Chapter 3

I wasn't sure what kind of reaction I was gonna get for a Greener story. Thanks for all the positive feedback!

I wanted to save this last light.
With dawn comes certainty of what we’ll be, for now hold me lightly.

I won’t wake you up. No need for last words.
These last idle hours. More than I deserve.

(lyrics from Kiss You Goodnight Meg & Dia)

“Got hot date?” 

Mike didn’t pause as he stuffed his skates into his bag on top of his shoulder pads and work out gear and he didn’t take the bait Ovie dangled hopefully from behind him. He didn’t want o talk about dates or girls or anything even related to either topic. He wanted to get the hell out of this place before anyone stuck a microphone in his face and asked him if he thought he’d be back next season or if he’d end up being trade bait. He didn’t want to think about that. In fact he didn’t want to think about much aside from getting out of the city and back to big sky country and some peace and quiet. 

“He’s in a bad mood,” Nicky noted and Mike winced. He’d left his friend high and dry again. He hadn’t even realized until right this minute when he’d heard Backie’s voice. 

“Whatchya do Lambogreenie? Fall asleep on that hot little red head?” Brooksy slapped his shoulder on the way by. “You shoulda called me in to bat clean up for ya.” Mike felt a growl of annoyance building up in his chest and had to take a deep breath to stop himself from snapping. The grilling he was taking was no different from the teasing he’d put up with a dozen times before when he’d left the club with a girl. Today though his skin felt like tissue paper and Nicky was right, he was in no mood to put up with the usual repartee. 

The fact was his ego was bruised and he knew damn well that he wasn’t much of a poker player when it came to most of the guys in this room. If he tried to blow it off, they’d see right through it and he’d end up having to explain why he was upset and that was something he was still working on. 

He would have kicked her out anyway, if she hadn’t already been gone when he woke up. Generally he wasn’t into morning sex and not just because he’d been told that he almost always looked like death warmed over when he rolled out of bed. He just wasn’t a morning person. Even after a coffee and a bowl of cereal he didn’t really feel human until he’d done a couple of laps on the ice, feeling the cool air on his face. 

But for the first time in a long time he’d woken up craving the woman he’d been with and not just her body. He wanted to see her smile, wanted to hear her laugh. So when he realized that she was gone, he’d been disappointed and then he’d been angry. He didn’t want to think about her and he really didn’t want to still be thinking about her, but he was. He was thinking about going to every bar in the city until he found her. He’d even checked his facebook status while he’d eaten his toast, hoping she’d asked to be his friend. So he had to get out of the city before he found himself sitting at Starbucks looking at every single red head that walked by.

“Something’s wrong,” Nicky whispered, sitting down on the bench beside him, his own bag already packed between his feet. If it had been just about any other member of his team asking, Mike would have blown it off, denied it, and asked to be left alone. But this was Backie and he wasn’t asking to get the goods, to get his digs in, to make Mike go three shades of red. He was asking because he actually gave a shit.

“I’m sorry I left you…again,” he apologized, though he knew he didn’t need to. Backie wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. It just wasn’t in his gentle nature. 

“So, was she a…a…clinger?” Mike couldn’t help but grin at how well Backie had picked up on the slang around the room but his smile disappeared as he thought about waking up to find the spot next to him in his king sized bed empty and cold. She hadn’t even had a glass of water so he could go all CSI and have the glass sent to a lab to be dusted for prints and tested for DNA. ‘Fuck,’ he thought with a sigh as he dropped onto the bench beside Nicky and dropped his head into his hands ‘I’m fucking losing it over some random girl and I don’t even know her name’. 

“No,” he replied honestly, “she was…fine…no, she was…ah fuck it!” He felt his entire face get hot the way it had when he’d realized that he wasn’t nearly drunk enough to get naked in front of a beautiful woman. “It’s never been like that, y’know?” he looked up at his teammate, knowing that of all of the men in the room right now, there’d be no sarcastic comeback from the young man sitting silently beside him.  Unfortunately there is also no affirmation. The Swede merely shrugs. ‘Of course’, Mike thinks as he rolls his eyes at his own hubris. Nicky isn’t a man whore. In fact the truth is that the young Swede is as far from a slut as any hockey player Mike has ever met. Nicky wants to be with ‘the one’ and isn’t willing to settle for less. It’s a choice that has often made the young center the butt of jokes in this locker room, even from Mike. 

