Delay of Game

by Catherine Gayle

  “Oh.” It came out as a kind of awed, whispery sound, which made me feel all of twelve years old. He was going to dry my hair? He’d already bathed me and washed and conditioned my hair. No one had done any of those things for me since I was a little girl unless I was at the salon and paying them to do so. He wanted me as much as I wanted him, there was no hiding that, but he hadn’t done so much as attempt to steal a kiss, let alone touch me.

  Cam plugged the hair dryer into the outlet and picked up my vented brush from the counter, and the next thing I knew he was blowing my hair dry like an old pro, even spinning the brush to curl the ends under.

  “Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked.

  “I have three little sisters. Goes with the territory.” By the time he was done, I was dry all over. Well…almost everywhere. He helped me into one of my satin nighties, and he pulled on the same boxers and undershirt he’d taken off before helping me shower. “You sure you want to try sleeping in your bed tonight?”

  I didn’t know if I’d be able to manage it, because lying down flat with these cracked ribs had been about the most excruciating kind of torment I’d ever experienced before, but I nodded anyway. “I want to at least try.” Sleeping upright wasn’t exactly easy to do. Too many nights of that and I would be just this side of loopy.

  Who the fuck was I kidding? Nothing was easy right now, and I was well beyond loopy.

  “Do you want me to stay or go?” he asked.

  I didn’t have to think about that. Not this time. Everything I did hurt, but somehow he made me feel better. About everything. Damn it. Damn him.

  Damn me.

  “Stay,” I whispered.

  Cam went over to my bed and pulled the covers down, and he climbed in. I sat on the opposite side and tried to lie on my side—the good side—without crying out in pain. I managed that, but not without cussing beneath my breath.

  He brushed the hair away from my face and tugged me to his side. “Tell me if it starts to hurt too much. Tell me if you need to move.”

  I nodded, focused on trying to will away the pain. He rolled onto his back and edged slightly closer still, and I inched over until I could rest my head on his shoulder. I put my hand on his stomach, and his dick jerked.

  “You’re going to kill me, you know,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I know.” I was going to kill him, and he was going to pamper me. Not quite a fair trade-off, but he didn’t seem to mind too much.

  Buster jumped up into the bed and burrowed under the covers, worming his way all the way down until he reached my feet. He propped his chin on one of them, let out a contented doggy sigh, and settled in for the night.

  At least one of us would be comfortable.

  SLEEPING LYING DOWN wasn’t comfortable with these damn injuries, but it wasn’t any more uncomfortable than sleeping upright on the couch had been last night. The part that truly was troublesome, however, was waking up with Cam halfway on top of me. Even though he was only pinning my good side, I moaned. That was more than enough to jolt him awake, though.

  “Shit,” he said, rolling us until he was on his back and he’d pulled me partially onto him. He brushed my hair back from my face and searched my eyes. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  Our change in position woke Buster, who grumbled and whined with his cute little doggy voice. He got up and walked in a circle three or four times before settling down again with what I swore sounded like an indignant huff.

  I shook my head. “Nothing permanent,” I mumbled in my pained sleep haze.

  The crazy thing was that I couldn’t stop thinking that if I hadn’t had those stupid cracked ribs, there was no way I would rather wake up than with Cam on top of me. I didn’t know where that idea came from, but judging by the erection pressing into my belly, I was pretty sure he felt the same way.

  “You’re sure I didn’t hurt you?” He kissed my forehead, smoothing both hands over my body as though he was assuring himself that he hadn’t broken me.

  I didn’t want just a little peck on the forehead. I wanted more. I stretched up until I could touch my lips to his, and I straddled my legs around his waist to keep me solidly in place. Amazingly, lying in that position eased some of the discomfort on my ribs. I was able to support some of my weight with my legs, which kept the worst of it away from my core.

