Body Check: Blades Hockey

by Luis, Maria

  I clear my throat, my back pressed to the window as I sit facing the aisle, my long legs sprawled out in what little space the row allots. “Rules were that loser buys the steak. I’m not losin’.” I stare down at my grid, then look to the plastic backing of Cain’s board. “D-4.”

  Cain’s mouth lifts in a smug smile. “Miss.”

  “Fucker,” I grunt, fitting a white pin in the corresponding slot in my grid.

  Beaumont’s dark head pops up from the row behind me. Forearms pressed into my chair’s headrest, he leans forward and sweeps his gaze over my spread. “What kind of fancy-ass steak you thinking about, Cain?”

  “Wagyu. I like it when my meat is massaged.”

  I cock a brow. “You like it when it’s chopped off, too? Because after you’re done with your massage and your specialty diet of grass and ice beer, that little bastard is gone and being served on a porcelain plate with potatoes au gratin.”

  “Maybe he likes the pain,” Beaumont muses, rubbing his chin dramatically. “You like pain, Cain?”

  “I like free steak.” Cain twirls a finger in the air, not even perturbed by the shift in conversation and his impending lack of dick, and then adds, “C-3.”

  One glance down at my grid and I’m tempted to do the cock-hacking for him. “Dammit.”

  “Is that a hit, Cap?”

  Beaumont snaps up one of my red pins before slipping it into the second hole of my Destroyer. “He’s been hit!”

  Narrowing my eyes, I glare up at our enforcer. “Why the fuck are you so chipper? It’s four in the goddamn morning and you’re wearing a suit.”

  He only flashes me a grin. “I took a hit, if you know what I mean.”

  From the row behind him, Josh Kammer jumps up like a mole emerging from compact dirt. “You really want to be talking about weed like that, Sin? Pretty sure that shit’s against protocol.”

  Beaumont’s dark brows furrow as the easygoing expression on his face dies a quick death. “Someone tell the rookie to take a seat before I help him do so.”

  “What? All I’m saying is—”

  “He’s talking about sex,” I cut in, meeting Kammer’s gaze. “He got laid. Now sit down unless you’re up for another round of rope climbing.”

  I swallow a chuckle when the kid promptly collapses back into his seat. It’s safe to say that he’s not in the mood to press his luck so soon after our last one-on-one. I’m not into hazing the newbies, but I sure as hell will put them in their place when they start talking shit—especially if it involves Holly.

  As though thinking her name has conjured her up, I hear the strains of her voice as she enters the plane, and goddamn, it takes every inch of self-control not to lift my ass off the cushioned seat and scope her out.

  “Matt,” she says to the attendant, “it’s so good to see you again!” There’s quiet murmuring, and then, “For me? Are you sure?”

  Fuck, I want to see her face when Matt hands over the goods. It’s nothing big, nothing monumental, but it’s a peace offering I know she’ll appreciate. If we’re going to be dancing around each other for the next few months, I need her on my side. I need her to know that I’m not the prick who’ll take her for granted when she’s doing it all for me—however much she wants to pretend otherwise.

  “Carter.”

  I flick my gaze up to Beaumont, who’s watching me with narrowed eyes. “Yeah?” My voice is gruffer than I’d like, and I grab my water bottle from the back of the seat in front of me and take a swig. “What’s up?”

  He leans down as far as he can go, his chest crushing my seat back. “You look like you want to take a hit, buddy. Simmer down or you’re going to poke a hole in the bottom of Battleship.”

  “Pretty sure this game is supposed to be G-rated,” pipes up Cain from across the aisle, just as I glance down at my crotch and . . . fuck me, but Andre is right.

  I’m sporting wood.

  For my ex-wife.

  In a plane surrounded by my teammates.

  Christ, it’s going to be a long four months.

  Needing to get the conversation off me and my ill-timed hard-on, I pick up the board game and shove it at Beaumont as I climb to my feet. “Take this, will you?”

  His fingers wrap around the sharp, plastic edges, his dark eyes flitting down before zeroing in on my face. “Masturbation in the bathroom won’t get you into the Mile High Club, Carter. Plus, no one on this plane wants to sleep with you.”

