Page 1 of Only for Tonight (Only For #1)

one

Jaxon

I slip my leg through the dress pants and repeat the action with the other leg before tucking in the white button-down dress shirt.

The tailor-made shirt fits perfectly, just like the blue suit I’m wearing tonight.

Grabbing the brown belt, I weave it through the belt loops circling my waist and buckle it in the middle.

I look in the mirror, making sure it’s centered, and run my hands through my short, dark-brown hair before moving back to the bedroom, grabbing the bottle of cologne and spraying one shot on the left and another on the right.

I turn the bathroom light off before heading over to the long bench right in front of the king-size bed.

My phone rings from the middle of the bed, where I tossed it before I stepped into the shower.

Looking down, I see it’s my father calling.

Instead of answering it, I press the red button declining the call before grabbing one of the brown shoes and slipping my foot into it.

“Jaxon,” my father yells from down the hall, probably just walking out of his bedroom, “are you almost ready?” The voice gets closer and closer to my door before I hear the knock. “Are you decent?”

I shake my head as I snatch up the second shoe. “Dad, we literally showered at the arena three hours ago, together!” I shout as I tie the laces to the second shoe before he sticks his head into the room. “I’m naked,” I joke with him as I look up at him and finish tying my shoe.

He ignores my joke. “Oh good, you’re dressed.

” He pushes the door the rest of the way open before coming in and standing there with his hands on his hips, wearing a black suit with a black button-down shirt.

I definitely got my build from my father.

He’s six-five and I’m just a touch shorter than him, which is good since we both play the position of defense.

His build is broad shouldered, which I also got from him, but he’s thicker in the waist where I’m leaner.

“Did you really call me from inside the house?” I get up before reaching down and grabbing my suit jacket. “You yell at Victoria all the time when she does the same thing.” I mention my younger sister, who we nickname Tori.

His eyes glare at me and I have to bite the inside of my lip to not burst out laughing at him.

“That is only because she calls me to bring her a glass of water because she says the kitchen is too far away.” His dark blue eyes say he hates it, but his soft tone says he would do anything for her because she was his first girl.

Kiera, on the other hand, who is actually the baby of the family at sixteen, gets away with everything.

But then again, I broke them in for Victoria and Kiera.

Only then Victoria drove them up the wall from the time she started walking.

The more you told her no, the more she was like “yeah, okay, I’m going to do that anyway. ”

“You were the one who begged her not to move away for school, so you have no one but yourself to blame.” I raise my eyebrows.

“I didn’t think she would actually do it.

She wanted to spread her wings.” He looks over his shoulder to make sure that it’s just the two of us.

When the time came around to pick a school, she said she wanted to stay local for my parents.

However, I think she really wanted to stay local because she was treated like a queen here and didn’t have to do anything for herself.

She is about to graduate from the university in the spring and has zero plans of moving out at any time.

I seriously think my parents will move out of this house before she does.

“Why would she leave?” I pull the cuffs out of my jacket before walking over to my dresser and grabbing one of the cuff links, putting one in before grabbing the other one.

My parents gave me these for Christmas one year.

They have my initials engraved on them and I only use them for special occasions.

I figure tonight is one. “She has all her bills paid for. She made her bedroom a suite with a sitting area. She comes and goes as she pleases; her food is cooked for her. She has everything she needs, and she doesn’t have to do anything because her father does it for her.

” I tilt my head to the side when I grab my watch and place it on my wrist. The silver Rolex was a gift my parents got me the day I got drafted into the NHL.

Even though I've gotten myself quite a few watches over the years, this is the one I usually wear.

“She’s practically still a baby,” my father says. “Only reason you moved out was because you were drafted by Minnesota.” I don’t say anything because he’s not wrong, although I don’t think I would have lived at home during college.

“Manning,” my stepmother, Evelyn, shouts his name from the hallway, “the car is here!” He walks over to the doorway and looks out.

A smile on his face already as soon as he sees her.

