Seduced by the Game (31 page)

“Don’t tease me,” I said.
I scrunched myself up in my seat, trying to put a little distance between us.

I wasn’t the only one
who’d fallen head over heels for him pretty much the day he’d arrived in
Portland. So had at least half the single girls here between the ages of ten
and thirty.

He’d always been nice to
me, but he was nice to everyone. If someone needed help, Jamie Babcock was the
first person to notice it and do whatever was needed. Even when he’d been about
to shave his head this morning, it was just because he was a nice guy.

I’d never really let
myself believe anything would come from the friendship we had, even if I’d been
daydreaming about him—and more than daydreaming—for two full hockey seasons
now. “Don’t make me wish for things that aren’t ever going to happen. It’ll
ruin my image of you.”

“I’m not teasing you. I
want to take you to your prom.” He reached out as though to take my hand, but I
looked at him like he was crazy and he pulled his back. “They won’t laugh if
I’m with you.”

It didn’t sound like he
was being arrogant. He was just stating a truth, and he was probably right.
They wouldn’t make fun of me. They’d be jealous, which would be yet another
reason for them to talk about me behind my back.

I shook my head. “If you
really want to take some girl to prom, I’m sure you won’t have any problems
finding a taker. You could have your pick of all those girls with the signs.”

“I don’t want to take
some
girl
to prom. I don’t want to take one of the girls with the signs. I don’t
want to auction myself off for charity to be some lovesick girl’s prom date. I
want to take you.”

“But…why?” came out of my
mouth before I could think better of it. Because I might very well be one of
those lovesick girls he was talking about, even if I didn’t bring signs to the
games. And if he took me to my prom, you can bet it would feel to me like he
was just doing it because he’s a good guy.

“You’re kidding, right?”
He looked out at the arena where only workers remained, cleaning up the mess
left behind by the crowd. He was blushing, which I’d always adored about him.
Most guys his age wouldn’t blush. But Jamie wasn’t most guys. “You’ve got to be
the only person on the planet who can’t see straight through me if you really
don’t know the answer to that question.”

He couldn’t mean that he
liked me. I mean, yeah, he had always been really nice to me and hung out with
me at team events, but that was just who he was. He had latched on to Tuck and
Maddie, too, once they’d moved in across the hall from him. The way he treated
me couldn’t mean anything…could it?

But why would he tease me
about something like that?

My pulse was roaring
through my head and these crazy, jittery tingles kept racing around in my chest
and belly, and I couldn’t force a single word past my lips without fear that
I’d make an absolute fool of myself. I could only stare at him and wish that
he’d look at me again.

“Will you go with me?” he
said finally. When he faced me, his blue eyes were so dark they were like the
midnight sky, and he looked just as sick and anxious as he had when he’d
watched Dad shaving my head. “Will you let me take you to your prom?”

“I…” My whole body shook
so hard that even my lips trembled. I pressed them tightly together, trying to
rein in my response.

That was when he touched
my cheek with the back of his hand. I half gasped, half sighed and turned my
head in toward his touch, seeking more like a greedy cat.

Of course, that was also
the moment when my dad walked into the owner’s box. Jamie’s gaze lifted over me
to the doorway, but he didn’t take his hand away.

“I’m going to murder that
dipshit,” Dad said, but somehow his voice was growing distant, like he was
moving farther away from us instead of coming closer.

Jamie’s lips quirked up on
one side. “Zee and Soupy hauled him out of here. Looks like they were waiting
on him to come in like that. I don’t know how much longer we have before he
comes back to finish me off.” He laughed. How could he laugh about something
like that? “So will you? Let me take you?”

“But my dad…” No matter
how tempting it was to forget reason and agree to go to prom with Jamie, I knew
it was nothing more than a dream. There was no chance my father would ever
agree to let one of his teammates take me out, whether it was to my prom or
anything else. That would be an absolute nonstarter.

Jamie moved his hand, and
his fingers dipped beneath the edge of my scarf. I wanted to pull away, but the
look in his eye held me in place while he used nothing more than his fingertips
to caress my newly bald scalp. “I’ll deal with your dad. Let me worry about
that.”

Maybe having no hair made
my skin more sensitive, or maybe it was the effects of the chemo—I couldn’t be
sure. All I knew was that my whole body was zinging with awareness from the way
his fingertips were dancing over the skin an inch or two above my ear.

I’d dated a few boys
before. I’d been kissed and touched in various ways, and it had all been
exciting and wonderful and new, but this was so different. The way he was
touching me was so much more intimate, and I felt more vulnerable and scared
and raw than I could ever remember feeling in my life, but I didn’t want it to
end. Because it was perfect.

It made me wish I wasn’t
sick, that I was whole and alive and vibrant like I used to be.

I wasn’t entirely sure
what came over me because everything I’d said about not wanting to be the bald
girl at prom was still a massive deterrent to going, and I had a very real fear
that my father would do actual physical harm to Jamie, but I said, “Okay. Yes.
I’ll go with you.”

