Seduced by the Game (47 page)

"Hey," I smiled,
cramming my hands into my front pocket so I could cradle my cell phone.

"Hey," he said
then fell into step with me. "You really did a great job in net tonight.
Want to go grab a pizza and head home?"

"Yeah, I would love
that, but I
kind
of already told a buddy I’d meet him somewhere."
It wasn’t a lie, so why did it feel like one? Brad was all sorts of “Hey, no
probs” and “Catch you later then” as we hit the parking lot. I felt like a dick
as I hurried to crank over my Rover. The heat was slow to thaw the window,
giving me plenty of time to think about whatever the fuck it was I was doing.

 I confirmed my decision.
Going to find Cam was the right thing to do. He needed someone to talk to. It
had nothing to do with how hard I got every time I thought about the man. Maybe
I should have just gone with Brad. He was a good guy. I could have gotten some
pizza followed by another dry-hump session. Fuck, I was seriously confused at
the moment. Blowing out a breath heavy enough to balloon my cheeks, I fished
out my cell, fed the info into my cold GPS, and headed off to find this clock.

* * * *

Turns out the Kaufmann
Clock was this old, gold clock with naked Grecian men on either side of it.
It’s a damned impressive clock that is a Pittsburgh landmark, I would learn
later. It seems that it is quite the thing to meet someone under this over
one-hundred-year-old clock. It was where I found Cam, bundled up in a thick
blue parka, sipping a hot beverage. The corner of Fifth Avenue and Smithfield
Street was pretty quiet. I pulled up in front of Macy’s, parked, then jogged
over to Cameron.

"You could have
picked somewhere warmer to meet," I said. Cam began walking. I fell in
beside him.

"Like where?"
the man asked, his face nearly concealed by the huge hood over his head.
"Tell me one damned place in this town that we could meet to talk without
someone knowing it was us."

I padded along beside him
with no reply for his comment. He was right. Everyone knew his face in “The Burgh.”
The longer we walked, the more I accepted that I would freeze to death. We made
two complete laps in total silence. Cam stopped to drop his empty coffee cup
into a trash can. We stood under a streetlight, our breath twin clouds of steam
hovering in front of us.

"You have to
understand that this…I don’t know how to go about…shit." He stuffed his
hands into the pockets of his parka. Again, we started walking.

"Look, man, if I knew
for sure what we were dealing with, maybe I could help a little better," I
said. A biracial couple hurried past us. I burrowed into my flimsy coat until
all that stuck out of the collar were my eyes.

"I have a daughter.
She’s a senior in high school."

"Awesome," I
mumbled into my coat. My forehead was extremely cold. Like ice cream eaten too
fast cold. We kept walking that block.

"She is
awesome." I peeked over at him. I wished he would drop that fucking hood
so I could see his face. "And not aware of how things were with her mother
and me."

"How things were, or
how you were
pretending
they were?" I chanced it. What the hell? He
would either slug me, call me a motherfucker, or stalk off. Whatever happened
it had to be better than roaming around this fucking city block when the
temperature was a balmy four degrees. "I mean, that
is
what you’re
dancing around, right? That you’re so far back in the closet you just
discovered Narnia? Why not just admit that much to yourself before we both
succumb to fucking hypothermia."

I should have known that
Cameron Evans was a man of action. I mean, I followed his career all though my
school years. He was fast. My back was against the wall under that old clock
before I could register the shove. Cam then got all sorts of in my face. I did
not raise my hands. His angry exhalation was flavored with vanilla.

"Are you calling me a
queer?" I shrugged one shoulder.

"I call them as I see
them. Now, you can either step off or you can kiss me." I threw the
challenge out without a second thought. I stared into the shelter of his hood,
finding his dark eyes in the shadows. They flickered down to my blue lips.
"Whatever you decide to do, do it fast. I’m cold, tired, and hungry."