  Cain chokes on a boisterous laugh when I narrow my eyes at him. To Andre, I drawl, “That’s not what you were telling me before Zoe entered the picture.”

  Pure. Silence.

  Beaumont lasts a total of four seconds before his neutral expression cracks and he’s bent over the board game, laughing so hard that heads swivel in our direction to see what’s going on. Including Holly’s.

  She’s holding her gift bag to her chest as she stares down the aisle, some ten rows separating us. Blond hair pulled up in a ponytail. Black, rimmed glasses perched on her nose. Yoga pants and a blue Blades sweatshirt complete the outfit.

  She looks fresh-faced and young, and I’m momentarily hit with memory after memory of waking up to her beside me in bed, her face smashed in the pillow, one arm splayed across my face. I can’t count the number of mornings I’ve woken her up by nipping at her arm, after being almost smothered by its weight in my sleep.

  Sometimes romance isn’t cuddle sessions and lingerie—it’s clinging to the edge of the mattress and praying you don’t topple over when your wife decides to hog the entire bed.

  Without giving myself the chance to switch gears, I duck my head to avoid smacking it on the overhead bins, and step into the aisle. The team is settling in for our flight to Nashville. Some of the guys are sleeping, heads propped awkwardly in the small confines of the seats; others quietly play on their phones. A few issue me their usual two-fingered salute as I pass them.

  Matt, our regular attendant, smiles when he sees me approach. “Do you need something, Mr. Carter?”

  I’ve told the guy hundreds of times to call me Jackson, but he always laughs me off. Short, thin, and with a mop of red hair on his head, he could be anywhere between forty and sixty as well as a stand-in for Ronald McDonald.

  “Nah, I’m good, man. Just gotta piss real fast.”

  Almost comically, he leans his slender frame to the left, his blue eyes no doubt landing on the bathroom at the back of the plane, close to where I was seated. When he looks my way again, I lift my brows, silently daring him to call me out on my bullshit.

  But just like he’s always called me Mr. Carter, Matt’s the sorta guy who will always keep his nose out of people’s business. Without a word, he slips into the empty seat to his left to let me edge past him.

  I give him a nod.

  His mouth pulls wide. “Don’t piss on the floor, Mr. Carter, or you’ll be the one cleaning it up.”

  And that’s why the Blades will pay the guy whatever he wants: he gives as much shit as he takes, and like a momma bear, he’s never shy about putting us all in our places if the situation calls for it.

  Hard-Ass Matt, the guys call him.

  Matt’s shoulders never fail to inch back with pride whenever they do.

  Holly has already taken her seat by the time I reach her side. Her camera girl, Carmen, sits beside her. I’ve known Carmen since she came on board with Carter Photography. Nice girl. Quirky. She hasn’t exactly been a cheerleader in my court since the divorce.

  Not that I’ve ever worried about divided courts—I think it’s safe to say that both Holly and I have always wanted the people in our lives to feel okay with talking to us both.

  No picking sides.

  No feeling guilty.

  I set my hand on the back of Holly’s seat, consciously aware that I can’t crowd her or tease her into glancing up and having my crotch at eye level. In a relationship, it would be funny, maybe even sexy, depending on the mood. While divorced, it’s pushing boundaries.

 
And she’s already warned me that I push those enough already.

  As if sensing my presence, she glances up, gaze skimming up my body until she arrives at my face. Behind the black frames of her glasses, her blue eyes are bright and beautiful. “I’m going to assume you’re the one behind the gift?”

  I shift my weight back, giving us space, and rest my ass against the seat opposite hers. “It’s a peace offering.” Perched in her lap, the bag sits unopened, the black tissue paper still spiking up in the air from when I tried to make it look half-decent this morning. “I think you’ll like it.”

  Her fingers trail up the side, then tug down on the bag. The tissue paper crinkles but remains in place. Probably because I stuffed an entire package in there—like cooking, wrapping presents isn’t my thing. Making assists on the ice? Scoring goals and watching the lamp light up? That’s more my speed.

