Chapter 9

“I just feel like I might have made a huge mistake,” Mya sighed, wrapping her arms and her jacket closer around her as she crouched near her Aunt’s grave, brushing snow off of the small brass name plate. “I’m just so far from home and I miss my friends. I thought I’d make more and I guess I have, like at work but...it’s not the same. I don’t have anyone but you to talk to and if you don’t mind my saying so, you sort of suck at advice now,” she added as she chuckled to herself. “I mean, I guess I could talk to your Stevie boy but...it’s not the same as getting advice from a woman,” she added with a sigh, pressing the potted poinsettia down into the snow beside the plaque. “But, on the other hand, they like me at the network and they’ve offered me a job there, on air and everything. I mean, not full time, obviously because they want me to finish my masters as much as I want to but still...on air, that’s pretty cool. But then I just think I could probably do it back home too, maybe even easier...I don’t know,” she let out another long sigh and then got up, stretching her arms over her head. “Maybe it’s just this dreary gray cold fucking city or maybe I need to just give in to Kris so I can get laid,” she mumbled, staring down at the lonely little plaque, a tiny island of colour in the white blanket of snow. “See you next week. Miss you,” she mumbled, blowing a kiss towards the plaque and then turning and heading back towards the cleared walkway, taking small, tentative steps so she didn’t slip on the ice.

She glanced up the hill towards the spot she’d seen him before. It seemed like a year ago but it had only been a few months, three and a bit. He wasn’t there and she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not by his absence. Part of her still longed for him. Just thinking about that night Sidney had come to her sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing at all to do with frosty weather.

Turning back to where she was heading, she met the dark, brooding gaze of the man who was waiting patiently for her. He watched her, heat and barely checked desire clear in his eyes, his inviting mouth set in a determined line, his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket, his muscular thighs wrapped tightly in dark denim. He was every inch the bad boy and his slicked dark hair and pork chop side burns only added to his image, and to his desirability.

Mya let her gaze roam over him, reaching deep to blow on those embers deep in the pit of her stomach, the ones that Sidney had left behind and were almost cold now. She blew on them, kindling them, making them blink red and orange as his assessing gaze met hers. She’d made him wait so long, too long she knew. What she should have done, what would have been the right thing to do, was to break up with him a long time ago. She should have told him about Sidney. She should have admitted that even though she found him attractive and that he was possibly the most perfect boyfriend she’d ever had that she wasn’t now and possibly never would be in love with him.
And yet she couldn’t let go of the sweet and saucy Frenchman. Like now, as she drew near him and his lips turned up into a roguish grin that made her heart skip a beat.
Mya was so very tired of holding him at arms length. She was tired of being lonely and she was just so fed up with wanting something she was obviously never going to have.

“You can’t wait forever girl,” she whispered to herself as she picked her way towards him along the paved walkway, “and he’s not going to wait forever either,” she added as she stepped off of the walkway and onto the paved parking lot, where her feet promptly went out from under her. Black ice, she thought as she threw her arms out, waving them like helicopter rotors, trying to maintain her balance.
His strong arms caught her, his knee under the small of her back, his arms around her and his body bent over hers’. Mya looked up into Kristopher’s handsome face and smiled.

“You saved me,” she whispered, reaching up to run her fingertips along his cheekbone, down to his jaw line and then back, through his hair until her hand wrapped around his neck. She pulled his lips down over her own and kissed him. Closing her eyes she chased away those thoughts that always came racing now, unbidden and unwanted passengers in the rise of her own lust. She forced them back into the darker recesses of her brain as she kissed this man who did want her, feeling his grip tighten around her as he pulled her up onto her feet, his tongue darting between her lips as he pulled her up against his body, his hands sliding down, down until he gripped her ass and pulled her against him, his need hard and obvious.

He moaned into her mouth, anticipating her withdrawal, knowing full well this was usually the time when she would turn away from him, making some pathetic excuse to throw cold water on the heat they’d created between them. Not today, she thought, ignoring that little voice in the back of her head reminding her that she didn’t love this man, that she could never give him her heart. Today, she promised herself silently as she laced her fingers in his long dark hair and deepened the kiss, grinding up against him, forcing his body against the car, raising her leg so her thigh rode high along his.

