Dropping Gloves Read online

  Because I’d told Katie I couldn’t be in her life anymore.

  Because loving her hurt too much.

  And all this did was make everything else hurt worse.

  “I’ll keep you informed,” Webs said. “Once the tests come back. Once we know.”

  “Okay,” I forced through clenched teeth, but what I wanted to say was no. I wished he hadn’t told me. Not any of it. If I didn’t know Katie’s cancer had returned, then I would have been able to go on nursing my broken heart. Maybe one day it would have healed enough that I could have moved on.

  But right now, all I could think about was going back. Back in time. Back to Portland. Back to Katie.

  “She’s going to be all right.” His voice cracked over the words, the crunching giving way to emotion like water bursting through a dam. “Right? She’s beat it before, so she—” He couldn’t go on, but there was no need to.

  I was torn between the desire to punch something until my knuckles bled and the feeling that I should try to comfort him.

  Webs didn’t exactly give me the chance to figure it out, either. He muttered, “Fuck,” and closed the distance between us, tugging me in for a bear hug. He was just as strong as he’d been back when he was still one of my teammates. His arms were like a vise around me. There was no escape.

  Out of instinct, I put my arms around him and patted his back.

  That was when Burnzie and Ghost ambled into the hall, busting a gut laughing about something. Webs released me almost immediately, but I knew my face would give away my embarrassment at being caught like that. I had always blushed way too fucking easily, which only embarrassed me more than I already was. Pissed me off. Blushing was something that people normally associated with teenaged girls, like the ones who were always following me and Levi around and gushing over how cute we were. I was a twenty-four-year-old man, for Christ’s sake, and I still blushed as bad as I ever had.

  “Shit,” Ghost said. “Sorry, we, uh…”

  “We were just heading the other way,” Burnzie said, physically turning Ghost around and dragging him back toward the hotel lobby.

  “What—” Ghost started.

  “None of our fucking business is what,” Burnzie muttered right before they turned the corner.

  “Sorry,” Webs said, clearing his throat once they’d disappeared.

  “Don’t be,” I said out of habit.

  He sniffled, and his facial muscles twitched as he tried to get himself back under control. “You should head up,” he said. “Try to sleep.”

  “Yeah.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, wishing I had a rock to kick around with my toes. “You should, too. Sleep,” I clarified.

  He gave me a wry half smile. “Not a lot of chance that’s going to happen.”

  Not for me, either, but if anyone understood that, it was Webs. I nodded and shuffled off down the hall. Instead of turning for the elevator bay, I followed the signs to the hotel’s gym, stripping off my jacket and tie and rolling up my sleeves as I went.

  There wasn’t a punching bag, which was what I really wanted now that I was here, but maybe that was for the best. Bruising my hands probably wouldn’t be my best move at the moment. Regardless of what was going on with Katie, I still had hockey to play and a team to lead. In the end, I got on a bike and tried to wear myself out to the point that I couldn’t think. Letting myself think only led me back to Katie. Should I call her or try to talk to her? The idea of taking back everything I’d said to her about no longer being her friend was weighing on me, and I was afraid I might end up doing just that. And then where would it leave me? She was still going to leave. She’d beat cancer again, and she would go back to Hollywood and date some asswipe who could never deserve her, and I would be left here to nurse my broken heart once more. That was the only sort of leaving I could let myself contemplate; the other possibilities threatened to rip my heart out just by allowing them to flit across the corners of my mind.

  I cycled harder in an effort to rid my mind of any thought of her. I don’t know how long I was on that stupid stationary bike. Long enough that I had sweated through my clothes and would have to send them off for cleaning. Long enough that my muscles were screaming for relief. Long enough that I should have stopped thinking about anything but getting off the fucking thing, taking a shower, and going to bed, but I could still think of nothing but Katie. At some point, the gym door opened, and Levi, Burnzie, Ghost, Coop, and half a dozen of our other teammates came in. They should have all been in bed. I should have, too, but that was beside the point.

