Caroline usually read all the columns. “Of course.”
“It was Luc.”
“I gathered that. Was he flattered?”
“Not at all,” Jane answered, and then she told her why. Through tears that wouldn’t stop, she told her friend everything. When she was finished, a frown pulled at Caroline’s brows.
“You already know what I’m going to say.”
Yes, Jane knew. And for the first time she actually listened. Jane had always been the smart one. Caroline the pretty one. Tonight Caroline was the pretty and smart one.
“Can you fix it?” Caroline asked.
Jane recalled the look in Luc’s eyes and him telling her to stay away from him and Marie. He’d meant it. “No. He would never listen to me now.” She leaned back against the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “Men suck.” Jane rolled her head and looked at her friend. “Let’s make a pact to swear off men for a while.”
Caroline bit her lip. “I can’t. I’m sort of dating Darby now.”
Jane sat up straight. “Really? I didn’t know things had gotten that serious.”
“Well, he isn’t my usual type. But he’s nice to me and I like him. I like talking to him and I like the way he looks at me. And, well, let’s face it, he needs me.”
Yes, he certainly did. Jane figured Darby could probably fill Caroline up with a lifetime of need.
The next morning, Jane received flowers from the Chinooks organization expressing their condolences. At noon, flowers from the Times, and at one, Darby sent his own arrangement. At three, Caroline’s were delivered. They were all gorgeous and smelled wonderful and filled her with guilt. This was pure karmic retribution, and she promised God that she would never lie again if He would make the flowers stop.
On television that night, she watched the Chinooks play the Coyotes. Through the wire of his mask, Luc’s blue eyes looked out at her, as hard and as cold as the ice he played on. When he wasn’t cursing the air blue in front of his net, his lips were compressed into a grim line.
He looked up and the camera caught the anger in his eyes. He wasn’t in his zone. His personal life was affecting his game, and if Jane had harbored any hidden hope that she could fix the relationship, that hope died.
It was truly over.
Luc drew three penalties as he let his rage loose on anyone dumb enough to step inside his crease.
“What’s the matter, Martineau?” a Coyote forward asked after the first penalty. “Got your period?”
“Kiss my hairy beanbag,” he answered, hooked his stick in the guy’s skates, and pulled him off his feet.
“You’re an asshole, Martineau,” the guy said as he looked up from his position on the ice. Whistles blew and Bruce Fish was sent to the penalty box instead of Luc.
Luc picked up his water bottle and sprayed his face. Mark Bressler joined him at the net.
“Having an anger management problem?” the captain asked.
“What the fuck do you think?” Water dripped from his face and mask. Jane wasn’t in the press box. She wasn’t even in the same state, but he couldn’t get her out of his head.
“That’s what the fuck I think.” Bressler punched his shoulder with his big glove. “Try not to draw any more penalties and we just might win this thing.”
He was right. Luc needed to concentrate more on the game than on who was or wasn’t in the press box. “No more dumb penalties,” he agreed. But in the next frame, he wacked an opponent in the shin and the guy milked it for all it was worth.
“That didn’t hurt, you pussy,” Luc said as he looked down at the guy holding his shin and writhing in pain. “Get back up and I’ll show you hurt.”
The whistles blew and Bressler skated by, shaking his head.
After the game, the locker room was more subdued than usual. They’d put up two goals late in the third period, but it hadn’t been enough. They’d lost three-five. Phoenix sports reporters combed the room searching for sound bites, but no one was talking much.
Jane’s father had suffered a heart at
tack, and the players felt her absence. Luc didn’t believe the heart attack story, and was surprised that she’d turned tail and run. That wasn’t like the Jane he knew. Then again, he didn’t really know her at all. The real Jane had lied to him and used him and made a fool out of him. She knew things about him that he did not want to read in the newspapers. She knew that he iced down his knees and that everything wasn’t one hundred percent.