  “Black like your soul, I see.” She says it with a teasing glint before plucking the black tissue paper from the bag and tucking it between her knees. Blond ponytail swinging forward, she peers inside and promptly lets loose a low, husky laugh. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  I watch as she pulls out the noise-cancellation headphones that I bought for her. Against my will, my chest tightens when faced with the small smile curving her lips. Fuck me, but the tightening sensation feels a lot more like strangulation when she flicks her gaze up to my face, a question in her blue eyes.

  “We’re noisy bastards, if you remember,” I say gruffly. “Figure with all the traveling you’ll be doing with us over the next few months, it might be something you’d like to keep on hand.”

  On the other side of Holly, Carmen snorts—derisively, no doubt—and makes a show of whipping out a pair of small earbuds and sticking them in her ears.

  I open my mouth, prepared to apologize for not bringing her something, too, when Matt taps me on the shoulder. “Take a seat, Mr. Carter. We’re ready to get a move-on.”

  “Right,” I mutter, “sorry for the hold up.”

  Holly’s cheeks flush and she drops her gaze. “Thanks for the gift, Jackson.” Her fingers drum along the headset’s cushioned ear padding. “It’s great. And I’m sure we’ll see each other later on today, but—”

  I sit.

  What the hell are you doing, man?

  Clearly, Holly has the same idea because her lips purse. “What’re you doing?”

  Hell if I know.

  If I were smart, I’d tromp right back to where I’d been sitting with Beaumont and Cain.

  If I were smart, I wouldn’t give a shit if I watched her discover what else I put in the bag.

  If I were smart, I’d do everything in my power to get it in my skull that Holly and I didn’t work for a million and one different reasons, and I’d be an idiot to let myself linger now. To let myself soak up her scent, her beauty, the sweet pitch of her voice.

  Holly was equal parts my strength and my weakness, and in this moment, I can’t resist the pull—her pull.

  I snap the seat belt together across my hips. Pinch my suit at the knees and get comfortable, my left leg sprawled in the aisle and my right spread wide and bent at the knee to fit in the narrow row.

  “Jackson?”

  I slide the blind down over the oval window, blocking out the sights of Logan International Airport and eclipsing my two seats in relative darkness. “Open up the rest of your peace offerings, Holls. I want to see your face.”

  8

  Holly

  I want to see your face.

  There’s no time to respond or still my rapidly beating heart before the cabin lights flicker and dim, and Matt’s smooth voice echoes over the speakers: “Hello, my dear Blades. So good to see you all again! It’s been too long.”

  A chorus of male voices rise up behind me:

  “We missed you, Hard-Ass!”

  “It’s been months, man! You been laid yet?”

  “Matt, what’ll I have to pay to exchange the shitty crackers you’re about to give me for a big, juicy steak?”

  There’s a strangled chuckle, and then, “Mr. Harrison, I’ve missed you too. Mr. Hartwell, that answer is between me and my nonexistent partner, thank you very much. And, Mr. Cain, you’ll eat the crackers and you’ll like it.” The sounds of masculine groaning at the back of the plane makes me grin. This back-and-forth ribbing has run rampant for years now. Luckily, Matt knows how to hold his own. Something he proves when he adds, “You all know that I won’t be repeating myself when I say, if I catch any of you watching porn on this flight, I’ll kick you off while flying thirty-thousand feet in the air. No parachute. Your fans will be disappointed—don’t test me. Our travel time is a few minutes shy of three hours, and we’ll have you ready for the Predators by 8 a.m. Sit back and enjoy, gents. It’s good to see you again for another season.”

  The speaker clicks off and chatter resumes. Quieter now, due to the lack of light and the gentle classical music Matt enjoys playing just to get under the team’s skin.

  If he weren’t beloved by every player, he’d probably have been fired by now.

  As Debussy drowns out male voices, I’m acutely aware of the fact that I’m not alone. To my left, Carmen reads on her phone, earphones plugged in to avoid the classical music. I know Jackson isn’t her favorite person—since I brought her on as an additional camera on my team, she’s always been fiercely loyal to me. She had little credentials when she applied to the job listing but I took a chance on her anyway. And when her ex-husband turned out to be a cheating schmuck, I found myself blurring the lines between boss and friend.

