Chapter 12

And I miss you like hell
And I'm feeling blue...
I've got feelings for you
Do you still feel the same?
From the first time I laid my eyes on you,
I felt joy of living
I saw heaven in your eyes...
In your eyes...

(lyrics from “I Wish You Were Here” by Blackmore’s Night)

“I’m starting to get a complex,” Becky mutters, mostly under her breath as the waiter walks away, having poured our wine and taken our orders. Well, having taken the orders from me, because he’s doing what a lot of Montrealers will do. Namely, pretending they don’t understand English and worse, turning their noses up at any attempt an English speaking tourist makes at speaking French, or what is truly spoken in Montreal, Quebecois.

“You’re doing just fine,” I insist, reaching over to take her hand and as I raise it to my lips she turns a delightfully cute shade of pink. 

“It’s so weird. It’s like a whole other country,” she adds, pulling her hand back and picking up her wine glass instead. It’s been like this ever since Sid’s nuptials. She’s been a little distant, a little unsure of me. I thought maybe it was just my bringing her to Montreal but I’m beginning to think that it’s more than that. 

“We like to think so,” I reply, raising my own glass and swirling the chilled peach coloured contents, allowing the fruity aroma to rise and spread across my pallet. 

“I don’t just mean Canada,” she begins, looking alarmed that I might think so and I do my best not to laugh at the childlike expression on her face. 

“I knew what you meant, ma colombe. We Montrealers like to think of our city as a little piece of Europe,” I add, gazing out at the city lights before turning my attention back to her. “Are you glad you came?” Her gaze settles on the piece of pain beurré on the plate in front of her and I can’t help but think that I’ve hit on the problem. “Or are you homesick mon chaton?” Becky pokes at the bread and shrugs. 

“No, that’s not it. It’s nice here. I guess I’m just feeling guilty,” she mumbles, looking sullen and fragile. Reaching for her hand I take it in both of mine and resist when she tries to pull it back. 

“Your mom, right?” She nods and then shrugs, giving me the same mixed signals she always has that make her confusing and infuriating but challenging and brings out that protective side in me at the same time. “I thought you hated her?”

“She’s still my mom,” she answers quietly, her hand finally relaxing in mine. 

“So does that mean that you’re wanting to go home?” I ask, giving her hand a squeeze when she looks down at her lap. “Becka?” 

“I like being here with you,” she insists in a tiny voice that’s barely above a whisper, her voice catching in her throat as a tear escapes and rolls, liquid silver, down her cheek. 

“And you don’t really want to go back. You just feel like you should,” I add for her and she nods, brushing that tear away with the back of her other hand. “Your sister would phone if you anything had happened right?” She nods, her gaze still riveted to her lap. “And what would you be able to do for her if you were there? Sit by her bed and do what?” 

“I don’t know Max,” she sighs, sounding exasperated. “What would you do if it was your mom?” As she slowly lifts her eyes to meet mine I see a spark there that I haven’t seen in a while, a challenge instead of the quiet and nearly childlike girl that I brought home to meet my mother. 

“Well my mom never beat me, or called me names, so I’d probably sit there all day holding her hand but only because she’s the best mom in the whole world,” I add, earning one of her hallmark sarcastic half smiles that ends in an equally sarcastic eye roll. “If you want to go back, I’ll go with you,” I offer but she shakes her head in a determined sort of way. 

“No,” she says, squaring her shoulders and, with a certain amount of obvious determination, she sits up straight and reaches for her glass. “I’m glad you brought me here and you’re totally right, Jen will call if something happens so I may as well stop being such a pouty little baby and enjoy myself,” she adds, tilting her glass towards me. Lifting my own I tap my glass against hers. 

“That’s my girl.” Our glasses make that sound that only good crystal can make and both of us take a long sip and then her eyes flutter shut and a satisfied smile tugs at the corners of her full lips, making her mouth look so inviting that I end up leaning across the table to capture her mouth with mine in a long, soft kiss. 

“Mmmm.” As I sit back down she looks over at me with a sleepy, contended smile. “I think I really like it here.” 

“Good,” I grin back at her, catching the envious looks the other patrons in the restaurant are sending our way, “because I like having you in my city and I like how you make my brothers all fucking jealous.”

“And here I thought you were going to say you liked how much your mother loves me,” she grins back at me and I nod. 

“Oh is that what you think? You think she likes her little boy being tied down by some girl who isn’t from around here?” I watch her blush again and that innocent girl is back, pushing the hard, artificial Becky back for a single, shining moment. 

