“I was young, but I wasn’t too young,” I said, pouring the balsamic vinaigrette over my spinach salad. “I knew what I was doing. What I wanted. Twenty-four when Kinsey and I got married. We had Carter a year later.”
“Shanna and I were eighteen. Stupid fucking teenagers,” he said. “Got married straight out of high school—not even a month after graduation. Neither of us had ever dated anyone else, even.”
“But you loved her, though, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but it was never going to last. We should’ve seen it. Everyone else did, and they were all too happy to tell us how stupid we were, especially once we’d divorced. We didn’t have a fucking clue. Just got married so fast because she was pregnant and we figured that was what you do, right? I signed my first contract, and we kept having babies. A few years later, we had three kids to raise but we barely knew each other anymore. I was being shuttled around in the minors and she was changing diapers and trying to keep toddlers from eating dog shit in the backyard. That was bad enough, but now they’re fucking teenagers. All three of them. How the hell did I end up with three teenagers? I’m not old enough for this shit.”
I smothered my laugh because Carter would be a teenager at some point, too, and there was no telling what that would entail. My boy was a good kid, but hormones could fuck with anyone. Didn’t want to end up with Mac having earned the right to say told ya so. Maybe he wouldn’t, but… Nah, he would. He totally would. And he’d probably take a swipe at me now for laughing.
For the next couple of hours, I listened to Mac whine and complain about all the crap he and his ex were going through in trying to raise three teenagers, especially when they didn’t see eye to eye on all of it, and I did my best to absorb as much as I could for when Carter was that age so I’d have a leg up on whatever issues Kinsey and I might run into.
But then, finally, blessedly, Mac had to head back to his room so he could dress for tonight’s game.
As soon as he was gone, I checked my cell phone.
There were several responses from the WAGs, letting me know they’d gotten my message and would be doubly aware of everything going on around Natalie. Tallie said she’d made a call to the local police station to get a list of dos and don’ts to pass around to all of them, which wasn’t much, but I supposed it was something.
But then I got to a message from Natalie. I got it, it read, which had to mean she’d gotten the tattoo, but there was no photo attached and no mention of tattoo placement, or even if she liked it.
I tapped out a quick response: Can I see?
Almost immediately, she came back with: Not now. I’ll show U when U come home.
So now I had to wonder—did she want to wait until I was home because she didn’t want pictures floating around? Was it somewhere she didn’t want photographic evidence of? Or maybe she hated it. In all honesty, it was probably just because she still had to have it covered in plastic wrap, so it wouldn’t photograph well yet.
But my brain wouldn’t settle on the easy, most likely reason. My mind was going a mile a minute.
I couldn’t wait to get home.
FOR THE BETTER part of last season, Prince and I had been defensive partners. So far this season, the coaches seemed content to keep the pair of us together, which was fine by me. Pretty sure Prince was okay with the arrangement, too. I had plenty of size and could use it to our advantage. He was a bit on the smaller side (at least in comparison to me) but significantly better at moving the puck, not to mention scoring, himself.
As a partnership, we were relatively well balanced. I took care of banging bodies to keep them out of our goaltender’s way, and he took care of corralling the puck and getting it into the forwards’ hands.
We didn’t even need to talk to each other very much, which worked out fine for both of us. Actually, Prince didn’t talk much at all, no matter who was around or what was going on, and I’d much rather someone else do the talking most of the time.
On the ice, we tended to let our game play speak for us. It worked out well for us and the team as a whole.
Usually.
Tonight was proving to be an exception to the rule. Which, if we were honest with ourselves, we should have expected. The Storm had been one of the better teams in the league for half a decade or more. They were always in the playoffs, perennially one of the bigger threats in the Western Conference.
We weren’t quite bottom of the barrel now that we’d been in the league for a few seasons, but we might as well be. I doubted we’d even get to sniff at the playoffs for at least several more seasons.
At the moment, Prince and I were getting a front-row seat to witness why our opponents for the night were so damn good. Better than front row, actually, since we were on the ice and trying to stop them from scoring for the third time this period.
They’d thrown out their top line of Riley Jezek, Jamie Babcock, and Nate Golston. Prince and I were both already far past the point of being winded, but we were stuck in our defensive zone and couldn’t get the puck out so we could get off the ice for a change.
Jezek and Golston might as well be fucking twins, because they could read one another like they’d shared a damn womb. Babcock seemed to have eyes in the back of his head when he was playing with those two; he always knew where the puck would be without needing to turn his head to look for it. The damn thing just landed right on his tape the second he put his stick on the ice.
“Clear it out of here,” Hunter shouted at me when I skated past him to dig the puck free from the corner.
What the fuck did he think we were trying to do?
I didn’t waste the breath necessary to roll my eyes at him; I needed all the oxygen I could get to deal with the Storm’s top forwards.
But no sooner did I get the blade of my stick on it than Golston was there. He was like a pesky gnat that just wouldn’t go away. I fucking hated playing against guys like him—small but strong as a fucking mule, and more determined than the runt of a litter trying to get to a free teat at feeding time. Golston was one of the shorter guys in the league, and I was almost the tallest. If I hit him the way I hit most anyone else, it’d be a fucking elbow to the head or something, and I’d be suspended faster than I could blink. He played with the attitude of a guy twice his size, though, like a chihuahua going up against a Rottweiler.
