Game On

chapter 38


“BEAN!” LUC POUNDED ON THE door, not caring that it was after midnight. The neighbourhood was otherwise quiet—no traffic, no people, no sirens or music—so different than his Miami neighbourhood. He was sure by the light of day, her English town would be described as quaint, maybe colloquial, but at the moment, he could have cared less. “Bean!” he shouted, again. A light went on in an upper window. “Open up!”

She came to the door tightly wrapped in a flannel robe.

“Luc?” Clara shook her head, rubbed her reddened, puffy eyes. God, was it only a week since he’d seen her? It felt like a lifetime, an eternity spent pacing the length of his cave, pretending to be interested in hockey games and pretending he could taste the food he chewed.

“Bean,” he said and pushed a loose bouquet of roses at her. He hadn’t intended to buy her flowers, but when he saw the woman outside of the airport selling them by the stem, saw that the pale, peachy-pink petals matched Clara’s skin tone exactly, he grabbed a handful. And with a sliver of hope, they might remind her of the last time he’d given her a rose.

“What are you doing here?” she said, taking the flowers before they fell to the ground. “Ouch!”

“Careful, Bean,” he said. “Thorns. I made the same mistake.”

She stuck her pricked finger in her mouth “Why do you keep calling me Bean like that?”

“That’s how you signed your note, Bean,” he said, not bothering to cushion the barbs. “Figured you preferred it.”

This was not how he envisioned it. This was not playing to the fantasy he had of her throwing herself into his arms in pure, unadulterated joy. He was tired, pissy, and feeling a bit of fool. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Yes, no, yes.” She was flustered. She looked over her shoulder, then back at him again. “Can you come back in the morning?”

“What? No!” Luc said. “I’ve been up for thirty-two hours. I was halfway to f*cking Turkey before I realized you weren’t there.”

“Oh.” She looked down. “Well, can you wait here for a moment? I’ll just, um… I’ll just be five minutes.”

She started to close the door, but Luc stuck his foot in the jamb before it shut all the way. “Oh no. Uhn-uh. We are not doing this again.”

She swung the door open and shrugged one shoulder. “I need to put these in water.”

Luc expected her cottage to be a mess, figuring she’d tried to buy five minutes to tidy up, but aside from a packed suitcase by the door, her little home was neat and tidy. No dust on the Queen Anne tables, no discarded socks on the floral print sofa, no stacks of newspapers in the magazine rack. Not even a cup of tea with a lipstick mark. It was like nobody lived here.

“Coffee?” she called from beyond. Luc followed the sound of her voice, down the hall, past the staircase, and found himself in a generous kitchen that took up the entire back of the house. Completely out of character with the rest of the ivy-covered stone cottage, the kitchen sported butcher-block countertops, modern stainless steel appliances, and a double-wide fridge. Then he remembered Clara’s aunt was a chef.

Clara, at the sink filling the kettle, repeated her question. “Coffee?”

“How ’bout a cuppa tea?” he said.

She clutched the neck of her flannel robe, the antithesis of Val. “I thought you despised tea.”

She did know.

“You’re right. Coffee would be nice. And if you’ve got anything to eat, I haven’t had anything since breakfast in Rome.”

“I…uh…not really. I haven’t been to the shops. I’ve got some day-old bread if you’d like some toast.”

“That’ll do.”

He sat at the table, a long, functional, solid-topped piece that looked as if it had been around for hundreds of years, fed generations of families. She’d put the vase of roses in the center, the waterline just below the tissue he’d wrapped around it, still spotted with his own blood. Strange that she hadn’t bothered to remove it.

Luc watched as she silently cut the bread, focusing her attention on the task as if nothing was more important. Her knuckles turned white around the handle, as though she was gripping it too hard, and the resulting slices were thick and uneven.

He was restless, uncomfortable, and didn’t know what to say or what to do. His knee throbbed from being bent in coach class, the only thing he could get at the last minute, so he stood and paced. The air felt heavy, thick, and hard to breathe. He was about to ask her to open a window when she turned her back, dropped the bread into the toaster and said, “I’m just going to pop upstairs for a few minutes while we wait for the water to boil.”

“No,” he said, leaping up to block her way. He felt like a bully, but she could have easily slipped past if she tried. Could have put her hand against his chest and pushed him aside, but she didn’t. In fact, she stepped back, seemed to want as much distance between them as the room would allow.

“I need to freshen up. It’s not proper to meet company in one’s bathrobe,” she said, one arm wrapped around her middle, the other at her throat.

“Bullshit, Clara. We spent weeks naked together.”

She looked away.

“What’s happening, Clara? Why can’t you stand to be in the same room with me?”

