annie was left trying to catch her breath. It was different when she didn’t feel like she was getting drunk off the alcohol on his breath. Her lips burned just as much, but it somehow felt more real.
“You said not to kiss you unless I had a reason. Well, you shared all your deep, dark secrets, so I guess I should share mine. My intention when I asked you to come over was to let you know I wasn’t going down without a fight when it came to you and Doug. As ironic as it is, he helped me realize today that I couldn’t live without you. While I’m thinking about everything I need to work out, you think about the fact that I love you, too.”
Nelson got off the couch and walked over to the door, opening it to let her escape. That was exactly what she wanted to do, but moving her legs wasn’t an ability that seemed possible. He waited patiently while sense tried to weave its way back into her head.
When she was sure she wouldn’t fall flat on her face, Annie stood up and quickly made her way across the room. As soon as his feet were in her line of vision, she tried to look up, but only made it to his chest.
“I’m sorry I hurt you.” She didn’t know what else to say, but leaving things where they were seemed wrong.
“And I’m sorry it took a chance of losing you to make me see that I’ve been hurting you. We probably won’t have a chance to talk before I get back Thursday, so make sure you take care of yourself. I’ll meet you at the doctor’s office.”
Annie nodded her head swiftly and walked out into the hallway. She didn’t hear the door close behind her, but she didn’t turn around to see if Nelson was watching her. It wasn’t necessary. She could feel his eyes following her all the way to the stairwell.
Once she was able to get the stairwell door closed behind her, she leaned against it and took a few deep breaths. She’d thought that Nelson was going to be the one who had a lot to think about after the truth came out, and clearly he did. But she hadn’t known he was going to kiss her the way he had and declare he loved her.
Her head was still spinning as she lifted her hand up to her lips. She was sure they’d be hot to the touch, but they didn’t feel any different than usual, other than being a little dry. If she would’ve known lips were going to collide, she would’ve used a little lip balm.
There was over two days before Nelson thought they were going to see each other again. That was a long time for him to question everything Annie had ever done or said.
Not wanting to get caught in the stairwell and peppered with questions by one of the other tenants, Annie decided she better move her pity party to her place. She took the stairs up two at a time and moved in a bit of a zombie like gait as she made it to her door.
Her keys and phone were in her pants pockets, so she went ahead and fished them both out. It took a second to unlock the deadbolt and doorknob. When she was inside, she relocked the door and made it to the kitchen. Her interest wasn’t food, rather she wanted to take a look at the roses that had brought Nelson into her apartment.
They looked exactly like the ones sitting on her desk, but even from ten feet away she could see there was more than three words written on the card. She was torn whether to see what he’d written for her eyes only, but the indecision only lasted about a minute.
It was almost on her tiptoes that Annie made her way over to the counter. She’d given the place a quick glance, and was surprised to see nothing was broken or out of place. Knowing the temper Nelson could sometimes have, destruction wasn’t unlikely if something made him mad. Annie supposed it helped that the vase of flowers was really the only thing around that could be destroyed.
Removing the card from the little plastic holder, Annie got her first real hint that Nelson hadn’t said he loved her as a weird defense mechanism. She hadn’t been expecting him to say it, and she was still making sense of where it’d come from. The card didn’t explain everything, but if it had been written before he’d found out about Doug, Annie had really shot herself in the foot.
The roads we’ve travelled on in life have never been clear enough to show that we don’t travel down two separate paths, but one long path that has always been intertwined.
If you see this before you check your phone, I’m waiting downstairs so we can talk about patching up any cracks that may have tried to change that.
Love,
Nelson
The words flowed on the front and back of the card, and were in print that she almost needed a magnifying glass to read. Her tears had never really stopped, and seeing Nelson’s romantic gesture gave them free will to fall where they wanted.
Annie wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to do anything other than curl up in her bed and try to think of ways to fix things. She tried that, but she had trouble thinking about anything other than the hurt she’d cause in Nelson’s eyes. Her goal for the next two days had to be finding a way to erase it, no matter what it took.
Chapter Seventeen
A six-hour plane ride was a long time to sit and think about things, not that Nelson hadn’t already spent all night and most of the day trying to figure out his feelings. Having been on the team plane hundreds of times before, the beige carpets and fancy leather seats were only impressive because they provided him a comfortable place to think. Unlike many of the guys trying to make the team, who couldn’t get over how different it was from flying commercial or taking bus trips.
It had been about twenty-four hours since he had planned to tell Annie he knew about Doug, and he wanted to be given a chance to prove there was something more between them. He hadn’t expected to find out she’d been hiding part of her for years. It should’ve been music to his ears, after he’d come to the realization he loved her, but it made him question every action she’d taken during the years she claimed to have loved him.
