One More Shot (Hometown Players #1) (14 page)

I
’m making my way out of this place and away from Jordan’s sexy, sweaty body and intense, sultry stare. Watching him out there, doing what he was born to do, what I’ve watched him do his whole life, was…hot. More than that, it brought up all the feelings I had for him when I used to watch him in high school, like adoration and attraction. And those warm feelings began to war inside me with the cold reminder of why they went away in the first place. It was too much. I needed to get away. I need to clear my head and think, but I’ll be damned if I can find the goddamn door I came in. There’s a whole bunch of other exits, but none marked 14B, which is the one I’m looking for. I don’t want to try a different one in case I get even more lost.

As I follow the curving hallway, I hear a lot of rowdy male voices and I falter. It’s got to be Jordan and the team coming off the ice. I spin and start walking in the opposite direction.

“Jessica?”

I know the voice, but it’s not Jordan. He doesn’t call me Jessica unless he’s joking or trying to annoy me. I spin around and find Chance standing there in a slim-fitting charcoal suit, deep purple tie loosened just slightly at his neck. There’s a guy behind him with a camera and he’s holding a microphone. I realize he must have been doing an interview with a player. His ice-blue eyes are smiling at me as he hands the microphone to the camera guy and tells him he’ll meet him upstairs.

“I have to say I’m surprised to see you here,” he says once we’re alone.

Awkwardly, I blurt, “I’m working.”

I know what he’s thinking—that I’m here because of Jordy. And in a way I am, just not in the way he must think.

“I don’t care why you’re here. I just want a hug.”

I hesitate. But then I remember how cool he turned out to be back in Silver Bay after the funeral. I hadn’t wanted him there, but when I burst into tears and started bawling after Jordy stormed out, it was nice to have someone to hug me. And that’s all he’d done. Hugged me and told me it would be okay.

When I’d calmed down, we’d actually talked. A couple years ago, Chance had found me on Facebook, and I’d accepted his friendship. We sent a few emails, catching up on each other’s lives, but that trip to Silver Bay was the first time we’d had a long, in-person conversation since high school. He told me about how hard it was to not make the NHL but how much he was enjoying his job covering games as a reporter. And he apologized for what had happened with Amber. I told him about my job in Seattle and assured him the Amber thing was old news. I appreciated his apology but I’d forgiven him long ago. What I didn’t tell him was that I should have thanked him for cheating on me. I’d been dating him for all the wrong reasons, and the cheating made me realize that.

So, now I walk over and hug him. He squeezes me hard and lifts me off my feet.

“You’re working for the Winterhawks? I thought you were at a private facility,” he says, leaving his arm resting on my left shoulder as he looks down at me.

“I am, but we were hired to rehab Jordy.” I give him a look that says I know how ridiculous it is.

He laughs loudly. “So, did you rehab the beast? Is he playing tonight?”

“They’re calling him a game-time decision, but my money is on yes.”

He looks serious for a minute. “Well, here’s hoping he does something stupid so I can talk about it on national television.”

I furrow my brow. “Come on, Chance. That feud between you two should be over by now. You’re both adults.”

Chance gives me a smile that says he’s not buying what I’m selling. “I have a feeling seeing me show up in Silver Bay might have pissed him off.”

“If he’s mad you came to support an old friend, he’s an idiot. He did the same thing.”

“Jessica, I’m not stupid and neither are you,” Chance begins softly, his eyes narrowing. “Garrison’s had a thing for you his whole freaking life. He came to your grandma’s funeral for more than just friendly support. He came for you. He still wants you. You’re a prize he never got to claim.”

Chance lifts his hand again and cups my face.

“And Jordan’s pissed because he knows I went back to the Bay for the exact same reason.” Chance takes a step toward me “To try and get you back.”

“What?”

I
wasn’t even looking for her.

I had just assumed she’d headed back to work. Why would she want to stick around and watch me practice? She had done that a million times before as kids and she always seemed bored by it—and that was when she could stand me.

I’m heading to Coach’s office, as per his request, to get the final yes or no about playing tonight.

I wasn’t thinking when I headed west through the bowels of the building. I was just looking for the quickest route, and the fact that the media would probably be wandering that same hall after doing game-day interviews with our opposition hadn’t even crossed my mind.

But then I look up just in time to see Chance standing in front of Jessie. His head is bent forward and his hands are on her face. It looks so intimate, and suddenly I feel seventeen again—and not in a good way.

The way he’s got his hand against the side of her face makes me tingle with rage. I walk right up to them, ignore him completely and stare down at her. “I thought you were leaving.”

