Chapter 10
The last time Jordan got in a fight on the ice was in his second season in the league when he was still young and scrappy and immature.
He was the captain now and captains don't get in fights. Captains don't let pests get under their skin. But how many captains had to listen to some goon talk about fucking the woman he was with?
Normally, trash talking a player's girlfriend isn't that big of a deal. You just brush it off and move on. Besides, what can that guy know about your girlfriend?
This time, Jordan knew it wasn't just talk. After the way Charlotte acted at dinner, after the way she dodged his questions about Declan Reed before trying to change the subject, he just knew.
It started in the first period when he lined up beside Declan for a face off.
"So you're banging Charlotte Stone?"
Jordan didn't care. Let that idiot talk. But as the game got more physical, Declan kept running his mouth.
"You know, I got to taste her cherry."
"Her pussy isn't worth your time, King."
"You must be really desperate to fuck my scraps."
He didn't know why that was the insult that set him off. Declan had already said some extremely inappropriate things about Charlotte that had caused Jordan to ball his fist up. But it was the insult about him taking Declan's scraps that caused him to finally drop the gloves.
The fight was quick, but for Jordan it seemed to take forever. Lots of punches thrown by him, probably lots of punches landed on him as well. His rage was so intense he just let the adrenaline take over as he threw a right hook while trying to yank Declan's jersey with his left hand balled up in the fabric. It finally ended when Declan jerked Jordan's jersey hard, causing him to lose his balance and fall to his knees on the ice.
Jordan could hear the New York crowd in the arena go wild. Their new player, their pest, had taken down the captain of the Detroit Pirates.
He got up as fast as he could, the ref's hand quickly finding his arm as he led Jordan back to the team's bench. It was already too late in the game for Jordan to serve his penalty in the box so it was directly off to the locker room for him. Probably a good idea anyway since he could feel the blood dripping down his face from somewhere above his eye, and he could taste the drops as they made their way into his mouth.
And yet despite all that, despite the noise and the blood and that stupid ass who punched him, his eyes were looking up into the crowd, past the jeering drunks and obnoxious fans, just searching for her. He had seen her in the crowd when he warmed up before the game. He knew exactly where she would be.
Charlotte stared down at him from her seat in the section just behind the visitors' bench with concern on her face as if she actually cared about what had happened to him. He gave her a scathing look in exchange, the adrenaline in his veins replaced with anger. If she had told him the truth, he could've at least been prepared for whatever nonsense Declan would throw at him. But instead, she had kept him in the dark, and he had reacted accordingly.
He pulled his eyes away from her and made the long walk down the hall to the locker room, too lost in his thoughts to understand what was going on around him as Andy, the team's trainer, pulled him into a room to get him fixed up.
All he knew was he got in a fight because of a woman, but she wasn't just any woman. She was Declan Reed's ex-girlfriend. And that fight on the ice? As far as Jordan was concerned, it was as much her fault as it was his.
The team made their way into the locker room, nursing their wounds and a nasty defeat to the New York Admirals. Jordan couldn't look any of them in the eye.
They all started to take off their gear and throw their stuff in the lockers. Jordan could see them staring at him in his peripheral vision. But his eyes were focused on the concrete column in the middle of the room. He was too angry to look at any of them, or maybe too embarrassed after losing his cool in such a public and humiliating way.
"You alright?" Logan finally asked him in a worried tone.
Jordan just stared ahead. He couldn't talk about it. He couldn't form any words. His mind was racing too fast to expend any energy on coherent thought.
"King?"
"I heard you," he growled.
"You need to get out of your uniform, man," Logan said. "Let the equipment guys get started on it."
Jordan looked down at the white away jersey, which was now spattered with his blood. His hand instinctively reached up to trace the gauze on his forehead. He barely remembered the team trainer patching him up after the fight. Since Andy hadn't called the doctor to get him stitches, he figured the trainer had probably just pulled the cut together with some bandages and let him go. It could've been worse.
