10. Robbie

The Staycation Express hasn't updated its interior décor since I last stepped foot inside, and even then it was dated; dark headboards with cookie cutter scroll work, orange floral bedspreads, moss green carpet, and mustard walls. The room is clean, the scent of lemon polish filling my nostrils as I take a deep inhale.

I lean my hip against the doorway and watch Vera's reflection kick off her shoes and set her bag on the little table. I'm not sure what I expect, maybe a look of disgust at her surroundings, or a long-suffering sigh, but it isn't for her to flop backward across the bed, hair fanning out around her ears. Her eyes are closed and her shorts are frying the synapses in my brain, but even I know you can't just walk into Hermes and buy that bag.

"I can book my own room," I say, and have to clear my throat halfway through as Vera reaches her arms over her head and stretches.

My eyes trace the length of her neck and down over the high-necked top to the inches of pale skin above the waistband of her shorts. I'm a pervert, a lecher, a creep who needs to learn to keep his eyes down and off the model, but it's hard to see her as famous fashion icon Vera Novak instead of my childhood best friend, my girlfriend.

"What?" One green eye pops open to look at me from under dark lashes and my throat is dry as fuck, but I force myself to answer.

"You didn't really have a say in my being here. And I think we both know I can afford to have my own room."

There's a fair chance I could buy the hotel outright, or at least offer a decent sum. I'd have to ask my financial manager. I leave investing and shit to him. Either way, a room is no issue. I shouldn't even offer. I should just go down to the front desk and talk to the hotelier now.

"I kind of did have a say," she rolls to her side and props her head on her hand. "It was my idea to pretend we were dating. Jack is pretty quick on his feet. I hadn't even thought about staying together." She frowns. "I didn't think a lot of things through."

The urge to move closer, to take her into my arms, is right there, pushing at me. It's like muscle memory kicking it and I have to physically pull my body back. Once upon a time I was the one she turned to when she was upset, uncertain, untethered. I'm not that person anymore.

"He thought of it at the rink." I offer, "Well, sort of. I didn't know he was going to volunteer for me to come stay with you."

Her head tips back as she laughs.

"That does seem like the kind of thing Jack would do, volunteering people."

I smile too. I can't help it. Her joy is infectious, a drug, and I might have thought I was clean, but this need has been sitting in my gut, dormant until it caught sight of her again. This is a test of my willpower. I'm supposed to say no.

I failed in the kitchen, sliding my mouth over hers like she had the last available oxygen and I was drowning. It was a mistake to reach for her. The lines of this arrangement are too blurry, too nebulous. We're both going to get hurt if we don't throw up some boundaries and fast. Except… except here I am in her hotel room as she splays across the bed and this feels like another test I'm about to fail.

"It's on his calendar, right under cause mayhem and give Oakes a headache."

"You were a shit once too," she says, and I'm about to refute her claim when she shakes her head. "Nope, can't even pretend with that one. You were actually a really stoic teenager. I feel like that hasn't changed much."

"Should I book another room?" Tell me no. I'll show you what hasn't changed. I hip check my inner voice.

Vera shakes her head. "There's two beds here. No need to go out of your way unless you want to."

If I'd wanted to, I'd have already done it, but I don't say that.

"Am I supposed to hate you?"

Her question catches me off guard and knocks the air out of my lungs.

"Do you?" I hold my breath as she looks me up and down. I swear I can feel her gaze slipping into my actual pores, burrowing beneath my skin.

"It would be easier if I did." She sits up, patting the bed next to her. My body moves to her on autopilot. When I settle on the mattress, the dip from my weight slides her against my hip. "It feels like it's an unwritten rule that you're supposed to hate your exes, right? Especially the ones who break your heart."

My heart is splintering into shards of glass, lethal and tiny and sharp. Green eyes find mine.

"Maybe it's the years before our relationship that change things. I don't think I could hate you if I tried." Her, I tried, is silent, but I can read between the lines. "It took a while to realize you did the right thing stepping away."

"And it worked," I tell both of us. "You followed your dream to the west coast, and I…"

"You got drafted." She pokes me in the side. "I always knew you would."

Just like I knew she'd make something of herself, as long as I got out of her way. That sounds conceited, but it was what I thought at seventeen. I truly believed I had to let her go to give her a chance at her dreams. Sixteen years later, the difference now is that I need to believe it. I can't let myself wonder if we could have had it all. Together.

"I think," she breaks me out of my thoughts, "this would be easier if we actually made some ground rules."

Easier? For who?

I don't realize I've spoken out loud until she's answering me. A sheepish little shrug of her shoulders accompanying her words.

"Easier for both of us." A blush spreads along her cheeks. "I'm having a hard time keeping current events separate from the past. You know?"

I do know. I just don't know if I care.