  It was a slow kiss at first, sleepy and languorous, but it wasn’t long before things got a lot more heated. Too heated, actually, because I needed to take deeper breaths than were comfortable, and I had to pull away and end it.

  “You are going to kill me,” he said, his voice gravelly and scratchy like his facial hair had become due to that stupid playoff beard superstition guys all over the NHL seemed to believe in. He kissed my cheek, letting his lips linger. “God, Sara.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t sure why I was apologizing. It just came out.

  I wasn’t sorry for kissing him, that much was for sure. If anything, maybe I was sorry that I couldn’t follow through with what I’d started. Yeah, that part stung. For both of us, actually.

  I lay my head on his chest while we worked on remembering how to breathe, and he brushed his hands over my head, my hair, my back—always gentle, in an almost loving manner. I shouldn’t let myself think like that. Words like gentle were fine; words like loving belonged in an entirely different arena, practically on a different planet. We weren’t starting to hang out in the realm of love. Were we?

  He grunted. “Don’t be.”

  Buster shifted around under the covers and finally stilled just beside my foot again. Then Cam let me shift and squirm until I got into a comfortable position. Long after I’d gotten situated into my spot, my head resting on his pecs and my legs draped over either side of him, he was still lazily touching me. He trailed his fingers through my hair, and he let them tease my back and hips and thighs, and eventually we drifted back to sleep.

  I could get used to sleeping like that. Even though his body was hard all over, he was like a pillow beneath me—a big, warm, firm pillow that cradled my body in just the right ways to keep most of my pain at bay. The thought of how easy it had all been scared me. A lot. Definitely a lot. Until Cam, there had never been a man who was an all-night, stay-in-bed-together sort of man for me. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it all.

  Somehow, we settled into a routine after that night, even though it wasn’t anywhere close to the sort of routine I would have ever expected to have. Not just me, Cam, and Daddy, either. There was a whole army of people surrounding us and foisting these changes upon me.

  When the guys had practice or a game-day skate, either Noelle or Dana and her mom came over to hang out with Daddy and me. Dana was great about making my father get up and move like the doctors had instructed him to do. She’d spent a number of years working as a personal trainer before she’d moved from Providence to Portland to live with Zee, and she was still more than able to whip out that in-your-face, take-no-prisoners sort of tone that someone as muleheaded as Daddy sometimes needed.

  The days that she came with her mom, we spent a lot of time working on wedding plans. Even Daddy got in on the act. Well, at least he had when we’d been deciding on cake samples.

  He was particularly fond of the one that had both a lemon curd filling and some sort of raspberry jam. “That’s the one,” he insisted. “None of the others even come close to comparing.” Then he went back in to finish that particular sample off despite my reminders that he was supposed to be eating better and staying away from empty fat and calories. One thing that undoubtedly qualified as empty fat and calories was cake. He responded by licking his fingers and smacking his lips at me, which made both Dana and Mrs. Campbell grin at him as though he was some big comedian.

  Regardless of his participation in the cake decision-making, he didn’t get anywhere near as involved when talk turned to floral decorations or color schemes. He even got up from his La-Z-Boy on his own and claimed he needed a nap when we star
ted looking at fabric swatches for the bridesmaid gowns.

  Buster followed him down the hall at that point. I didn’t see either of them again for hours afterward while we continued talking about wedding attire. In fact, I was fairly certain he let Buster nap with him, which seriously screwed with all of my ideas about Daddy not liking dogs.

  Since I wouldn’t be able to go with the other women when they went dress shopping because of all my injuries—trying on dress after dress sounded like my own personal idea of hell at the moment—we did a lot of looking online to get ideas in advance. Mrs. Campbell made an executive decision that they would FaceTime me when they had Dana and Rachel in gowns they were considering so I could give my input, and it was determined that each bridesmaid would have a dress that suited her own personal style, but they’d all be made from the same fabric so we would look like we belonged together.

