Somehow Remi had the feeling that this conversation was not going to go well no matter what she said. She wished Jasmine would see that her relationship with Ethan wasn’t healthy, but she seemed blind to it and only got defensive if anyone tried to point that out to her.
The doorbell rang, interrupting her gloomy thoughts. She frowned.
Jasmine sat up straight and put her feet on the floor. “That must be Ethan.”
Remi rose and looked at her. “Do you want to see him?”
“Yes. No.” Jasmine scrubbed at her cheeks and smoothed her ponytail as Remi went to the door. “I don’t know.”
Jason walked up to the house, the front window glowing golden through the drawn curtains. In the quiet dark neighborhood, it seemed like a beacon—inviting, homey, welcoming.
He stood on the porch beneath the light and paused.
What was he doing here?
After the game, the guys were going out and had invited him along. For some reason, going somewhere like Rouge or another hot club with groupies and puck bunnies appealed to him as much as a puck in the eye.
The game had sucked. He’d played like crap, couldn’t get anything going and only their goaltender had saved them from getting their asses really kicked.
The face of one person kept floating into his head—Remi. He wanted to see her. He wanted to tell her he could play better than that. He wanted to know what she’d thought of the game. So here he was, like an idiot, standing on her doorstep afraid to ring the bell.
He pushed the doorbell.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his long coat, still dressed in suit and tie. He hadn’t gone home; after the coach had reamed their asses for how they’d played, he’d gotten in his Jeep and driven straight here.
He heard the deadbolt click and the door slowly opened.
He smiled at Remi standing there, but her eyes went immediately to his left temple. Oh yeah. He lifted a hand to touch the butterfly tape.
“Hi,” he said.
“You’re not Ethan.”
“Uh…no. No, I’m not.” Ethan? Who the hell was Ethan? “Did I come at a bad time?” He was ready to turn and leave.
“Ethan…” A young girl with puffy red eyes and a pink nose appeared in the French doors to the living room. “Oh.” Her face fell.
Jason looked from Remi to the young girl behind her, looking so much like Remi, but obviously distressed about something. “Hi,” he said. “You must be Jasmine.”
She frowned. “Yes. Who are you?”
He grinned and stepped forward into the foyer, hand outstretched. “Jase Heller. Nice to meet you.”
She shook his hand, sending a confused glance toward her sister.
“Sorry, Jasmine, it’s not Ethan,” Remi said softly. She closed the door.
“I see that.” Her eyes filled with tears and Jason looked at Remi. She gave him a strained smile.
“Come in,” Remi invited, leading the way into the living room. She picked up the remote and turned off the television.
“I was watching that,” Jasmine protested.
“No, you weren’t,” Remi said. “You were crying about Ethan. Maybe you could uh…go to bed?”
Jasmine frowned, looked back and forth between the two of them, then turned with a dramatic sigh and disappeared down the hall.
“She’s still here?”
“Yes.” She blew out a breath. “But it sounds like she’s moving back in with Ethan.” She shook her head.
Should he even take his coat off? “I guess I did come at a bad time.”
“Oh, no! It’s fine. I just got home, actually. Delise and I went out for dinner after the game.”
“How did you enjoy it?”
She stared at him wordlessly.
“Well?”
“It was awful!” she burst out.
“Yeah, we played like crap.”
“No, I mean…my god, Jason, that is a brutal sport! Look at you!” She bit her lip and eyed his forehead again.
Disappointment filtered down through his body. Here he’d been thinking she’d be all impressed. Instead, she was horrified. Great.
She was a teacher, he reminded himself. He’d gotten past that fact enough to ask her out for dinner the other night after getting to know her and how she treated the kids in her class, but still…she was intelligent, educated. She probably thought hockey was a bunch of goons beating each other up, chasing a stupid little puck around the ice. It was true—he played a game for a living. How could he ever hope to impress her with that?
“I’m fine. It’s just a little cut.”
“You were bleeding.”
“Yup. That happens when I get cut.” He grinned again, holding his arms out at his sides. “I’m tough. But if you want to kiss it and make it better, that would probably help.”
She didn’t move. “I was going to call you,” she said, voice a bit choppy. “To see if you were okay.”
“Well, then it’s good I came over to show you I’m fine.” He still stood there in his coat. “But I can go…”
She rubbed her forehead, her distress diminishing as she took in that he was okay. “No. It’s fine. Here. Let me take your coat.”
He smiled as he shrugged out of it, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder from the hard check he’d taken from Sanders in the third. Probably not good if she knew about that additional minor injury. She disappeared to hang his coat up, then came back, rubbing her palms over her jeans. “Would you like a drink? Beer?”
“Um. Sure, a beer would be nice.” He followed her to the kitchen. “Some of the guys were going out after, but I…didn’t feel like it.”
“Because you lost?”
“Well. Yeah.” He was bummed about that for sure. “We haven’t done as well as we should have this season and playoffs are almost here. If we don’t win our next few games, we might not make the playoffs.”
Drowning his sorrows at a rocking club like Rouge again would probably have been a better way to take his mind off the shitty game he’d just played than sitting here in Remi’s house. But this was the place he wanted to be.
“Oh.” She handed him a beer and kept one for herself. “I guess that’s bad.”
“Hell, yeah.” He sighed as they walked back to the living room and took a seat, side by side. She curled one leg under her. Damn, she looked good in jeans. He wished he could have seen her at the game. “That’s bad. That’s what it’s all about. Making the playoffs. The Stanley Cup.”
She nodded, eyes soft and warm. “Want to talk about it?”
He did. So he talked. And she listened. She was a great listener and seemed to get his drive, that dark need inside him to fight to the end for the win. Not literally fight. Well, sometimes he did, but it was more a powerful need to battle through and come out on top. Some of her questions amused him, but it felt good to talk about how crappy he felt, how he was letting the team down, how the team was letting down the coach and the owners and the fans—especially the fans.
“So if you win your next three games, you’re in?”
“Only if New York loses.” He grimaced. “That’s how close it is. Dammit. We should have been way ahead at this stage of the season. Ah, well.”
“You put a lot of pressure on yourself, don’t you.”
He considered that. “Yeah. I guess.”
“But you aren’t responsible for the whole team.”
“I’m a part of the team. We’re all responsible for how the team does.”
“And you hate it when you don’t play well.”
“Of course I hate it!” He shook his head, the image of his high school English teacher Mrs. Wong flashing into his head, the damning message she’d beaten into him through that junior year. “I have to be good.”
She nodded and he wanted to tell her more, but the stuff backing up in his brain was some kind of stinging shit and talking about it wasn’t easy. Which was why he didn’t. Ever.