He did. He captured my
mouth with a kiss so aggressive my teeth ground into my lips. Yeah. This was
it. This was what I had been pushing him to do…hoping he would do. His hands
slapped to the wall on either side of my head. I grabbed his hooded head then
ran my tongue over his bottom lip. The tempting taste of his latte lingered on
his tongue. Then he lost the fingertip hold he had found on the slippery slope
of sexual honesty. Cam stumbled backward. I remained flat to the wall, my lips
warmed nicely. He threw horrified looks up then down the street.

"Cam, man, it’s okay.
It is okay to kiss a dude on the street. It is totally acceptable."

"No one knows."
He pulled his hood even farther over his face.

"Then tell them. Go
to your daughter, tell her. Tell your ex-wife, unless she already knows?"

"No, she doesn’t
know, but she suspected. I need more time to…think this through."

"Cam, don’t you think
you’ve lived a lie long enough, dude?" I asked as he retreated farther
into his parka.

"It’s so much easier
to hide in the dark," he murmured then left me under the clock, back flat
to the wall, lips tender from our kiss.

* * * *

Things did not improve for
Cam, or the team, over the next few days. We lost the next game by a one goal
margin. The fans were online, screaming for the coach to do something. They
rode Cam to the ground. Sports writers questioned if his time was up. There
were rumors of an impending trade, that the man was injured, that he and the
coach were fighting. No one guessed the real dilemma the man was facing. I had
kept a distance from Cam for the entirety of the road trip. I have to think
that the team just assumed there was conflict between him and me. There was,
but it was not the issue they thought it was.

I was confused about the
kiss under the clock, my role in it, the lust that I felt whenever I looked at
Cam, the ongoing sort-of relationship that Brad and I had started, and how I
combed my hair. In short, my head was a disaster area. I was rewrapping my
wrists, deep in concentration, when someone tapped my shoulder. I looked up at
Ivan. Cam was seated beside me, lost to the turmoil that had followed us to the
Dourman Center in Vancouver.

"Coach says you’ve
got the start, Jacobi." Ivan’s eyes roamed to Cam after delivering the
news. "Take the night and rest, Cam."

Ivan clapped Cameron on
the shoulder. I met the cold look the man who had kissed me a week ago now leveled
at me. It was hard to breathe properly with the cocktail of excitement blended
with pain bubbling in my gut.

"Torn between belting
me or kissing me again?" The fire that erupted in Cam’s sensual brown eyes
was impressive. He turned his back to me. I called myself a hundred different
names, none of them good. As I finished readying myself for my first pro start,
I kept glancing over at Cam on the sly. He was dressing with jerky motions, his
aggravation evident in the sharp way he moved. I thought I should say something
to him. Apologize for being flip when he was facing the worst crisis of his
life. The words were ready to tumble out when Brad plopped down on my left.

"Just heard that you
were starting." Brad smiled. I nodded then smiled in return. Several
members of the team gathered around, to rub my head or wish me well. Brad
grabbed my noggin and smooched the top of my head loudly. The guys all
chortled. "We really need this win, Jacobi," Brad said. I mumbled
something in reply. I was fully aware of our situation. "Look, just do
what you did down in the AHL, okay? Same difference, right? Just a bunch of
jocks in jocks."

"Yep, just a bunch of
jocks in jocks." My nerves were jangling. The thunder of over eighteen
thousand Vancouver Vipers’ fans filling the arena over our heads slithered into
my pulse. Brad slapped me on the back then returned to his cubicle to finish
dressing for the game. When I looked over at Cam’s spot, it was empty. I
searched the locker room for him, but didn’t see neither hide nor hair of the
man.

It was maddening to sit
there, mulling over how badly I wanted to talk to him. I knew I needed to get
my shit together. Cam’s tumble from the top was his own doing, right? If he
would just be honest with
one
person, he could pull his ass out of this
psychological tar pit he was mired in, right? Why should I fuck up my career
over some stifled queer, right? I needed to stop letting the memory of that
kiss haunt me, right? Just say, fuck this mess. Just say, fuck it. Fuck me.
Just…fuck me and fuck Cam Evans.

"Two times two is
four."

