Chapter 13

Jon winced as he tried to stretch and found that he ached in places he had never ached even after game six against Phillie. He’d never slept on the couch before and he made a mental note not to do it again even as he buried his face in Edie’s soft fragrant hair. If he had to do two hours on the table with physio, it had been worth it to wake up with her warm body curled into his.

“Morning babe,” he whispered into her hair. She made a purring sound in response, backed her ass into him and pulled his arms tighter around her. He smiled and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck. “Well at least you’re not trying to take off,” he added, maybe a little too hopefully because she let out a long frustrated sounding groan.

“What time is it?” she asked, groggily, yawning and wriggling like she wanted to get free. Jon tightened his arms around her and refused to let her move. “Mmm Jon, you know I have to go,” she moaned, going very still, like she was mad at him for stopping her from going.

“No, I know you seem pretty determined to go but I know you don’t have to go,” he told her, his heart beginning to hammer in his chest in panic.

“I have a flight to catch,” she reminded him with a sigh, but at the same time she pressed her lips to the back of his arm.

“Flights can be cancelled or rebooked,” he told her quietly and she grumbled and even laughed.

“Yeah but work…that’s not so easily fixed,” she chuckled, rolling in his arms until she was facing him. She lay on her back and he leaned on his elbow and looked down at her. At least she wasn’t running but his pulse was still racing, knowing that she was planning to leave, no matter what arguments he came up with. It was a helpless feeling and he hated it.

“Okay, what do you do?” he asked and watched her roll her eyes and shake her head. “Humor me. Just tell me.” She sighed again but he could tell by the way her full mouth turned, just that little bit, that she was giving in, on this at least.

“I work for this marketing company that works with beverage companies, beer companies, that kind of thing,” she explained with an expression on her face that clearly said she didn’t expect him to understand.

“So that’s why you were meeting with the Wirtz’s,” he smiled, feeling proud of himself for getting the association right away. “So we talk to them. I’m sure they have contacts, and if that fails, you could probably be an ice girl.” He didn’t even duck when she reached up and gave him a playful slap on his upper arm.

“Yeah, you’d like that huh? Me shakin’ my groove thing out there for everyone to see,” she rolled those emerald green eyes of hers’ again and this time he laughed.

“Maybe not,” he told her quietly, dropping a soft kiss onto each eyelid. “I don’t want to share you, at all,” he added, pulling the blanket up over them both and cuddling beneath it, pulling her close. “C’mon, stay. We’ll figure everything out,” he promised her, partly because he believed it and partly because he was desperate to have her believe it too. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder and let out a moan.

“Stop it,” she whined. She was saying it but the way her hand was sliding up his back and her body was naturally relaxing against his, accommodating his, was telling him something else entirely.

“Why? Am I getting through to you, finally?” he whispered against her temple and felt more than heard her laugh.

“You know I like this,” she admitted, clinging to him. He wanted to relax, feeling like she was finally choosing him but until she said she was staying, he didn’t want to hope for too much. “But I just don’t feel like it’s real. I feel like…,” she laid back and met his gaze with tears in her eyes. “I feel like this is a perfect moment in time and if we try to make it into something else…than we’re probably just going to fuck it up.” Jon knew what it meant to not want something too much, but he’d won a gold medal and the Cup and he had learned to get over those feelings. He’d also figured out a long time ago that his friends who hadn’t had the same experiences, hadn’t grown up playing sports competitively had more trouble visualizing positive outcomes. He could already see it, her being here when he came home from practice, from games, but she was already spooked, so he didn’t tell her.

“I think you’re over thinking it,” he told her, brushing the back of his hand along her cheekbone.

“I am?” she laughed and leaned into his hand. “You’re planning out my job interviews and I can see what’s going on in that brain of yours,” she added, tapping his temple with her finger. “You’re already calling the moving van in your head, I can see it.” He didn’t want to lie because he had been imaging what his apartment would look like with girl stuff everywhere and what his mom would think of another woman’s touch around the place.

“It could be good,” he told her seriously and bent to touch his lips to hers’ but she pressed her fingers to his mouth and pushed back.

“I think you’re crazy and…and sexy and cute and so…so amazing and this is all doing my head in,” she told him honestly and then pulled him down for a long, soft kiss that stirred his blood at the same as it made his heart ache. She was going to leave. He was pretty sure she didn’t want to but he was also damn sure she was going to anyway. 