They got together when I was eight, from what my biological mother said, he cheated on her with Evelyn.

The truth was my father tried to get a divorce for years and she threatened him each and every time, with me as the bargaining chip.

She even took me away from him once for a couple of weeks when he sent her divorce papers the first time.

I think I was six. I don’t remember much of it.

Most of my young childhood memories aren’t the fondest, with my father being on the road half the time and my mother doing whatever she wanted when he was gone.

The only time she gave a shit about me was when my father was in the room.

It’s safe to say my father was the parent I bonded with the most. He was the one I would long for when he was away.

The minute I knew he was in town I felt happier and more at ease in the house.

Don’t get me wrong, my mother never mistreated me.

It was more like she tossed me to the side and practically ignored me and pretended I didn’t exist when he wasn’t here.

That all changed when Evelyn came into the picture.

She cared for me like I was her own, and worried about me just as much as my father did.

Especially when the visits with my mother would come up and I would be angry that I had to go.

It lasted, I want to say, over a year, my mother would have me when my father was travelling with his team.

Only taking me to piss him off. As I got older, the visits with my mom became fewer and farther in between, until I just stopped going altogether.

The only reason she wanted to force me to go with her was because the second I stopped going regularly, her child support got decreased, so she would drag my father into court to make sure it stayed the same.

For that to happen meant I had to be with her when it was her turn.

My father saw the game she was playing and, in the end, didn’t give a shit about the money and just continued paying her, even if I stopped going.

Until I was eighteen that is, but she stopped caring about me long before that.

The last time I saw her was when I was twenty-four and she showed up at my house, trashed out of her mind and looking for a place to stay.

I put her in a cab and gave the driver the address to a hotel.

She sent me texts the next morning, telling me I was dead to her.

It’s been over seven years since I’ve heard from her.

It was no skin off my back, especially since I considered Evelyn my mother.

“Let’s go.” My father motions with his head toward the hallway. I follow him out of my room at the same time my sister comes out of hers. She’s wearing a long-sleeved, tight black dress that covers her all the way from her neck to her mid-calf.

“Hi, Daddy.” She smiles at him as she turns and walks down the stairs, and there it is. Her back is bare all the way down to practically the crack of her ass. “You approve that dress?” My father looks over at Evelyn, who shrugs.

“She’s of age to wear what she wants,” she replies, her voice low, “she’s a full-blown adult.”

“She’s also of hearing,” Victoria tosses over her shoulder, “and you bought me this dress.” She points to my father when she gets down to the last step.

“You mean you charged my credit card,” my father grumbles as he follows her down the steps. “That doesn’t mean I bought the dress; it means I paid for it.”

“Same thing, Pops,” she retorts. “Come and take a picture with me.” She walks to him and holds her phone up in front of her, taking a selfie.

“Even though you are opposed to social media.” She smiles big at him.

“That’s going to get me so many likes.” She lifts her hand and pats his chest. “I’ll tag you. ” She smirks at me. “You’re welcome.”

“You look so handsome,” Evelyn states from beside me, and when I look at her, I see her smiling at me with love written all over her face. “I love when you wear blue suits.” She gives me a side hug. “Makes your eyes even lighter.”

“Come and take a picture with me,” Victoria says to me. “I can caption it single and ready to mingle.”

“We aren’t mingling.” My father puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the ceiling. “No one is going to mingle. This is a family event.” His voice goes higher and higher. “There is no mingling. Please, don’t start this.” He looks at my sister. “I beg of you.”

“Why do you think Jaxon’s driving his own car tonight?” Victoria asks my father. “So if he finds someone he wants to mingle with, he doesn’t have to come home and we don’t have to hear moaning for two minutes.” She winks at me.

“Okay, for one, two minutes? Please.” I roll my eyes. “And that is not why I’m taking my own car.” I shake my head. “I’m taking my own car because if I want to leave, I can leave and not have to wait for you guys. Or, if I’m having too much fun, I don’t have to leave when you guys are leaving.”

