Across the Line (In The Zone) (10 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Flinging the sheet off, Calder went to his phone. Sure enough, there was a voice mail from Hart. Somehow he’d missed it. Probably because he’d been busy fucking.

Becca turned the light on and sat up, holding the sheet up to cover her breasts. “Hart signed with San Diego. I saw the announcement when I was taking my dinner break.”

Calder turned away from her as he listened to the message.

“
Hey
,
CS.
I
have some news for you that I wanted to give you personally.
I
just signed a contract with the Barracudas.
” There was a pause. “
Yeah.
I
know you’re probably not happy about it.
”

Calder blew out a breath. That was an understatement.

“
But I think—I
hope
it’ll turn out to be great.
I
,
ah...needed to leave the Cascade
,
and San Diego had the best offer.
I
already told Mom and Dad.
Mom cried.
” Hart laughed, and in spite of the shit situation, Calder had to smile grimly. His mom was famous in their family for crying.

“
I’ll call you when I know more about when I’m moving down there.
Contract’s for five years
,
so let me know if you have any suggestions as to where I should live.
”

Calder put the phone on the table and stared at the curtains they’d drawn earlier. He sighed.

“Is everything okay?” Becca asked from the bed.

“Oh, yeah.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Everything’s absolutely perfect.”

She got out of the bed and came to wrap her arms around him. “You’re not happy about being on the same team as your brother.”

“It’s fine. It’s a major adjustment, that’s all,” he said.

After studying his face for a moment, she pulled away, went to the nightstand phone and punched a couple of numbers. “Hi, this is room 413. We’d like some room service. What do you have for dessert?” She listened for a moment. “We’ll take all three. And two glasses of milk. Thanks.”

“What did you order?”

“Chocolate cake. Apple cobbler à la mode. Espresso crème brûlée.”

“How did you know I needed that?”

“I have a food sixth sense.” She laughed. “Like, you know that kid who ‘saw dead people’? I see hungry ones.”

He nodded and managed a weak smile. “Good movie.” He scrubbed his face with his hands and stretched.

“Okay, so back to this major adjustment. I gather you and Hart aren’t arch rivals, but you’re not exactly the best of friends either,” she said.

Since room service was coming, he glanced around, found his shorts and pulled them on. “It’s complicated.”

“So give me the short version.”

She put some clothes on, too, then lay back on the bed. Her hair looked inky against the pristine white pillowcase. “I won’t judge you. I have crap with my family too.”

He joined her on the bed, but didn’t cuddle up. Instead, he stared at the ceiling. “It’s stupid, but I’m just so sick of being compared to him all the time. My whole fucking life I’ve been held up to the almighty Hart Connelly Griffin and found wanting.”

“Are you the younger brother?” When he nodded, she said, “I’m the youngest in my family too.”

“Mom and Dad never told me I wasn’t living up to the benchmarks Hart set, but they were thinking it.”

“Let me guess. There was like this unspoken checklist and Hart had all the boxes checked off, but you were always missing some?”

Startled by her spot-on analysis, he turned his head to look at her. “That’s it exactly.”

“I know the feeling.” She rested her arms above her head and sighed.

“I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. My parents never said anything out loud or to my face. They were always encouraging, especially my mom. God, if I’d called her right now and said I wanted to be President of the United States, she’d say, ‘That’s wonderful, honey. I’ll start thinking of a slogan for you.’”

Becca smiled tightly. “I know your mom. She’s great.” Her voice sounded tight too. “I wish my mom was like that.”

She got back under the covers and he joined her, on his side so he could face her. “What’s your mom like?”

“You really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

She sighed and burrowed deeper, turning to face him too. “Did you ever read that
Wall Street Journal
article about Chinese tiger moms?”

“No. The
Wall Street Journal
had a story about tigers?”

“No. Tiger
moms.
Chinese mothers who act like tigers.”

“I still don’t get it,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “You know how typically, Asian kids are really good students? Straight As, never get in trouble, stuff like that?”

