Chapter 6

oh well, you win some and obviously you lose some, so now with ALL my teams out of the playoffs I guess I should have more time to write!

Chapter 6

I was just another early morning commuter with my coffee in a cup holder, listening to the sports radio guys talk about the upcoming season. I was looking forward to seeing the guys but there was something about the first practice that was eating at me. Most of it had to do with my wrist but I'd have the answer to that soon enough. The rest of it had to do with starting the whole quest for The Cup again.

They say that once you've won it, it's in your blood and you'll do anything for another shot. I think that's probably true of Tazer and maybe some of the other guys but I don't really want to go through the hell it takes to get there. Not that I don't take it seriously but I don't get the point of having money and not being able to have fun with it. Tazer's always saying there's plenty of time for that later but I figure later I might not be in any shape to enjoy myself.

Which is where I get into trouble; while Tazer's at home watching films or picking his belly button lint or whatever Captian Super Snooze does when he's not at practice or playing a game I actually go out and have a beer with my friends and somehow that apparently makes me the bad guy.

And that is exactly what I feel like when I get to the doctor's office and see the woman behind the desk roll her eyes. I'm late and the look on her face is like that's just typical of me, which actually it's not.
"I'm sorry I'm…." I begin but she doesn't let me finish.

"Go in, he'll be with you as soon as he can," she sighs and goes back to staring at the computer screen in front of her. I pause there by the desk, still thinking that I should apologize but she doesn't look up again so I don't. I find the open room and hop up on that examination table with its strip of thin, crunch noisy paper.
"Good Morning Pat, how was your summer?" the doc asks as he breezes into the room and goes directly to the small metal sink and washes his hands.

"Not bad, considering," I reply, holding up my cast. There was definitely some things I didn't get to do because of it but then he knows that. He was the one that gave me the list of don'ts.

"All for a good cause though hmm?" he smiles before turning and opening one of the cupboards and pulling out what looks like a tool my dad might use back at home. "Let's get that off and see how we did."

"Boy, am I looking forward to this." I've been sticking about everything I can down under the cast, my arm itches pretty bad.

"Looks like you haven't been slacking though," the doc adds approvingly as he unwinds the cord and for the tool and plugs it in. I smooth my t-shirt down over my abs and I do feel a little proud of my new six-pack. I hope Coach Q feels the same. "How has the arm been feeling, any pain?"

"No, not really," I reply honestly, "except for…." Normally talking about sex wouldn't make me blush but something about mentioning it in a doctor's office makes it feel weird. The doc has the saw poised above my arm and raises his eyebrow at me, inviting me to finish. "I got kinda carried away the other night in uh…bed and uh…had my hand kinda pressed to the wall and my wrist hurt a little," I admit, feeling my face start to get red. The doc nods and then ducks his head over the saw.

"You might feel a little weakness as you start using it, but you'll soon get your strength back," he smirked and then set the saw to its work.

---

I had my bag packed and I was debating if I had enough cash to take a taxi to the airport or if I should try taking transit when he walked back in. He looked at my bag and then quizzically at me. We stared at one another for a long moment and then he just grabbed my bag and took it back to the bedroom.
"You're being kind of dramatic dontcha think?" he said in a very controlled tone.

"I don't know how you even talked me into this in the first place," I countered, following him into the bedroom where he dropped my bag onto the bed. It was only then that I noticed his cast was gone.

"Because you wanted out of Buffalo," he replied in the same tone with just a hint of barely controlled fury that made his peach fuzz covered jaw clench. "Sorry," he apologized with a sigh, closing his eyes for a long moment as if he was reaching inward for control. "I didn't really mean that."

"Yeah, you're right," I admitted, "but if you're trying to imply that I'm some kind of gold digger…." He shook his head and shrugged a single shoulder.

"I actually know that you're not," he smiled but it wasn't the smile that I was used to. It was almost sad; little boy sad. It was the kind of sad that made me want to give him a lollipop, kiss him better and promise everything would be alright. It also had the immediate effect of dousing my anger. "That stuff you found…just to be clear, I know what most of those girls are interested in and I know they leave that stuff here so they have a reason to come back," he added, further throwing cold water over my simmering emotions.

