“I seem to be a bit distracted this time.” She’swearing a soft-looking sweater set to ward off the night’s chill, but even covered, I let my eyes trace over her body slowly, enjoying every inch. Even the ones I have to imagine beneath the knit fabric. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s been my best off-season yet.” I flash her a cocky smirk, imagining I can see a blush on her cheeks, but it’s probably the glow of the fire since Kayla wouldn’t blush about a damn thing, especially a compliment she deserves.
“I spend my off-season healing up any injuries, then focus on strengthening and flexibility so I don’t reinjure myself during the season. Lather, rinse, repeat.” Riggs rolls his shoulder, probably not even aware he’s unconsciously checking it. He’s been religiously doing his physical therapy and Zeke says it’s good, but I watch his face for any sign of pain. Thankfully, I don’t see any.
“We’ll report for training camp in September, have a few weeks of practice with the rookies and special teams and do a few exhibition games. Then, the real fun starts. We’ll play eighty-two games from October to April, then, assuming we make the playoffs…” I pause to send a glance skyward and cross my fingers. “That goes until June.”
Kayla listens silently, but I can see calendar pages virtually flying around in her head.
“About half those are on our ice, so we play, shower, and drive home,” Riggs says, trying to minimize how insane our schedule sounds. “The other half… the team has a rule about sleeping in our own beds whenever possible, so we fly out after the games. We get home, but it’s not the same as if we had a nine-to-five.” His jaw is stone, and I know he’s remembering how Eliza would bitch about him waking her up when he got in late, to the point he often resorted to sneaking in as quietly as possible and sleeping in the guest room of his own house.
I wonder if he’s also imagining how it’ll be to not see Kayla for days on end once we’re as busy as she is. I don’t mind a busy woman. Hell, I think it’s awesome that Kayla runs a billion-dollar company, but right now, we’re wide open and flexible, able to pop into the city at a moment’s notice or hang out with her on an unexpected day off. Soon, that won’t be the case.
“So you’re not always hang-around-the-house-ers,” she summarizes, as if that’s all we’ve been doing. Admittedly, we work out when she’s at the office, so to her, it probably does seem like our days are a little light comparatively when she talks million-dollar contracts and we talk weight room personal records.
I chuckle, shaking my head. “Definitely not. We’re in-and-out-ers,” I tease, pointing here and there and everywhere, but letting sex coat the double entendre to soften the truth of the matter, which is that we’ll miss important events, grumble hello before falling into bed to sleep for hours, and then be gone again. It’s the reality of our lives as professional athletes.
“Thank God,” she mutters.
I jerk my eyes to her, finding a big smile stretching across her face. “What?” I ask, my brows furrowed in confusion.
She tries to stop smiling but can’t and resorts to covering her mouth with a hand for a moment as she shakes her head. “Don’t get me wrong. Please, don’t. But aren’t you two going stir crazy? I mean, I know you work out, but that’s like two or three hours of your day? What do you do with the rest of the time?”
This woman surprises me at every turn. I’m all puppy-dog, sad-eyed about leaving her, while on her side, she’s like ‘get a damn life, man’ because her days are full to the brim and overflowing with Very Important Shit.
“Other than workout? Jerk off. Swim. Eat. Watch trash TV. Wait for you to call or come over. Eat some more. Fuck. Sleep.” I list off the sum total of my usual day, then finish with a dreamy, “It’s a tough life, but somebody’s gotta do it. Might as well be me.” I hold my arms out to my sides, as if I’m a saint making a sacrifice for the greater good of humanity.
“If not you, then who?” she says, echoing my sentiment, though she sounds a bit sarcastic about it.
“You’re not worried about us being gone so much?” Riggs asks, still anxious enough to turn our jokey approach serious.
Kayla turns a softer look to him. “No. I get it. I travel for work too. Not as much as what you’re describing, but if you have to, you have to.” She shrugs, accepting that it’s a simple fact of life. “I appreciate that your team tries to get you home as much as possible. That’s important.”
“We can make it work,” he vows earnestly. “Coordinate schedules and plan around your trips too. Lots of the guys do it.” His eyes drift back to the fire. “Though a lot of the WAGs don’t work, which sometimes makes it easier.”
Not for Riggs, it didn’t. It made it infinitely more difficult that he was Eliza’s be-all-end-all and when he was gone, she searched high and low for anything to comfort or entertain herself. Thankfully, it was mostly shiny things, not other guys, or Riggs wouldn’t beplaying hockey. He’d be in prison for killing whatever unlucky bastard Eliza fucked.
“Or it makes it harder,” I counter pointedly.
“Do you want someone who doesn’t work?” Kayla’s voice is different, clipped and cold, like she’s hiding her thoughts behind a veil of non-reaction until she hears his answer.
I don’t think I’m breathing because the only sound I can hear is the crackle of the fire. The moment stretches, and I almost answer for him to make sure he doesn’t say or do something stupid. But I have to let him find his way out of the briar patch Eliza left him in. This is his healing, his journey back to trusting himself, and I can’t do that for him. Or at least not all of it for him. Horse to water and all, though he’s more of a stubborn mule than a horse.
Riggs lifts his eyes to hers and reaches over to take her hand. “I just want you.”
Simple. Perfect. Sometimes, he’s a genius in his simple statements. We won’t discuss the other times.
Kayla gives him a soft smile, her eyes looking a little glittery, and I let my breath out in a whoosh. “Damn, man. I thought you were gonna fuck that up. Good job.” I hold a hand up for an air high-five. He doesn’t do it back, even though he has another hand, but he takes a deep breath, nodding to himself. Knowing he needs a minute to settle the tornado in his head, I high-five myself and then turn to Kayla. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I’m saying that if we have to hire a personal assistant whose sole job is coordinating our calendars and travel plans so that I can be buried balls-deep in your pussy as often as possible and for as many hours as possible, I will happily find someone to fill that role.”
Kayla’s bark of laughter echoes through the trees. “You get called in to HR regularly, don’t you?”
It could be an insult, but there’s no heat to the accusation. In fact, she sounds amused by my potential job posting.
“Mmm, I can neither confirm nor deny that,” I reply. “And actually, it’d be the PR team.”
“He buys them big Christmas gifts. Huge, please don’t kill me for being me gifts, every Christmas and at the end of every season,” Riggs offers, a smile trying to steal across his face.
He’s come a long way, doing a lot of the work over the years, but making leaps and bounds I never expected in just the last few weeks. I’m a fixer. I always have been, but Kayla has fixed something in my friend I don’t think I ever would’ve been able to, and I appreciate that more than she’ll ever know.
“You shut your lying face hole,” I say, pointing a finger at him, but I can’t hide my grin. He’s right, I paid about a thousand dollars per PR staffer this past June. More importantly, Kayla and Riggs’s answering smiles are eerily similar to mine.