He watched a series of emotion cross her drawn, pale face, from confusion to disbelief, and finally it settled on what could only be anger. Her jaw was so tight when she spoke, every word seemed an effort to form. “You went to her, to that blackmailing, sash-wearing beauty bitch. You went to her, in the middle of the night, while I lay ignorantly asleep. You went to her!”

Merde. The mysterious phone call. “Yes, I did,” he said with a slow nod.

“Well aren’t I the bloody fool!”

“Look at me, Clara.” He waited until her gaze drifted back to him. “Whatever nonsense Val said, you know damn well nothing of a sexual nature went on.”

“Sure,” she said, clearly not believing a word he said.

Luc drove his fingers through his hair. “I went to make sure she didn’t bother you again.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“It was the only time you wouldn’t notice me gone,” he said.

“And why didn’t you tell me?”

“You told me not to interfere! You said you’d handle it on your own. You made it very clear that I wasn’t to get involved, and that’s the only reason I didn’t say anything.”

“Really? Or did you not say anything because then you’d have to explain her de-robing?”

Luc’s heart dropped as Clara’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yes, she explained that part in vivid detail, I’m afraid.”

“Tabernac, I’m going to kill that woman,” he muttered. “It wasn’t like that, Clara. She was being difficult and I grabbed her arm, caught her sleeve, and her robe slipped. And it wasn’t even a real robe, it was a short flimsy…Oh never mind. But I didn’t take it off in the way she led you to believe.”

Clara’s chest rose and fell with every huffy breath.

“For heaven’s sake, Clara. I’m not what’s-his-face…Scott, who cheated on you. You know nothing happened. Please tell me you trust me enough to know I’d never hurt you like that.”

“No. Instead, you let her humiliate me.”

“Because I wasn’t about to sit idly by while she upset you!”

“You kissed her!”

“Is that how she put it?” Did that bitch have to give up every detail? “Because that’s not what happened. Valentina kissed me, as I was leaving. I did not kiss her back and though I’d like to say I felt absolutely nothing, I can’t honestly say that.” Clara braced as though he was about to strike her. “What I felt was sick to my stomach. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

The pinched expression softened, but only a smidgeon.

“And I did want to tell you, very badly, because I found out that Val knew nothing about your lost sense of smell, but I didn’t know how to tell you without confessing that I’d snuck out while you were sleeping. And I know that sounds lame, but it’s the God-honest truth.”

Clara had a shocked look on her face, so he continued babbling, “I mean, she knew you were in an accident, that you had some sort of brain trauma, but she didn’t have a clue what the nature of the permanent damage was. She tried to get me to tell her.”

Clara’s jaw unhinged. “But how did—why did she—you mean she was bluffing?”

“Yup. Just like she bluffed you into believing something more went on at her place. She’s very good at lying without lying.”

“But Charlie—”

“Charlie didn’t mention specifics, he just begged her not to mention the accident to Bartel, that he would handle the situation from there.”

“Oh my God! She knew nothing? I let her blackmail me, manipulate me, I got Lydia involved, and it was all for nothing?”

“Nothing,” Luc said. “I had to make up some story about you getting seizures to get her from digging any deeper.”

“Bloody hell! Wait ’til I tell Lyds. I’m not sure if she’ll laugh, cry, or oil up her shotgun.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t want you angry at me.”

Clara shook her head, as if the information was all too much to handle. “Right, well, I’m glad we got that cleared up.”

“Great,” he said, a spark of hope igniting in his chest. “So we’re good? Me and you? We can go back to normal?”

She laughed. Not the funny kind but the ha-ha-you-must-be-joking way. “There is no normal for us, Luc. We had a thing, a fling, and now it’s over.”

“A thing? Are you f*cking kidding me?” Luc began to pace, a short path between the escape route through the hallway and the butcher-block island.

“Not in the slightest.” Her nonchalant tone felt like pricks beneath his skin. “It was great while it lasted but frankly, I can’t keep up the pretence.”

“Pretence?”

“Yes. Pretence.”

Luc placed both hands firmly against the countertop in an effort to stop the falling feeling. His stomach had turned inside out, and the aroma of the toasting bread made it worse. When he spoke, he made sure to look straight at her. “There was nothing make believe about our relationship.”

A glimmer of fear appeared around her eyes, almost like she was afraid. But of what? He watched her swallow and when she blinked, the trepidation was gone. In its place was a hardness, a humorless woman he’d never seen before.

“Perhaps it’s on my part then. I simply can’t abide your perfectness, your…your flawlessness.” Her words came like curses. “I could never live up to all that. I’m horribly selfish. Ask anyone.”