  Levi picked up my tie and jacket from the floor, where I’d tossed them before getting on the bike. “Come on,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Go up to bed.”

  Ghost grabbed the handle of my carry-on bag, ready to haul it off. “Not until you come, too,” he said.

  “Why the hell are you guys even down here?” It had to be four or five in the morning by now, and we had a mandatory meeting and film session scheduled for after breakfast. That was going to be here far earlier than I would want to be up.

  Burnzie came over behind me and gave me a cuff on the backside of my head, something he’d been doing since my rookie season. “Because you are, you dumb fuck, why do you think? Ghost and I got Webs to tell us what was going on when he came through the lobby. We were still debating how long we should let you sulk when Coop came wandering around like a lost puppy and said you still hadn’t picked up your room key or headed up. That was when we all got together and decided to figure out where you were.”

  “Well, you found me,” I bit off, wishing I had bothered to grab a towel. Sweat dripped down my forehead and got in my eyes, stinging. “Mystery solved. Fuck off.”

  I sounded like an ass, and I knew it. I was reacting like a damn toddler, minus the kicking and screaming. It was definitely a toddler-worthy temper tantrum I was throwing, at the very least. My teammates didn’t deserve that kind of treatment, but I didn’t know how to stop myself when everything inside me was twisting into knots. I couldn’t very well kick and scream at the universe and expect it to do any good.

  Jonny frowned at me, his arms crossed and his feet planted like two tree trunks making roots in the floor. “You boys go on up,” he said quietly. “I’ll stay with him.”

  “Yeah,” Burnzie said, backing out of the gym while the other guys followed, Ghost and Levi hauling my shit along with them. Burnzie caught Jonny’s eye and nudged his head in my direction. “Feel free to bust his face in for being a dick.”

  If there was anyone on the team who could—and would, considering I deserved it—it was Jonny. He grunted in response, which Burnzie and the boys seemed to accept as a suitable answer. They trickled out of the room.

  When the door closed behind them, Jonny crossed over and sat backward on the weight bench across from me. He ran a hand over his shaved head and stared at me. “So you can keep cycling if you want, or you can talk if you want. Whatever. I’m not leaving until you do, though, and Sara will tell you I get really cranky if I don’t get my beauty sleep.”

  “Beauty sleep, huh?” I couldn’t help but chuckle, and I raised a brow at the yellowish bruise around his eye and the fresh set of stitches on his cheek. I knew better than to think he would get up and go just because I told him to. I was pretty sure the only person I’d ever met who might come close to him on the stubborn scale was his wife, Sara.

  “It takes a lot of work to look this good.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. “Point is, I don’t think you need to be alone right now, and I don’t intend to let you be.”

  I mimicked his earlier grunt.

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I guess I’m going up to bed so I don’t have to sit here with you staring at me like that all night.”

  “I meant about Katie.”

  Hell if I knew.

  In order to keep my mind occupied while I was waiting on the results of my latest barrage of
tests, I had decided to go house hunting. Mom and Dad wanted me to just move back into their house, now that I didn’t have any good reason to go back to LA, and especially now that I did have a good reason to stick around in Portland. If I was going to have to go through cancer treatments again, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to do it under anyone but Dr. Oliver.

  That didn’t mean I wanted to live with my parents and have my mother hovering over me constantly until I was cancer-free again, though. It only made sense, she said, because I was already living here at least temporarily. I hadn’t forgotten what it was like, going through radiation and chemotherapy and all that jazz. I remembered everything about it, not the least of which was the emotional toll it had taken on my family. I needed at least some space of my own, some distance between us without completely going away, if I was going to get through it again without going completely berserk. I wanted to be able to hang out with my mom when I felt like crap but to not have her watching me so she could pick out every minuscule change I went through before I noticed it. There had to be some sort of balance there, and I intended to find it.