She blinks up at me, stunned by my tone. I can tell I’ve hurt her, but I’m hurt too. Seeing her with him, here, hurts. Realizing she may have left my practice to go find him hurts even more.

“Gee, this is a surprise.” Chance winks at Jessie and smirks at me. “Relax, Garrison. You can consider her my guest right now.”

“This isn’t your arena. You don’t get guests,” I snap, and stare him down. I take a step toward him.

“Chance, just go,” Jessie begs from in between us. She reaches out and places a hand on each of our chests. “I’ll leave, Jordan. Just back down.”

“You need to let it go, buddy. Move on. Give it up,” Chance says to me, and rolls his eyes like he’s really annoyed.

“What the fuck am I supposed to be letting go of?” I snarl.

“Her,” he clarifies, and gets a cocky gleam in his weird-ass eyes that are so light they look see-through. How Jessie ever thought that was hot, I’ll never know. “She doesn’t want you that way. She never has. After all these years, you think you would have figured that out.”

I shake my head and smirk at him. “Is that what you think?”

“I know it,” he replies confidently. “She hates you.”

“Chance!” Jessie says angrily. “Stop.”

“She hates me now, fine. But did you ever bother to ask yourself why, Echolls?” I say, taking another step closer to him. I feel her hand fall away from my chest, and she takes a sharp breath, but I don’t look down. My eyes stay on him.

“Because you freaked out like a fucking stalker,” Chance replies with a look that says he’s convinced that’s the truth. “That night I brought her home from work, you lost it because you knew she didn’t want you. Even after she dumped me, she still didn’t want you.”

Something in me snaps. After all these years, all this time, his superiority still gets under my skin, especially when it comes to Jessie. I’m so filled with rage I get tunnel vision, aware of nothing but his smirking, arrogant face. My brain shuts down but my mouth doesn’t. “You never fucking loved her. You wanted her because all the guys thought she was hot and you wanted to be that one, the first to nail her. But she was too smart to take you back. And guess what? Even if she had, she wasn’t going to give it to you. ’Cause she’d already given it to me.”

“You fucking asshole,” Jessie whispers, and stumbles back away from us. Her quivering voice breaks the bubble of rage I was in, and as soon as I see her cheeks tinge red and the watery look to her eyes, I realize I fucked up. Again.

“Jessie, I didn’t mean…” It feels like slow motion but it isn’t. In seconds, Jessie turns away from me and runs down the hall at the exact same time Chance raises his fist.

He goes to punch me, but I’m expecting it. Hell, if it was me hearing this, I would swing too. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let him do it. Jessie deserves to punch me over this, not Echolls. I duck but he swings again and lands one on my cheek. Fuck, he’s gotten stronger.

I want to hit him back but I know I can’t—not here. So I grab him by his suit jacket and try to shove him backward. I stumble, my left fist still tangled in his jacket. Someone yells. I hear feet slapping the concrete as people run to break it up. As he leans in to hit me again, he slips and crashes into me with his full body weight. I start to fall backward, with Chance coming down on top of me. I reach back to stop my fall, my right hand landing on the concrete floor to brace myself. I know right away it’s not a good angle. And then Chance falls down on me and my hand takes all the weight of both our bodies. I feel a lightning bolt of white-hot pain flash up my forearm. Oh fuck.

And then Mick is yanking Chance off me and Seb is there, helping me to my feet. Chooch is there too and he lunges at Chance, shoving him and threatening him, like he would if I was punched on the ice. Teammate until the end. I’d thank him but the pain in my wrist is all I can think about. That and the fact that Chance is telling everyone he’s going to report that I attacked him on national TV.

“Chance.” The voice is hard and flat, like a stern principal talking to a delinquent student. I turn and realize Jessie’s still there. She’s across the hall standing against the wall. Her eyes are filled with tears but piercing as she stares at her ex-boyfriend.

He stares back at her defiantly. “After what he just said, you’re going to defend him? He just made you look like a—”

“Chance!” She hisses his name again and he shuts up midsentence, thankfully.

Mick looks furious and completely lost at the same time. He turns to Jessie. “Miss Caplan, do you know what happened here?”

“Jordan hurt his wrist.” She points to me but doesn’t look at me.

Mick turns and realizes I’m holding my wrist. He swears, storms over to me and barks. “Come with me. Now.”

I follow him, but my eyes stay on Jessie and hers stay on mine, until the curve of the hall makes it impossible to see each other anymore.

