Breathless #5 (The Breathless Romance Series - Book #5) (6 page)

As Georgia and I sat and talked and ate, we pulled up
more information on hockey and she started quizzing me. “I don’t even know why
I have to go through with this,” I said. “Johnny knows I’m not some, like, hockey
super-fan.”

“But you need to be able to talk to him about
something he loves. Come on, he’ll appreciate it, I promise.” I knew Gigi was
right, but that didn’t make me any more interested in learning things about a
sport I’d only recently developed a passing interest in. As long as Johnny was on
the ice I’d be into it, but I didn’t think I’d ever really know the differences
between any of the professional teams unless Johnny went pro. And I didn’t
think I would particularly care. I would cheer for whatever team Johnny liked
and devote brain cells to something else that actually mattered in the grand
scheme of things.

But Georgia was right; Johnny had done so much for me —
he had loved me passionately, he had been so wonderful to me on so many
occasions, he had tried to protect me from the pain that he was dealing with. I
could afford to learn at least to know what he was talking about at any given
time when it came to his favorite sport. It wouldn’t kill me to know more about
Johnny’s position on the ice or what he might get fouled for. I was so tired
and so ready for the game to start — we had sped down the highway enough to
make it so that we got to the stadium with apparently more time than we had
expected for Johnny to get ready. Or maybe they’d delayed for another reason. I
wanted to curl up in Johnny’s arms and press my cheek to his chest and feel
that safe, warm feeling once more. I had no doubts in my mind at all that
Johnny and our team would win; they had won every game I had ever seen them
play before. The possibility that they might even struggle a little bit hadn’t
really occurred to me. “Ah, here they come. Come on, Becky, let everyone see
you cheering for your man!” I laughed at Georgia, but went along with it; I
cheered for Johnny as he came out, and he glanced up at me, a happy look in his
eyes once more. That look was worth every bit of the fatigue in my bones.

Chapter
Eight

Within moments of the team taking the ice, I realized
that this was not going to be the great, winning game that I had believed it
would be. The reporters were shouting for Johnny, taking pictures, and I heard
some of them turning to camera and making statements about Johnny’s past — about
the rape and suicide of Claire White, about the press conference he had given a
few hours earlier. On the ice, Johnny looked like a spooked horse at the sight
of the reporters and photographers.

When the team started to play, it was difficult for me
to watch; where normally Johnny was all aggression and focus on the ice, he
didn’t seem to be able to concentrate. I remembered that he’d floundered just a
little bit on one previous occasion — when everything had been great between us
and he’d kept looking up at me in the stands. Some of the students watching the
game shouted jeers, and I shivered; I would be even more distracted than Johnny
was, and he was pretty distracted. I looked around. It wasn’t fair — it wasn’t
right. There out to be rules against press trying to hound a player at a time
like this. “What’s wrong with him?” Georgia asked me as quietly as she could.

“It’s all the hounding. Some of
it’s
even people from the school,” I said, pointing out one or two girls from the
campus who were waving signs proclaiming Johnny to be guilty. I shook my head.
Johnny had explained what had happened. Claire’s own parents had come out with
what had happened in that horrible incident. It didn’t make sense for people
who want Johnny, and the team, incidentally, to lose.

One of the other team’s players hooked Johnny’s skate
with his stick, and I yelped in dismay and surprise as the man I had seen evade
dozens of hits on the ice sprawled on his front, moving several feet before he
gathered himself up. It wasn’t right — there was something wrong. What could
anyone do for Johnny?

“It’s like before,” Georgia said, “when he was too
busy paying attention to you to pay attention to the game, only
it’s
worse.” I nodded, chewing at my bottom lip. I didn’t
think they could kick Johnny out for not winning a game, but they could find
other reasons, I was sure, if he was off his game. And it would not do his
reputation any good to lose a game just now. I cheered for Johnny with all my
heart, trying to overcome the jeers, trying to understand what was going on. I
thought that maybe Johnny was still shaken up by the press conference, but he
had seemed so on top of everything, so confident. He didn’t exactly look
unconfident now. He looked distracted.