I'm a masochistic asshole who enjoys having her near me just a fraction too much.

"I want to be sure I'm not stepping on any toes," Vera says. Instead of looking at me, her eyes are on the back of her hand, the one tugging at a loose thread in the worn comforter.

Toes ? I want to laugh. I'm not the one being photographed with new men on a semi-regular basis.

"You aren't."

The look she gives me is pure skepticism, accompanied by another perusal, top to bottom. If I flex my pecs and abs and biceps while she's looking? Well, who's going to tell on me?

"Really, Robbie?" The total disbelief in her voice urges me to tell her how long it's been since I was with a woman, just to prove there's no territory to poach or partner to anger, but I don't. Instead, I nod my head and let the sound of my name on her lips soak my brain like a sudden downpour.

"I'm not the one whose dates get photographed." I look down at my hands as I fist them in my lap.

There's a beat of silence, one the stretches out into the room and I can feel like a weight on my shoulders. Fuck. Why did I say that?

"Keeping tabs on me?" There's a curve to her brow and a twinkle in her eye. She's waiting for my answer, even though she already knows it.

"Yes."

She bumps her shoulder into mine, the same bony nudge that she's been giving me since she was eight, and then her head nestles right into my neck. She smells like sunscreen and sweat and Vera. Our reflection is centered in the mirror and my gaze traces the lines of her face, connecting the freckles one by one the way I used to. The same freckles I've studied in grainy tabloid photos and glossy magazine covers.

"It's okay," she says. "I do too. Old habits die screaming or something like that, but this is probably further proof that we need some boundaries of some sort."

Boundaries. Right.

"I'm here until Saturday, so we only have to make this work for a few more days. Or we could just fess up and tell everyone the truth."

The truth that we're strangers still treating our past like an elephant sitting in the middle of the living room?

My initial yes was automatic. Vera asked, and I didn't hesitate. That's always been the way I operate. She needs something to happen? I make it happen. No questions asked. No passing go, no collecting two-hundred dollars. Being near her again is like sliding into the hot tub my parents used to keep on the back deck. There's the initial burn, skin-melting-off-my- bones heat, and then it's comfortable. Soothing. And getting out into the chilled night air feels like a chore not worth pursuing.

And after seeing how happy Mom was? Dad? The way Vera settled right in next to me at the dining table? It was just beautiful enough to justify taking these next few days with the one woman I will never fully get over. I can have this week, this taste, to fuel me through the next sixteen years and who knows? Maybe by the end of the next decade and a half she'll be unavailable, married to the perfect guy with two point five perfect children covered head to toe in freckles. And maybe, just maybe, that will be the push my brain and heart need to finally leave this girl behind.

"I can handle four days." Probably.

"I don't know about you, but I thought tonight was pretty easy." She nestles in closer to my side and my cock decides now is a perfect time to stand up and take notice. I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and dislodging Vera. It's some middle-school shit, hiding a boner as I hunch over, but I don't think he'll be a welcome addition to this conversation.

To Vera's credit, she either doesn't notice that I've shifted away from her, or chooses not to comment on it.

"I wasn't sure if we should just not correct them, or really lean into the dating thing, but…" she gets to her feet and crosses to the middle of the room, hands propped on her hips. "That kiss?" She fans her face.

I hadn't planned to kiss her. It was natural. Like stepping up next to her to help with the dishes—despite the top-of-the-line dishwasher I installed last summer—or stepping onto the ice as the crowd chants our names. As simple as breathing.

"I should have asked," I say and scrub a hand down the front of my face so I don't have to see her agree with me. "I overstepped…"

"I loved it. I wouldn't mind doing it again sometime."

My head comes up and there's a record-scratch sound echoing in my ears. She what?

"Would that be overstepping a boundary? To tell you that I want to kiss you? To touch you?" She licks her bottom lip, and there's no blood in any part of my body except my dick.

I shake my head. "Not overstepping." I wish I was smooth enough to hook my arm around her waist and pin her under me. "I feel the same."

"So," her grin is hot, full of mischief. I might come in my pants. It's a very real worry. "It's okay if I tell you that I've been turned on since I saw you at the airport? That you still do it for me?"

"I…" words are failing me. I can't wrap my brain around the shape or feel of them, I just know I'm supposed to say something.

"I like your tattoo. I've been thinking about doing this since I first saw it." She leans in, dragging her hot, wet tongue up the side of my neck. Every nerve in my body is firing out of sequence. I can both feel her loop around each curve of the inked leaves, and can feel nothing.

I'm hallucinating. It's the only explanation. That's why this hotel room still looks the same as it did after prom. That's why she smells the same and leans into my touch the way she used to. That's why she's standing in front of me, telling me she liked my kiss, because she isn't actually in front of me.

