Comeback (22 page)

I shivered as we got out of the car. I headed for the garage door and hurried inside. When we reached the kitchen, Nicky put an arm around my waist.

He pulled me back against him, his lips nuzzling the top of my ear. “I had fun today.”

“I did, too.” I laughed. I had to. His lips were tickling my skin and we were creating a puddle all over the floor that we’d have to clean up later. Everything about the entire situation was absurd. “We’re making a huge mess,” I added, trying to pull away. Only halfheartedly, though, because having my backside pressed up against his body felt ridiculously good, despite the wet clothes between us.

Nicky only held me tighter. “It’s just water. It won’t hurt anything. I love it when you laugh.”

“Laughter is good for you.”

“You’re good for me.” His teeth grazed my lobe for a second. Then he dipped his head lower and kissed the side of my neck.

I gasped, the heat of his mouth coming as a shock next to the freezing damp of my skin.

“We should get out of these wet clothes,” he murmured. “I need to get you warmed up. Be sure you don’t catch a cold.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say,” I said through giggles. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d giggled. These days, I tended to think myself above them, but he brought something out in me, something long repressed. He made me giggle, and more than that, he made me glad of it.

“Funny, is it?” But he was laughing, too. Then he turned more serious. “I could help you out of them.” One of his hands moved to the zipper of my coat, easing it down as the other hand eased inside to cup my breast.

My nipples were already hardened nubs, overly sensitive because of the wet clothes plastered to them, but when his palm pressed down on me and he squeezed, a squeal came out of me. It was hopelessly loud, so I couldn’t help but be thankful the kids weren’t in the house.

Through my shirt and bra, he gently pinched my nipple between his thumb and a finger, rolling it until my hips were likewise rolling back to meet him. “I could do a lot more than help you out of your clothes.”

This was absolute insanity. We were both grown-ups, there were children living in this house, we had spent the morning running around in the rain, and now we were about to have sex in the kitchen in the middle of the afternoon? Grown-ups didn’t do things like that, did they?

“It’s the middle of the day,” I said, trying to remember how to breathe.

“And we have nothing we have to do the whole day.”

“But the kids—”

“They’re with Soupy and Rachel. They’re fine. And Soupy promised he would call before he brought them home. We’ll have plenty of notice.”

“But we can’t.”

“We can.” He kissed me in the same spot he’d bit me before, and I wished he was using his teeth again.

No. I couldn’t think like that. I couldn’t be doing this.

“I…” I was quickly running out of excuses, and I had already forgotten why I needed an excuse to begin with.

Nicky undid a button on my shirt, and then another. He slipped his hand beneath my bra, his warmth covering me. Filling me. A pleasant heat spread from every point of contact and raced through my veins until I couldn’t imagine how I’d been cold only a few moments before.

“Come to bed with me,” he said. “Let me warm you up.”

“You already have,” I said with a husky laugh.

He chuckled, his lips caressing the skin of my neck. “I can do better.”

I had no doubt about that. I angled my head back so I could kiss him.

“Is that a yes?” he asked, not breaking the kiss.

I nipped his lower lip. “Yes.”

In no time, he had me up in his arms and was carrying me through the house to his room. He didn’t stop there, though, taking me into the bathroom before setting me on my feet and stripping the clothes from my body, kissing and touching me all over so I couldn’t possibly get cold.

I reached for him, trying to help him take off his clothes, but he picked me up, set me on the edge of the bathroom counter, and dropped down between my legs.

He placed a kiss on the inside of my thigh, near my sex. Then I didn’t bother thinking anymore.

THE BOYS GOT
back from the road trip late Monday night. They’d won the final game against the Flyers by a wide margin, 7-2, so they came home on a high. For whatever reason, they decided to follow up that high by all coming to Emma’s memorial service the next afternoon, something that was about as much of a downer as I could imagine.

