Still One Year Earlier
Eyes like fire met mine only for one fleeting moment before they dropped to the fresh glass of red wine sitting in front of her. Stevie. Her silence only increased the color of her round cheeks. This chick was soft everywhere. The kind of soft you wanted to sink into and never stop touching.
“It’s a little intimidating…” She raised her eyes. The color, pupils rimmed with a blue burst that bled into a rich brown, threw me off my game, and I had to swallow the `holy shit’ that tried to trip from my over-eager mouth. “And not to mention, kind of rude to stare.”
Her smile pulled her kissable lips into quiet dimples. It was a good thing the guys hadn’t noticed my departure yet, because if they got one look at me, doe-eyed and struck dumb by this woman, I’d never hear the end of it.
“It’s hard not to.”
“Be polite?”
I chuckled. “To stare. You’re pretty amazing to look at.”
I took a swig from my bottle of beer. All confidence, high from the win of our game, high from the fact this beautiful creature had no idea who the fuck I was. I was used to girls throwing themselves at me. Women who wanted me only for the gossip of it, or the dollars in my wallet. She had no clue, and if I hadn’t already fallen for her curvy-as-fuck figure, or those damn eyes, that alone would have been a turn on.
Her eyes lost their flirtatious challenge and glazed with skepticism. “I’m serious,” I pressed and won a smile. Making her smile felt better than it should have.
Her gaze heated my features as she took me in from across the table. “I’m sure,” she said with a bite I felt all the way down to my groin. She raised her wine glass to take another sip, and the vulnerability I’d hoped to capitalize on faded into poise. That sexy confidence radiated. “You probably do this every weekend. Am I right?” She nodded her glass toward the back of the bar where my teammates were partying. “You’re young, a player, I bet… definitely a player. You give some poor girl your attention with your brooding eyes, and sexy tattoos—” She paused when she realized her slip.
My smile turned from interested to triumphant. “You think I’m sexy?”
“You know you’re beautiful,” she said with a flash of irritation and a sweet sigh. Fuck, she was cute. When I shrugged, she ran her long fingers through her hair and regrouped. “I’m married.”
“I noticed.” I took another pull from the beer bottle but kept my eyes on her.
I’d caught her off guard, flattered her, but she was unavailable. A better man would have bowed out when he saw the ring, if anyone knew the damage an affair could do to a person it was me, but I’d rattled her and it made me curious. The ring was a symbol I should heed, but her body language was a glaring contradiction. Digging deeper couldn’t hurt.
Tiny white and blue shreds of paper littered the countertop as she took her nerves out on her cocktail napkin. I was about to ask her where her husband was, ask her what her friend meant when she’d said Stevie was home for a reason, but my idiot friends started to chant again. The televisions in the back had been replaying our winning goal, my winning goal, all damn night. She cringed at the noise.
“You do realize you’re in a sports bar?” I asked, and she turned her head to look around the room. It was slow and deliberate, as if she hadn’t even cared to notice where her friend had brought her. “Tampa Bay won. Opening night. It’s a big celebration.”
“Opening night?” Her brows dipped. “I thought baseball—”
“Hockey,” I barked the word around a laugh.
“In Tampa?”
I choked on my beer. “For twenty-four years.”
“Huh.”
My brows lifted to the ceiling. “I think I love you.”
“Why, because I didn’t know Tampa had a hockey team?”
“It’s precisely why. I’m used to…” I stopped myself.
It was a rare and beautiful thing. Her ignorance of the game. I didn’t want her to care that she was sitting with the star center for Tampa Bay. The silicone girls, with their painted-on smiles—the bunnies—had been circling me all damn night. It would be nice to actually have a girl like me, just for being me. I’d only found relief from all the fake bullshit when I excused myself from the party to grab a beer up front. Best decision of the night, because fuck, she was perfect. Married, maybe. Seven years older than me, whatever. She was perfect, nonetheless.
“You’re used to what?”
“This place is usually crawling with college chicks, and that shit gets old.”
Bold laughter tipped her head back, exposing a wide expanse of flawless skin. She was cream and silk. My eyes wandered down her smooth neck, the path of her pulse and dipped to her full tits.
Married.
“There’s nothing holding you back. You can do as you please.” Her eyes searched mine and the color faded from her lips as she whispered, “You’re lucky.”