“Perfect, flawless? Where is this coming from? I just went from being an accused cheater to flawless. Clara, you’re not making any sense. And I’m the most f*cked-up person I know!” Luc pushed away from the counter and growled in frustration. “Since the shooting, I’ve barely existed. I struggle to get from day to day without losing my f*cking mind. Two years I’ve been in my own kind of hell, pretending to be fine, fronting like I’m okay with what happened, okay with my shit job, and you know what? I’m not perfect. I’m not even fine. I barely leave my goddamn house for fear of having a panic attack in public. I sit in my cave and resentfully watch a game I’m beginning to hate, over and over until I want to kill myself because I’m scared to let it go. Because if I don’t have hockey, I’m nothing.”

He stopped to catch his breath, scrub the fear and frustration from his face.

“Then you walk into my life with your accent and bouncy hair and I felt like I had a reason to get out of bed in the morning, a reason to leave the house. For the first time since the accident, I got on a plane because seeing you again was more important than worrying about a crowded departure lounge. My mother almost had a heart attack from sheer joy when I walked through the door in Montreal last month, and that’s because of you.”

He thought her lip quivered, but she caught it in her teeth before he could decide.

“I’m excited about hockey again. I didn’t even know it was important to me that you like the stupid sport, but when you called it thrilling, I almost fell to floor and kissed your feet because I didn’t want to find out that I’d devoted my life to something you found trivial and unnecessary. The fact I can even consider entering an arena is your doing, but I can only do it if your hand is in mine.

“So don’t tell me that it was a fling, that we meant nothing to each other. I knew the minute you stepped off the plane in New York that I’d never let you out of my life again. I want you and I’m never letting you go. How’s that for selfish?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back. Her chin dropped so he was staring at the top of her head when she whispered, “I’m sorry. For everything. Please, Luc. It’s better that you just go. I can’t have a relationship at the moment. I’ve a lot going on with work.”

A wave of cold desperation washed over him. He felt a little like a shipwreck passenger clinging to a scrap of driftwood. He bared his soul and she wanted him to go away? “Work?”

“Yes,” she said. Her words were choked but dry and hurried. “My schedule is chock-a-block. Lots of…uh…travelling and—”

Luc slammed his palm against the counter.

She flinched.

“Enough with the head games!” Luc expelled a lungful of muggy British air. He hated this place. He wanted to hit something. A punching bag, a wall.

This woman, this Bean, standing before him who hadn’t smiled once, didn’t give him one toss of her hair, was not his Clara from Miami, not the woman he’d fallen in love with. And he wanted to know why, damn it.

He probably scared the shit out of her, but tabernac, he wanted answers. “You weren’t in Turkey,” he said, his jaw so tight it hurt to form the words. “I called Charlie from Rome—yes, that’s where I flew to get a connection to Istanbul—and he had no f*cking idea what I was talking about.”

“Oh, well, you know Charlie,” she said with a nervous shrug. “He gets confused.”

“Really? And was he confused when he told me you quit your job?”

Clara closed her eyes, seemed to steal herself until her face became a mask. “Luc, please. Please just go.”

“No. No, Clara, I won’t. Not until you tell me why you left. Why you’re keeping up the pretence.”

She bit the inside of her lip so hard, Luc was sure she’d punctured her skin. He knew that move, had seen her do it when she didn’t want to cry, but what he couldn’t figure out was why now?

“It’s not important anymore,” she said, holding her middle as if she’d eaten bad sushi. “I…I…I told you if we…I said it would get awkward.”

“But it wasn’t awkward, Clara. It was amazing.” Luc took a step toward her. “You cannot stand there and look me in the face and tell me it was anything but pure, f*cking magic.”

She took a step back, and another. She shook her head, looked at him like he were some kind of monster.

“What?” he demanded. Before the iron band around his chest could constrict him further, he asked, “Is there someone else in your life? Another man? Just tell me!”

She shut her eyes tightly, pressed her lips together and closed him off, closed him out.

Luc felt like his innards were leaking. He shouldn’t have come. This just made things worse. There was nothing more to say. “Toast is burning.”

She didn’t move. Acrid puffs of dark gray smoke clouded the end of the counter behind Clara.

“The toast is burning,” he repeated. Luc fanned his face, the smoke already drifting toward him and stinging his eyes.

“Huh?” she said.

“The toast,” he muttered, thrusting his chin toward it. “It’s burn—”

Luc remembered, vividly, the first time he took the butt end of a stick to his sternum, remembered how he couldn’t react, couldn’t groan, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t close his mouth from the shock of it. That’s what it felt like the moment he realized Clara couldn’t smell the burning bread.