Edie pulled back when Jon didn’t kiss her back. She looked up into his teddy bear brown eyes and knew that she’d popped their little bubble. Gone was the playful, sexy expression in his eyes. It was replaced by something serious and something hurt.

“Don’t,” she plead quietly, reaching up to touch his cheek. “I have like three hours,” she added, glancing towards the glowing time on the PVR. “Can’t we just….” Jonathan shook his head, and pushed up and away from her.

“You should probably go,” he said coolly, grabbing his pants off of the floor and pulling them on. Edie pulled the throw up around her chest and sat up. She stared at him, fighting her first impulse to get up and run her fingers over his wide chest, to wrap her arms around his waist and hold him, erase the unhappy expression he was currently wearing but then, she knew, she would be being just as contrary to reality as he was.

“Jon…I’m just trying to be realistic. I mean this has been fucking amazing but…,” she bit her lip when his expression went from upset to pissed off, real anger flaring in his eyes.

“But what? I like you, you like me, but it’s just sex, is that it?” He wore an expression she’d seen him wear when Kevin Bieksa or one of the other Canuck D was pushing him around. He didn’t like it much and he wasn’t going to put up with it.

“I’m not a spontaneous kinda girl,” she tried to explain. “This is probably the most impulsive I’ve ever been. I just don’t think we should push our luck.” If it was humanly possible, Edie expected to see steam come out of his ears as Jon’s glare turned to an actual look of fury, little red dots appearing on the apples of his cheeks as he made a very unhappy face.

“Get your shit,” he repeated in an abrupt tone before he disappeared into another room. Edie sat in the dark and listened to him send a ping pong ball into the wall, hard.

“Damn,” she said quietly, blinking back tears. She dropped her head into her hands and cursed her own pride silently. “It’s just sex,” she told herself, but even as the words came out of her mouth she knew it was bullshit. In that moment, she knew she wanted to be in that other room with him, in his arms, and that there was nowhere else in the world that she wanted to be. “Damn it,” she grumbled, smacking her forehead against her hands and clenching her teeth. “Okay…okay fuck it!” Taking a deep breath she stood up, let the blanket fall and walked across the room, down the hall and into the room where Jon was still hammering ping pong balls into the wall, leaving little dents behind. “Jon,” she called, waiting for him to turn and then, “Jon,” she said louder, turning her hands into a bull horn. “Damn it, Jon I’m naked here!” She watched him stop, put the paddle down on the table and lean forward, his back to her, his amazing ass staring her straight in the face.

“What?!” he growled. She could see the tension in his muscles and her hands clenched and unclenched as she fought the urge to go and run her hands over his skin.

“Two weeks…I looked,” she began, pursing her lips as she admitted that she’d thought of this. “Two week…well, almost three and you’re playing in Vancouver. If we can…if we can figure this…whatever this is by then and when you get to Vancouver and we still…we want this,” she moved forward and slid her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to the middle of his back, “and you get me that interview…then…oh fuck, then yeah…we’ll see.” He was still tense, but Edie was sure that she felt him relaxing by inches.

“Yeah?” His voice was muffled but she didn’t miss the hopeful but guarded note in his voice.

“Is a frog’s ass water tight?” she asked, grinning and he finally laughed.

“Jezus Christ Ede’s,” he grumbled as he turned around pulled her into his arms. “You have no idea how fucking relieved I am to hear you fucking say that,” he whispered into the crown of her head. His arms clamped around her until she thought she’d never be able to breathe again and then he loosened his grip just enough to let her look up at him so that he could press his soft lips over hers’.

The kiss started out soft, slow and sweet, like melted caramel, but as if he was suddenly reminded that she was naked in his house, he parted her lips with his tongue and Edie suddenly felt herself lifted onto the ping pong table. He stepped between her legs and deepened the kiss. Edie wrapped her legs around him and did the same with her arms. Sliding her hands up the smooth skin of his back, she dug her fingers into his hair and he responded with a moan as he began to press his growing erection against her, the wool of his suit pants rough against her pussy lips.

“Shit…I’ve wanted to do this since I bought the thing,” he breathed, his hands fumbling with the fly of his crumpled suit pants. Edie grinned at his efforts and then grew impatient and batted his hands away. He groaned as she freed him, her hand cupping his heavy length, guiding it between her legs and then it was her turn to groan. Edie sucked in a ragged breath between her teeth. “You okay?” he asked, his big meaty hands digging into her thighs, his lips brushing hers’.