Mike opens his mouth to say something dismissive like ‘you wouldn’t understand’ when Nicky does something unexpected. He smiles in a sly sort of way that Mike knows is almost always followed by something he doesn’t want to hear.  Mike shakes his head. He can already hear the words in his head before his friend actually speaks them. 

“No, no, no. Don’t look at me like that,” he insists and then rolls his eyes and shakes his head when his teammates just continued smiling at him. “There’s no such thing,” he insists which only causes his baby faced blonde teammate to shrug and continue to stare back at him with the same expressive smirk on his face. “You can look at me like that all you want. I don’t even remember her name. So there.” 

“What are you two girls talking about?” Nicky was the one to turn an evil eye up toward Brooks who stood over both of them with his ‘I’m about to cause shit’ grin on his face. 

“How we’re going to rent the honeymoon suite when I get to the stampede,” Nicky grinned and reached out to touch Mike’s hair. Mike slapped his hand away and glared at him. 

“Oh can I come to?” Brooksy minced, trying to lower himself onto Mike’s lap. Mike glared at them both and pushed Brooks away. 

“Get off me you fag,” he muttered, reaching for his bag. “I’ll see you fuckers in July.”

“Only if you’re a very, very good boy,” Laich called after him. Mike flipped him the bird over his shoulder and headed out of the room. 

________________________________________________________________

“Hey there girl, did you miss me?” Chelsea let the soft velvet muzzle of her appaloosa, Popcorn, fill her hand. She pressed a kiss between the horse’s eyes as she lowered her head and softly nickered a greeting. Chelsea closed her eyes and let the familiar smells of hay and horses fill her to the brim with a sense of homecoming. This had been her first stop after the taxi dropped her off at the end of the long driveway. He’d have taken her right up to the front door if she’d asked, but she wanted to stretch her legs. It had been a long flight. “Hey now, I don’t have anything for you yet,” she giggled as the mare poked at her shirt, looking for hidden treats in her pockets. “I’ll come back with some later, promise,” she added as she ran the flat of her hand down the mare’s muscular neck. The mare bobbed her head up and down as if she understood. 

Chelsea giggled and turned to walk down the aisle of stalls, most of which were filled with other people’s animals, paid boarders, all but the last stall which was empty and closed. She tried not to look at it, told herself she wouldn’t stop but her feet seemed to have a mind all their own. The next thing she knew she was facing the Dutch door and reaching for the lock. Her hand hovered over it, half of her brain telling her to keep moving while the other half felt like a metal filing pulled towards a magnet. 

This was the stall that her mother’s horse, Joker, a wild eyed head strong quarter horse stallion, a barrel racing champion and her mother’s pride and joy had ruled the roost from. She could hardly remember ever coming into this barn without hearing him stomping his feet and demanding, loudly, her attention. No one could ride him. No one but her mother and even then he only ever wanted to run, tossing his mane, prancing and threatening to bite when she’d put his bridle on and then gnashing at the bit until his mouth was filled with froth and blood. His blue eyes, the result of a rare but prized genetic trait called overo, would roll back in his head and he would paw at the ground until his saddle was cinched tight and then his entire body would ripple and shudder as if an army of ants was crawling beneath his skin until her mother swung into the stirrups and dug in her heels and then he would take off as if he had afterburners. 

Chelsea lifted the pin from the lock and pulled the top of the Dutch door open. The stall was spotlessly clean right down to the concrete floor. The water bucket stood empty in one corner and all of the first place ribbons had been taken down.  The stall looked as barren as the space in her heart that ached for her mother every single day all because of a gopher hole. 

She could still see it now, when she shut her eyes, her mother going over Joker’s neck when he stumbled, his leg twisting, snapping like a twig as his body lurched forward but his leg did not. She’d heard the impact, her mother’s body twisting as it fell to earth like a rag doll, going eerily still, unnaturally rigid. 