It wasn’t just the guys on the team who came to the service. The training staff, the team doctors, the equipment managers, the facility crew, and pretty much everyone from the front office was there. Even Jackson Engels, the team owner, made an appearance. In my time with the Storm, we typically only saw Mr. Engels once a year when he came to town for the Christmas party. This year’s party wasn’t scheduled until Saturday, still almost a week away, so I was completely shocked to see him at the funeral home. He stopped in front of me, shook my hand, and said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Anderson.”

“Ericsson,” his wife said, elbowing him in the ribs and giving me an empathetic smile.

“Ericsson,” he repeated after her.

I couldn’t say anything. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know my name. He was
here
. I was so overwhelmed by the outpouring of support that any attempt to speak would only end up with me crying.

Jessica handled that for me, though, holding out a hand for him and saying, “Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Engels, Mrs. Engels. Nicky and the children really appreciate it.”

They mumbled a few things I couldn’t hear over the din in the room and walked away, and the sea of well-wishers kept coming.

I held on to Jessica’s hand as if it were a lifeline.

Dr. Larry Mitchell, the team’s head physician, stopped in front of me and gave me an assessing look, checking my eyes and other things as though he were giving me a medical exam. “You getting by okay?” Doc asked quietly.

He’d come over to the house to see me in the days after Emma had passed.

He’d told me that usually, when a guy has a death in the family, he would prescribe sleeping pills to help the player get through the first little while after the loss. I knew that well enough; he’d done that very thing for me when my father had passed. I’d managed to get a few other doctors to prescribe them for me back then, as well. I’d already been addicted at that point, and the new prescriptions had just allowed me to go deeper into my issues.

This time, he’d told me I was going to have to get through it without the help of a pill—something I already knew, but I was glad for confirmation that he was on the same page. I hadn’t been sleeping, though. Not much. Every night, I’d been lying in bed, holding Jessica and talking to her until she fell asleep in my arms. Then I would keep lying there with my mind racing. Eventually, I would pass out, but it was a restless sleep and it never lasted long. At some point, I was going to sleep just because I couldn’t stay awake any longer. Or at least that was what I kept telling myself. I hoped I was right.

I nodded. “Doing well enough,” I told him, my voice cracking over the words. As well as I could without pills.

He grimaced and patted a hand on my upper arm, clearly not buying what I was selling. But what else could he do, short of giving me a prescription that would cause more problems than it solved? Then he moved on, and the next mourner came along, and I forced myself to shake hands and give hugs and nod thanks while Jessica spoke for me.

The guys all headed over to Burnzie’s house after the service was over since he owned the most enormous house known to man, one that was big enough for the whole team and all their families to fit comfortably for a get-together. It was built into the side of the river, so it was three times as big on the inside as it looked from out front. There were two main levels that could be seen from the street, but then there was a massive lower level beneath, built into the cliff, in the back. He used to have big parties here. He still did sometimes, but they were different now. Not wild and crazy like they used to be. They tended to be family friendly these days.

This wasn’t a party, per se, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I didn’t really want to go anyway. I wanted to be by myself for a little while. Other than Saturday, when Jessica and I had gone to the Japanese Gardens, I’d been constantly encircled: the guys’ wives and kids, Jim, our former coach Scotty Thomas, several of the people from the Storm’s front offices, Henrik, a sea of people from the coroner’s office and a lawyer’s office and the funeral home and someone dealing with probate. All of them, and so many others, had been surrounding me constantly. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Jessica had her hand on my elbow, trying to herd me and the kids out to the minivan so we could follow the rest of the team to Burnzie’s mansion.

“I can’t,” I said, just to her.

She slowed down, letting the kids race ahead of us. They were excited about going to Burnzie’s place. Apparently, Tuck and Maddie had told them all sorts of stories about the game room and Burnzie’s dogs, and they couldn’t wait to get over there and just be kids. I couldn’t do that, though. I couldn’t just go down to the game room and play and ignore everyone else around me. I couldn’t zone out. If I went, the guys were going to try to get me to talk, and they were all going to stop by and tell me they were sorry for my loss again and try to make me feel better, and it was only going to make me feel worse.