He smiled, one of those
amazing, shy smiles he had that made his dimples come to attention and left me
wanting to kiss him. “Good. Now I’d better go deal with Webs before he hurts
one of the boys.”

I took his hand when he
pulled it away from my head, holding it in mine for just a second. “Don’t…don’t
let him hurt you, either.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he
said, squeezing my hand and sending a flood of warmth through to every nerve
ending I had.

Before I could come up
with a reasonable argument to convince him to leave by escaping through a back
alley or some other means where he wouldn’t have to go near my father, Jamie
let go of my hand, winked at me, and was gone.

Mom came over almost instantly,
like she’d been watching and waiting for Jamie to leave. “Do you want to tell
me what that was about, or would you rather keep it to yourself?”

“Prom,” I said.

That damn wetness popped
back into her eyes, and she said, “Oh,” all soft and touched and mom-like while
she tried to blink the tears back.

“Don’t let Dad hurt him,”
I begged. “Please.”

Mom nodded and steeled her
spine. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” Just like that, her eyes were
focused and she looked like Super Mom, ready to set the world right, at least
for today.

I felt sorry for anyone
who didn’t have a mom like mine.

Heck, I felt sorry for
anyone who didn’t have a dad like mine, too.

They might drive me crazy
sometimes, but it was only because they loved me.

“I asked Katie to let me
take her to her prom. That’s all.”

Webs hadn’t stopped
glaring at me since I found where Zee and Soupy had dragged him. For now, he
was just sitting on a bench in the concourse. That meant he wasn’t trying to
close the distance between us so he could wring my neck or rip my head off my
shoulders or any of the much more horrifying things involving certain parts of
my anatomy I’d been imagining ever since Kally had put the idea of taking Katie
to prom in my head this afternoon.

I didn’t expect he would
stay there very long. Not with the energy vibrating off him like it was. You
could almost see it pinging through the air around him.

Zee was sitting next to
him, and Soupy was standing off to the side—by all appearances, both of them
ready to hold him back if needed. I didn’t attempt to delude myself that they
were doing it for my sake. It was for Katie, just like my somehow finding the
balls to ask her and then coming here to talk to Webs about it was for Katie.

It was like Jim Sutter,
our GM, was always saying: the Portland Storm wasn’t just a team and a
business. We were a family, and we took care of our own. It was my turn to do
some of that
taking care of our own
bit.

“I don’t give a fuck what
you asked her,” Webs growled at me. “She’s my little girl, and you’re going to
stay the fuck away from her and keep your hands to yourself.”

“No, he’s not. Not this
time, Dave.”

I would know Laura Weber’s
voice anywhere. It was so much like Katie’s, smooth and warm, but a little
older and more careworn. I turned my head to see her marching straight for us,
looking more determined than I’d seen her look about anything since Katie’s
diagnosis. She’d always been a force to be reckoned with, as long as I’d known
her, but it was like she’d forgotten all of that when Katie had gotten sick.
They’d all been losing a bit of their fight lately, the whole Weber family.

“She’s still in high
school,” Webs shot back at her. “I’m not letting one of my fucking teammates,
who’s a grown-ass man, anywhere near my little girl.”

“And she’s got cancer.”
Laura didn’t stop until she was standing between me and Webs, like she could
somehow stop him from killing me just by standing between us. She planted her
hands on her hips and stared at her husband while I tried to maneuver myself
around her. There was no chance in hell I was going to let Katie’s mom be a
shield for me. She glanced at me but then returned her focus to her husband.
“Cancer trumps your illogical need to keep her under lock and key until she’s
past her child-bearing years.”

“The fact that she’s sick
is one more reason she’s not going. She needs to stay home. She needs rest.”

“All she does is rest!”
Laura practically shouted at him. “She can rest the whole day leading up to
prom so she’s got the energy to go. But she’s going. And Babs is taking her.
And that’s all there is to it because what she needs to do more than anything
else is
live
—really live and not just survive like she’s been doing the
last few months.”

It was almost as though
she’d kicked me right in the nuts with that one. There was something in the way
she’d said it, something that made it seem possible that if Katie didn’t really
start living again, then maybe she wouldn’t survive it at all.

That’s the thing with
cancer, in my limited experience. It doesn’t matter what the doctors say about
your chances. If you give it the finger and keep going with your life, you have
a hell of a better likelihood of kicking its ass than if you just give
everything up and count on drugs and therapies and all that bullshit to fight
it for you. At least it had always seemed that way to me, but I’d never had
cancer before. I’d only watched my aunt go through it a few years ago—and I’d
watched her lose. She’d shut herself off like Katie had once they’d started
pumping the drugs into her, and it had eaten all the life out of her eyes until
one day there’d been nothing left. She’d given up, and it had taken her away
from my uncle and my cousins and my mom.