“Kind of…no, let’s be honest, more than a little tender,” she hissed as she locked her ankles at the small of his back.

“You don’t…don’t want me to stop do you?” he asked in a very young, very boyish way, the words saying he would, the expression on his face making it clear that he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

“No,” she replied, smiling up at him as she slowly lay back on the green table, reaching for the edge with one hand and the net with the other. “If this is gonna be the last time for three weeks you better make sure I can’t do this again until you see me in Vancouver.” 

“I hate this,” he told her honestly as they stood together at the departure gate. His own plane was waiting on the tarmac, his teammates were already boarding. Coach had raised his eyebrow when Jon had asked for an extra few minutes to walk her to the gate, but had acquiesced. Jon didn’t often ask for favors. “I wish I knew I was coming back tomorrow to you.”

“The only way we’re going to know, for sure, if whatever we’re feeling is more than just heat,” she began, looking down at where their fingers were twined, “is to get a little space. That doesn’t mean that you can’t send me racy text messages from the showers after the game,” she added a little more playfully, her free hand sliding up under his suit jacket to feel the warmth coming off of him in waves.

“Only if you’ll do the same,” he asked and then immediately went a very bright shade of crimson that could best be described as tomato. He was already imagining it, she could tell, and made a mental note to figure out how to use the timer on her digital camera back home.

“And we’ll talk on the phone, maybe skype?” she prompted and he nodded the crimson tide rising from beneath his collar, darkening the already deep shade of scarlet that was colouring his face as her hand slid down to cup his right butt cheek. He was looking around nervously and it was only then that Edie reminded herself that he wasn’t just some cute guy that had picked her up at the bar. He was the Jonathan Toews and this was his backyard. Chicago had adopted him and made him one of their own. Canoodling in public was probably frowned upon by his handlers and he was certainly making it obvious it wasn’t something he was comfortable doing and yet he was doing it, for her. “You have to go,” she said quietly, taking a step back and removing her hand from his so that she could straighten his tie. He looked down at her fingers and then gathered them all into his own and kissed each and every knuckle on both of her hands before he met her gaze again.

“I know you think I don’t mean it when I say it,” he told her softly, his big dark eyes full of such intensely earnest emotions that Edie forced herself to remain silent, not to argue, even though she knew what was coming. “I think I am in love with you and I know that three weeks isn’t going to change that. In fact,” that crooked smile of his reappeared suddenly and Edie found that she was completely helpless to do anything other than to grin back at him, “it’s probably just going to make you fall in love with me more than you are already.” She rolled her eyes. It had come out of her mouth, despite her best efforts not to say it out loud when he’d brought her for what had seemed like the hundredth time on his ping pong table. She hadn’t had the energy to fight the raw unchecked emotions that had overwhelmed her when he’d gathered her up like a rag doll into his massive arms and carried her into his bed and held her there. What else could a girl have said to him in that moment? It had been true then and as he grinned mischievously at her now, it was still true.

“Yeah well, we’ll see about that,” she shrugged and did her best to look unaffected. He laughed and the next thing she knew, he was dragging her up off of her feet and covering her mouth with his. Edie wrapped her arms around his neck and kicked up her heels. She almost hoped someone was taking their picture. She was willing to bet they looked as cute as a button right about now and not like they’d worn each other out and wouldn’t be walking straight for a week. “You have to go,” she reminded him as he put her down.

“So do you,” he said seriously with a glance over her shoulder at the long line that was slowly moving towards the security gate. “We’ll talk later?” he asked again as she leaned into his hand where he had reached up to brush her hair back behind her ear.

“As soon as I get off the plane, and as soon as you get off the ice, no matter what time, okay?” He nodded and then kissed her forehead, each eyelid and the tip of her nose before leaving her with a soft, barely there kiss before he turned like he was being forced at gun point, and walked away, back towards the doors that would lead him to that waiting golf cart that would take him to the Hawks’ waiting plane.

Edie watched him go and for the first time in her life knew what John Dunne had meant in that poem she’d had to memorize for Lit twelve:

 If they be two, they are two so                                           
    As stiff twin compasses are two ; 
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
    To move, but doth, if th' other do.  

And though it in the centre sit, 
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,                               
It leans, and hearkens after it, 
    And grows erect, as that comes home.  

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                   
    And makes me end where I begun