"And you're okay with that?" For some reason it surprised me that he understood that these women were using him but I wasn't certain if that was a point in his favor or against him.

"I dunno, I guess I haven't really cared too much about it," he shrugged and then looked up at me from behind lashes that any girl would kill for and I began to feel like I may have been a bitch about this despite the fact that there was still a voice somewhere in the back of my head warning me that I was being played.

"You could have cleaned up," I pointed out, to which he merely shrugged again.

"I don't really do that," he replied sheepishly, the corner of his mouth turning up as he began to get the feeling he was about to be let off the hook.

"Well then you could have asked your cleaning lady to clean up," I sighed, the anger that I'd been holding onto while I'd packed had been ebbing quickly ever since he had walked through the door and the cocky smirk he was now wearing should have made it come rushing back, but it didn't.

"She won't touch that stuff," he shrugged and now I could tell he was trying hard not to go for a victory lap around the bedroom. "And up til now," he added, his smirk growing by degrees as he closed the gap between us, "I've had this bum arm…until now." He flexed his arm, displaying his bulging bicep and ropey muscle, making my mouth go dry. I didn't love him, my heart wasn't involved at all but my pulse quickened just the same. "Wanna try it out?" he asked, reaching out to toy with the strap on my tank top, running his finger underneath the strap and then letting it fall over my shoulder.

"We could do that," I replied, reaching down to cross my arms and pull the shirt over my head. His cocky grin grew into a full blown smirk and as he grabbed me around the waist, picked me and tossed me down onto the bed right beside my bag which he then pushed off the end of the bed. We both listened to it hit the floor with a resounding thud and then he smiled down at me.

"You forgive me, right?" It wasn't really a question, nor was it an apology, but then I hadn't asked for one.

"Shut up," I mumbled and ran my hand up underneath his golf shirt, pushing the cotton fabric up with it.

"No problem," he laughed, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it onto the floor behind him before falling on me like a man who'd just walked out of the desert and was diving into a kiddie pool. There was something about his enthusiasm that made me forget to be mad.

For the time being anyway.

---

"Why not?" I listened to the silence on the other end of the line and knew that JT was trying his best to read between the lines. I could picture his face, his beady eyes all focused, making a bummy mouth.

"Because we always do it at Sharpie's," he said again, like that was going to change my mind.

"Well I'm sure before you were Captain OCD they probably had it at someone else's house so…what's the big deal?" I asked. Now I could picture him staring daggers at his phone because I'd called him a name. Finally I heard him sigh and knew I'd won.

"Fine, whatever. What do you want everyone to bring?" I almost said hot girls, knowing all it would take was for him to walk out the front door of his apartment and there'd be half a dozen hotties just waiting to catch his attention, but then I turned and watched Beth walk out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel that barely covered her and thought better of it.

"Dude I've got this, no worries," I smiled, knowing that alone would have the old worry wart grinding his teeth for the rest of the day.

"Pat if this is some kind of prank...?" he began to which I snorted and hit end on my phone. I followed Beth into the bedroom and watched her dig through her suitcase.

"You're going to have to unpack sometime," I told her, again. She didn't reply, just retrieved a pair of skimpy black lace boy shorts out of the suitcase and dropped her towel. I watched her shimmy into them. It was almost as good as watching her slip out of them. "So uh...you cook, right?" She turned, her high, firm tits staring me down and it took me a minute to force my gaze northwards.

"I can...why?" she asked slowly, eyeing me like I was about to ask her to put on a French maid's costume and ask her to serve appetizers...which wasn't such a bad thought.

"I've invited a few people over this afternoon, sort of a pre-season get together so I thought we could just grab some chips and stuff from the market." She rolled her eyes, which is what I'd been hoping for.

"These 'people'," she said, putting air quotations around the word, "are your teammates?" I nodded and she sighed again. "You can't feed them chips," she grumbled, turning back to pull a pair of black yoga pants from her suitcase and tossed a t-shirt onto the bed. "I wish you'd told me last night, this is fucking short notice so we'll have to go to a deli that can make some platters."