  I had more than enough money set aside that I could get a reasonable place of my own without it hurting my bank account, whether I was going to be working in the near future or not, so I didn’t see any reason to put it off. Chances were pretty high that I’d be starting some treatment plan or another pretty soon, and once that happened, I would have a lot less energy for things like house hunting.

  When I headed into the kitchen for breakfast, Dad was there eating a bowl of oatmeal and some fruit, but this time he didn’t have his iPad playing video. I’d been at my parents’ house at breakfast more than enough times since Dad had started coaching to know that he always watched game footage on his iPad over breakfast, but the tablet was nowhere to be seen.

  By the time he and the team had gotten in after their loss against the Stars last night, I had long since gone to bed. I’d still been awake, though. I’d heard him come in, his footsteps careful in the hall as he made his way to my bedroom and opened the door. Katie? he’d whispered. You awake? I hadn’t answered him, lying there with my eyes closed, hoping he would close the door and make his way to his own bed.

  He hadn’t done that. He’d crossed over to me and sat down on the edge of the bed, and he’d kissed the back of my head. I could tell he was crying. That was what I’d been trying to avoid, the reason I’d pretended to be asleep. I wasn’t ready for all this again—to have everyone hovering and crying all the time. That didn’t help me. It just made me feel as if I was the one responsible for everyone’s lack of emotional well-being. I had hoped he would wait until the light of day before starting, but my hopes were in vain.

  He’d stayed there for a few minutes, stroking my hair, and then he’d sniffled and shuffled out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Only after he was gone did I allow myself to break down in tears. I hated crying. I really fucking hated it, and I’d allowed it to go on so long that I ended up with a massive headache that kept me awake for hours after he’d left my room.

  And now, here he was, looking up at me with red-rimmed eyes over his breakfast, and it took everything in me not to break down again. We’d talked on the phone some in the last couple of days. He knew everything I knew at this point about my test results. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much. It was just enough to know there was something to worry about but not enough to know how worried we should be.

  “What time did you get in?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know. I just needed to talk. To keep myself from bawling again. I took down a mug and brewed a cup of coffee.

  “Late.” His voice was rough. “Your mom has a meeting with the women’s league this morning. You could go with her.”

  Mom had been getting involved with all sorts of clubs and groups ever since Dani had graduated from high school. She’d been a stay-at-home mother the whole time we were growing up, but now that we had lives of our own to lead, she’d been getting restless. She’d always been involved in things with whatever team Dad played for or coached for, of course, but apparently that was no longer enough to keep her appropriately busy.

  “I could,” I hedged. I’d already told Mom I didn’t want to go with her, but I hadn’t broached the real reason why I wasn’t going with either of them. “If I didn’t already have other plans.”

  He set his spoon down and met my eyes. “What other plans? More tests?”

  “Not today.” Hopefully not any time soon. They had stuck me more than enough over the last couple of days to last me for a while, thank you very much. “Actually, I have an appointment with a realtor.”

  “A realtor?”

  “Yes.” I took out a bowl and started fixing my own breakfast, copying his.

  “Here in Portland?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, I thought I’d fly to Timbuktu and go house hunting there. Yes, of course here in Portland.”

  “So you’re going to stay? You’re not planning to go back to Hollywood?”

  “Not in the near future, at least. Maybe someday.” Of course, if I was going to be able to return to Hollywood, I’d have to still be alive to do so. For some reason, airlines aren’t really fond of transporting dead people. And then there was the small matter of no longer having an agent or any real desire to live that lifestyle anymore. I wasn’t ready to close the door on that part of my life completely, but that didn’t mean I needed to walk through it any time soon. “Even when I’m working on a show, I still come back and spend quite a bit of time here. This is home. I might as well act like an adult and really make it home, right?”

  “Did you tell your mother?”

  I shook my head, biting my lip. Mom wouldn’t take it as well as Dad, so I’d been keeping it a secret, hoping maybe I could get him to break the news to her instead of me. I hated having to tell her things that she wouldn’t like. “Not yet.”