I was shocked as the other team scored its first goal
a few minutes into the first period, followed quickly by another. I couldn’t
believe what I was seeing. Johnny’s team always won — he had said so. But Johnny
kept missing his shots or kept getting intercepted. I grabbed onto Georgia’s
hand and held tight, watching in amazement. All of the guys were struggling. None
of them knew how to deal with the game with Johnny not on the top of his
strategy. They had counted so much on Johnny being able to out-play everyone
they ever went up against that they floundered around, always a minute — a
second — late to where they needed to be, hesitating just a moment too long.

Of course, the fans for the other team were thrilled;
they had expected at best an exciting game and a loss by one point. By the end
of the first period of the game, the other team was up by three points. I
couldn’t believe it. I wanted to be angry at the goalie, but I knew that it was
the whole team that was struggling to deal with the situation, especially
Johnny. If he had been scoring the way he normally did, if he had been acting
like his usual brash, impulsive, aggressive self, he would be keeping the other
team so harried and confused that they wouldn’t have any idea of how to get in
to score. “What the hell is going on with him?” I asked Georgia in confusion.
“It doesn’t make any sense at all.” Georgia shrugged. I looked around me in
disbelief, and I saw the girl who I’d been having so many problems with — the
redhead from the dining hall, who had had no success with getting Johnny to
herself. She caught my gaze and smirked, looking directly at me.

I frowned. I looked at Georgia. “Do me a favor,” I
said to her. Georgia looked at me in confusion.

“What do you need?” I pointed to the redhead.

“Hold my seat. I feel like I might get kicked out for
a little while.” Georgia laughed as I stood up, walking slowly and deliberately
over to the redhead. As I walked towards her, more of the people in the stands
noticed I was there in the first place; I guessed not all of them had been
paying attention. I took a deep breath. I didn’t want a fight, but I was good
and tired of the girl. I wanted to have it out with her once and for all; and
as I had told Georgia, there was a good chance that it would get me kicked out,
though I was pretty sure I could convince them to let me back in since I was
Johnny’s girlfriend. I hoped so, anyway. “Hey!” I said, calling to her before I
walked up the couple of levels to her seats.

“How’s your loser boyfriend treating you? Has he done
you like he did Claire White yet?” I crossed my arms over my chest and held the
redhead’s gaze levelly.

“You know,” I said, looking her over, “I would think
that if you really believed that Johnny had had anything to do with that, if
you thought he was capable of hurting and driving a girl to suicide, you
wouldn’t want anything to do with him.” The redhead blushed. “So I
gotta
think that you’re of the belief that it’s more
important to get rid of me than it is to do something that might actually be
good for Johnny. Sort of a ‘if I can’t have him, no one will,’ am I right?” I
spoke loudly enough for the people nearby to hear, a few feet away from the girl.
Someone giggled.

“You’re not woman enough for him!” the redhead said.
“Besides, I don’t want him anymore.” I snorted, rolling my eyes.

“I think you want him bad. But here’s the deal,
sweetie: you don’t get him. In fact, even if he left me tomorrow, you wouldn’t
get him because he doesn’t go for backstabbing rumor-mongering bitches with a
jealousy complex.” Someone — I thought it was one of Johnny’s frat brothers — hooted
appreciatively. “So I’m going to warn you this one time: you ever say anything
to me about Claire White, if I even hear her name from you again, I am going to
make you regret it.” I turned on my heel and went back to my seat, shaking. I
wasn’t a very violent person, but in that moment, I was more than willing to
punch that stupid girl out if I had to.

As I sat down again, the game went into the second period
and I sighed. It was starting to look hopeless, absolutely hopeless. Johnny
made one goal and then the other team pulled ahead again by another point. We
were a consistent two or three points behind, all the time. It wasn’t good.
Normally by this point, we were at least keeping the other team from scoring
any points, even if we had only a one or two point lead. It was unheard of for
us to be behind. It never happened — at least, that I knew about, and everyone
else seemed to be almost as shocked as I was, if not more so.