---

Now that I'd b put turning around and catching the next train back to Buffalo on the back burner I'd been suddenly forced into the position of having to play the perfect hostess, the smiling arm candy in a tight emerald green dress he'd insisted on buying right off of a mannequin in the window of a boutique I'd never, in a hundred years, have thought of going in. I felt like I couldn't breathe and if I kept smiling my jaw was going to ache more in the morning than if I'd spent the day on my knees in an airport bathroom.

His teammates started to arrive, lead by his tall, dark haired golly gee absolute opposite. Pat introduced the mile wide shoulders barely shoe horned into a crisp butter yellow dress shirt as Jon. From the minute he leaned forward and brushed his lips along my cheek I wanted to die, preferably beneath him, exhausted and sated.

Pat was the dime store version of Jon in every way. Pat was shorter, louder and Jon was quiet and spent most of the welcome back party acting like this was his place and making sure everyone's drinks stayed full, the canapés kept being circulated and every single wife or girlfriend knew that he thought each and every one of them was special, pretty, and that he was going to be their significant other's best friend forever.

"I can already see Pat's made a great choice," he said to me as he tipped a bottle of red into my almost empty glass. "You know he's never brought a girl back here before." I blinked at him and wondered how he could lie with a perfectly straight, yet adorable look on his face.

"He's had half the city in his bed. I've been here two days and I've found three separate earrings, two pairs of panties shoved into a drawer in the bathroom and this morning I found a file on his computer entitled 'tapped that'." He tried, really made a solid attempt to look shocked but it clearly wasn't in the captain of the Hawks to cover the disgust he felt on my behalf. When he failed, utterly, to keep his expression blank, he turned and glared at Pat, who, from across the room, just raised his glass and grinned. "On the other hand...he begged me to stay when I packed my shit." His tanned jaw unclenched and he nodded once.

"Well, there's that," he responded quietly.

"Yes, there's that," I agreed watching Pat toss another one of those basil toasts with the goat cheese and pine nuts into his mouth. I wasn't sure why I was telling Pat's friend everything, other than he seemed to care and I felt better getting it off of my chest.

"I knew something was up," Jon said suddenly, his gaze still trained on Pat who was talking and laughing with some of the other guys. "When he asked us here, I knew there was something...someone he wanted to show off."

 "Like a new toy," I said, only realizing that I was saying it out loud after the words tumbled from my mouth. Jon turned his dark espresso gaze towards me and bathed me in the light of his crooked, boyish smile.

"Us guys can be like that," he said and it sounded sincere, but I couldn't help thinking as he turned his gaze back towards his teammates that he would never do that, treat a woman like a prize won at the county fair. He put his hand on my arm and I looked down at his tanned skin overt top of my moonlight pale skin and wondered at how warm his skin was. "I'm sure he means it in the best possible way."

He gave my arm the lightest of squeezes, as if he knew exactly how to touch a woman, knew his own strength and I looked at his hand and then up at him and the thin line of his lips and wondered if his kiss would be as warm and as tender. His molten gaze held mine for a minute, a long, heated minute until I thought the only way the moment could possibly end was with him kissing me like his life depended on it, and then he was gone.

I watched him go, watched him wade into the crowd of guys and lay his hand on Pat's shoulder as if he was just greeting his friend but I saw Pat blink, saw his cocky grin fade at the edges. I wondered how many other people in this room knew those signs the way I'd begun to recognize them.

As much as I'd liked the warm, light touch of Jon's hand on my arm, I liked the way his fingers dug into Pat's shoulder more. I shouldn't have. It wasn't something a perfect hostess should enjoy but I did. I stood there and knew that he deserved it.

I stood there, mesmerized by the intensity in Jon's dark eyes and imagined that intensity directed at me. Just the thought of those dark chocolate orbs staring down at me while his massive body pinned me down made my pulse treble. There was something about a guy barely in control that made my breathless. It was the reason I always picked bad boys, guys that were trouble, guys that hurt me. It was also the reason that Pat's cocky grin had landed me in his bed and I didn't even really like him.

And now I'd felt the kind of spark, the kind of immediate animal attraction that makes your entire body tingle with electricity and I'm almost sure he'd felt it too but there wasn't a chance in hell he'd do anything about it thanks to the god damn Bro- Code that made any woman they're friends are involved with strictly off limit and the worst part was, I had no one to blame but myself.