“Yeah. This one kid I went to high school with, Kevin Chin—you know him?”

“I didn’t go to Ithaca High. I went to Flint Academy.”

“That explains why we didn’t really see each other after elementary.” Flint Academy was an all-girl prep school, expensive and exclusive.

“Anyway, Kevin was like the perfect stereotype. President of a couple of clubs, took every AP class, aced the SAT, dressed nerdy...like his mom picked out all his clothes for him.”

“Right. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The woman who wrote the article talked about the pros and cons of traditional Chinese parenting techniques and how authoritarian they are. Her kids weren’t allowed to watch TV, or get anything less than an A, or play anything but the piano or the violin.”

They heard a knock and Calder answered the door. A girl in a white blazer and black pants wheeled in a small cart with their array of desserts. After signing for it, Calder tipped her a twenty.

Becca joined him at the table as Calder started right in on the pie à la mode. The ice cream was in a separate dish, so he dumped it on top and because the pie was warm, gooey rivulets of melted vanilla puddled on the plate. He scooped up a bite with one of the spoons and ate it. Becca tried the crème brûlée.

“Mmm,” she said. “Good.”

He agreed. He hadn’t had a decent dessert since he started training hard. He demolished about half the pie before he put that back and picked up the plate with the cake. The chocolate cake was thick and moist and dense, the frosting, buttery. The chocolate flavor was intense.

“Okay, so back to the tiger mom thing. Were you brought up that way? No TV? Piano and school 24/7?”

“For the most part. I was able to watch TV, though. But only a half hour a day.”

“Shit.” He thought about his own childhood and realized that he hadn’t watched much more TV than that himself, but that was because he’d been playing hockey, a sport he loved. He didn’t get the impression Becca liked the piano much.

“I was expected to excel in every subject.” She spooned up a bit of brûlée. “If I did not, I was a disgrace. An embarrassment.”

“Shit,” he said again. “They said that to you? To your face?”

She handed him the brûlée and took the cake. “No. Not really. It was more covert. They might say something about cousin so-and-so winning a merit award at the science fair, and that was code for ‘You need to get an award, too, so we don’t have to hang our heads in shame.’”

“That is fucked up.”

She lifted a shoulder. “It wasn’t like they were screaming at us or verbally abusing us.”

He frowned. “That’s true, but still. I don’t like it. If I ever become a father, I sure as hell won’t be saying shit like that.” He offered her the brûlée, but she shook her head so he finished it with a couple swipes of his spoon. “So, are they proud of you now, owning your own successful restaurant?”

She attempted a nonchalant shrug. “I really don’t know for sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“They didn’t approve of my decision to quit medical school and have not, to my knowledge, ever come to Cups.”

Calder stared at her. “Wait a second. Let me get this straight. They boycott your restaurant because you decided not to be a doctor?”

“Basically. When I quit medical school, they kicked me out of the family. I haven’t seen them in four years.”

Calder looked furious. His expression got dark and his lips thinned. “That is seriously fucked up. I mean it this time. I officially hate the shit out of your parents. That’s the stupidest, most immature thing I’ve ever heard. ‘We didn’t get our way, so we’ll show you. You’ll be sorry.’ Well, that’s bullshit.”

“That’s the way it was. But I’m never going to be sorry. Never.”

“You bet your ass you’re not. You’re going to fucking open up Cups all over the country.”

She tried to smile but didn’t do a very good job. Even though she could see her profits increase month by month, she wrestled with self-doubt constantly, mainly because of her parents’ cold disregard. Whenever she encountered a setback or difficulty, she could practically hear her mother or father tsk-tsking her.

If you’d finished medical school
,
you wouldn’t have to deal with rotten vegetables.

Doctors don’t have to kowtow to disgruntled customers over a three-dollar cup of soup.

Your food is too trendy.
In three years no one will want to eat lettuce cups and you’ll be frying burgers to stay afloat.