“Today,” she promised him quietly as his lips brushed her jaw, trailing kisses down her neck. “Take me home today.”

He didn’t need to hear more, his dark eyes searching hers’ for one brief moment during which she lied with her own gaze, putting things behind her eyes she would never feel. He grinned, bright and dazzling before bending over her hand, kissing the back of her hand like he was greeting royalty, thanking her silently before he yanked open the passenger door and practically ran around the car and cranked the engine over before he’d even settled into the driver’s seat.

Mya couldn’t let the embers die down, she knew, or she’d lose her nerve. Eschewing safety and decorum both, she reached for his belt buckle, allowing her stage character to take over as she urged him free of the tight and now obviously uncomfortable confines of his jeans. She wrapped her fingers around him, enjoying the strangled cry that escaped his throat. Slipping beneath his arm, Mya slid her mouth down over him and closed her eyes.

Only now, when Kris had to keep his eyes on the road or kill them both, did Mya allow herself to think about the hazel eyed dark haired boy, the one and only who made her heart skip a beat. She brought his handsome face to mind, let her imagination strip his muscular athletic body naked in her mind’s eye and lost herself in the idea of kneeling before him and performing this act while his hazel eyes looked own at her, full of love and affection, his full pink lips curled up into an angelic smile.

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“You have to snap out of it,” Jordan said quietly, his eyes trained above on a spot on the ceiling as Sidney took the weight bar out of his hands. “If you’re not going to apologize or at the very least go see her, then you have to snap out of it.”

“I don’t remember you saying that after Randi died,” Sidney replied just as quietly, exchanging places with his taller teammate and waiting while weight was added to each side of the bar. He too stared at the ceiling, but it wasn’t just a plain white ceiling he saw, nor was it the angelic face of his ex. It was Mya’s face. Contorted by passion and bathed in sweat, her eyes bright with ecstasy, her full lips turned up in feral grin. It was a vision he couldn’t get out of his head.

“That was different and you know it,” Jordan hissed, gingerly lowering the bar into Sidney’s hands and waiting until he had full control of it before stepping back just enough to give him room to lift it. “This woman’s alive and you’re acting like you’re dead. You didn’t even do that after Randi died.”

“I had the Cup then and I’m not acting like I’m dead. I’m concentrating. I’m focussed. You should try it,” he replied, keeping his voice level, conscious of their teammates working out around them. They didn’t need to know his business. It wasn’t good for them to know that their captain was off, even a little bit. And that’s all this was, Sidney told himself as he grunted with the effort of lifting the heavily burdened bar. This was a blip. He’d get over it, eventually.

“There’s hundred of fish in the sea,” Jordan reminded him, sounding just like the team psychologist. That’s what she kept telling him every time he tried to broach the subject of how to get over his one night stand, how to get this woman out of his head. That seemed to be everyone’s answer. Just go on to the next pair of tits. Go home with the next girl that offered. Have sex with some other stranger and he’d feel better.

But he wouldn’t. He knew that. He knew it as well as he knew that when he went out on that ice tomorrow that everyone would be expecting him to score, that half of the people in the stands would be wearing his number on the back. It was just something that true and he couldn’t get around it.

He was in love with a ghost and he was in love with a woman he didn’t even know. How much more fucked up could you get?

“I’m not interested in fish,” he snarled, managing to push the bar up one last time, every muscle in his arms and chest straining, grunting with the effort. He was glad when Jordan finally took the bar from him and rolled back into its’ resting spot.

“You say that, but you don’t do anything about it, and that’s the part I don’t get Creature.” Jordan tossed him a towel and stood over him, looking down at him, mystified. “You’re the most fucking determined person I’ve met in my entire fucking life, and that’s fucking saying something considering my family,” he began, shaking his head. “If you wanted her, you’d have gone after her a long time ago. I just don’t get it.” Jordan gave him one last, long look and then shook his head dismissively and turned and walked towards the bikes. Sidney watched him go and then pulled the towel over his head and hung his head between his knees.

“Yeah, me neither,” Sidney said quietly. “Me fucking neither.”