Lucky? The rock on her finger caught the light as she lifted her glass to her mouth once more. The mood changed from easy to heavy. Steer away from it, Melo. My conscience agreed with the devil on my shoulder. Her earlier assurance wilted away, and the good boy my mother raised was telling me this girl was sinking, that she needed me to stay in the deep water with her in this moment. The slant of her shoulders gave me a clue that not all was well for the home team. That slight frown creasing the delicate skin around her eyes, she was defeated. I’d seen that look on my opponents’ faces, hell, on my own teammates, so many times. The ache of knowing there was nothing you could do to turn the loss into a win. I had to know why this stunning woman was sitting with me, without her husband, on a Friday night.
“What’s holding you back, Stevie?”
The air sizzled and thickened, and each breath she took was marked by the hard rise and fall of her chest. Those wicked eyes shimmered and the blue burst was eclipsed by the black of her pupils. I could’ve kept it light, flirted a little more, sent her on her way, closed this place down with my boys, but my ass wasn’t moving from this chair. And the pressure building was almost unbearable as I watched her war with herself.
She let out a breathy sigh, and I had the urge to kiss away the sadness from her lips. Kiss her until my hands sank into the curve of her hips and…
“Have you ever been in love?”
Her question cleared my head. “Nah.”
That wasn’t the truth and I wasn’t sure why I lied. But it seemed she ignored my answer anyway as she continued without pause.
“I married the first guy I loved. And over time, I think we’ve both fallen away from each other. We’re so different.”
“You changed?”
“No…” She was thoughtful, looking through me when she said, “He did.”
“How so?”
Her laugh was gentle. “Do you really care?”
“I’m still sitting here, aren’t I?”
She ran the tip of her finger around the top of her glass. “He doesn’t like me anymore.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, I mean...” She stumbled over her words and took a deep breath. “I mean, I’m still me. I’m still the same girl he fell in love with. The girl who loves bad punk rock music, and trashy novels. I binge watch shows when I should be cleaning. I still want to get the tattoo I’ve always wanted, but he gets angry if I talk about it, if I talk about the past. I want to be spontaneous again, travel—do something risky. He’s happy in his tiny, complacent, little life. He tells me I need to grow up, be serious all the time, but I’m only thirty-two, and I feel older than I should. I feel so stagnant.”
“If you were married to me you could do whatever you wanted.”
Her vacant eyes flared and locked me to my seat. I shouldn’t have said that, but what she said next floored me.
“Time is what binds me.”
“How long…”
“Thirteen years. We’ve been married for thirteen years.”
I coughed. “Whoa, that’s a long ass time.”
“Too long to throw away.”
“Kids?”
“No.”
Time wasn’t enough to hold a person. Time was fragile, and loyalty could only get you so far. I’d learned that for myself the hard way. It didn’t matter how much you loved a person, it wouldn’t make them love you back.
“Where is he tonight?”
“Back home in Richmond for a work thing. I’m here to visit with my family. I needed to get away… missed being here. I was raised east of Tampa, but moved years ago when we had the opportunity to build our accounting firm with his best friend from college.”
“You’re an accountant?” Thinking about her in a tight blouse with the top four buttons popped opened, her hair pulled up into a bun, turned my grin into something scandalous.
I had her blushing as she laughed through her next sentence. The woman had read my mind. “It’s not that exciting.”
“I’d like to see you behind a desk.” My tone was coated with innuendo.
“So charming, did you pull that fantasy from the latest issue of Playboy?”
My chuckle shook my shoulders. “Nope, just my own dirty mind.”
The rim of the glass rested against her bottom lip as she smiled at me. It was easy to make her smile, to make her happy. I wondered how, in thirteen years, her husband hadn’t realized that. Then again, I didn’t really know her at all, did I? For all I knew, it could be the wine that pulled out those pretty smiles and brushed those soft cheeks with a glow.
When the server came by the table, I thought for sure Stevie would ask for the check, but she surprised me and ordered another glass. She was more than tipsy when we’d decided to take off. I paid our bill even when she tried to kick me under the table in an attempt to stop me. Apparently, she was a feisty drunk. I let myself imagine she was feisty when it came to other things, too. This girl was bottled up and I wanted to set her free. We’d spent the last hour talking about her life in Richmond. She was bored at her job and hated that she hadn’t made any real solid friendships over the years. All her friends were his friends, and after she’d had her last glass of wine, her truths had become a faucet. I wanted to drown in them for her. Her husband had put her on the bottom shelf and, from how she portrayed it, he’d forgotten she existed beyond the office and the normal good mornings and good nights of their marriage.