---

I'd known he was up to something, but I hadn't expected a living, breathing woman to be at Pat's apartment. When I'd seen her, when I'd walked in the room and I'd seen her for the first time I thought she had to be some kind of model that he'd hired. She wasn't the skinny blonde with the fake tan and even faker tits that he usually went for. She looked like she'd walked out of a tooth paste commercial. Not so pretty that she was unapproachable, but not the kind of girl you'd walk by without doing a double take either.
When he told me that she'd moved in I wasn't the only one who thought he was fucking with us. Of all the guys on the team, Pat's the last guy I could see settling down but then I got pulled into her orbit, smelled the sharp tang of green apple in her hair and lavender on her skin.

Then I touched her and once I'd touched her I wanted to go on touching her.

"What are you really doing?" I asked and every face in the group turned to stare at me. I'd cut Sharpie off. I knew it. He'd been talking about something he'd done in the summer, diving or something. I hadn't been listening. I'd been thinking about her and the way that green dress look like it had been wrapped around her body like so many elastic bands. "With her...what do you think you're doing?" I asked, digging my fingers into his shoulder hard enough that I heard him suck his next breath in through clenched teeth.

"Fuck off," Pat hissed at and brushed my hand away. "Since when did you care who I dated?"

"You don't date Kaner," I pointed out, glancing over to where she was still standing, her still full wine glass in her hand watching us like she was waiting for something to detonate, like a cat trying to decide whether to attack or flee. "You do one night stands, maybe a week. Since when did you date?"

He got that look on his face that he always gets when he thinks he's done something he should get credit for, like he's just waiting to be patted on the back. I thought long and hard about pouring the beer in my hand over his head. It wouldn't have been the first time. We kind of have a love, hate relationship. Sometimes he's the best guy or at least he makes me laugh, lightens the mood when I get a little intense. Sometimes, like now, I want to punch him in the head.

"Well fuck, look at her," he suggested as he raised a glass to her. She looked flustered and turned away. He watched her go, tilting his head to get a better view of her ass in that tight fitting dress. "She's a fucking animal in the sack," he added with a self satisfied grin on his face that I was barely able to stop myself from slapping off his face.

"You got a point there Kaner," Sharpie said admiringly as he too watched her walk towards the kitchen. Until he'd been dragged to the alter recently Sharpie had been as big a man whore as Pat was always proud to say he was and just because he had a ball and chain didn't mean Sharpie didn't appreciate perusing the menu now and again.

"You see?" I sighed and shook my head. "If she's your main squeeze you don't talk about her like that." All the guys turned back to look at me, all wearing the same expression, as if I didn't know what he fuck I was talking about, or, I guess, that I didn't have the right to talk. Of course Pat took it a step further and made a big fucking show of looking around me, behind me and scratching his head.

"I don't see anyone, do you Stalby?" I aimed my most unhappy look at the big Swede who kind of chuckled and shrugged.

"No, I don't see anyone either," he agreed and then aimed a meaningful look towards the leggy brunette across the room who was deep in conversation with Sharpie's wife Abby.

"Well fuck you too Stalberg," I snapped and felt the aluminum beer can in my hand crumple. I needed air. I needed not to be here. "See you guys at practice. Eight, sharp and don't be late Kane," I added, staring down at the destroyed can in my hand.

"Whatever you say...dad," Kaner snorted. I thought he was lucky I didn't crush his head like I had the can because I wanted to. I put the can carefully on the nearest side table and ignored him, ignored the fact that they were watching me leave and probably making fun of me behind my back. Fans did that at games, it was something I was used to ignoring. That didn't mean that it didn't bug the hell out of me, only that I didn't rise to it.

"Going so soon?" Her voice was like running my hand along the softest velvet, like having a cat curl up on your lap and purr.

"Yeah," I responded more curtly than was strictly fair. I looked up into her startled gaze and felt sorry but I couldn't take it back. She was Kaner's girlfriend. She was sleeping in his bed. This was her party. "Sorry," I added more softly and then forced myself to look away, walk through the door and pull it closed behind me.