Jordan finally began to move. He could tell Declan got a few good shots under his chest pads during the fight, which was just going to lead to more pain later on. He tossed his jersey in the laundry cart before peeling off the rest of his gear and heading for the shower. The water at his feet turned red at first as it washed away the extra blood that lingered on his face. Then it was just steamy and hot and not strong enough to get rid of the real pain he had suffered on the ice, both physical and emotional.
He had trusted her.
"King?" Logan's voice echoed against the shower tiles. "The media want to talk to you."
Jordan looked around. The other players had their backs to him. You never make eye contact with a player in the shower anyway, but they were very pointedly avoiding any reaction to Jordan. "Come get me after they leave."
"Sure thing, captain."
And with that, the guys around him started to turn their showers off as an unspoken rule among them had been activated. When a player had a particularly bad night, the rest of the team would help him out and pick up media duties. Most of the time that job fell on the shoulders of the team's captain. Tonight, it was his players taking one for him.
When the journalists had finally cleared out, Jordan dried off and quickly dressed, his progress slowed by his wrinkled fingers fumbling with the buttons of his dress shirt and the bruises that had started to blossom on his torso. He grabbed his ear buds from his locker and shoved them in his ears, thankful for the ability to distract himself and wordlessly tell everyone else to leave him alone as he got on the team bus.
The drive to the airport was a quick one, and the flight to Boston was only an hour. No one bothered him or talked to him or even acknowledged him from the time he left the locker room in New York until the door of his hotel room closed behind him in Boston.
Charlotte was having a bad day. Again.
It was three days after Jordan's fight at the game in New York and he was still giving her the cold shoulder. She couldn't blame him. She knew she deserved the silent treatment he was giving her after she kept her relationship with Declan a secret. She had even avoided his questions when he asked her about it directly. At the same time, Jordan could at least call her back and give her a chance to explain herself, couldn't he?
But it seemed Jordan was the only one who didn't want to talk to her. She never realized how many members of the sports media even cared about her until they started calling and calling and calling. She finally just recorded a new outgoing message on her voicemail directing all of them to her family's spokesperson. Of course, that still didn't stop them from trying.
She shoved the key into the lock on her apartment door, slamming it shut behind her and angrily throwing her suitcase in the corner. Her coat got tossed over the sofa, her carry-on bag dropped in the middle of the floor. She was focused on one thing right now and that was her liquor cabinet. As a writer, she would joke with her friends that of course it was well stocked. But right now, she was thankful that she fit the "drinking writer" stereotype because it meant she had plenty of bottles to choose from. Wine. Tequila. Vodka. Rum.
Charlotte grabbed the bottle of Captain Morgan's and started pouring it into a glass with one hand as she flicked off her shoes with the other. She would pick them up later. Right now, she needed to sit on the sofa in the quiet of her penthouse and wish this would all go away.
The liquor burned as it went down, but the events from the past few days still lingered.
There were some bad things about it all — many bad things — but the worst part for Charlotte was just after the fight. She didn't really know what happened on the ice before the first punches were thrown, although she was pretty damn sure it started with Declan.
In the third period, it looked like more words were exchanged between Jordan and Declan right before they lined up on opposite sides for a face off, something that seemed to have been happening all night. But this time, as soon as the ref dropped the puck, Jordan dropped his gloves and went after Declan. It was a tough fight before Declan finally got Jordan off balance and brought him down, but the damage had already been done.
As the ref escorted Jordan to his bench with a gash above his eye, Declan continued to yell at him while the crowd at the arena cheered on their new player. But Jordan blocked all of it out. Instead, he found Charlotte in the crowd, staring at her with a look of anger and resentment that she had never seen on his face before. It went straight to the core of her with a guilt she had never felt before. If she hadn't been so afraid to talk to him about her past, he would never have needed to look at her like that.
ESPN had played Declan's post-game soundbite over and over again on Sportscenter the next day.
