Page 149 of Heartbreak Hockey

I’ll pour myself a lonely glass of Canadian Club to numb this awful pain until … until when? It’s too sharp and stabbing to conceive of it leaving me permanently. I’ll count myself lucky if I can get it to numb over time like Dad did so that I can go about my Jackless days.

I don’t get to the pouring. There’s a lot of loud commotion outside—tires on gravel. Someone’s coming up my long driveway in a vehicle and another someone is yelling directions at the vehicle.

I’d know that voice anywhere. My heart lifts.

Nearly ripping the door off its hinges, I run outside. Jack’s standing there, guiding a white pick-up truck that’s backing up the driveway with a whole bunch of shit in the box. He looks good. Likehim, which is weird to say because he can only look like him. But he’s just so him wearing his loose grey sweats that hang off his hipbones and his baggy white t-shirt, with bicep-hugging sleeves so I can watch his tattoo-covered muscles contract and relax with every movement of his arms.

He's just missing the hat. I still have it.

One of his brothers is driving and the other is hanging out the passenger side window. “Okay, that’s good, eh? Looks like the door’s open. We can start taking stuff in,” one of them says.

Start taking stuff in…? What in the fresh hell?

I should yell at them to stop what they’re doing because it’s easy to see that they are moving all of Jack’s belongings into my house. After a week of hell, missing him, without having talked about a thing, he’s just moving in as planned as if nothing happened. All I have to do is shut my door and lock it and that’ll put a quick end to this.

But all I want to do is wait until Jack and his stuff are ensconced inside my house and then lock it and never let him leave.

Definitely doing option two. Whatever shit we need to work out, we’ll work it out. Then I’m telling him how thisusthing is going to work from now on.

Because like fucking magic my heart is mended. All those hollow, gut-wrenching emotions are gone—poof—instantly banished by his presence and I don’t want ‘em back. Him barging back into my life is exactly what I needed. All better now. If he thinks he’s ever leaving me again, he’s mistaken. He wants a time-out or whatever the fuck he called it? Fine, but he can do that in some other room in my house. Hell, it can be called our house. I don’t care who the house belongs to. Point is, he’s not going more than five feet from me to do it.

I step out of the door and that’s when the first raindrops hit the naked skin of my face.Plink. Plink.He picked a fine day to do this. All his stuff is gonna get wet.

“Uh, heya, Merc.”

“Jack. You came back to me.”

The raindrops fall faster. There are enough that we can officially call it rain. Neither of us makes a move to get somewhere that’ll be dryer. We’re Vancouverites, surely our skin is water repellent by now.

“I’m moving in.”

“I see that.”

The droplets aren’t just many, but fat and cold. They quickly soak our hair as the thunder crashes and the clouds open up, pouring rain so thick it blurs my view of him.

“You okay with that?” he calls over the clamor.

Right. He didn’t hear my crazy inner monologue. Probably a good thing. Or no. This is Jack I’m talking about. He loves it when I go wildly possessive. That bodes well for us right now.

Gripping him by his collar, the animal part of me roars to life.Mine. My Jack.I push him—careful of his bruised side—against the house and shove my tongue down his throat as the rain continues to drench us. I don’t care that his brothers are behind us somewhere or what they think about how I’m mauling their little brother. Even when I run out of oxygen, I refuse to let his lips go. I’m a man dying of thirst in a freshwater lake because here he is for me to drink up, but the more I kiss him, the less quenched I am and the thirstier I become.

“Wow,” he says when I finally release him, trying to get his breath back. “Everyone said this was gonna be hard and that you were gonna be stubborn.”

“Oh, we’ll get to the hard part, but I’m not going there until I know you’re moved in, and I have you all alone.”

He shivers, which has nothing to do with the cold rain sluicing over his body in rushing rivulets. “God damn you’re hot when you’re dangerous.”

“C’mon. Let’s help them so it gets done faster and your stuff isn’t totally ruined.”

Thankfully, he doesn’t have a lot of stuff. When everything’s a wet mess inside my house in a trail of Jack’s stuff from the entryway, through the kitchen and then the living room, an odd sensation takes hold.Safety. Having all his things inside my house is one step to safety.

We thank his brothers for their help and promise to invite them for dinner. When they’re gone, I can’t decide what I should do first. Spank him so that how very mine he is will be written on his ass or having the conversation we have to have?

The storm rages on outside. Bolts of lightning crack the sky, flashing from the other side of the window, while the rain pounds murder on the roof, encasing the house in an almighty ruckus. Yet, somehow, that ruckus is the most soothing sound in existence, spreading contentment through my center.

Conversation. Spank him. Then epic make-up sex. Done. I like that plan. I drag him by his wrist to the couch, which is one of the only free spaces available.

Once seated, he runs fingers through his wet mop of hair. His jade-green eyes are wide. “I’ve rehearsed this in my head so many times, but none of it sounds right.”