“Is that what I’m doing?” she asks in that small, self conscious voice as her cheeks flare crimson. 

“Wrapped,” I grin back at her, holding my pinky up and wiggling it. “You’ve got me totally whipped Becks and I never thought I’d say this but I think I kinda like it.” 

I wake in the middle of the night to find Max standing near the window, leaning against the wall staring out at the full, silvery disk of the moon. His compact, sculpted body that reminds me so much of pictures I’ve seen of Mars, the Roman God of War, is painted a white blue like he could be one of those strange creatures from Avatar. 

“Something wrong?” I ask, rubbing my eyes and pushing myself up onto my elbow which makes the sheet fall away, slipping to my waist. He looks over and down at me and a sly smile spreads across his full lips as his gaze slides from my mouth and down to my chest. 

“Maybe.” His fingers tap on the sill and then he pushes off from the wall and stalks towards me, slowly, until he finally sits on the edge of the bed. I watch his hand reach out towards me, feel his fingertips brush my cheek gently, watch his gaze become unfocussed. 

“Maybe? What does that mean?” I ask, curling my fingers around his wrist and slowly pulling his hand down and him with it until he’s lying beside me on the bed, still bathed in silvery blue light. 

“It means that I was thinking and I’m not sure I liked the conclusion I came to,” he adds, his hand sweeping slowly down into the valley of my waist and then up over my hip where it pauses before he strokes his hand back up to my ribs, making me shudder. 

“Are you worried about being traded?” I ask, my chest suddenly getting tight, making it hard to breathe at the thought of returning to Pittsburgh without him. 

“No,” he smirks and then his hand is back on my cheek and an indulgent smile makes my blood heat. “What I’m worried about is all the women who aren’t going to ever get a piece of this,” he adds with a chuckle, giving me a playful wink.

“Oh?” His hand travels down my jaw and then down over my collarbone until the back of his hand slides down the slope of my breast. I watch the progress of his hand, watch the pad of his thumb slowly circle around my nipple until it hardens, almost painfully and then he slides down and takes my nipple in his mouth, his tongue working around it until his teeth clamp down on it and give it a firm tug. 

“Yeah,” he whispers as he kisses his way up to my neck again, his tongue sliding slowly up my neck until his teeth take over, digging into my earlobe. “Because you taste like candy,” he adds, his voice thickening, becoming hoarse as he pulls my body against his, making it very obvious that his voice isn’t the only thing thickening. “And your pussy is like crack,” he adds, kissing the corner of my jaw, my eyelid and then my mouth. “I want you all the time,” he continues as his body moves over mine, pinning me to the mattress beneath him. “I want to be in you all the time.” I gasp as he fills me, my hips rising to meet his, wanting him deeper. “It scares me how much I want you Becky.”

There’s something I’m supposed to say now, something that matches the heat, the need in his eyes but even as the words form in my mind I know that I won’t say them. Not because I don’t feel safe and wanted and cared for and not because the thought of having him pluck me out of the trailer park and turn me into a princess doesn’t make me feel all of the things that should make saying those words right. 

I won’t because of the look in Kris’s eyes long after Max had passed out next to us in that King size bed back in Cole Harbour, after he’d been snoring softly for a while and we’d just been lying there, looking at one another, both of us wondering what had just happened. My realizing that at the very least I’d been wrong and at the most I’d been lied to. 

It had become very clear to me when he and Max had traded places and it was his dark eyes I was looking down into and where I’d expected to see…what? Fear? Insecurity? Whatever it was I’d expected, that wasn’t what I saw then and it wasn’t what I saw later after Max had passed into the Land of Nod and was occupied with counting sheep. What I’d seen then was a sort of tenderness and a vast need that had matched the emptiness I’ve always felt. 

Then, when we’d made love, slowly and quietly, I’d felt something I’ve never experienced in my entire life. I’d felt…loved. 

Not like now. Not the sort of possessive, you are mine sort of feeling I can see in Max’s eyes as he presses my thighs further apart so he can watch himself sliding in and out of me, his cock gleaming with my juices as he pulls it almost entirely free before dipping it back in, taking deliberately shallow strokes to prolong the moment, to tease me and make me beg which I will because I like it best when he isn’t so controlled, when he lets loose, when he just fucks me.  