She’d known, before she’d even brought Poppy to a halt and slid to the ground, before she’d pressed her fingers to the spot where her mother’s pulse should have been. She’d known at a very basic level before she’d realized that her mother wasn’t breathing. She’d known what she’d find but that hadn’t stopped the primal scream that had torn from her lungs. Her screams and Joker’s bellows of agony had brought her father and a gun. 

The echo from the shot that had brought on the unnatural silence still seemed to hang in the air in the barn as Chelsea slowly closed the door and let the lock fall back into place. She rested the flat of her hand against the rough hewn wood. It was as silent and as still as….

“So you’re finally home.” 

Chelsea turned and looked down the aisle at the talk drink of water standing with his broad shoulders seeming like they could fill the entire doorway. His straw Stetson was tipped forward, shading eyes that she knew were the colour of summer skies from the sun. His shirt was open almost to his navel framing his smooth sculpted chest that glistened with a fine sheen of sweat. 

“Hi Jimmy,” she smiled and turned to lean her back against the closed stall door. Tipping his hat back to reveal his square jaw dusted with the golden scruff of few days growth, his wide easy smile and his twinkling blue eyes. He was devastatingly handsome in that Hollister model sort of way. 

“What no call? Were you even gonna let me know you were home?” he asked, his dusty boots clumping on the concrete as he walked towards her. She watched him close the distance between them, waiting for the jump in her pulse, the tightening in her chest that usually accompanied Jimmy Henry’s sudden appearance but even as he leaned his forearm over her head and loomed close enough that she could smell the hay he’d been stacking and the musk of his body, it didn’t happen. 

“I’m tired Jimmy,” she whispered, tracking a glistening drop of sweat that dangled for a moment from his chin and then slid down his throat and began to make its way over his collarbone. She didn’t dare look lower. She knew what his chest looked like beneath his shirt, each and every muscle defined as if carved from alabaster. “I just came to see Pop and then I thought I’d head in and crash for a while. It’s a long flight, y’know?” She did tremble, just a little when his other hand reached up and the knuckle of his index finger traced the line of her jaw. 

“Want some company?” 

She almost laughed. The aches of the night before hadn’t yet subsided but that wasn’t the reason that she was shaking her head and looking away. 

“I’m really tired,” she told him honestly, ducking beneath his arm and moving away. 

“Alright,” his long reach caught her before she got more than a step away and she looked down at his long fingers as they curled around her wrist. She’d always liked his hands. They were the hands of a man who knew an honest days’ work. “Dinner though, okay?” Chelsea nodded and that smile of his, the one that made women passing in the street stop and turn to watch him walk by, shone down on her like the noon day sun. “Wear somethin’ pretty,” he added, glancing down at her jeans and ballet flats with disapproval before leaning in and pressing his lips to her forehead. “Glad you’re home CeeCee,” he added in his deep, husky voice, the one that had been sending chills down her spine since it had changed when he was fourteen years old. 

“Yeah, me too,” she sighed, closing her eyes and waiting for that sensation, that bubbling over giddy feeling she got when he kissed her to surface but that feeling too seemed to be absent. She opened her eyes to watch him grin in the way he did when he thought she was being just a little odd, but then he just kissed the corner of her mouth and turned and walked away. 

She’d always loved to watch that man walk away and today she was no less appreciative but something was…off…different. 

‘It’s just because I’ve been away’, she told herself as she pushed herself back onto the balls of her feet and walked the other direction out of the barn and up towards the house. ‘It has nothing to do with last night’ she added as a sort of afterthought as she bounced up the stairs and into the empty house. ‘Except that I didn’t get enough sleep’, she added silently with a yawn as she stuck her key in the lock and pushed the door open to the simple old farmhouse with the formal dining room on one side of the stairs and the living room on the other, the kitchen at the back of the house and three small bedrooms upstairs. 

She was almost dead on her feet by the time she pushed open the door to her room, the one that still had her college hoodie hanging over the footboard of her double bed and the same dusty rose wallpaper on the walls. Kicking off her shoes Chelsea crawled up onto the bed and grabbed hold of the floppy eared stuffed rabbit that sat guarding her pillows. 

“Hello Mr. Wabbit,” she mumbled as she curled up on the top of the home made, hand me down quilt with its ragged edges and faded patchwork fabric squares and closed her eyes.