Page 41 of He Has Game (Boston Brawlers Hockey)
“I’ve never . . .” she says and she doesn’t need to finish the sentence for me to know she means she’s never come with a man before, virgin or not. Whoever her other lover or lovers—though I doubt there was more than one—was, he was a loser, taking care of himself and neglecting this beautiful angel.
“It’s all right.” I stroke her face and hair and then I lift her from the counter and carry her to the couch to make her more comfortable. Her hand still covers her heart and I have to ask.
“You always do that. Put your hand over your heart. Why?”
She closes her eyes, then opens them and looks at me square and I can see the gulp in her throat before she speaks.
“Because I have a heart condition.”
Fucking shit. Reflexively, I jump back from her and I’m immediately afraid that I’ve given her a heart attack, that I’ve hurt her.
“Are you okay?” Alarm has me shaking, and all the desire that had my cock swollen and hard a minute ago drains from me, the blood going back to my brain and making my head spin.
She goes into a medical explanation about the heart defect she was born with, sinus node dysfunction, that led to her need for a pacemaker since she was young.
“But I’m all right. The pacemaker works well,” she reassures me. I stand.
“Maybe I should go.”
“Is it because of my pacemaker?” She looks miserable and disheartened and I want to make that look go away.
“Fuck no.” I can say that with certainty although when she first dropped the pacemaker bomb, I was surprised and fucking worried. But she said she’s not a virgin and she’s a sensible woman. Vivvie would never do anything that would be unhealthy, would never put her heart at risk.Or would she?
“I should go because I’m not right for you. I’m the opposite of your type of guy.”
“What type is that?” I can hear the defiance in her words.
I pace around, working myself out of my tension, avoiding looking at her.
“Someone decent.”
“You never explained about your mother,” she says. “What your problem is with her.”
“That’s . . . random,” I say, fear riding up my spine, knowing it’s not so random and not wanting to go there. She’s met my mother and I have no idea what the woman might have said. I haven’t asked because I don’t want to know.
“Seriously. You need to deal with whatever issues you have with her.”
I sigh and sit back down next to her on the couch, inhaling the scent of her sex, I groan.
“It’s not so simple, sweetheart.” That’s all I intend to say. She reaches out and strokes my cheek.
“Please tell me about her.” Her green eyes say so much more. They say she cares, they tell me she’s kind and unselfish all the way down to her soul. They tell me she’s trustworthy. I sigh, feeling compelled, going from reluctant to needing to tell this woman about my mother, about the deepest darkest shame of my life. I clear my throat and, with her hand resting on my shoulder then sliding to my chest until it covers my thudding heart, I talk.
“Caroline Reed. Believe it or not, she was actually married to my dad. She used to show me the marriage certificate as if it were a trophy when I was a kid.”
“That’s . . . odd.”
I grunt. She hasn’t heard anything yet.
“Dad was killed in the service when I was two. He was American. I have no memory of him. Mom was a widow at twenty-one.”
Vivvie sucks in a breath, looks like she’s going to cry. “Same age as I am right now. How unutterably sad.”
“I suppose it is. Unutterably.” I need to tease her. She smiles but doesn’t lose the melancholy look. “That’s not something I understood as a kid and especially not as a teenage boy.” I have to admit, it makes sense. She probably was fucking depressed. But is that an excuse for ignoring her son and sleeping around town with every man she met? Lonely or not, I’m not ready to give her that.
“She moved us back home to Snow Lake with my grandparents when she found out she was a widow. That’s when my memories start. At Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I had a happy childhood mostly, living with my grandparents. They were more like my parents than my mother—she was like a black sheep aunt, sometimes disruptive, often absent.”
Her face is earnest and attentive as if she needs my words to live.