Forty minutes later I shove open the door to the reserved parking with my one good hand—the one not wrapped in a brace thanks to Chance Echolls—and step out into the cold, misty Seattle afternoon. Mick had diagnosed the severe sprain in seconds and spent the next twenty minutes screaming at me. Then he went and got Coach Sweetzer, told him what happened, and Coach spent another twenty minutes yelling at me before storming out of the room to call some producer guy he knew at NBC to do damage control.

He came into the locker room just as I was yanking my coat on. Although he looked furious, he seemed much less panicked as he barked, “Echolls isn’t going to talk. But this isn’t over for you. Expect a call from team management.”

As I walk toward my car, a green Volkswagen Beetle parked a few cars away catches my attention even before the door swings open and Jessie gets out. She marches over to me, the hood on her jacket up.

“Jessie. I’m sorry.”

She shoves me hard in the chest and when I stumble back, she steps into me, rocking up on her tiptoes and pointing an angry finger in my face. “You’re a hypocrite, you know that?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The wind picks up, the misty rain whipping us and causing strands of her long hair to blow into her face. She pushes them away angrily, causing her hood to fall back. “You think Chance was such a monster because he wanted to play me. You act like your intentions were so fucking different.”

“They were!” I bellow.

“Really? Because you got what you wanted and moved on,” she shouts. “You’re the one fucking half the free world, not Chance. You’re everything you thought he was in high school.”

She shoves me again, but this time I reach up and grab her hands and yank her to me. I bow my head so my face is inches from hers and our eyes lock. “He cheated on you. He broke your heart.”

She stares up at me, green eyes blazing, her breath huffing out in rage-choked gusts. Her hair, damp from the rain, looks dark as it sticks to her neck. I let go of one of her hands and let my fingertips trail over her neck, then gently lift the hair away. I can see her shiver and I know it’s not from the cold air. I fucking know it. It’s from the same lingering desire she won’t admit she still has for me. The same desire that makes me want to kiss her right now.

I lean forward, my hand slipping back to touch her neck, but she abruptly pulls back and slaps my hand away, her palm making a loud smack as it hits the side of the plastic brace I’m wearing.

“I’m nothing like Chance,” I call out as she turns to walk back toward her car.

“No. You’re not,” she calls back as she keeps marching to her car. “You told Chance about our past because you thought he’d give up and go away. That’s what you did so you figured he’d do it too. Well, he didn’t. We’re still friends. Such good friends that he’s agreed to keep quiet about this as a favor to me. The NHL won’t know you’re a hot-headed idiot who picks fights with the media. You’re welcome.”

She reaches her car and yanks the door open. Before sliding behind the wheel, she looks up at me again. “And if that hand needs extra therapy, call someone else because I quit.”

And then she’s peeling out of the parking lot and I’m left standing there, rain-soaked and feeling like I’ve just been eviscerated.

I
laugh—really, truly, deeply laugh. And it hits me I haven’t even cracked a smile, let alone laughed, in the last five days since the disaster at the hockey arena. Man, it feels good. The bartender puts two more shots down in front of Tori and me. “These two are on me, ladies.”

He winks at me and I smile back. He is so not my type—too short, his hair is too dark, and he’s too meaty looking. But hey, free shots.

Tori and I giggle and clink glasses, powering through what are our fourth shots of the night. She’s been picking the poison, throwing names like “broken-down golf cart” and “honey badger’s foot” at the bartender. I have no idea what’s in any of the things I’m pouring down my throat, but they’re sweet and delicious so, whatever.

“I’m glad you made me do this!” I admit, and hug her spontaneously. When she first suggested a girls’ night at her favorite bar, a place called the Nine-Pound Hammer, I was reluctant because I hadn’t exactly been in a partying mood lately, but I was enjoying myself for the first time in months.

She hugs me back. “Well, you looked like you could use a night out. And I wanted to celebrate getting rid of Jordan Garrison.”

I try to ignore his name. Ignore
him
. Thinking of Jordan would just ruin this night. I will not think of him.

I haven’t seen him since that day he sprained his wrist. Either his trainers are handling the injury on their own or he had told them he wouldn’t go back to Sea-Tac. I didn’t care, I’m just glad to have some space. Now if only I can get him out of my head as easily as I’ve gotten him out of my physical space. I think about him all the time. I even found myself on the Winterhawks website, looking for updates on his condition. All it said was that Jordan Garrison was back on the injury list after “a freak accident at practice caused a severe wrist sprain.”

