Jase (10 page)

Shaking her head, she stood from the side of the bed and looked at the scrap of paper again then carefully folded it, tucking it away for safekeeping, wishing she could do the same thing with her heart.

“Goddamn lucky charm!” Jase shouted, sitting on top of Daniel on their hometown locker room floor, pushing handfuls of cereal into his mouth. They had
won
the series, won the cup—the Mallets were champions, and he was celebrating the only way he knew how, over the top.

After they
won
the game in Fort Wayne and returned to Chicago, his first stop had been the hotel suite. He found DeeDee had already checked out and the key he had
kept
no longer worked. He remained standing in the hotel hallway for a long time, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. When he left only twenty hours
before,
he would have put money down they had connected in a very real way, but then she disappeared. She was just gone.

He made the rounds, looking everywhere for her, but the staff and regulars at Jackson’s claimed not to know if she was still in town or had left to go home. There hadn’t been much time to focus on how she
bugged
out; the team had been busy with promotional shit about the win that had brought the championship one game closer. With the series standing at three to two in their favor, all the local TV and radio stations wanted a chance to interview members of the team.

Even with splitting up the obligations, each of the
principal
players had wound up doing three or four interviews a day in the short interval before game six, the one they had just won. There hadn’t been time to breathe, much less pursue a woman who had proven herself damn good at avoiding him.

His view of the world tilted and shifted, and he realized Daniel had taken advantage of his moment of inattention and flipped him, and was now holding him down while Gary approached, cardboard box in hand. Jase happily opened his mouth, chowing down on the symbolic winnings with a broad grin. After a couple of minutes, they were all three out of breath and exhausted, slumping in laughter. It had been a hard-won game and series, and all the players showed it.

Dragging himself off the floor, he sat on the bench in front of the lockers, phone in hand, thumbing through the well wishes of friends and family, some with attached pictures of his game-winning goal.
Those made him smile, and he saved them to look through later. Flipping through the last few messages, he was about to put the phone down, when a new one came in from a number he didn’t recognize.
Congratz on the win, Jase! So proud of you. ~DD

He read the text and was about to delete it when he received a media file from the same number. It was a picture of him right after a goal tonight, his stick raised high over his head in celebration. However, what captured his attention wasn’t his own image; he focused on the reflection in the glass showing the photographer who had masses of dark red hair and a petite face, the figure wearing a jersey with his number on the sleeve.
She was in the arena tonight
.

He fired off a response,
Holy cow, woman. You’re here? At the game? Where are you?

Nervously waiting for a reply, he stripped off his jersey and pants, tossing them into the locker behind him. Nothing yet from her, so he jumped in the shower and was finished in record time, picking up the phone and checking, but still nothing. He sent a second text,
I’d like those
gratz
in person. Tell me where you are.

Dressing in the suit he wore to the game, he sat again, waiting. Waving off invitations to after-parties, he was still sitting and holding his phone when Daniel walked
into
the locker room, followed by Mason. He jumped up, stepping in front of the biker. They were about the same height, but Mason always managed to make him feel as if he were looking up at the man. “Hey,” he said and then paused; he didn’t seem to know where to go from there.

Mason looked at him and sighed. “Hey what?”

“Do you know where DeeDee is staying?” He was crazy nervous asking this question.
Mason doesn’t care who she sees, does he? Isn’t like he’s her big brother or anything, right?
He waited for a response and got an eyebrow quirk. Reading that as needing clarification, he rephrased. “Do you know where DeeDee is staying? Is she staying overnight here in Chicago? Or is she going back to the Fort right away?”

Mason dropped his chin. “Didn’t know she was in town. No idea where she’s staying, if she’s staying, or if she was even here.”

“
Oh,
she was here, she was. She sent me a picture.” Mason’s eyebrow
quirked
again and Jase handed over his phone, pointing. “See? Not the picture,
that’s me. Of course it is
; you can see that. But
lookie
at the reflection in the glass. That’s DeeDee. Right there, see that?”

Nodding, Mason pulled his phone out and compared the numbers. “It kinda looks like her in the picture, but
wrong
number. That’s not DeeDee’s phone, man. Sorry.”

“But that’s her reflection.” He didn’t even know why he was arguing. The man had already stepped around him, slapping his back on the way and telling him it was a good game. He
was disagreeing
with the air now. His joy at their win tempered with disappointment, he slowly slipped on his shoes, tying the thin laces with fumbling fingers.

Looking around the locker room, he realized he was the last team member to leave. Watching as the equipment managers slowly gathered up the worn and discarded jerseys, pads, and various pieces of equipment, he decided to get out of their way. Nothing to wait around for, she evidently wasn’t going to respond to his texts. “Need to just chuck it in the fuck it bucket and move on,” he said to one of the men, slapping him on the back and striding through the door.

Most of the players were at Jackson’s, where they sat watching the highlights repeatedly play on the TV. He got some good ice time this year, averaging nearly thirty minutes per game, and skated more than fourteen hundred shifts in the forty-eight games played. Thirty-two goals, twenty-seven assists for a
nice
total of fifty-nine points. Regular season. He hadn’t tallied up the playoff information yet.

Proudly, he thought to himself,
Those are damn good stats, no matter at what professional level you play.
He looked up, draining his beer as the screen filled with a video of him lifting his stick over his head, a
broad
smile on his face. Frustrated, he realized the angle was
just
wrong, he couldn’t see the section from where the photo had been taken, couldn’t see if she had actually been at the game.

Looking around the bar, he saw Slate standing across the room, doing his usual vulture thing, just waiting around for trouble to start so he could break it up. He got another beer from Merry, the bartender, and walked over to lean against the wall next to Slate.
Receiving a silent chin lift in greeting, they stood there quietly for several minutes until Slate moved, standing up to his full height to stare down a couple of fans who had been baiting a player.