I'm lying on the ice somewhere—probably fucking Phoenix, or Columbus—after a nasty hit, and the medical team is coming to get me. Or maybe they already did. I could be in an ambulance speeding toward the nearest ER. Maybe I'm in the ICU in a medically induced coma. Or a brain damage induced one. My mind is spinning all of my deepest fantasies—okay, maybe not the deepest ones—into a fake reality while my body tries to process the trauma of whatever I went through.

Wasn't there some guy who went years before noticing a lamp that wasn't quite right? Ten years. A marriage, a wife, kids. All gone in a blink, and he woke up in the hospital. How far back do my delusions go? Is Vic even married? Did I even get drafted into the NHL? Although if I wasn't drafted, then how would I have taken this bad of a hit? Juniors? Hit by a bus? Fuck.

A cool hand cups the back of my neck.

"Hey there, mister." The hands move to my cheeks. "Come back."

I blink slowly, trying to bring the hotel room back into focus. Vera is crouched in front of me, her thumbs stroking the skin above my beard. Back and forth, back and forth. The same way she's done a million times in my memories.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi." Her smile might be my North Star. "Welcome back. Sorry. Too much?"

I mumble an apology, shifting her hands up and down on my face.

"You caught me off-guard. It's been a long time for me," I say, which is embarrassing to admit, but possibly less embarrassing than believing she's a mirage.

"It's fine. It's been a long time since I've dated someone, too. I forget the rules sometimes, myself."

She's so sweet. Too good for the likes of me. A man who broke her heart to chase his own dream, but still can't let go of her sixteen years later. A man who still dreams of her mouth, her tits. A man who rubs one out with her name on his lips.

I pull her hands down from my face and hope she can't feel the way my fingers tremble. I hear the click of my swallow as if it's a gunshot echoing in the room.

"You don't mean dating, do you?" It's not a question, not with the way she smiles at me, soft and warm, and understanding. "It's been a long time since you've kissed someone?"

I don't have to nod. She can read my affirmation in my face. It doesn't matter that I know— I know —she won't tease me. My stomach cramps up with the thought that Vera, super model Vera, now knows that even at the ripe old age of thirty-three, with a multi-million dollar NHL contract, I have very little experience. I almost don't want to look at her, but I also can't make myself look away.

Vera's hands settle on my hips. She's still crouched in front of me, and I'm trying hard not to reach for her. I want to. Her left hand slides up the front of my chest. Even through my t-shirt it feels like a brand, smoking and singeing my skin as she moves. Long fingers tangle in the hair at behind my ears, nails scraping against my skin. I shudder. The tremor moving down my spine and shaking me where I sit. I suck in a breath and all I can see is Vera's smile.

Her lips touch mine between one heartbeat and the next, her tongue gently swiping across my bottom lip. Her taste explodes in my mouth and I pour a moan down her throat. My hands spasm on nothing and I reach for her, circling her waist and dragging her up to sit in my lap. Her thighs hug my hips and I shift back, just to avoid contact with the steel pipe in my pants, but she follows the movement, putting us in direct contact.

This time we both moan. My hands slide up to twist in her hair, cradling the back of her head, and she drags her ass back down my thighs before snugging right up to my front. Her pussy is dragging across my aching cock and I know what this is. We've been here before. Making out like teenagers, testing our limits while our clothes stay firmly in place.

Or maybe not so firm.

Her hand slides up under the hem of my shirt and splays across my back as she grinds against me again.

"Tell me this isn't pity." I pant into her mouth. "You don't just feel sorry for the old guy who hasn't gotten any."

She laughs and I pull her closer, trying to drag the sound into my very soul.

"I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't get any. Myself included." She winks, "But it's not pity. I meant what I said before. You turn me on. I think," she rocks over my dick again and I choke on my own spit, "I do the same for you." She pushes back, putting space between us. I want to haul her back, but words seem possible with the extra space between us.

"You'd be okay with that? Sex for the week?" On the one hand, I don't know why I'm questioning her when she's clearly initiating. I should pull her back into my space and give us both a happy ending.

"What's a kiss or two between friends?" Vera asks as she slides off my lap. "We're still friends, Robbie."

"That was more than a kiss." I frown.

"And you're still the guy I think of when I need to get off, but I can understand if you'd rather not go there with me."

I take too long to answer. She's grabbing her pajamas and closing herself into the bathroom while my brain is trying to catch up. When she comes back out, covered in the smallest satin shorts and tank top I've ever seen, she smiles at me.

"Think it over, Robbie. I'm not going to rescind the offer, but you need to be sure."

I'm sure, I want to tell her. I want any piece of you you're offering, but she's already slipping under the covers of her bed and switching off the lamp on the bedside table.

I head to the bathroom to take the coldest shower of my life.