Page 18 of Hell Bent (Portland Devils #5)

FURTHER INFORMATION

Alix

Picture this. You’re perched on a barstool in a rustic-but-modern lodge, sipping an Old Fashioned that, yes, does have some sweet, hot bite to it, and swiveled toward a man in a merino sweater you want to run your hands over, a gleam in his golden eyes and his strong hand wrapped around a beer bottle, his boot hooked over the chair rail and his powerful thighs on full display.

He’s telling you a story about the dog knocking the Christmas turkey off the counter, and saying, “We cut away the part he’d eaten, washed it off, and sliced it anyway.

Fine, right? Except for the dog getting sick all over the house during the night. From both ends. Merry Christmas!”

Except …

I said, “Wait. You said you’d never had a dog.”

He stilled. Just … stilled. And said, “I didn’t.”

“But …”

“My dad died when I was seventeen.” He was still aiming for ease, but it wasn’t quite coming off. “Foster care for a few months, that’s all. ”

I thought about the whining I’d done to him about my family and inwardly cringed. “What about your mom?”

“I don’t know. Left when I was little.”

“Did she have a … a drug problem?” I asked, probing cautiously. “I’m trying to imagine a mom leaving her kids, and I can’t, unless it’s something like that.”

He shifted on the stool and took a sip of beer. I said, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I get that.”

“No,” he said. “It’s a fact, that’s all. Yeah, she left, and yeah, I was in foster care. A few different places. It’s hard to place a seventeen-year-old boy, and I was …” He stopped again.

“You were grieving your dad,” I said.

“Well, yeah, if you want to call it that. Pancreatic cancer’s vicious, and you bet I was mad about it.

Mad at the doctors who hadn’t caught it sooner.

Mad at my dad for leaving me alone, stupid as that is.

Mad at the whole world, because I was scared.

You don’t get to be scared, so I was mad instead.

Soccer was the only thing I cared about, and the only thing where being mad can make you perform better, but you can’t play all day.

I did my best to take care of Dad, which meant I missed most of a month of school that autumn, when you add it up.

I didn’t miss any soccer, though. The school wasn’t happy about that, but as far as I was concerned, I had my priorities straight. ”

My hand was on his arm, because I couldn’t stand hearing this. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Yeah, well …” He shrugged. “It happens. It wasn’t for long, and I was seventeen, not nine.”

“Why were you on your own, though? Wasn’t there any other family?”

“Not close by, and not that wanted to take on a seventeen-year-old with a chip on his shoulder. And my sister had just started med school all the way across the country in Vancouver. Luckily, I didn’t need them, because I got taken on by Newcastle the next summer.

Soccer club, Premier League. That’s England, and not the fancy part.

The good news is, I’m from Ottawa, so not put off by wind and rain and snow and general weather unpleasantness.

The possible bad news is, I’m not even a high-school graduate. You heard it here first.”

“It must have been hard to leave everything you’d known, though. Were you even eighteen?” What did I care whether he’d graduated? It was obvious he was plenty bright.

“Well, some of what I’d known wasn’t all that hot,” he said, “which made it easier. I had to be eighteen to sign the contract and to leave school, but you can bet my birthday was the day I did sign it and left the country. No worries about my lonely self over there. I only lasted four years.”

“Why?” I asked. “As talented as you are … why?”

“You might think so,” he said, “but sports aren’t just about talent and skill.

They’re about discipline. Humility, because you can’t get better unless you can be told what you’re doing wrong, and then change it.

Good habits. Hard work. Emotional maturity, you’d call it.

There’s a difference between being good enough to be drafted and being good enough to make it long-term, and that difference is mostly injuries and discipline.

I didn’t have that, so I ended up at a team further down the league, and then in Houston, where I was good enough—for a while—and possibly a little smarter, too.

That was still pro soccer, just paid a whole lot less.

Now, that’s not a place for a Canadian.”

“Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of Christmases alone, though,” I said. “Or did you see your sister? Or—wait. You said you’re Jewish. A lot of Hanukkahs, I guess.”

Some more shifting on his stool. “No, on my sister. She’s still in Canada.

We aren’t as close as we could be. I’ve been gone too long, and she’s busy.

Also, my dad was Jewish. You’re only Jewish if your mom’s Jewish, and you’d call him more of a secular Jew anyway.

No dreidel- spinning for me, but that’s fine.

It’s all fine, because I’m a lucky man. Landed on my feet every time.

Now I’m kicking those field goals, wondering how I lucked into that one.

It helps that I don’t expect to stay. Almost nobody does in the NFL, so you have to make your peace with that.

And with the money part, too. Put away as much as you can, have a plan, and don’t worry too much about tomorrow. ”

“How?” I asked. “How do you deal with the uncertainty?” He looked at me for a long moment, and I said, “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but it would be useful information. I have to confess that I find it—” I stopped.

“How do you find it?” he asked.

“Terrifying,” I said. “At times.”

“Well,” he said, a smile twisting the corner of his mouth, “there’s that, too. I meditate every morning. That helps. And I put money away, like I said. I do my best to take life as it comes. It’s a process, acceptance. Takes practice. Fortunately, I know how to practice.”