“Just for a little while,” Jessica said quietly. “We don’t have to stay long. They’ll understand when you want to leave. But they want to show you they’re here for you right now, Nicky. They want to show you that they love you. Let them, just for a bit. Besides, it’ll be good for Elin.”

She had a point about Elin. When my niece was with Maddie, she forgot about trying to be a grown-up. She allowed herself to play, to be a kid, to stop looking after me and her brothers so much. When Maddie wasn’t around, though, Elin went back to being a little mama and trying to take care of everyone else.

I wanted Elin to have the freedom to remain a child, at least a little while longer, so I gave in. “All right. Just for a bit.”

Tuck and Maddie met us at the door, and the kids immediately took off for the game room on one of the lower levels of Burnzie’s enormous house. Meanwhile, Julianne d’Aragon, Danger’s wife, snagged Jessica and pulled her in the direction of the kitchen. She gave me an encouraging look over her shoulder as she went. Based on the feminine laughter coming from that wing of the house, I was fairly certain that was where most of the wives and girlfriends were gathered.

Babs poked his head around the corner of the entry hall and saw me before I could find some empty room to hide in. “Come on,” he said, angling his head toward the room he’d just come out of. “It’s quiet in here. Just me and Levi right now.”

Apparently, I wasn’t going to be able to escape everyone. The lure of a quiet room was strong, though, and if Babs and 501 could offer me that, I would be an idiot not to take them up on it. I went with him, flopping down on a leather sofa and wishing I were anywhere else. It didn’t take long before I was starting to go crazy.

It was just Babs and 501 in there at first, like Babs had said, but soon Ghost and Spence came in, as well. The four of them started telling me about a prank the guys had apparently played on 501 in Philly. Someone had filled a cup of water and had hidden it in his shin pads before morning skate. When he’d pulled them down from over his stall, he’d dumped water all over himself. Even now, they were all laughing and giving him a hard time about it. Under normal circumstances, I would have been involved. I definitely wanted to know about things when I wasn’t involved, at least usually. Today, though, I couldn’t get into the telling. A little bit later, Colesy and RJ joined us and I couldn’t take it anymore. I excused myself and tried to find somewhere else I could go, somewhere quiet.

Danger and Q saw me almost as soon as I left the room. They pulled me into the den with them before I could protest, sitting me down and trying to draw me into their conversation. I couldn’t focus. I had no idea what they were talking about, merely nodding here and there to keep them appeased. I stayed as long as I could take it, but that wasn’t long. Jens and Jonny dropped in and I dropped out.

It became a pattern. I moved from one room to another, trying to find some solitude, and three or four of the boys would follow me and try to strike up a conversation, attempting to draw me out of the shell that I wanted to disappear into.

I didn’t want to talk. I wanted peace and quiet, and some time to myself to figure out how I felt about anything, but I was being smothered, like I was suffocating. And I was shaking. The same kind of shakes I’d get when I needed a pill. I couldn’t have a pill, though. I couldn’t take anything, and I couldn’t have a drink. I was going to have to get through today with nothing but me, myself, and I. This wasn’t going to end well.

After about four attempts at getting away from the guys, I went down to the game room where the kids were all hanging out, but that wasn’t really any better. Maddie and Elin had their heads together in a corner of the room and were playing some game for two, and Tuck had Hugo and Nils parked in front of a big-screen TV playing Minecraft. They were all oblivious to me, shouting and laughing as kids tended to do, but it wasn’t the kind of solitude I’d been seeking. Not only that but I’d barely gotten comfortable in a recliner before I realized Soupy, Zee, Hunter, and Burnzie were coming down the stairs behind me. I just couldn’t take it. I wanted to punch something. Or someone. And if they wouldn’t leave me alone, I was afraid I was going to do that. Or maybe I was going to start hunting for some pills. Either way, it wouldn’t be good.