Offside (25 page)

She choked on a laugh. It was true. “I
know.”

“And there were a lot of them,” he
continued, frowning.

Also true.

“All we wanted was for you to meet a
nice guy and settle down.”

“Yeah.” Her chest constricted so
tightly she could hardly breathe. These things were still so hard
to talk about. Hard to admit. Even to herself. Because deep inside,
that was all she’d ever wanted too. So eager to find someone to
love her, she’d rushed into relationships with any guy who came
along, even if he was a cokehead abuser who loved her for her
money, or a spoiled rich kid like her, whose parents paid for his
condo, his car, his parties, so he never had to work, or… Well, as
Dad had said, there’d been a lot of losers.

“Matt’s a decent guy,” Dad
said.

“I know.”

Dad gave her another long, inscrutable
look then nodded and turned back to the game.

She turned over all that in her head.
Apparently Dad approved of her and Matt together. Which just made
that scary, mixed-up feeling inside her even worse. She didn’t need
her parents’ approval. She’d spent the last few years trying to get
past that.

She focused on the game, sitting on
the edge of her seat whenever Fiero and Matt were on the ice
together. But nothing much happened between them. At one point,
after a whistle, she saw them skate near each other. Her breath
stuck in her throat, but all they did was apparently exchange
words, which of course she couldn’t hear.

Then she began to notice that nearly
every other player on the Condors team was taking any opportunity
to hammer Fiero into the boards. When she caught on to that, she
started smiling. It wasn’t until near the end of the second period
that Matt leveled Fiero with a hit into the boards. She sucked in
breath, but no whistle blew.

“Clean hit,” Dad said beside
her.

Every time Fiero got hit, the crowd
cheered. Honey grinned.

In the end it wasn’t Matt who fought
Fiero, it was their biggest d-man Jeff Bradley who took him on
after Fiero skated into the crease and jostled the Condors’ goalie.
Fiero got a penalty for goaltender interference and it wasn’t that
bad a hit, and somehow Honey knew that Matt’s team had his back all
through this game. And she liked that.

Chapter Eighteen

A week later, Matt’s teammates were
planning a night at Eden, a trendy upscale club in L.A.

“Want you to come with us,” he’d told
Honey Friday night back at his place after they’d gone out for
dinner.

She’d made a face, sitting in his bed
naked with sheets wrapped around her. “That scene doesn’t appeal
anymore.”

“I want you to meet my friends,” he
said. “Want them to meet you. We’re together. We can’t hide from
the world forever.”

“I’m not hiding from the world.” She
frowned.

“Yeah, Hon, you are.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts,
still frowning. “I’m just not into that stuff anymore.”

“I know you’re not. And it’s not like
I’m all that fired up about it either. But they’re my friends and I
like hanging out with them. Sometimes it’s just at the pool at my
place shooting the shit, sometimes it’s playing beach volleyball,
sometimes it’s a nice restaurant or a fun bar.”

She sat there silently.

“Want you to be part of that,” he
said.

More silence.

“Babe. Honey.”

“What?”

He reached for her face and cupped her
chin so she had to face him. “Let me in,” he said
quietly.

She blinked. “What do you
mean?”

“I mean, let me in. We’ve been
spending a lot of time together. We go out just the two of us, but
it always has to be somewhere people won’t see us. My friends don’t
even know about us. That night your parents saw us, I thought you
were going to hide under the table until they were gone. We’re
having a lot of hot sex, which, don’t get me wrong, is great. But I
want into your life. Let me in.”

“You are in my life. You just said
so.”

“You know what I fucking
mean.”

They stared at each other. She felt a
tight, burning sensation in her chest, rising up into her
throat.

She knew it was a mistake. She’d known
getting involved with him was a stupid thing to do. What had she
been thinking? All this time she and Matt were spending together
was drawing her deeper and deeper into this thing, whatever they
had, and now he was pulling her in even further. Meeting his
friends.

He wanted more. He wanted them to be a
real couple.

Her lungs refused to expand and her
skin went cold. She didn’t want to end things between them, but…
She closed her eyes briefly.

“Okay,” she said. “We can go to the
club.”

“Got a VIP table,” he said, leaning
over to kiss her mouth. “It’ll be fun.”

“Right,” she muttered.

Now they walked into Eden, big and
dark, with colored flashing lights, occasional bursts of fog, and
pumping house music. DJ Eric D’Angelo was at the front, mixing the
music, his body moving, hands clapping above his head.
Electronically generated funk, soul and pop recordings added to the
foundation of kick drum beat and synth bass line. Honey felt the
pulse of the music deep inside her body.

With his hands on her hips, Matt
followed behind her closely into the crowded club, as a hostess led
them to the VIP table his teammate Joe had reserved, up on a raised
dais above the crowd, with its own bouncer guarding the steps and
its own serving personnel.

“You look hot as hell,” he said at her
ear. “Golden girl.”

She was wearing the strapless gold
lace dress, her only other choice for the night other than the
black sequined dress. She’d splurged on a pair of nude-colored
stilettos she’d found on sale.

People crowded the dance floor, moving
to the mid-tempo beat, arms swaying, hips shifting. Professional
dancers on small raised stages also danced, girls in what looked
like black lace underwear—skimpy bras and tiny boy shorts—and high
heels. More people lined up around the long mirrored bar, holding
drinks, laughing, talking.

The bouncer let them past him and they
climbed the steps up to the small private area with a big round
table with a curved padded bench seat around it. Joe Barzetti,
Chris Dobie and Niklas Berglund were there, along with Joe’s new
girlfriend Bryn. Some shouted introductions were done, Honey
smiling and shaking hands with everyone, then sliding into the
booth followed by Matt.