Becca shook her head. “I don’t really want to be that big. I can barely handle the stress of one location, let alone multiple ones. Take today, for example. I only had that nightmare because of what happened with the fridge. I’ve never had an appliance break like that before. Today things worked out. We were able to serve people, even though Kassidy called in sick. But what if it’s the soda dispenser next time? Or the flat top or the stove? The soups will go cold. I won’t be able to cook the fillings. It’ll be my nightmare for real. And don’t even ask about how the lattes are selling. Because they’re not.”

“Hey.” He reached out and tugged on her hair gently. “I’m gonna let you in on a little secret I learned from hockey.”

“Hockey wisdom.” She smiled weakly. “I can’t wait.”

He gave her an amused look that promised she’d regret her sarcasm. “There are lots of factors that can affect whether you win or lose a game. What smart players do is focus on the ones they have some control over and forget about the ones they don’t. Like, ice quality. We have no control over that. It’s a waste of mental energy to be pissed off about it. Same with a bad call. Not much you can do about that besides chirp at the ref, so you go into the penalty box, sit it out, put it out of your mind, come back out and play hard.”

“I think I understand. What you’re saying is when a problem comes up, you decide: Do you have control over it or not? If you do, you do something about it. If not, you forget it and move on.”

He smiled. “Exactly! Don’t dwell on shit and make yourself miserable.”

“Shit like your brother joining the team?” she asked with an arch of her brow.

Calder blinked. “Oh, fuck. You did not just say that.”

She smiled and drew one knee up to rest on the chair. “I sure did.”

He closed his eyes. “Damn it. Can I rewind this conversation to before I shot my mouth off about hockey wisdom?”

“Nope.”

She watched the struggle on his face as he realized how he’d backed himself into a corner. Eventually he sighed.

“So, I guess I need to take my own damn advice.”

“Yep.”

“I can’t do anything about Hart being on the team, so I have to forget about it.”

“It’s a waste of mental energy,” she said. “Deal with it and move on.”

He laughed. “Holy shit. You’re tough.”

Chapter Eighteen

The next morning before their breakfast was delivered, Calder presented her with a gift. He’d been waiting for the perfect moment to give it to her.

With an eager smile, she opened the gift bag and laughed.

“A Backstreet Boys backpack? Oh my God. Where did you get this?”

“On eBay. Where else?” he replied.

“I can’t believe you did this!”

She turned it over in her hands, laughing. It was tacky and made of plastic, and obviously made for a child, but he hoped she would appreciate the significance.

“Oh, look, someone scribbled on it with a permanent marker,” he said in a mock sad voice. “Wait a second. Is that Nick Carter’s autograph?”

Sure enough, she could make out the name down in the corner.

“Dude. You’re crazy. You got me an
autographed
Backstreet Boys backpack?”

He stood there grinning. “It was the least I could do after ruining your other one.”

Breakfast arrived. After the sugar splurge last night, he’d ordered lean and low-carb. He lifted the metal thing off his breakfast and the smell of turkey sausage and scrambled egg whites with sautéed spinach filled his nostrils. She’d ordered the same thing, plus they had coffee, wheat toast and orange juice.

As they ate, he finally addressed the elephant in the room. “So where do we go from here? I want to keep seeing you.”

He was surprised by how much he wanted that. The intensity of his need to be with her made him wonder if Hollander and Sullivan had been right. Was he falling in love?

He’d never felt this way about a woman before. He’d been infatuated, sure. And once upon a time, he thought he was in love with Perri, but in hindsight, he realized he hadn’t.

“I want to keep seeing you too,” she said, but her smile was reserved, probably because of the obstacles keeping them apart, all two thousand eight hundred of them, give or take a few miles.

He poured some milk into his coffee. “I have no problem coming here to see you a couple of days here and there for the next few weeks. But once the regular season starts, I won’t have that kind of time. Any trip is going to require two days just for traveling and my schedule won’t allow that.”

She didn’t have the time
or
the money to travel. She worked seven days a week and was only now able to give herself a meager paycheck. In the end, they decided they had time to figure something out. The regular season didn’t start until October.