* * * *

Vladimir Oleczar was lying
on top of me. It was not anything sexual, trust me. The Russian had a nose that
slid sideways over his face, a black eye, no front teeth, and a lingering smell
of fish on his breath. I shoved the Vipers’ first-line center off of me, or, I
should say, I shoved
at
the Russian. The pileup in my crease was keeping
Vlad pressed to me intimately. Thank God for hockey padding. There are some
dudes you want snuggled tight between your spread legs, and some you don’t.

A scrum was breaking out
directly to the left of the pile-up. Whistles were blowing. Players were
shoving. Vladimir was breathing flounder in my face. But hey, we were winning,
right? And the penalty call for goaltender interference that
had
to come
would be the icing on the cake. We only had three minutes left in the third
period. If I could keep the puck in front of me, we’d wrap up the first win of
our road trip with a 2-1 final score.

"Vlad, man, ever hear
of breath mints?" I grunted as the mountain of ripe men atop me began to
lessen.

"You hear of being
pussy?"

"I’ve heard of
it," I said as I rolled to my side to gain my footing. "Generally
it’s mentioned with your name attached to it."

He called my mother a
particularly nasty name. I skated off to find my stick. Let the refs figure out
how many penalty minutes the Vipers would get. My job now was to stay focused
on keeping my net free of pucks. So imagine my surprise, and that of the Puma
team, when no penalty was assessed to the fishy Russian for plowing into me in
the crease. I immediately got into the referee’s face to argue my case. The
blind bastard informed me, and my team captain, that the Russian had been
pushed, and thus was not of a mind to intentionally cause me harm.

"Wasn’t of a
mind?" I shouted over Pierre’s shoulder. "Being a goon is all that
carp-sucking fucktard ever has on his mind!" I threw my mask to the ice in
a fit of pique. DeLoux steered me to the bench. A time-out had been called by Coach
Webern. My mouth kept flapping at anyone in black and white stripes I could
find. Brad skated up beside me, my mask in his hand. I met his look and knew
the payback would be doled out. I smiled at the winger, turned to grab a new
water bottle, and locked eyes with Cam.

The uproar that was
shaking the stadium dimmed to nothing. If someone would have offered me a cure
for cancer to describe what I saw in those hooded brown eyes, I would not have
been able to save one poor, suffering soul. There were far too many emotions
twirling in the man’s eyes to ever be able to express just one. Coach Mars
shouting at me jarred me from the depths of Cam’s gaze.

"You’re a wall, Neal!
Bricks and mortar." My head bobbed up and down. I sucked half a bottle of
water down. "Keep your hands in front of your body."

"Right," I said
before I skated back to my crease. The sounds of the stadium began to flicker
out. "Eight times four is thirty-two," I whispered as I pulled my
mask onto my head. We lost the face-off. A wrist-shot streaked at me, clipping
the front of my mask then sailing into the stands. I looked at the clock as
play was stopped. Two minutes and thirty-one seconds left. I tossed my head
left then right, rolling it around until my neck cracked. The next face-off
took the action to the Vipers’ end of the ice. I tried to stay tight on the
action. My mind slid from the game. I glanced at the bench in search of Cam. He
was a study in noncommittal expressions. If only I could get him to open up to
me. Shit, if only I could get him to kiss me again, I’d–

I never saw the slap shot
from center ice. It sailed over my glove hand, hit the pipe, then dropped down
behind me like a grenade. Which it kind of was. The home fans exploded. I
turned around to stare at the fucking puck. Then I beat the holy shit out of my
goal with my stick. Dale Asaba, our third-line left winger came over to talk me
up. I did not want his voice in my ear and politely told him so. He patted my
helmet then skated to the bench for a line change. That was it. I vowed that I
was done dicking around with Cam Evans, his need to linger in the closet, and
my need to feed what was becoming a sick obsession. Filled with resolve, I slid
back into the net, the pipe resting on my spine. No way was anyone getting
anything past me again. The remaining minute plus trickled away. The buzzer
sounded. We took a TV break. When I arrived at the bench, Ivan began telling me
to put the tying goal from my mind.