Off Her Game (14 page)

“Hmm?” She opened her eyes, his face inches from hers.

He leaned in toward her, like he was about to kiss her, but she couldn't take it anymore.

She pressed her palm against his chest and stepped back from him. “Please. Don’t.”

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“What do you want from life?” He looked at her, puzzled, so she added, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“You mean, you want to know my five year plan?” He chuckled. Thankfully, he stepped back, giving her much needed space. He smelled amazing, that spicy cologne of his filling her nostrils. His arms felt too good around her, holding her, making her feel safe. “I don't know. I'll be in my late thirties, so I figure I'll probably still be playing. Other than that, I'm not sure.”

“I know,” she told him. “Or at least, I did. In five years, I was supposed to have enough saved up to put a down payment on a house without having to get mortgage insurance. I wouldn’t have to hold two jobs anymore, because I'd have saved enough to live off of until I finish my doctorate degree. Unfortunately, losing my job has somewhat forced my hand. I’m not going to get that house. I’m not going back to school. I have to focus on my life.” She sighed. “Do you see what's not there, what isn't in my plan, and even more so since I lost my job?”

He frowned, searching her face, but she didn't look away. She needed him to understand how her world worked. What she needed and what she didn't need. She had an order to her life, and a plan, and he wasn't part of it, regardless of how much she wanted him to be. He shook his head slowly. “I'm not tracking, Val.”

Her throat tightened. She so didn’t want to have this conversation with him, but it was best to get it done… right?

“I don't see myself getting married, or having kids. I’m not that person. Not now, possibly not ever.” Val could see his throat working hard, up and down, and she knew he was either getting it or on the verge. She pressed on. “I have to concentrate on getting another job. I cannot cut into my savings to save the day while I piddle away as a waitress in a bar. I can't afford to put off the plan. This is the way it has to be.”

“So, what? You're saying that I don't fit there?” His voice had a twinge of anger. Her throat hurt, like she swallowed a pinecone and it had lodged in her throat.

She wanted to tell him it wasn't true. That she’d work it out. That she wanted him. But that wasn't how it went. That wasn't what she needed. She swallowed hard, but it didn't help that pinecone feeling, only made it worse.

“It's not you.” She sighed. “It's that I need to keep to the plan. And right now—”

“It doesn't include me,” he spat out.

“It doesn't include any romantic entanglements,” she said. Why couldn't her life ever be easy? Here in front of her was a gorgeous, generous man who was so sweet, and so endearing. And if she wanted him, he was hers for the taking. But it wouldn't have been fair for her to do so. He deserved someone who could love him and be the person he wanted. It wasn't her.

“I see,” he said. Any emotion vanished from his face. “Well, I'm glad we got this cleared up ahead of any entanglements.” His voice was laced with barely leashed rage, though he had tight control over the stoic expression on his face. It cut her deeply, left her bleeding with longing.

“I'm sorry, Darren,” she whispered.

“Nah, it's all good,” he said, sounding all too not-good. “It's better, you know? This way, I don't have to worry about attachments.” He shook his head. “Except that you were different, Val. You weren't supposed to be just a quick fuck.” He threw up his arms as he backed away from her. “My bad.”

Val gripped her still locked apartment door like a lifeline as he turned away from her. When she heard his car door slam below, she ran to the edge of the railing and looked down as Darren's car pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared down the road. Her gut wrenched with stabbing guilt.

Her body trembled with weak strength.

This was why relationships were not in her plan. Because she just couldn't take the pain of it when it was time to say goodbye.

***

Darren cursed as he slammed his stick against the puck, sending it down the ice, but it veered off in the wrong direction and ricocheted against the pipes, going wide instead of making it between them. He could hear the crowd beyond the glass groan, a few curses about the craptastic way he was playing.

Some mocking. All right, a lot of mocking.

He was absolutely playing like shit tonight. The glass held back a lot of the crowd's comments and jeers, but not everything. He tried to tune them out but he couldn't concentrate on the game. Every time he saw the puck, Val's face would pop in his head, telling him she couldn't see him anymore. The misery in her eyes. God, he could still see it. He knew she didn't want to do it. So why had she? What was so wrong about being in a committed relationship?