Victoria holds her hand up, snapping her fingers in the air, moving her hips side to side. “That means he’s ready to mingle.”

“Don’t ever move like that again,” I grit through my teeth. “Now, are you going with me or Mom and Dad?”

“I’ll go with you, so Mom and Dad can make out in the car and get it over with so I don’t have to see it when we get there.”

My father wraps his arm around Evelyn’s waist. “I’m never going to get over making out with her.” He bends his head and kisses her lips and she sighs, as if it’s the first kiss he’s given her and not that they’ve been together for over twenty years.

“Is Kiera coming?” I look up the steps toward my youngest sister’s bedroom.

“She’s gone skiing for the weekend,” Victoria announces. “Besides, she’s sixteen and the last thing she wants to do is hang out with the old people.”

“We are not old,” my father snorts. “We are—” He tries to think of a word but Victoria cuts him off.

“Old,” Victoria repeats. “See you there.”

She walks out of the door and snatches my hand, pulling me with her.

“See you there,” I say quickly before I’m pulled out into the cool air.

Taking the keys out of my pocket and unlocking the door, I open the door for her.

“Get in, Tori.” I use the nickname that she got when Kiera couldn’t say her whole name and she just became Tori.

“I don’t know why you are still single.”

“Because I want to be,” I answer her honestly. “Besides, I haven’t found the right person yet.” She gets in and looks up at me.

“How do you think you’re going to find the right person when you keep dating the same old girl?” she asks me, reaching out her hand for the door handle but I close it before she touches it.

I walk around to the driver’s side as I spot my parents walking out of the house.

Hand in hand, my father rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip, no doubt having just had a make-out session with Evelyn.

I guess they are the reason I haven’t found my person.

I don’t just want a person to date. I want a person I can grow old with.

A person who walks into the room and all I can do is think about kissing her.

A person who will stand by my side through the good and the bad, not just when it’s convenient for them.

Like my last girlfriend, who didn’t understand why I couldn’t go out on the town while I was recovering from an injury that took me out of the game for three weeks.

The sound of the horn honking has me opening my driver’s side door.

“It’s freezing,” my sister hisses.

“You might be warmer if your dress covered your back,” I tell her and she snorts.

“If that isn’t you deflecting, I don’t know what is.”

“What am I deflecting?” I ask her as I start the car and she messes with the heat in the car, rubbing her hands together.

“That you keep going for the same girl over and over again.” I pull out of the driveway.

“I do not.” I focus on the road.

“You so do.” She laughs. “It’s those artificial girls who are all ‘my boyfriend plays for the NHL.’” She makes a fake voice.

“You have not had a girlfriend for longer than six months. And the reason for that is because you know it’s safe since you don’t actually want anything serious with them.

It’s called sowing your oats, Mom says.”

“I was with Tiffany for almost a year,” I remind her of the girlfriend I just broke up with.

“And you broke up with her because?” She taps her finger on the door handle. “Shall we discuss all the reasons that you broke up with her?” She tilts her head to the side, waiting for me to answer.

I don’t bother answering her because she is kind of right.

Tiffany was a party girl, even though she was two years older than me.

She was the “it girl” because I was burning up the standings.

She would always want to go out and celebrate, even though we were a couple months into the season, and anything could happen.

It got to the point where we just had different ideas on what our future looked like so we, or better yet I, decided we should maybe stop wasting each other’s time.

I pull up to the hotel and head straight to the valet, getting out at the same time Tori’s door is pulled open. “Keys are in the cupholder,” I tell the guy who gives me a white valet tab.

“Okay, big brother,” Tori urges, “how about you let loose”—she throws her hands up in the air—“have a drink. Have two drinks. Bring out the vacation Jaxon who is funny and witty. Unlike this Jaxon who plays hockey and is all serious and focused, if only for tonight, yeah?”

I chuckle as she wraps her hand around my bicep. “Yeah, only for tonight.” I make fun of her words. I never thought that this would be the night that my life was going to change.