He supposed that was unfair of him, but she’d admitted to have a secret motive for moving close to him. He’d spent more than half of the hours since he’d learned about that little detail trying to decide what he would’ve said if she’d asked to have his baby. There were many topics he felt he spent most of the time thinking about. In reality, they all probably had equal amounts of his attention.
Even before he was forced to admit he’d do anything for Annie, he liked to think there was nothing she could ask him that he wouldn’t agree to. Having a baby the way she wanted was something he wasn’t sure he’d go through with. He’d always wanted to have kids, but he thought he’d meet a girl, settle down and have the white picket fence life.
“You don’t usually sit off in a corner. Did you pee in a circle around the seats to make sure no one bothered you?” Dylan asked as he lifted one of Nelson’s headphones. Nelson found the loud, wordless music comforting while he thought.
“How’d you know?”
The seat next to Nelson suddenly became occupied by his friend. Nelson had been preoccupied enough that he hadn’t realized Dylan was even on the plane. They were flying up to Calgary Tuesday night, so they’d be there in time for practice Wednesday morning. Dylan hadn’t flown with the team in almost a full year, opting to stay at home with his wife.
“From the looks
I got on my way back here, you haven’t been the best travel companion. Twenty minutes into the flight has to be a record for you to already have the rest of the plane giving you a wide berth.”
Dylan offered Nelson a bottle of water, which he took and put in the seat on the other side of him. Flying didn’t usually bother him, but his stomach was in knots and that made him want to steer clear of eating and drinking.
“Why are you on the plane, Dylan?” Nelson asked as he took his headphones off and put them with the water.
The chair also held the suit jacket he was tired of wearing. He’d gone for pure black attire to match his mood. Dylan evidently wasn’t as glum, because he was in navy with a white dress shirt.
“I’m still trying to get over the fact that you cut your hair. Your mom has shown me tons of pictures of you as a kid, and I don’t think a single one of them had you without a mop on your head.”
“Things change when you have a kid on the way. I’m pretty sure it was you who told me that one.”
“You’d be right. You look good respectable.”
Nelson didn’t feel like sitting through six hours of idle chitchat, so he pushed to move things along.
“Has the grapevine made it back to you?”
Casey always seemed to know everything, and along the way thought she knew what was best for everyone involved. Nelson hoped she didn’t have some plan to issue another week of silence. Nelson didn’t know where his head was, but he knew Annie and he needed to talk things out.
“Nope. I can tell something happened, though. This isn’t probably the best place to talk about it, but I’m all ears if you need to bounce anything off me.”
The plane was full of players and staff, none of which Nelson wanted knowing his personal issues. He’d sat in the back, but there were a pair of rookies in front of him, not surprisingly Helms was one of them.
“You didn’t answer my question about why you’re travelling with the team. I know you have your fancy title that puts you in charge of all sorts of things, but those things tend to be back home.”
“They do, but Casey thought we could hop a ride up north to visit my grandparents for a day. As much as my mom’s mom likes to think she’s invincible, she broke her hip before Katie was born and hasn’t been able to come down to see her great-granddaughter.”
Nelson remembered Dylan’s extended family from when Dylan had almost died. Grandma Mae, as she liked to be called, was one of the more memorable characters. At eighty-five, she hadn’t shown a single sign of slowing down.
“I’m sorry to hear about that.” Nelson sat up a little straighter to see if he could see Casey. Her red hair was hard to miss, but he didn’t see her anywhere.
“She’s with Holcomb in the private cabin. I guess that’s the perk of being related to the big boss man,” Dylan explained before Nelson had a chance to ask the question.
“How many years have we flown in this plane without knowing about a secret cabin?”
It was the first time Nelson had heard about it. He always assumed the Holcombs magically teleported to games, if they even made it to away games.
“A few. So, is there anything you can tell me about your situation? Casey says your friend hasn’t been answering her phone.”
It was cute of Dylan not to mention her name, but Nelson was over keeping Annie’s name a secret. The plane had a bit of white noise that played in speakers overhead, which made their conversation as private as Nelson could hope for.
“If you want to have that conversation, we should probably include someone else on the plane.”
For once, Nelson didn’t want to fill Dylan in on the things happening in his life. Throwing in that there was someone else involved on the plane was hopefully going to remove any desire to keep the conversation going.
“You can come in the back and bounce your thoughts off Casey if you want. I’m sure Holcomb won’t mind.”
Nelson had made the mistake of omitting that the person in question was with the rest of the players. Nelson had attempted to stare holes in the back of Doug’s head, but the goaltender must have felt it and sunk down in his seat.
“As much as I like your wife, she isn’t who I was talking about. The boyfriend Annie told me about is on the plane.”