But I also don’t want it to last, not tonight, not when I know that we’ll see Kris in the morning for the first time since…since that night. I don’t want it Max to be tender and make me think of the way that Kris held me close and kisses me while we made love. I don’t want to think about the raw yearning I saw in his eyes or the way my heart felt like it was going to burst inside of my chest when he brought me shuddering and weeping over the edge, when I clung to him and whispered words I never thought I’d ever say.

 Whimpering, I raise my hips off of the bed and dig my nails into Max’s ribs and he squeezes his eyes shut and groans. 

“Harder baby,” I whisper, dragging my nails down his ribs until I can dig them into his, pulling him into me as I lock my ankles around his thighs. “Fuck me baby.” 

“Christ de plote sale,” he hisses as he presses my thighs further apart until it actually hurts and begins to ram his dick into me like an air hammer, his body slapping against mine hard and fast. “As tu ça comme ça?” he growls, his cock bottoming out deep inside of me, making me gasp out loud, the air literally pushed out of my lungs. “Tu aimes ça quand je tu remplisses? Oui,ma petite putain? You like it rough?”

“Oh yes!” I cry, feeling the tightening in my stomach, the fluttering in my belly while white stars begin to dance around my head. “Yessss harder.” Pulling my legs up over his shoulders, Max obliges me, ramming his cock home again and again until, screaming as my back bows for him, I tumble over the edge and an orgasm rips through me like hot shrapnel. I barely feel it as his balls empty into me, his cock pulsing as his head tilts back and he lets go a wild sounding cry, his hands clenching painfully around my ankles. I take the pain, enjoy it, loose myself in it because it sweeps away the memories that are haunting me and steals my ability to speak aloud the name that is on the tip of my tongue. 

“What do you mean not coming?” I look around Flower to see if Tanger’s hiding out somewhere, assuming this is their version of Punked. “We always do this golf tournament.” 

“He said he isn’t feeling well,” MAF replies with a shrug and I can tell because I’ve known him for years that our quiet goalie isn’t lying, or at least he isn’t doing it on purpose. Kris on the other hand….

“Pussy,” I mutter, reaching for my phone and hitting the speed dial for his number. “Ever since we…,” I swallow the rest of my comment, knowing that not only would Flower not appreciate my sharing that kind of information but that Becky has been fidgeting like crazy all the way here which tells me that Kris isn’t the only one who is experiencing misgivings about that night, which is too bad. Not that I remember most of it, but what I do was pretty hot. 

“He might really not be feeling well,” Marc says, giving me that look that says ‘not everything is about you’. “Dupers said he’s been hitting the clubs pretty hard.” 

“Tanger?” I can’t help but feel shocked by that news. “Our Tanger? Clubbing it up? The same Tanger we practically have to drag out back in the ‘Burgh?” Shaking my head I try and imagine the quiet, hide behind his hair guy that never goes up to girls and never, ever dances when we go out in a group. “Calisse de tabernack, maybe our little boy is growing up eh?” 

“I heard the fucker was even doing a little runway work.” Turning around I watch Alex Burrows, Burr, mince and sway like some kind of flamer, like that guy on Next Top Model and it makes us all laugh.

“Actually, he was good,” Marc shrugs and that makes me roll my eyes.  

“You went? Tapette,” I laugh and as usual, Fleur doesn’t so much as twitch when I cast aspersions on his sexuality.  

“Vero wanted to go. There were lots of hot girls there. You should have gone,” he adds with simple shrug of one shoulder. 

“Go where?” I feel Becky’s arm slide around my waist and her lips softly press to my cheek. 

“Flower was just saying how Kris was strutting his man meat at some fashion show. I assume it was for Kasual?” I add, glancing at Marc who has suddenly become preoccupied with shining up one of his drivers but he does nod, even without looking up. 

“He was?” she says quietly, and her sunny grin fades a little at the edges. “Oh…oh too bad we missed it. You should have called. We would have come, wouldn’t we?” 

“Go? I should have been in the damn thing. I mean, if they wanted someone for the catwalk, who’s better than me, n’est ce pas?” I give Becky a meaningful look, expecting her to laugh or at the very least to smile, but just as she has for the last few days, the only look on her face is one of being entirely lost in thought, somewhere a million miles from here. “Becks?” I grab her arm, probably harder than I should, but her dark eyes finally focus on me. 

“Is he here?” she asks and something twists painfully in my gut. 

“No, babe. No, he’s not. But I am,” I add, giving her arm a squeeze and she smiles, like she wasn’t just thinking about him. 

“Of course you are,” she grins, and then turns her sunshine bright smile on Burr and Flower. “So, who’s playing with us?”