An unknown number had popped up on my call display a couple times in the last week, but I didn’t answer it. Although no one would admit it, I assumed someone in our shared group of friends and family had finally broken down and given him my cell, but I wasn’t ready to talk to him again. I need to get my head straight and get my defenses back up. I’d almost let him kiss me in the parking lot, even though I was hurt and humiliated by what he’d said to Chance and how he’d said it. Chance was right, he’d made me look like a whore. What kind of crazy person wants to let a boy like that kiss her?

“I need to tinkle!” Tori announces, and adjusts her silky blue strapless top. It’s barely keeping her ample breasts contained. “I’ll be back.”

She bounces off to find the restroom. A few seconds later, the bartender winks at me and places some kind of yellow frothy martini in front of me.

“Lemon meringue martini,” he says with a smile, and nods his head toward the other side of the bar. “From him.”

I glance down the bar and see a stocky brunet with a mischievous smile and nice blue eyes. Not Jordan nice, but nice. I scold myself for even thinking of Jordan. I can’t help it though. I’ve been comparing men to him since I was a teenager. Even in those years when we weren’t speaking.

I raise the glass toward him as a sign of thanks and he raises his beer back to me. That mischievous grin grows a little, as does the twinkle in his eye. I take a sip. It’s sweet, tangy and delicious. I watch him walk over to me over the top of my drink.

“You like it?”

I nod. “It’s good. Thank you.”

“It’s the best drink in the house. You look like someone who deserves the best,” he says, and smiles.

“Wow.” I nod and giggle. I’m getting very drunk. Not fall-down-barf drunk but flushed-and-flirty drunk. “That was quite the line.”

He blinks, laughing. “Like I said, you deserve the best.”

“I’m Jessie.” I extend my hand and he takes it. His handshake is firm. That’s hot.

“Finally! A name for the pretty face,” he coos, and I’m not sure what he means by “finally.” We’ve only been talking for six seconds. “I’m Alexandre.”

He says his name with a heavy roll of the “r,” and my drunken brain realizes he’s French. His accent is similar to but heavier than Luc’s. We stare at each other smiling and sip our drinks. I’m so not in any place emotionally to be flirting with a guy—any guy—but this one is adorable.

“You’re Canadian.”

His nice blue eyes flare in surprise. “Yes. How did you know?”

“The accent. I have a French Canadian friend,” I explain, and sip the yummy drink again.

“Pretty and smart,” he says. His praise makes me blush and giggle, playfully swatting at his chest. It’s rock hard under his black T-shirt. I let my hand lightly graze down his taut belly as I pull away, and his smile gets larger.

“What are you doing all the way over here in Seattle?”

“I work here.”

“What kind of work does a pretty French Canadian boy do in Seattle?” I ask as I gulp down more of my frothy beverage. If my brain wasn’t doing the backstroke in alcohol right now, I would have known the answer to that. There’s usually only one reason an athletic French Canadian boy would be working in Seattle. Before he can answer, there’s another guy beside him. A shorter, even stockier guy with brown hair and brown eyes. He’s clearly as fit and muscled as my new friend Alexandre.

“Dix!” Alexandre claps his buddy on the back. “This is Jessie.”

Dix and I smile at each other and shake hands.

“Chris Dixon,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

“Dix plays with me,” Alexandre explains. “But he’s not as good.”

Dix rolls his eyes at that and Alexandre laughs. I smile and nod, but then I realize what he just said. I stop smiling. “Play?”

Alex nods as his eyes twinkle playfully. “Hockey. You don’t recognize me? I recognized you.”

“No,” I say firmly. No, because I really don’t recognize him, but it’s also a giant “no, this can’t be happening” to the universe. Because, seriously. No.

“Yeah. Winterhawks,” Dix adds helpfully.

I put my half-empty martini on the bar. Alexandre uses the opportunity to reach for my hand. “Seattle Winterhawks. The National Hockey League. But you know that. You’re a therapist, right? You worked on Garrison.”

“I gotta go.” I yank my hand back and push my way through the crowd, looking for the restroom so I can find Tori and get the hell out of here.

Alexandre and Dix are fucking Seattle Winterhawks. Just when I think my luck can’t get any worse…

I see the restroom sign blinking neon above a doorway to my right and start toward it. As the crowd breaks apart making room for me, I see Tori. She’s leaning over a small high-top table beside the restroom. She’s face-to-face with someone, raising a shot glass toward them in a “cheers” gesture. The person in front of her is holding a beer bottle in a brace-covered hand. His blond head is angled so I can’t see his face, but I don’t have to. I know exactly who he is. I know even before his eyes find mine.