She never once asked me about my life, and it didn’t offend me at all. She needed a sounding board and allowing her to vent was a hell of a lot better than listening to some broad tell me how great I was, when she didn’t even know me beyond the rink. Only once did I have to deal with one of my teammates. He’d stopped by the table on the way back from the bathroom and asked if I was heading out with them to the strip club. Stevie had gotten a good laugh at that and, when I said no, Bryson shrugged his shoulders and went about his business.
The usual humid air clung to the fabric of my shirt as I held the bar door open for her. I felt disappointed that she was ready to leave, and almost wanted to ask her back to my apartment, which was a quick car ride away. But I didn’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want to capitalize on her misery. She was married and confused and needed to figure her shit out. And I certainly didn’t need to open the new season with another cheating scandal.
“Thanks,” she said as we walked a few steps away from the crowd of people smoking outside the building.
“For what? The wine? It was—”
“No. For listening.” She took a step closer, and holy fuck, I wanted to reach out, wrap my arms around her waist and pull her body against mine.
She didn’t seem fragile anymore under the light of the moon. She was taller than most girls, but small compared to my six-foot-one frame. The table we’d sat at had hidden her lower body for the most part, but standing in front of me was a full-on hourglass. Those hips and that ass. She was thick, but in a good way. Like I wanted to bite her thick, hold her down thick, explore every inch of her and not have to be gentle kind of thick. Goddamn it, she was married.
“Your husband is an idiot,” I blurted without thinking, and she giggled.
The sound of it was like fog in the dense October, Florida air. Warm and soothing.
“I’ll make sure and tell him you said so.”
The breeze was salted as it stirred from the bay, whipping strands of her long chocolate waves across her cheeks. She lifted her fingers to her face to move the stray pieces, and laughed as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Her eyes closed and her nostrils flared as she breathed in. My hand itched to touch her, to feel the flesh of her cheeks, but I kept my arms planted at my sides.
“I’ll find us a ride.”
I reached into my pocket, disappointment filling my chest again when she spoke so quietly I almost missed it. “I don’t think I can go home yet.”
All my restraint got stuck in my throat when her wide eyes pleaded with mine. I didn’t want to use her. She was drunk and I wasn’t about to take advantage. Not after everything she told me. She wasn’t the type of woman I wanted to use for a quick, messy fuck. In another lifetime, she would’ve been the type of woman I would’ve tried to keep.
“Let’s walk around, sober you up,” I offered, and as if to prove my point, she took a misstep and laughed.
“Good idea.”
It was late enough that the usual crowds had dispersed. The bars were still open but the sidewalks were empty.
“Ready?” I asked and let myself take one small token as I threaded our fingers together. She paused, tipping her chin, her eyes examining my hand in hers. “Am I overstepping?”
“No.” She lingered on the connection briefly before tilting her gaze to my mouth.
Her hand was hot in mine and I let it sear through me. I licked my lips and stared down into hooded eyes. The static in the air fed the erratic beat of my heart. Want. Want. Want. The sound of my pulse thundered in my ears. My free hand cupped her cheek, and her lids fluttered closed. We were both breathing too fast, sucking down each other’s air like it was precious. My thumb dusted the high arch of her cheekbone and her lashes tickled the tip. She was gorgeous and scared and felt perfect under my palm.
“Hey.” My voice was rough with suppressed need as I lowered my hand from her face. Her eyes opened and that fear I sensed shadowed her irises. “Tell me to stop.”
“Stop.” The way she said it though… she couldn’t lie if she tried.
“We shouldn’t do this, right?”
“Right.”
But her hand remained in mine.
I couldn’t stand still or I’d break down and kiss her.
“Come on,” I said and led her along the walkway.
I kept my nose down as we made our way through a group of guys sporting Tampa Bay jerseys. We walked about a block before I tested her again. “What if someone found out?”
“They wouldn’t.” She stopped and shook her head. “I mean… nothing is going to happen.” She let go of my hand and I didn’t fight it.
“Would you feel guilty?”
I wasn’t sure why I asked. She’d clearly stated nothing was going to happen. But my heart was a fucking battering ram, and I could see my need reflected in her eyes. Her blush had spread all the way down to those spectacular tits, and the alcohol I’d consumed blurred the line. I stepped in, leaving little room for her to breathe anything other than me.