"What was the fight with Jordan King about?" asked a reporter in the locker room scrum.
"He's dating my cold leftovers."
"Who's that?"
The pest sneered at the camera. "Charlotte Stone."
That's what Declan had told the media and that's the quote the New York Post used for its headline. "Cold leftovers" was plastered in large capital letters on the front page of the tabloid paper. Not the front page of their sports section. No. The front page of the entire damn paper. And right there on the cover next to Declan's smug grin was a picture of Jordan, blood streaming down his face from the gash that had been opened up above his eye.
One of the reasons Jordan had been chosen to be the captain of the Pirates was because he led by example, and the example he set was of someone who was measured, fair and didn't let some trash talking from other players get under his skin. She didn't even know when he last fought someone. But she doubted he was used to getting chirped at by her ex-boyfriend. Declan probably said something vulgar, something that could never be repeated off the ice, something that was likely a variation of his stupid "cold leftovers" comment. Whatever it was, it was enough to make Jordan take a rare swing at another player.
The media kept leaving Charlotte texts and voicemails, but all she wanted was one call from Jordan.
She put her drink down on the coffee table and began to dig through her purse before finding her phone. Seven more messages were waiting for her, and that was after she deleted the fifteen that were left for her while she was on her flight home. She dialed Jordan's number and her call immediately went to voicemail. Again. She was pretty sure he was blocking her.
"Jordan, it's me. I'm home in Detroit now. I think you were supposed to get back today after your Boston game and I wanted to invite you over so I could explain all of this." She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down so he couldn't hear the emotion in her voice. "I don't know what else to say except please call me."
Charlotte mashed her finger on the "End call" button and threw the phone down on her sofa in disgust. She should've told him the truth. There were so many times she had the chance to tell him about Declan and her past, so many times she could've explained herself. Instead, she decided to not open herself up to him, afraid of what he would think of the real her. In that sense, Declan had still been with her, whispering in her ear that she wasn't good enough. She just didn't expect it to come to this.
Charlotte finished her drink and dropped it off in the kitchen sink before heading to bed. She grabbed her phone, making sure the ringer was off so the calls from reporters wouldn't wake her up. She needed sleep if she hoped to put the past few days behind her. And more than that, she needed Jordan.
The harsh buzzing from her penthouse intercom woke her up. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and checked the screen — 10:13 a.m. and another five missed phone calls. None of them were from Jordan.
The buzzer sounded again and she dragged herself out of bed to answer the call from the front desk.
"Yeah?"
"Um, Miss Stone? A Mr. Jordan King is here to see you."
Her doorman knew damn well who Jordan was and knew he had been there before to see her so she was a little weirded out by the formality. Then she remembered that even her doorman had probably heard about Jordan's fight in New York.
"You can send him up."
Charlotte cracked the door open slightly so Jordan could walk in when he got up there. Then she realized that she had slept in her clothes and her things from the trip to New York were strewn everywhere. She quickly ran into her bathroom to try and pull herself together, grabbing a brush for her hair and some lip gloss from her drawer. She would just have to hope her clothes didn't look too wrinkled since she didn't have any time to change.
"Charlotte?"
She heard his voice from the living room, a shiver going down her spine. Even without seeing him, she could tell he wasn't in a good mood.
"Hey," she replied, coming out of the bathroom to see Jordan standing in her apartment. He was wearing his Pirates track pants with a white t-shirt and trademark sheepskin coat. He looked like he had about as much sleep as she did the past three days, which wasn't saying much.
Then she noticed his eye. It wasn't swollen but was still black and blue from the hit he took from Declan. Above it was a white butterfly bandage protecting the cut he got from the fight. She gave him a weak smile and walked over to him, reaching out to touch his face in the hopes that it would soothe away the pain. But Jordan winced as her hand came close and quickly pulled away. He pushed past her into the living room, his arms crossing in front of him to mirror the anger on his face.
"So," he said curtly.
"So."