Ever since I’d met Sebastian, I realized with the kind of jolt that’s nearly physical, I’d thought about myself.

I’d been cautious, and there was nothing wrong with that, but I’d also been blind.

Assuming that because he had confidence and money—how much money, I couldn’t tell, but the NFL didn’t pay poverty wages—he’d try to run me over.

I hadn’t taken the time to look. I hadn’t taken the time to see.

I was still wrestling with all that when he set down his nonalcoholic beer and said, “We should probably get you home. It’s nearly eleven.”

I wanted to say something. I just didn’t know what.

The drive back across the bridge was quiet, because he may have felt the same way. When he pulled into the KOA, though, he said, “Now, see, why did I share that?”

“What?” I asked. “No. I’m glad you shared it.”

“Right,” he said. “Because vulnerability is such an attractive quality in a man.”

I was furious, suddenly. “You bet it is,” I said. “You bet. Who told you it isn’t? They were wrong.”

“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” he said, losing a little of his calm. “I’m fine. I’m more than fine. I’ve had thirteen years of good luck, and I have a great life. I even have a dog. I don’t need pity, from you or anyone else.”

“Oh, that’s great,” I said. “That’s just great. You tell me something like that, then you get mad at me because you told me. That’s really emotionally mature.”

He braked to a stop beside my space and put the car in Park. The lights came on, which meant I could see him glaring at me. I was pretty sure I was glaring, too, as I unfastened my seatbelt. Until I laughed.

He said, “And now you’re laughing at me.”

“No,” I said. “I’m laughing at us. This is not the way it goes in the movie when the hero opens up. I’m supposed to snuggle up to you, hold your head in my hands, kiss your mouth, and tell you how impressive you are to have overcome all that. You’re making that hard. Just saying.”

“How about if you snuggle up and kiss me because I’m good at ping-pong?

” he said. “I like that better.” His hand was at the back of my neck, and now, his seatbelt was off, too.

He didn’t pull me, though. He leaned halfway over, and I must have been leaning, too, because both his hands were on my head and his mouth was closing over mine.

Fire. That was the only thought in my head, or maybe it wasn’t a thought at all.

Something dark and hot leaping inside me, my hands on him, finally able to touch him the way I’d needed to, thrilling to the shift of muscle under my palms. His mouth was insistent, but gentle, and his hands held me not so much tightly as tenderly.

My hands were moving, his weren’t, and suddenly, my eyes were full of tears.

He stopped kissing me, pulled back a little, and ran a thumb over my cheek. “Alix,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, feeling stupid. Feeling confused. “I … I don’t know. Emotion, all of a sudden. Sorry.” I sniffed, wiped my hands over my cheeks, and said haltingly, “It’s that you’re so … so sweet.”

To my shock, he groaned, pulled away, and banged his head on the steering wheel. I didn’t know what to think, and then I realized he was laughing, and so was I. Reflexively, I guess. “What?” I asked.

“That is not,” he said, “what a man wants to hear.”

“Oh,” I said. “I got it wrong. Oh, well. I told you, I’m romance-challenged.”

He was still smiling, and he had his hand on my face again, too. I said, feeling shy, “Does it help if I tell you that you, um …”

“I’m liking the sound of this much better,” he said. “Go on.”

I turned my cheek into his hand, just so he’d caress it some more. That felt good. Comforting, and weirdly erotic. “Can your whole body be an erogenous zone?” I asked.

He exhaled. “Yeah. Yeah. Want me to kiss you some more?” But when my hand closed over his wrist and I kissed his palm, he didn’t ask again.

He just kissed me. For a minute, or possibly for ten, I couldn’t even have told you.

His hand at my mouth, then moving over my cheek to my neck, and oh, hell, yeah, that was definitely an erogenous zone.

It was like I had a nerve going from there directly to …

well, you get the idea. It was stabbing me.

His scent was swirling through my head, all leather and wood smoke and man, my entire body was lit up, and I was shifting in my seat, wanting more of him.

And still, his hands weren’t moving. They were, in fact, wrapped in my hair, and the possessiveness of the action, the thought that he couldn’t get enough of me, made me squirm more.

Bright lights behind my closed eyes. I opened them and saw another car edging around us on the narrow road. Sebastian must have felt the change in me, too, because he stopped kissing me and asked, “What?”

“I should go inside,” I said, hardly trusting my voice. “I have work.”

He said, “I guess that’s not an invitation.”

“No,” I said, but now, my hand was on his face. “I don’t want to make stupid decisions,” I tried to explain. Every window in this car was steamed up. How long had it been since I’d kissed a man in a car like this? How long since a man’s kiss had felt this good?

“Ah,” he said, and smiled, a twist of a thing.

“I don’t want you to make stupid decisions either.

Much.” I laughed, and he said, “I have a home game next Sunday at one. That’s your day off, I know.

Want to spend some of it watching me? Sounds conceited, but that’s the best I’ve got, because my day off is Tuesday.

We could go out Sunday night after the game, though. What do you think?”

“Do I get to see Lexi?” I asked.

“You get,” he said, “what you want.” And kissed me again.

It wasn’t easy to go inside.

Man, maturity sucks sometimes.