“I’d feel terrible.” Her admission was real and I backed off.
I knew better.
She cleared her throat and left my eyes cold as she turned and walked away from me. I let her get a few feet in front of me, but she stumbled again and I grabbed her hand. It was more selfish than valiant, but she held onto me, and I smiled even though I shouldn’t have.
That hot silence covered us as Stevie kept pace with me. Seconds, maybe minutes, passed before she said, “Tell me something, Mark… I talked all night, it’s your turn.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. What do you do for a living? Where did you go to college, did you even go to college…” She playfully bumped into my shoulder. “Oh God, are you still in college?”
My laughter brought us back to that pleasant little bubble we had going at the bar. Where it was safe.
“I’m twenty-five, not eighteen.”
She glared at me and I laughed harder. I hadn’t laughed this much in a long time.
“I grew up in New Hampshire, went to The University of Maine.”
“Major?”
We both stopped on the corner as we waited for the light to change. I had no clue where we were going. But things felt easy, so I ran with it. I just hoped she didn’t ask me what I did for a living again.
“Education.”
That got her attention and a slow smile spread across her face. “Like a teacher?”
“Yeah, well, more like a coach.”
“You’re a coach?”
“Not yet, maybe someday.” I had my dream job already, but being a coach, watching kids succeed, reach their goals, help them live out their hockey dreams, when I retired from the NHL, coaching college hockey was all I wanted to do.
The light changed and before she could ask me another question, I gently pulled her into the crosswalk. We’d walked farther than I had intended and if we kept going, eventually, I’d have to tell her the truth about who I was, and I didn’t want to watch her change from this unassuming woman to some fangirl. Maybe she wouldn’t, but my past experiences proved otherwise.
We got to the other side of the street and I released my grip on her hand. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. “It’s getting late, can we share a ride? I live on the other side of town.”
“Sure.”
My phone felt heavy in my hand, and I had to make myself not look at her as I found the closest ride with the app on my cell. “The car will be here in two minutes.”
“Great.” She didn’t sound like she thought that was great.
The awkward moment didn’t last long, thank God. The ride arrived faster than I thought it would and, before I knew it, I was tucked away in the back seat asking Stevie for her address.
“I live kind of far away, you should get dropped off first.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I gave the driver my address, and without any guilt, I took her hand in mine. She scooted closer, and I forgot I wasn’t supposed to want this, want her. Her hair smelled like the salted air of the bay mixed with something fruity. She melted nicely against my side and I wanted to pull her even closer, but I kept my hand in hers and my arm as the barrier.
“Who’s Atlas?” she asked and caught me staring.
“My dog, I got him last month.”
Her free hand traced the letters of ink on my forearm. I didn’t give a damn that my skin broke out in goose bumps, and that she could see, plain as day, how her touch affected me.
“Great Dane, cutest fucking puppy on the planet.”
She bit back her smile. Her teeth pressing into the pink of her bottom lip.
“You’re kind of adorable.” She giggled and tapped my shoulder again with hers.
“What? Atlas is like my kid.”
She smirked. “I bet.”
The driver stopped outside of my apartment building, and I exhaled an unsure gust of air. This was it. My last shot on goal. I shouldn’t take it. It’d be a sloppy shot, but maybe this was what she needed to remember who she was, just like her friend had said.
“Come up and meet him?”
The seconds that ticked by were agonizing. The emotions flew past her eyes as she struggled with her own conscience.
“Yeah?”
I gripped her chin between my fingers, letting my thumb explore the outer line of her bottom lip. “Is that what you want?”
She swallowed. “I should go home.”
I let go of her hand and chin at the same time.
“You should.” I smiled before I turned to open the door. Even though I felt like I was letting something amazing slip through my fingers, this was the right thing to do. Nothing ever good came from lies or deceit. I sucked down a sobering breath. I’d been the victim once, and I never wanted to be the one to inflict that pain on another person. I’d let Stevie’s eyes, her lips, the cloud of beer, and the sweet smell of her skin get the better of me. “Thanks for chilling with me tonight,” I said once I was out of the car.
“Thanks for keeping me company.”
I leaned down like a masochist stealing another greedy breath of her scent. “Take care of yourself, Stevie.”
I didn’t wait for a reply, or a goodbye. I shut the door and tapped the roof of the car twice. I took the loss like a man, and as the car drove away, I pretended I didn’t see the regret in her eyes as she turned for one last look.