"You want to tell me about Declan Reed."
Charlotte shoved her hands into the pockets of the jeans she had slept in. "Not particularly."
"That wasn't a question, Charlotte."
She looked up to see him staring at her, willing her to tell him what happened.
"I dated Declan two years ago when he was playing in New York. I was in love with him." She took a deep breath remembering Declan's smug grin when she caught him with that other woman. "Then he cheated on me. Or really, I finally caught him cheating on me."
Jordan's face was starting to turn red. "You should've told me," he said bitterly.
"Yeah, I should've told you, but that relationship was two years ago, Jordan."
He scoffed and stared at her. "Really? Because it didn't seem that long ago when that jackass punched me."
"I didn't think he would do that," she said quietly.
"You didn't think the biggest pest in the league would take something that's important to me and shove it in my face in the worst way possible for an entire game?"
Charlotte's face softened as she looked back at Jordan. "I'm important to you?" she asked.
He took a deep breath, dropping himself on the sofa with his head in his hands and his fingers threaded through his hair. It felt like a lifetime to her before he finally looked up again.
"I don't know how important you are now, Charlotte. I truly honestly am not sure."
Her frustration, desperation and heartbreak at seeing him like this began to fester inside her and turn to anger. "You're not sure now? Why aren't you sure now?"
"Because you weren't honest with me."
Now it was Charlotte's turn to sit down, trying hard to process what she was hearing. "Not honest with you? Just because I didn't tell you about my past doesn't mean I wasn't honest with you."
"Yes, it does! I mean, seriously, did you ever think that maybe you should tell me about your relationship with him?"
She rubbed her hands on her jeans, trying to stall to get her thoughts together. "Yes, I thought about it. I really struggled with trying to decide if I should tell you and how I should tell you. And I was going to tell you, I really was."
"Oh yeah?" he asked incredulously. "When, Charlotte? Before or after I got in a fight in front of 20,000 people? Before or after he went to the press and called the woman I was dating his cold leftovers?"
"Was dating?"
That was enough. Charlotte stood up and glared down at him.
"First of all, I'm no one's cold leftovers. I am me. And second of all, where the hell do you get off sitting on some high horse of yours? Yes, I dated men before you and yes, one in particular hurt me so bad that I still doubt myself today. But you dated people before me, and according to pretty much every woman in Detroit, there were many of them before me. But have I asked you to give me details about them? To tell me about why your relationships with them failed?"
Jordan quickly stood up to match her stance. "None of them are women you ever have to meet! None of them are women who are going to punch you at the next charity ball or celebrity whatever here."
"Is that all I am to you? Someone who goes to charity balls and celebrity whatevers in Detroit?"
He sneered at her. "I saw how people reacted to you in New York while we were at dinner. You loved the attention, didn't you? You loved being the Charlotte Stone in New York. The woman who got her name on the front page of the New York Post and loved it no matter how it got there."
Charlotte balled her hands up into fists. "That's not true."
"You know it is."
"That's not true!" she yelled. "I never want to be on any cover of any newspaper, which is why I left. And I especially never wanted to be on the cover if it was because you got hurt."
Jordan took a deep breath and stared down at his feet. "And yet that's what happened," he said bitterly.
Charlotte could feel the lump in her throat threatening to break free. "Jordan, I never meant for that to happen to you. To us. I would take it all back if I could."
He scoffed and looked up at her. "Well, you can't really do that now, can you?"
He started walking towards the door, and Charlotte instinctively stepped in front of him to slow his progress.
"Don't leave. We need to talk about this."
"I don't know what else to say, Charlotte." His voice had become so quiet and small and yet was having a huge effect on her heart as it began to crack.
His shoulder brushed against hers as he forced himself past her to get to the door.
"Jordan, maybe we both just need to take a couple days and then we can talk about it."
His hand rested on the handle of the door and he kept his eyes focused on the wall instead of looking back at her. "Maybe," he said quietly.
And then he was gone.