Damn.

He sounded like a freaking girl in his own head. How sad was that? Commitment? Relationships? What the hell was wrong with him?

“Get off the ice if you can't hang, pigeon fucker!”

Smith from the New York Rangers yelled as he skated by with the puck in his possession. Darren skidded to a halt and started after him. Smith was headed for their goal, that goofy, smug grin on his face. That asshat was going down.

Darren gritted his teeth and launched himself down the ice. Cody waited between the red pipes of the goal, his eyes on the puck as his large body hovered in front of the net. He'd let his guard down, letting Smith take the puck. Smith drew closer.

Gavin got to Smith before he could, his broad body smacking straight into him. Smith's body slammed into the glass, making it waver back and forth with the impact. Darren snatched the puck while Smith was occupied, turned and soared down the ice toward the Rangers' pipes.

He didn't slow as he dodged two Rangers, ignoring the curses that streamed from their mouths as his heart pounded hard in his ears, blocking out all other sound as he sighted the goal and slapped the puck. The loud ping off the red pipes made him growl as the Rangers took back the puck and took it back down towards Cody.

At the end of his time, he skated to the bench for the change out, Gavin Ferrara coming in behind him as two other Highlanders went out to take their place. Darren flopped on the bench. It was going to be a long game at this rate.

The game ended 4-2, a loss to the Rangers, which put Darren in an even worse mood as they left the bench. It was getting to be like last season all over again. Darren stomped back to the locker room, irritated and gloomy. All he wanted was a shower, clean clothes and to go back home. But since it was the last day of the road trip, media was going to be there in the locker room post-game.

“What the fuck was that, Moran?” Darren glanced over at the captain, John Charbonneau as they all filed back into the locker room. “Did you forget there were other players on the ice tonight?”

Darren didn't answer. There wasn't an answer for him. He'd fucked up tonight. His concentration was shot. Vince was going to have his balls for breakfast.

Charbonneau wasn't done yelling, but luckily, he didn't have a chance to continue. Media streamed into the locker room, each of them crowding Charbonneau, asking for quotes, and explanations. Charbonneau handled them like the champ he was. Darren couldn't help but wish he was half the legend that John Charbonneau was. Maybe then he wouldn't have fucked up with Valerie. Or maybe he'd know how to fix it. Or maybe he'd never have been in this position in the first place.

He sunk on the bench as he took off his equipment. Val was exactly the kind of woman his mother would love. Hell, she was exactly the kind of woman he loved. That he did love. But something had to give. Either he needed to get his focus back on track by fixing this... whatever it was with her, or he needed to cut her loose so he could function. The idea of the latter left him with a painful hole in his heart. She was his good luck charm.

He glanced over at Charbonneau.

The older player had his hands on his hips as he spoke. “I thought the game started out pretty well. First two periods were, uh... we were really taking it to them, but the end was a little weak on defense and we let a few slide through. We've got some new players this year, and it's a learning curve, and we're going to take what we've learned tonight and apply it to future games, and hopefully come out on top.”

One of the reporters shoved a smartphone into the bouquet of microphones and smartphones and recording equipment in front of Charbonneau. Darren recognized him from one of the largest papers, but couldn't place the name. “Is it true you're retiring after this season?”

Charbonneau laughed. “I'm in the best shape of my life. No plans for retiring any time soon.” He flashed his Charbonneau grin, and gestured to Coach Rogers. “I'm sure anything else, Coach Rogers can tell you. I'm going to humbly step out so I can wash tonight's game off my skin.” The reporters chuckled a little but in seconds had forgotten about Charbonneau in favor of drilling the coach instead.

Charbonneau paused as he walked past Darren. He glanced down and whispered out of earshot of the media. “You and I aren't done, Moran.”

“I don't have an answer for you, John.”

“This isn't you. You're better than this. Something's up with you and I want to know what.”