  The days that Noelle spent with us couldn’t have been more different from those with Dana and her mother. Noelle brought her puppy, Puck, for each visit, and it seemed as if he was bigger every single visit. For large chunks of those days, we wasted a lot of our time watching Buster chase Puck or, alternatively, watching Puck chase Buster. There was a lot of laughter during Noelle’s visits, especially from Daddy.

  Nothing could have surprised me more. He’d never allowed me to have a dog when I was growing up, so I’d given up hope of ever having one—at least not as long as I lived with him. But I had always assumed that his refusal was because he didn’t like dogs. That didn’t seem to be the case at all, considering how he was acting with these two around.

  In fact, Daddy was a lot more active during the hours that Noelle and Puck joined us than at any other time. He was happy to let both dogs jump up on his lap, and he didn’t even complain when they got up in his face and gave him doggy kisses. He laughed—more than I could remember him laughing in years—and I could see in his eyes how much he wanted to get down on the floor to play with them. The only thing that stopped him was the postsurgical pain. The light in his eyes was like that of a little boy. When he walked his laps through the living areas while Noelle was with us, both dogs raced circles around him, staying right by his side the whole time and barking excitedly. That only made him laugh more.

  She brought flowers with her fairly regularly, either that or some homemade potpourri she was experimenting with, and she was always tidying things up, perpetually in motion. Whereas Laura could be a whirlwind of talk, Noelle was more like a tidal wave of action. She usually stayed just this side of driving me insane because she never held still.

  After a couple of days hanging out with us, at one point when she was helping me to get up so I could use the restroom, she completely threw me for a loop.

  “I really like your father,” she said.

  Most people didn’t like Daddy. He was so different around everyone else than he was with me, usually. But then, he was different around Noelle than he was with other people, too. Maybe because she was different. Hell, she wasn’t anything like who I’d initially pegged her to be.

  “I like him, too,” I said cautiously, unsure where this was going.

  She walked alongside me up the stairs in case I had any problems along the way. “My parents died a few years ago. Would you mind if I adopted him? Even if it’s just for however long we’re all here.”

  “Oh.” I’d never imagined anyone else would want that sort of relationship with my father. I’d been an only child, and I hadn’t even had to share him with my mother for over half my life. The idea of sharing him with Noelle, though, didn’t sting like it might have. She was too sweet for me to begrudge her something like that. And for that matter, I would never begrudge my father having someone like her in his life. It was like a giant lightbulb followed her around everywhere she went. I shook my head. “I wouldn’t mind. Not at all.”

  “Really? You’re sure?” Noelle turned huge eyes on me, bright with tears despite the smile lighting up her face.

  “I’m sure.”

  Before I could prepare myself, she wrapped both her arms around me and drew me in for a hug—tight enough that I had to suck in a breath from the pain. Only it wasn’t just the pain that stole my ability to breathe. It was also the fact that she was hugging me at all. I had never really been the touchy-feely sort. At least outside of the bedroom. I kind of liked the fact that she was hugging me, though.

  “Oh!” She let me go almost as quickly as she’d grabbed me. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “If you adopt Daddy, then you’ll be like a sister or something.” Which was a weird thought. Not a bad thought. Just weird.

  You would have thought I’d hung the moon based on the smile she gave me then. Granted, that just seemed to go with the territory where Noelle was concerned. I made a mental note to try to get used to the sensation, to the idea that she could think I was awesome. It looked like I was going to be experiencing a lot more of it in the near future. And maybe in the far future, too. Who could know?

  The biggest adjustment in all of this, though, wasn’t having the girls around. It was having Daddy home all the time—and Cam there with us as often as he was gone. Sometimes it felt like he was there more than he was away.

  Surprisingly, it hadn’t been as weird or awkward to have both Daddy and Cam staying in the same house as I’d expected it to be. There was definitely a surprising dynamic between the three of us, though. Cam and I were both trying to take care of Daddy, and Cam and Daddy were both trying to take care of me, and yet neither Daddy nor I were really up to doing much of anything to help the other, and so Cam ended up doing almost everything.