A waitress was there immediately to
take their order. Honey asked for a French martini and Matt ordered
beer.

“Do you like dancing?” she asked in
his ear.

He smiled down at her. “I don’t mind
it.”

“Good. ‘Cause I can’t sit here and
listen to this without wanting to move to it.”

She was moving already, her shoulders
and her head, bopping a little to the beat. She looked around the
bar, watched people dancing, accepted her drink from the waitress
with a smile.

When Matt learned Joe had already
started a tab, he held up his beer. “Thanks, dude,” he
yelled.

Joe grinned. “I’m not buying your
fucking drinks all night.”

Matt laughed. “Whatever.”

Honey knew bar or dinner bills into
four figures weren’t unusual when Matt and his friends went out.
They all had the money.

“Wait till Dobie and Nik start buying
drinks for chicks,” Matt said with a grin.

Joe rolled his eyes and slid his arm
around Bryn.

“Great idea.” Nik slid out of the
booth. “Let’s go mingle,” he said to Dobie. And they disappeared
down the steps and into the crowd.

That left her and Matt with the other
couple.

“What do you think of this place?”
Matt asked her.

“Haven’t you been here before?” Joe
said.

“No.” Honey shook her head. “I was
living in San Francisco the last few years. This place is new. I
like it.”

But she felt like she’d been there
before, because it was just like every other club where she’d spent
almost every night back in her wild partying days. Beautiful people
dressed in expensive clothes, lots of them flirting and looking for
hookups, lots of booze and no doubt lots of other
substances.

“D’Angelo is a great DJ,” Bryn said.
“That’s why the place is so packed tonight. Some of my friends are
here somewhere too. We have to find them.”

“They’ll find us,” Joe
said.

“What do you do for a living, Bryn?”
Honey asked.

“I’m an entertainment lawyer, at
Warner Brothers.”

Honey blinked. “Cool.” She’d expected
to hear “model” or “actor”. Bryn’s long dark hair was straight and
super shiny, her olive complexion smooth and perfect and her teeth
gleamed the impossible bright white of expensive
veneers.

“What do you do, Honey?” Bryn
eventually asked.

“I’m a Programming Coordinator at the
Condors Foundation.”

“Foundation?” Bryn blinked.

“It’s the charitable arm of the
California Condors,” she explained. “It’s a way for the players,
their wives and girlfriends and the coaches to contribute to the
community.”

“Oh, that’s awesome,” Bryn said. She
glanced at Joe. “Didn’t you say you did some volunteer work with a
hockey camp?”

“Yeah.” Joe nodded.

“You’re so lucky you get to work with
hockey players,” Bryn said to Honey.

“Well, I don’t do a lot of work
directly with them,” she said. “I’m mostly liaising with the
community, but I have been working with Matt, getting him involved
with a local school project. And I’ve been busy lately with a big
fundraiser we’re doing next weekend, actually, the Sweet Affair
Ball.”

“What are you raising funds
for?”

“St. Clara Children’s
Hospital.”

Bryn nodded. “That’s so great. Are we
going to that?” she asked Joe.

“Yeah.”

“Oh good!” Then she shocked Honey by
asking, “What could we do to help?”

Honey blinked. “Um…do you want to
donate money?”

Bryn glanced at Joe. “I was thinking
more about volunteering somehow. I assume you already bought
tickets?”

“Yeah.” He looked bemused, watching
Bryn. Then he looked at Matt and they exchanged glances, which
Honey read as surprise.

“Well, if you want to help at the
event, I can check my files at the office next week and see if
there’s anywhere we still need volunteers.”

She expected Bryn to let it go at
that, but Bryn insisted they exchange cell phone numbers so Honey
could call her next week. Now Honey was a little bemused, but went
along with it.

“Let’s go dance,” she said to
Matt.

He made a face. “Okay.”

She took the last sip of her martini
and set the glass down on the table. They slid out of the booth and
Matt held her hand as they walked toward the packed dance floor.
Bodies moved to the beat of the music, hands in the air, pulsing
lights illuminating them red and blue and purple. Honey turned to
face him and started moving to the music. Their eyes met and she
smiled.

“You’re a good dancer.”

She smiled her thanks. It had been a
while, but she loved dancing. This was all familiar to her, the
music, the bodies around her, the moves. She swiveled her hips,
shook her hair, lifted her arms above her head. Matt’s eyes were
heated on her. She liked it.

She edged closer to Matt and draped
her hands over his shoulders. In her heels, she was only a few
inches shorter than him. Smiling back at her, he set his hands on
her hips, and she bent her knees and starting rolling her
hips.

“Hot,” he said, watching her, bending
his knees too.

They danced a few songs, her moves
getting down and dirtier as she got into the music, then returned
to their dais for another drink. Dobie and Nik had returned with
some other people they’d invited to join them in their VIP area,
everyone now standing by the table instead of sitting. It had
turned into a small private party. Honey watched in amusement as
some of the girls who’d joined them attached themselves to the
players.

Their personal server approached and
they ordered more drinks. A few cocktails, some dancing, Matt’s
teammates seemed like nice guys, even Bryn seemed nice—this was
okay. They were joined by more people, the friends Bryn had
mentioned, and Honey found herself enjoying some of the banter and
laughter. Servers brought them trays of hot and cold hors
d’oeuvres, thanks to their VIP status.

A few drinks later, she and Matt
returned to the dance floor.

The music shifted into a slower mix,
and now, holding his gaze as long as she could in a sultry
connection, she turned her back to Matt. He set his hands on her
hips. She bent her knees again, laid her hands on her thighs with
her back arched, then looked at Matt again over her shoulder. She
rolled her hips again, back into his groin. His lips parted and as
they moved together, she felt him get hard.