I tried to kick the puck free with the toe of my skate, hoping to send it in Zee’s direction, but Golston blocked it with the blade of his stick.
Mac skated over to help out, but adding his stick to the mix only created a bigger blockade, trapping the puck in place. Finally, Mac managed to tie up Golston’s stick with his own, and I squeaked the puck out of the pile, but I got too much juice on it. The fucker squirted past Zee and all the way down to the other end. Storm defenseman Keith Burns got to it first, and the refs blew the whistle as soon as he got his stick on it.
Icing. Lovely.
They sent out fresh legs, but my teammates and I were all stuck out there, winded and exhausted and needing to get off for a line change.
We lined up for the face-off, all huffing for air and sweating like crazy.
The linesman dropped the puck.
Zee put up a good fight for us, but Storm center Blake Kozlow tied up Zee’s stick with his own and kicked the puck over to one of his teammates with his skate blade. We all scrambled to get into position, Prince chasing Kozlow into the corner and me taking up position in front of Hunter, but—winded and out of gas—we were no match for their fresh legs.
Their forwards got off a couple of crisp passes, dragging all of us out of position. Their left wing fired a wrister on Hunter, which he stopped but only by flailing in an unorthodox move that left the net wide open. Their center somehow freed the puck from the pile of bodies that included both Hunter and Prince. He surveyed his options and then Leif Sorenson, one of their defensemen, lifted his stick for a slapper.
Hunter would never get back into the net in time. I had no choice but to drop
to the ice and pray the puck hit me.
It did. Right on my cup. I felt the cup crack from the force just before I felt intense pain starting in my balls and radiating all the way down to my toes.
Thank fuck for that plastic invention. I could only imagine how a ninety-plus-mile-an-hour slapshot to the balls would feel without protection.
In too much pain and shock to move, I collapsed, but the puck was under me.
Hunter flailed around, shoving me off the puck so he could cover it himself, and we finally got a whistle.
The officials moved in to separate all the bodies in front of our net, and Zee and Prince helped me get to my feet. I knew there had to be tears in my eyes, but fuck. I’d been kneed in the balls once by a girl in middle school, but that had been nothing compared to this.
They each threw one of my arms across their shoulders and helped me to the bench, and one of the other guys opened the door so I wouldn’t have to climb over the boards.
Jesse Coakley, our head equipment manager, made his way down the bench and leaned over. “Good thing for cups, eh?”
I couldn’t speak. No chance. I couldn’t even nod my head.
“At least you’ve already got a kid,” Mac joked as he jumped onto the ice. “Might have permanently damaged your swimmers.”
As the trainers took me off the bench and helped me back to the room to be examined and evaluated, I didn’t even have it in me to tell him to go fuck himself.
“SERIOUSLY, HOW CAN you stand having ice on that?” I asked, half-amused, half-shocked. “I’m trying to imagine putting ice on some of my more private areas, and…no. Just no. I couldn’t do it.”
Ethan laughed into the phone, which made my belly flutter in a way I didn’t want to examine just yet. “It’s not easy at first. But I promise, it’s better having it numb.”
“Yeah, but the time between when you first put the ice in place and when it goes numb… I don’t know.”
It was the middle of the night, following the Thunderbirds’ loss to the Storm. Ethan had texted me once he was back in his hotel to see if I was still awake, and I’d called as soon as I saw the phone light up with his name. I was trying to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t wake Viktoriya if she was sleeping, but there wasn’t a chance I’d pass up the opportunity to talk to Ethan right now.
“Playing with ice can be sexy,” he said.
I clammed up, suddenly hot and flushed all over, so hot that some ice on my skin wouldn’t be uncalled for. How could I already be feeling this way toward any man? It seemed too soon, especially since I hadn’t been sure I’d ever want another man’s touch again. But now I was thinking about Ethan, and his big, strong hands and how safe and protected he made me feel, and suddenly, there was something more.
“I’ve had worse injuries,” Ethan said, changing the subject before my thoughts could completely run away with me, before I could say something I might regret. “And so have you.”
“True, but still.”
“You could ki—” he started to say, but then he cut himself off suddenly.
“I could what?”
“Nothing. Forget I said anything.”
“That’s not going to happen, and you know it. I could what?” Something that started with a k-sound. Kick him in the balls? Doubtful since he was already hurting so much, anyway. And regardless, I would never do something like that to him. But what?
“I was about to say something really crass and totally inappropriate, and I realized my mistake before it was too late, all right?”
Crass and inappropriate? That didn’t seem like the Ethan I knew at all, but…
“I could kiss your boo-boo and make it better?” I suggested, unsure where the boldness had come from. Because if he had been here, in front of me, there wasn’t a chance I would have said anything of the sort. Somehow, with him being halfway across the country, I had done it, though.
And I was almost certain that was exactly what he’d been thinking, what he’d almost said.
And I was fairly sure that he wanted it as much as I did.