That got Dylan to sit up straight, with his hands on his knees, as he looked around. “And he’s still breathing?”
“Yup, but we aren’t going to talk about him. He was doing Annie a favor, and since I’ve never been able to tell her no, I can’t blame him.”
Nelson reached over and grabbed the bottle of water. Talking made his throat dry, even if his stomach told him it wasn’t too sure it’d keep even clear liquids down.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m still making sense of it myself. I’m pretty sure the only thing that matters is that within the next five months, I’m going to be a married man.”
Nelson was still angry about how things were handled, but in the end he knew he’d be back down on one knee to try another proposal. And he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He didn’t know how long he’d wait, because there was a part of him that wanted to make her sweat.
“Does that mean you asked her again and she said yes?” Dylan was still looking around the plane, like maybe the teammate in question had worn his “I’m the boyfriend” t-shirt.
“Nope.” Dylan had asked two questions, but Nelson wanted him to get the point that he wasn’t in the mood to discuss things.
Dylan sat back in his chair and kept quiet for a minute while Nelson played with the empty plastic at the top of his bottle of water. There was enough air at the top that it made an annoying popping noise.
“If it’s not something you want to say with all the ears around here, why don’t you text it to me?”
Nelson glanced over at his friend. He honestly couldn’t believe Dylan had suggested that.
“It’s probably time for you to go back and check on your wife and daughter.”
“Wow. That bad. And yet you’ve declared you’re getting married.”
“If you want more information, go up to the window seat in the third row. Although, I’m pretty sure he only got part of the story.”
Nelson wasn’t sure if Annie had immediately called Doug to warn him Nelson knew about everything. He also didn’t know how much of Annie’s story the other man knew. He highly doubted she’d shared the details of the night they spent together.
Dylan didn’t move, but Nelson knew the second he figured out who Nelson was pointing out. The curse word under his breath was a dead giveaway.
“Careful now. You don’t want it getting back to your wife that you’re using that kind of language. She’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”
“What was she thinking?”
“You should probably ask her. I thought it was rather silly for her to tell a guy who used to be an amazing agitator on the ice that he couldn’t curse anymore.”
Nelson and Dylan both knew Casey’s reasoning for demanding no curse words muttered within her hearing range. Nelson also knew that Dylan wasn’t referring to that.
“Seriously, dude. You can’t tell me that and not fill in the details.”
“I’m pretty sure I suggested you go ask him.”
“And I’m pretty sure you know that’s not going to happen.”
“So, are you bringing Grandma Mae and Grandpa Hank to the game?” Nelson was ready to talk about something else. The straight back and forth exchanging of sentences wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
Dylan shook his head, with any luck in defeat. He’d gotten a lot more out of Nelson than he’d wanted to share, a talent Nelson sometimes hated.
“We haven’t worked that out yet. It kind of depends on how her hip is doing, and whether she can bear to be around that many people with Katie around. She’s going to want to be the center of my little girl’s world, and that’s hard to do when there are thousands of fans dividing Katie’s attention.”
; Dylan tried to keep Nelson talking with lighter topics, but Nelson continued to fight any meaningful conversation. They’d been sitting there for almost an hour before Dylan gave up. Rather than leaving when he knew things weren’t going anywhere, Dylan remained in the seat.
Nelson understood that he was proving he was there for Nelson. They didn’t need an awkward silence to prove to Nelson that Dylan was the real deal when it came to being a friend. The reminder only made him think about his friendship with Annie.
There were so many times he should’ve realized something had changed. As he kept thinking about Annie, there were moments he thought back to different emotions he’d seen in her eyes over the years. Since they’d been so close, he’d always thought the jealous or angry looks he caught when he was dating someone was because she thought he’d spend less time with her.
Through all his thinking and the anger he felt, he couldn’t come up with any situations when she’d been untrue to who she was, the little girl he’d always been there for. And in the end that was the important part.
“I know this isn’t the best time, but since you two seem to be able to have a conversation without the front of the plane hearing it, I was hoping maybe you’d have a few minutes for me.”
Nelson had spaced off again, so he wasn’t prepared for Doug’s voice. He looked over, almost expecting Dylan to be gone.
“Even if conversations can be kept quiet, I’m not sure this is the place for you two to talk. Nelson doesn’t seem to be in a talkative mood as it is, and you’d be taking your life into your own hands poking the bear at this altitude.”
Nelson scoffed. It wasn’t smart to give him ideas. “It’s fine. I can’t promise I’ll have a lot to say, but I respect you making the first move.”
They hadn’t said anything or acknowledged each other until they boarded the plane, even though they’d seen each other earlier in the day. Doug had given him a look and a nod, but after that he’d shrunken down in his seat and tried to stay out of view it seemed.