  “And this has nothing to do with you not wanting Mom to be up in your business all the time, right?” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Who’s your realtor?”

  At least he understood. “Sierra Firth,” I said, letting out a breath.

  Dad picked up his spoon and went back to his oatmeal with a nod. “She’s the one who helped us find this house.”

  “I know. I remember. I was fourteen, you know.” With my breakfast prepared, I took the stool next to his at the bar. I’d been a teenager when we’d moved to Portland. Dad had played in Toronto, New York, Carolina, St. Louis, Edmonton, and Detroit before signing on with the Storm, so we’d moved around a lot. That’s just how it is sometimes for a pro athlete. It had been rough on me as a kid. As soon as I’d grown comfortable somewhere and settled on who I wanted to have as my friends, we were on the move again. Portland had been the one place he’d really stuck. It was the only place I wanted to call home.

  He shoved the sugar dish in my direction so I wouldn’t have to reach for it. “Never thought you would have paid attention to things like that when there were boys to be ogled.”

  “They were at school, not in the empty houses we were looking at.”

  “So where are you going to look? I just saw a For Sale sign on a house around the corner. The one with the blue shutters.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at him. “Not around the corner.”

  “Too close to your mom?” He finished off his coffee and pushed the cup aside. “Yeah, too close to your mom. I get it. Not too far away, though, okay? She—we—need to hover at least some.”

  “I know.” That was going to be one of my biggest decisions—how close was too close, and how far was too far. “It’ll be in Portland. I don’t know where. Sierra said she had some ideas that she thought I’d like.”

  “Fair enough.” He reached in the fruit basket for a banana and started peeling it before passing it to me and taking out another for himself. “I told Babs.”

  I swallowed hard, blinking back tears. I’d told both Mom and Dad that I didn’t want Jamie to know. Jamie ha
d made it clear that he couldn’t be my friend anymore, and I had no intention of doing anything to hurt him worse than I already had. I wanted to give him a clean break. No contact. Nothing more than the knowledge that we both existed and were in the same city. I could give him that, couldn’t I? I owed him that much. “I didn’t want—”

  “I know you didn’t want him to know, but I thought he should, and I told him. You can be angry at me if you want. You can yell at me and curse me. Hit me, if you think it’ll help. But I told him, and I’m not sorry I did, so you’re just going to have to accept it.”

  It wasn’t me accepting it that I was worried about, though. It was Jamie.

  “Not only is it a great location for you while you’re undergoing treatments, but it’s right in the heart of things for when you’re healthy again,” Sierra said, opening the door to the backyard and stepping aside so I could go out before her.

  It might as well have been a private garden out there, with various trees, bushes, and flowering plants lining the fence, making it seem like a sanctuary. A swinging bench hung under one of the bigger trees on one side looking toward the mountain view over the tops of the greenery, and a pond was situated off to the side, with rocks and plants arranged around it so it looked as if it had always been there even though it surely must have been installed after the house was built.

  My parents lived in a classic Tudor-style house in Grant Park on the east side of Portland. I’d asked Sierra to show me houses on the other side of the river, claiming it was because I wanted to be close to all my doctors downtown. She’d already taken me to more than half a dozen houses today, mainly in Beaverton and Lake Oswego, because they were close enough to downtown for what I needed but with enough distance to still feel as if I had some privacy. She’d caught on pretty quickly that privacy, a place where I could just be away from it all, was a big factor for me.

  This house, though, was just outside of downtown in the Northwest District. It hadn’t been on the original list we’d discussed; she’d suggested it after we’d been out looking for a while, once she had a better sense of my likes and dislikes. I hadn’t seen any more than the front entry and the path through the house to the backyard, yet. It didn’t matter. Unless the place was completely gutted and would need a ton of work, I was pretty sure I wanted this house to be mine because of nothing more than the peace and solitude I would have in this backyard.