Almost. Maybe I only hoped he did. Maybe I was reading something in him that I wanted to be there even if it wasn’t actually there.
He might not want me. He might just be a kind man, someone who’d help anyone in a similar situation, and his kindness didn’t have anything to do with me, per se. Actually, that might be the truth. Ravyn had told me how Ethan and Carter had ended up with Snoopy. They’d found the puppy tied up in a garbage bag, left on the side of the road. I might just be the latest stray he’d taken in.
But now I’d said it, and it was out there, dangling between us like forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. Now, everything was going to change.
It had to, whether for good or bad.
“Natalie,” he said on a sigh, and he sounded strangled and frustrated, and there was a hint of something else in his tone, but I couldn’t put my finger on what that something might be.
“Sorry,” I forced out. “Forget I said anything.” But I knew better than to think either of us could do anything of the sort. I couldn’t unsay the words. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted to, even if I could.
“You know I don’t expect—”
“I know,” I cut in. But why was he trying so hard to convince me his intentions were strictly honorable? Maybe I didn’t appeal to him, especially after what Hayes and his buddies had done to me. A sharp, aching pain stabbed me in the gut, and I had to blink back tears. “I shouldn’t have said that. Please, try to forget I did.”
“I can’t do that,” he said.
I pressed my eyes closed, thankful he wasn’t here to see me cry. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry. I mean I can’t forget it because I want it so much. I want you, but I feel like an asshole for wanting you when you’re still so hurt, so raw. When you’re still dealing with so much.”
“You want to be with me?” I asked, my tongue so thick that the words were strangled.
“More than I should. More than I ever imagined possible. But most of all, I want you to be healthy. To be happy. To be safe.”
“I feel safe with you,” I said. “I miss you.” There was so much more I wanted to tell him, so much I needed for him to know. But if I tried to speak more now, it would all come out as a massive sob.
But I got the sense that there were just as many things he’d left unsaid as I had, just as many things stealing his ability to speak.
“I miss you, too,” he said after a painful silence passed between us. “I need you to know that I’m never going to push you, though. I’m never going to put what I want ahead of what you need.”
“What if it’s what you need, too?”
“It’s got to come from you, Nat. It’s all got to start with you.”
So, the ball was in my court? That was how it seemed.
Now the question was: what did I intend to do with it?
CARTER’S FLIGHT TO Tulsa was due to land about forty-five minutes after the team’s flight landed, so I took my bags to my car and then headed back inside to wait for him. I’d barely made it through security and reached his gate by the time he was skipping down the bridge, holding hands with a flight attendant with his Tow Mater backpack dangling from his free arm. The flight attendant was carrying his suitcase—which was, of course, a Lightning McQueen suitcase, because Mater and McQueen were best buddies, just like Carter and Snoopy.
“Dad!” he shouted. He ran straight into my arms, ignoring the flight attendant’s admonishment that she needed to check my paperwork first to verify that I was the adult legally allowed to pick him up.
I passed the papers over to her with one hand, the other wrapped tightly around my kid because he had a death grip on my neck and obviously had no intention of letting go. She chuckled and took the paperwork from me, giving it a quick once-over.
“Did you have a good flight?” I asked him.
The flight attendant winked at me and handed all the paperwork back with
a knowing smile.
“The man next to me let me watch Monsters, Inc. on his iPad,” Carter said.
I took his suitcase from the flight attendant, re-situated Carter’s backpack over both of his shoulders so it wouldn’t fall off him, and grabbed hold of his hand to lead him out of the airport. “That was nice of him,” I said, but I thought to myself that my son’s seatmate was probably just trying to have a little peace and quiet on the flight. Carter could talk anyone’s ear off if he was in the right mood for it. “Did you say thank you?”
Just like that, my son stopped cold. “Oh no. I forgot.” Then he turned around, scanning the sea of faces. He climbed up on an empty chair for a better angle. “I don’t see him!”
“He probably went to baggage claim,” I said, holding out my hand again.
But Carter refused to be swayed. “We gotta go find him.”
I laughed to myself, but I said, “All right. Let’s go see if we can find him. We have to go past baggage claim to get to the car, anyway.” This time, when I reached for Carter’s hand, he took it.
We gathered up his things again and started the long walk to get out of the building. He made up a game as we went, designating where it was safe for me to step and where I might trigger an attack of the monsters from his movie, despite the fact that we were wide awake and the scary monsters were supposed to come out while you were sleeping.
“You need to use the bathroom?” I asked when we were almost at baggage claim, since I spotted a sign out of the corner of my eye. “Might be a while before we can get to another one.”
“I went pee on the plane,” he said, sounding like it was an absolute coup, the best thing he’d ever experienced.
“Got it,” I said, chuckling to myself. “Did you remember to wash your hands?”
“Duh,” he said, but he sounded guilty.
I made a mental note to make him use a wet wipe as soon as we got out to the car. And I’d be using one for myself, too.
We finally reached the baggage claim area. I checked the overhead signs to find where Carter’s flight would be receiving their bags, and then we headed for that carousel.
Rain Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 5) Page 11