“What can anyone do about it, though?” Georgia asked
me when I mentioned it to her. I chewed on my bottom lip. The second period of
the game was moving forward just like the first one had. It was not a good
situation. It wasn’t a situation anyone wanted — or at least, it wasn’t one I
would have thought anyone wanted. I looked around; most of the jeering people
had been taken out, the reporters were being thinned out by campus security,
which gave me a deep feeling of relief. But there were still students jeering
the team as a whole — and that was their right. There were a few students
waving signs accusing Johnny of aiding and abetting rape, and I wanted to punch
them, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to figure out how to help Johnny.

The problem was that I had no idea what the actual
problem was; he didn’t seem insecure and he didn’t seem to be distracted by me.
If he were distracted by me, then I would have just left. This was not a time
for me to enjoy the flattering feelings of a guy being so distracted he
couldn’t work for thinking about me. But Johnny wasn’t even looking at me very
much. He just wasn’t as quick, wasn’t as focused, wasn’t as aggressive on the
ice as he normally was. I bit my bottom lip and worried it between my teeth.
The second period was quickly winding down, and we hadn’t even been able to
make up the lead the other team had on us. I didn’t even know if it was
remotely possible to make up a three-point lead in such a short time. We would
have the last period of the game to try and make it up, but if the other team
kept up at the rate that they were going, it wouldn’t matter if we had a whole three
more periods.

Johnny needed to get his mind off of whatever was
clouding it. He needed to…I bit my lip again, watching him on the ice. I tried
to figure out what was going on in his head. I tried to think of what would
help him, something I could do. I was getting antsy, and I could hear in the
commentator’s voice that he knew that the team was in trouble without Johnny’s
usual aggressive style. But of course, he couldn’t say anything about it really.
He couldn’t suggest anything. He had to remain as neutral as possible; the most
I heard the man say was that Johnny, “looked like he was in trouble this
evening.”

The buzzer ticked down the last few minutes of the period
and I was at a loss. The other team scored another goal! They were four points
ahead — even with the last period of the game to go, four points ahead was a
difficult thing to come back from. It was almost hopeless. In fact, most of the
seasoned fans around us were saying that the best that the team could hope for
to come back from that was that they could, with a lot of luck, bring it up to
a tie and make it a shoot-out. Somehow, that sounded less than promising to me.
They had to make a comeback. They had to get in the game; Johnny had to get in
the game. I looked at Georgia as the regulation clock ticked down the last few
seconds and then the buzzer sounded announcing the intermission. I saw Johnny,
his face sweaty as he took of his mask and helmet, and an idea occurred to me
all at once. “Georgia, hold my seat again,” I said, feeling giddy and
breathless.

“You’re not going to beat someone up, are you?” I
shook my head.

“I’ll be back. I swear.” Georgia looked at me and I
felt myself blushing, but I wasn’t about to explain the idea that had popped
into my head just yet. “I’ll be back in time for the third period.”

Chapter
Nine

I found my way over to the locker room where I saw the
last of the players filing in, looking less than happy with how the game was
going. I bit my lip. I knew that Johnny was distracted. I knew that everyone
was distracted, really. But the idea I had in my head of talking to him was not
exactly orthodox. But really, I thought, what else could I do? I didn’t think I
could work any kind of magic, but I knew that it had helped in the past for
Johnny to talk to me, just as it helped me to talk to Johnny. Maybe if we could
talk, I could get to the bottom of what was distracting him and we could fix
it. I hoped.

I saw the goalie heading for the locker room and took
a deep breath. “Hey,” I said. “Hey!” the goalie looked up from his gear and
blinked at the sight of me.

“You’re Johnny’s girl, right?” he said. “What are you
doing out here instead of screaming your head off in the stands?” I blushed.