  The only times he complained were when we essentially got in his way and made whatever he was trying to do more difficult for him. Even then, his complaints were quiet, and not really worded like complaints. You know, if you’d go back and sit down in your recliner, Scotty, I could fix her some ginger tea and bring you some water, or, I’m not sure your dad will appreciate it if you puke on his bed while you try to help him get up in the morning. If it had been either me or Daddy and not Cam, we would undoubtedly be saying something like, Get the fuck out of the way and let me do this, you idiot. He was a lot nicer than we were. That just proved he didn’t belong in my life, didn’t it?

  We could probably make things a lot easier for him if the two of us would stop being so stubborn, trying to do more than we should, but I doubted that would happen any time soon. Maybe Obstinate should have been our last name instead of Thomas. It had a certain ring to it, at least.

  But it was those moments when the three of us were just hanging out together that felt the…well, the oddest. Odd because they were comfortable.

  The nights when Cam was home with us, in particular, were just nothing at all like what I’d been dreading. He would go into the kitchen and make something for the three of us to eat. Cam was a surprisingly good cook. Not a gourmet chef or anything like that, but he could make tasty meals that fit the doctors’ recommendations for Daddy’s diet, and he didn’t burn the house down in the process. It shouldn’t really be surprising that he could cook. He’d been living on his own for years now, and most guys figured it out eventually. And it shouldn’t be surprising that he knew how to make relatively healthful meals because that was what athletes needed to eat to stay in peak physical condition. Nevertheless, color me surprised. I just hadn’t been expecting it, I guess.

  After we ate, he would sit with us in the living room so Daddy could watch the game footage that he’d recorded. Cam sat with me on the sofa and let me lean into him, and Daddy never said a word about how Cam kept his arms wrapped around my waist, or how he planted little kisses on my head, or how he twined his fingers with mine and whispered horribly inappropriate and delicious things in my ear so quietly that Daddy couldn’t hear. Or at least I prayed he couldn’t hear.

  I can’t wait until I can taste you again, he’d said one time, and I’d had a hard time keeping my face from flooding
with heat since Daddy was in his recliner only a few feet away. Cam had put both his hands over the backs of mine, wrapping our doubled-up arms around my waist and tugging me closer to him. Next time, I’ll taste all of you, including that sweet pussy. I’ll make you come so hard you’ll forget your name.

  I nearly forgot my name just from listening to his promises.

  Another time, he’d leaned his head down so his lips brushed against my ear, on the side opposite of where Daddy was sitting, and whispered, Your breasts drive me insane in the best possible way when you’re sleeping. They’re these perfect pillows, and I can’t stop thinking about getting my hands on them.

  When he said things like that to me, those tingles he had always been able to cause in me took over, racing up and down my spine and leaving goose bumps in their wake. It made my breath turn shallow and my pulse sprint like a racehorse, and all I could think about was getting him alone.

  None of that could have prepared me for what he said to me Wednesday afternoon before he left for Game Four, though.

  The three of us were hanging out in the living room, Daddy on his recliner and Cam and I on the couch, watching NHL Network. The commentators were analyzing everything that had happened in Game Three and giving their opinions on what both the Storm and the Canucks needed to do in order to win the game tonight. I wasn’t paying much attention to the TV, though. All of my energy was wrapped up in sensation. Cam had me leaning against his chest like he did so often, our thighs melded together, and his arm was around my back so that his hand was able to rest on my lower ribs. He wasn’t putting any pressure on them, of course. He was always careful to avoid anything that might cause me pain. But the way he was holding me allowed him access to my side, which he teased with his fingertips. They danced along my skin, tickling me and leaving prickles of awareness in their wakes.

  I was just starting to squirm from the sensation when he brushed my ear with his lips again and whispered, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”