Drama over, settling back against the wall, Slate cut his eyes towards Jase. “I don’t know where she is, man. Mason already asked.”

“Well hell,” he snarled, banging the back of his head against the wall, suddenly angry. “First, she wasn’t here when I got back from Fort Wayne, and now she’s in town, but just wants to tease me with a picture. Bet she’s having a hell of a laugh right about now.” He shut himself up by drinking deeply from the bottle, and then let his hand drop back next to his side.

Slate moved slightly, the leather of his vest creaking and sliding against the wall. “She’s tender yet, man. I don’t think you ever had a chance to meet Winger, but he was a hell of a good
person
. Good brother, a
good
member, and he seemed to be a good husband. Losing her old man and her daughter all at once like that…it’s going to leave places that are hard to heal. The way she was at the party, she’s interested. A woman doesn’t act like that without being interested. You want my advice, I’m happy to give it, but a lot of things depend on what you’re looking for.”

“What I’m looking for?” he scoffed. “Hell, I’m not looking for anything. But, I want to get to know her better. Every time I’ve seen her, she blows me away with her wit, her intelligence, her attitude—everything about her is amazing. She’s all that, man. I want to know her inside and out, figure out what makes her tick.” That should satisfy him without pulling a kiss-and-tell rendition of their night together.

“Didja fuck her?” Slate’s question caught him off guard and he laughed nervously. “
Fuck me
. Never mind, I can tell from your face.
As
I said, man, she’s tender. You try to push or pull her, she’s gonna spook and run. Did you say something to shut her down?”

“No,” he said softly. “I left for Fort Wayne with
full
expectation that she’d be waiting for me that night.”

“Then be patient. If she’s interested, she’ll reach out. Like she did tonight, letting you know she kept your number. She’s
smart
like you said. She’ll find you if she wants to.” Slate straightened, walking quickly across to a table and grabbing a man by the collar. He shook the man back and forth, speaking to him with a raised voice and roughly
slinging
him back down into the chair.

From where he stood, Jase could see it was another biker, but wasn’t a Rebel. The other two men at the table wore similar patches, and he watched as they slipped their hands behind their backs, faces
tense
with potential violence. The
man Slate had been manhandling
had a pistol shoved into the back waistband of his pants, and Jase could only assume the other two men were likewise armed. He took a half step away from the wall and Slate immediately brought his eyes up, giving him a small head shake, effectively waving him off.

Jase settled back against the
wall,
but intently watched the remaining interaction between the men. There was more talking, and then Slate reached out and slapped the back of the man’s head, making everyone around the table laugh. He made his way back over to where Jase stood and resumed his posture of attentive waiting.

As if nothing had happened, he continued their conversation. “You’ll just have to be patient, man. She’s one of those women who would be worth it. She was a good old lady, respected her old man, respected the club, and she is respected by the club in her own right.”

Changing the subject, Slate looked over at him with a grin. “I had the fucker handled, but thanks for the backup, man. Hey, be here next Friday. I’ve got a three-fifty rice-burner lined up for you to ride and wreck around the parking lot. Go buy your gear: helmet, jacket, pants, boots, and gloves. Be ready, man.
Birdy’ll
get you trained up, and then by the time Road’s
willing
to drop the hammer on the sale, you’ll be
prepared
to ride.”

Jase nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, I’m ready. You
betcha
. I’ll be here with bells on.”

***

For the next few
days,
there was a cyclone of media events for the whole team to attend, but within a couple of
weeks,
things had eased off to what Jase termed offseason
normal
. He quickly settled down into a predictable routine. He hit the gym every day, met teammates at Jackson’s for beers and
conversation
, and video-chatted with his nephews in Canada at least once a week.

Birdy had proven a hard taskmaster, but more patient than Jase had anticipated.
He went over things Jase hadn’t expected to learn, explaining how to jumpstart a bike and what to look for when it wouldn’t start. An example was showing Jase how to open the petcock to drain water from the fuel lines. That, along with a hundred other small details that were cool to hear about and try to absorb, but he was afraid he could never remember half of them.

When it came time to actually learn to ride the bike, he took Jase to an empty section of the parking lot at Jackson’s. Setting up a series of barrels and cones, Birdy called out maneuvers and speeds Jase could barely hear over the pipes, and seemed to change his mind on a whim about the direction and gear Jase should have the bike in.

He offered the biker a drink after each practice session, with no success. Jase had finally counted it a win when after the third time he received a casual hand flip, instead of a gruff, “Fuck you,” as the man walked away.
One day while
at Jackson’s,
he asked Slate what the story was on Birdy, but received a non-committal
response
and decided against pursuing it, suspecting it fell under the club business umbrella.

After four brutal practice sessions on the smaller bike, the pair of men deemed him road worthy, and he borrowed an old bike of Mason’s to ride around town. Bear being out of town had held up the completion of Road Runner’s new bike, but he would be ready to sell it within a couple more weeks, and Jase was determined to be
prepared
.

He hadn’t mentioned DeeDee to any of the men again, and none of them broached the topic, which he took to mean she simply wasn’t interested.
Oh, well,
he thought, shaking his head, striving for nonchalant.
Ya
win
some;
ya
lose some
. He didn’t like the way it stung, and he laughed at himself for having such an ego he couldn’t take one woman’s rejection.
Situation normal
, he thought and frowned.

His days were generally solitary, typically starting early with a run, and then the gym. He headed home to cook lunch, and played video games for most of the evening.
Daniel
frequently called
to check up on him, as he did with all the players he was planning on keeping on next season’s roster. He liked to stay in touch and make sure nothing was going wrong in the offseason.