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Mya looked over at the inert form beside her, watching his back move up and down at regular intervals as he slept deeply. The sleep of the dead and the innocent she thought as she reached over for the cigarette pack on her nightstand.

It was a bad habit she’d picked up at Blush from the other girls. It steadied their nerves but Mya had never had nerves, not even when she got naked in front of a room of strange men. But she had them now and had had them ever since she’d been with Sidney in this bed.

She hadn’t really hoped that bringing Kris here would erase the past, she had far too good a grip on reality for that, but she had prayed it would lessen the sting. It hadn’t.

Reaching for her robe, Mya tugged it around her and took her lighter and the pack of cigarettes and slipped down the hall. She couldn’t sleep, not with him there, looking all sweet and innocent in his sleep when she felt anything but.

Shaking a cigarette out of the pack, she put it in her mouth and lit it, taking two long hard drags off of it before she took it out of her mouth and coughed. She wasn’t really good at smoking and she hated the stink of it but it gave her something to do with her hands when she couldn’t sleep like this, which lately, seemed like all the time.

He’d done his best, she was fairly certain of that. Her joints ached and the smell of stale sweat and sex clung to her body just as it should after hours of romping between the sheets with an indefatigable athlete. She’d even done things she didn’t really like doing but seemed to please him in hopes of making it last longer, of bringing on the sleep of the truly well consumed.

But she wasn’t. She was sitting in her kitchen, smoking, and hating herself.
She thought about the ice cream in her freezer and the cookies in the cupboard. She could make herself a sundae and turn on the horror channel and really and truly let herself fall into a deep depression. Except at some point she was bound to wake Kris up and then she’d have to explain and how exactly was she going to do that, she wondered, as she flicked the ashes from the end of the cigarette into an empty bowl.

No, seriously, you’re amazing in bed. A fucking silver medalist if I’m any judge. Why not gold? Well you see you have this teammate and....

No, she thought ruefully as butted out the cigarette and stared longingly towards the freezer. That conversation probably wouldn’t go down that well. Although he deserved some sort of explanation because this couldn’t go on and she knew it. Especially not now, not after they’d had sex, not after the way he’d looked at her as he held her in his arms after the first time.

He was in love with her. It had been written all over his handsome features. He’d looked down at her with this sappy puppy dog look in his eyes and she’d almost called it all off then. She should have. Right there and then, she should have crawled out of the bed and ordered him out. But she hadn’t had the courage and part of her was still hoping that something inside of her would answer him, would suddenly realize that he was just as perfect as he seemed to be.

But it didn’t and it hadn’t and she knew that it wouldn’t.

Tugging her robe closer around her to ward off the chill she walked back down the hall and to the bathroom, careful to close the door quietly behind her. As soon as she turned the water on the room would fill with steam, but if she left the door open the fire alarm would go off.

Dropping her robe to the floor Mya reached to turn on the water and caught sight of herself in the mirror. Turning back to the mirror she arched her neck, looking for any of the obvious signs left behind and found none. Of course Kris would be more careful, mindful of her trade. But then Sidney didn’t know. She could hardly blame him for the fact that she hadn’t been able to work for days afterward.
And therein lay the answer to it all.

While Montréal was, in all likelihood, a very modern place, most of its’ inhabitants were also very religious. Kris wore a small gold cross and he often played with it when he was concerned or concentrating. Maybe he was okay with what she did to pay her bills but his family, in their suburban home on the outskirts of Montréal would probably see it differently.

And Sidney? Well that was a no go from the beginning. His squeaky clean image would never withstand the kind of scrutiny that even a whisper of her occupation would likely raise.

Not that she’d ever done anything that she was strictly ashamed of and there weren’t any nude pictures for anyone to find and publish, just the same sort of suggestive ones that were posted outside Blush and on their website. Still, it would be enough because even though no one even so much as touched her, being a stripper was equated to being a porn star. Mya knew the difference but she also knew that most people couldn’t care less that there was a difference.

And that was exactly what she was going to tell Kris and it was also exactly what was going to help her get over the idea of her and Sidney, because it could never happen. She’d made her bed and she was going to have to lie in it...alone.