He strode away, and Darren leaned back against the cubbies behind him. His game was suffering. He had to fix this. With Val. Without her. It didn't matter. The game mattered. But it did matter. The idea of not having Valerie Chase around made him want to bang his head into the wall. Somehow, in the short few weeks, she'd gotten into his head, his mind, his heart. He couldn't even play a decent game of hockey without her inserting herself on him like she belonged there. Jenkins was right. She was a distraction.

But she was a distraction he couldn't let go.

Valerie should have been happy. The bar was busier than ever, which meant she was making money during a time in which she needed it badly. The Highlanders were on the road a lot, which kept them too busy to come to the bar. Darren hadn't shown his face in nearly two weeks.

It was almost everything she wanted.

If she could just find another job before she had to move back home to Dallas. Moving back in with Mom and Dad for a few months wasn’t something she looked forward to doing. Her mother had already started making plans for her. It was a nightmare in the making. In a fit of insanity, she’d called Vince Jenkins and rescheduled the interview.

She was almost tempted to cancel it again. Did she really want to work with hockey players and their families? Did she really want to be that close to Darren Moran and not be able to touch him?

Valerie leaned against the bar top on her elbows, her eyes glued to the screen as the Texas Highlanders took the ice in the second period. She'd never paid attention to the sports games other than a quick check of the score before. But since being with Darren, and even now that they weren't together anymore, she was getting into the games now. Hockey was actually pretty interesting, even with the body slams into the glass that made her cringe. She was surprised there weren't more injuries than there were. But it explained the occasional cuts and abrasions Darren had sometimes sported.

She'd made a mess of things with him.

Fear had driven her actions the night of the benefit. Fear of not knowing what her life would be like, fear of love destroying what order she had left in her life, of seeing Emery and knowing that she'd been let go for something so trivial. She was a mess now, far from the ordered life she’d once had. Darren had created a longing in her, one that wouldn't be silenced and then left her with the fall out.

Except that she was the one who had done the leaving.

Now she was dreading the day Darren walked back through that door. She knew he would eventually. It was inevitable. This was why she'd always avoided entanglements with customers. Hell, this was why she'd always avoided relationships. They didn't fit with where she wanted to be. They complicated her plans, spun things out of control. And with her own livelihood up in the air, she didn't need to lose any more of that control.

On the screen, Darren slapped the puck toward the goal, but it ricocheted off the post. Three of his team converged on the puck, but as soon as one of them had it, they fanned out into a wide triangle. The fourth worked his way toward the goal. The view of the camera was too far out to see who was who without knowing their numbers, and she didn’t know them by heart.

The camera switched angles, to a closer one, as Darren stole the puck and bolted down the ice. Valerie lifted her heels off the floor and leaned toward the screen as he flew down the ice. She wished the camera was closer so she could see the concentrated grimace on Darren's face she knew had to be there.

She liked the way his tongue pushed around his mouth guard. How he had it half hanging out of his mouth when he was focused. That much she could see from where the camera was. And when it was closer as he skated to the bench, she could also see the dark circles under his eyes.

Was he not sleeping? Didn't he know that the loss of sleep led to many different health risks, like obesity or heart failure? He could have a stroke. What if he had one on the ice while playing?

Someone should tell him. Someone that wasn’t her, because he’d never listen to her now. As Darren sailed along the boards, she tried not to think about how his muscles, under all that gear, must have been flexing and contracting in different ways. Or about how graceful he looked, even on the TV, or how at home on the ice he looked. He veered from the boards, about to make a run on the goal, when a member of the other team slammed into him, thrusting his weight into Darren. His body hit the glass with a thunk, loud even through the TV.

“Oh, damn!” A couple of guys exclaimed as they watched Darren hit the glass. “That was a good hit!”

She started to turn from the TV when the bar started cheering loudly. She glanced back at the TV. Darren had dropped his gloves and was circling with the player that hit him. A second later, he lunged for the other player, his fist slamming into his opponent's face. His opponent's head snapped to the side, but it barely fazed him.