  As far as the latter goes, Carmen is as close to a bestie that I have, and I know that watching me fall apart with Jackson over the last year has been just another bullet point in her long list about why men are assholes.

  Jackson isn’t an asshole.

  We just couldn’t find a way to meet in the middle.

  The gift bag sits heavy in my lap, the expensive headphones he purchased resting on my stomach. They feel like a brand against the fabric of my shirt—a brand of failed dreams and bitter hopes and nonexistent reconciliations. Stupid, I know, to want something back that didn’t work in the first place, but emotions are rarely logical.

  “Open it, Holls.”

  His deep Texan drawl curls around me like wisps of heavy smoke, warming me up from my toes to that forever-tingly spot behind my ear. The spot that Jackson once loved to kiss, knowing that it made my fingers twitch and my skin leap and my heart thud a little faster.

  I switch on the light above my head just as the jet’s engine begins to hum and the aircraft jerks forward. “You should sit with the guys,” I mutter, desperate to draw the line back in the sand between us.

  “I will—after you see what else is in there.”

  Forget the line—there’s a damn aisle dividing us, and yet I still feel like he’s right there, pressed against me, surrounding me.

  There’s no more tissue paper to remove, so I tilt the bag and shove my fingers inside, grasping around for whatever else he purchased. Plastic meets my fingertips, and I draw the yellow package out and tilt it under the light to better read the font scrolled across.

  My heart squeezes. “Jackson—”

  “Sour Patch Watermelon candies,” he murmurs, “your favorite.”

  Beside me, Carmen slumps farther down in her seat. I get the feeling she’s listening to us and not whatever playlist she selected. Part of me—the young girl who once loved a boy more than anything else in the world—wishes that Jackson and I could be alone. But that wouldn’t be smart—it wouldn’t be logical—and so the thirty-two-year-old divorcee takes center stage and tries to not read between the lines when there are no lines to be read.

  “Stress and candy go hand-in-hand for me. Thanks for saving me a trip to a corner store at midnight when Carmen and I are editing film till we can’t see.”

  I finally cave and glance his way. Sparse light dances across his features, splicing over his crooked nose an
d giving way to shadows for the lower part of his face. His dark eyes, however, remain visible—and they’re locked on me.

  “I figured that’d be the case,” he says, the smoky tendrils of his voice skipping along my spine as though it’s a physical touch, “so I’ve got a supply loaded and ready in my suitcase for you.”

  Carmen turns her body, shifting in the seat beside mine to give me her back.

  Some privacy.

  Slick sweat licks at my palms. Space, I need space. To breathe, to remember the downward spiral of our marriage, to remind myself that I’m allowed to regret what could have been but shouldn’t uncap the bottle of what-ifs.

  What-ifs are dangerous.

  Jackson’s long leg enters my periphery as he changes positions. The armrest goes up so he can face me as much as possible with the seat belt locking him in place. “There’s one more thing in the bag for you, Holls. One last peace offering and then I’ll go back to my seat.”

  Because the noise-cancelling headphones and my stress-eating candies aren’t enough?

  Carefully, I dig into the bag, feeling around. Nothing. Emptiness. I use the overhead light to glance inside, only to note a small card lying flat against the bottom. What are you doing to me, Jackson? With shaky fingers, which I’ll deny to my dying day, I slip the card out from the bottom of the bag and peel open the red envelope.

  Inside are two tickets to I’m-not-really-sure.

  “There’s an event tomorrow morning at an art gallery,” Jackson says as I squint to read the text on the tickets. “A National Geographic photography showcase.” He pauses, and each indrawn breath that I hear him pull into his chest is mimicked by my own as I struggle not to let my scattering emotions wear me down.

  I want to cry.

  I want to throw the damn tickets at his face.

  I want to hop into his lap and tell him thank-you in the way he’s always appreciated most—with my lips wrapped around his cock and my hands cupping his balls.

  “Figured you and Carmen can slip away for an hour before you have to report for duty,” he continues. “Sports 24/7 will have us covered at morning practice. Y’all can swoop in later tomorrow night and do what you gotta do with the team.”