Breakaway (6 page)

“Well after the three of you scared
the hell out of me, I don’t know if that shit’s gonna happen,” Dean
chuckled. “But in all seriousness, I don’t know. We’re still trying
to coordinate something and I just don’t know the what, when, and
why of it.”

“I hope she’s special,” Zach replied.
“I haven’t seen you like this in a minute.”

Dean sipped his beer. He was acting
like a lovesick schoolboy, though he kept his focus on the ice when
he was at practice and during game time. But after each practice
and every game, his second phone call was to Sydney. His first was
always to his mother, just to make sure he could still talk with
all of his teeth.

He told Sydney he was going to fly her
down during Christmas so she could watch him play in person.
Christmas wasn’t that far away and Dean was becoming increasingly
anxious about her arrival, despite not having any plans set in
stone.

Now he knew why he never fell in love;
he truly hated not having any control of his emotions.

Eleven

She felt like throwing up.

Her stomach was in knots and kept
getting increasingly tighter with each passing moment, as if
someone was squeezing the life out of her by some messed-up torture
experiment they do to POWs at war camps. Every breath she took,
hoping to calm the rapid beat of her heart down, only made it
worse.

Sydney was about to see her man. And
she was going to break up with him.

It had been almost a month and a long
one. Video chatting, text messaging, and several creative Skype-sex
sessions could only do so much before the feelings of jealousy and
angst reared their ugly heads.

Now there she was, walking down the
seemingly long corridor from the plane to boarding area. Her nausea
simply increased with each step.

The plane ride from San Francisco to
Los Angeles was short and relatively uneventful. She could only get
a small handful of days off and rather be the good daughter who
spent every holiday with her family, while they politely (was it
really?) remarked why she was still the single one of out her
friends, she took Dean on his offer and flew down to L.A. He wanted
to fly her first class but she wouldn’t have it, shocking them both
at the request. He did, however, buy her a business class ticket
and well, it was too late to argue.

In less than five minutes, she was
going to see him.

She swallowed the big lump in her
throat and let out another deep breath as she breezily walked
through the airport and to baggage claim. Sydney knew how important
the trip was on many levels. One, it was testing the waters of how
realistic they were being on a long-distance relationship. Two, it
was seeing if what happened in Chicago actually stayed there or if
they both were just in denial.

Most importantly, Sydney was scoping
out her future in L.A. That is, if there was one.

She wasn’t about to start picking out
china patterns and going to the home improvement store to swipe
color swatches for her potential bridesmaids dresses quite yet. She
had visited L.A. before but only in passing, with her girlfriends
in tow, and mainly to see the infamous Sunset Strip and the wild
cast of characters that occupy the City of Angels.

She was now Dean’s guest to his
home.

She suggested a hotel and
Dean shot that idea down before she had a chance to lie out her
case. He mentioned he lived in a beach town, along with several
others of his teammates, and she was going to stay there to get to
know the city.
You’ll like
it
, she recalled his words to her,
I wouldn’t want you to stay here if there was
going to be a problem.

Sydney briefly closed her eyes as the
memory reverberated through her body, filling her with warmth and
security. It was okay. It was going to be okay. They were going to
have some fun. He was going to show her around his favorite spots.
They were going to make love like it was about to go out of style.
Finally, they were going to have a heartfelt, serious talk about
their future plans with themselves and each other.

And maybe, just maybe, she was going
to tell him that a long-distance relationship was not in the cards
and they needed to go their separate ways and that they
should…

“You look so sexy while you’re in deep
thought.”

Sydney opened her eyes and saw a
smiling Dean, holding one of the biggest teddy bears she’d seen in
her life. “My friend here and I were just chatting about this
really beautiful girl who was walking and all of a sudden closed
her eyes. I thought you had an undiagnosed case of narcolepsy but
my friend here said, ‘Nah, nah, bro…she’s thinking of something.
Give her a few moments.’ So I listened.” Dean walked closer to
Sydney and cupped her face with a hand. “But then I got
impatient.”

Sydney smiled before he planted a long
kiss on her, crushing his lips against hers and sweeping his tongue
inside. He pulled her body close to her and grabbed her ass,
claiming her as she moaned in his mouth.

Heaven.

Her heart fluttered with
desire while the tingling sensation between her thighs thumped
with
want
. When he
finally pulled away, his eyes twinkled at hers, knowing what he
just did and what they were going to do soon.

He simply smiled. “How was your
flight, baby?”

She really wanted to tell him that she
was too caught in thinking about their future and how the fantasy
of 2.5 kids and a white picket fence was slowly fading away. She
wanted to tell him that they both weren’t being realistic about
their relationship and that Christmas would be the last time they
should see each other.

She wanted to tell him that
despite the wild and passionate sex, the heart fluttering whenever
she received a text from him, and the longing to be with him and be
a dynamic duo that defied the odds, reality told her that they just
wouldn’t work. She didn’t want to move to L.A. and
just
be a hockey
girlfriend who will eventually become a wife but she didn’t know
what she wanted.

She was going to tell him all of that
and she’d rehearsed it over and over during the plane ride. Then
when Sydney saw Dean, the plan went to hell. All she wanted and
craved was his touch, his love, and his embrace. She wanted to feel
him on top of her, beneath her, and behind her. She couldn’t wait
for him to mount her as she spread wide to accommodate him and his
size. She really looked forward to the aftermath, when he just held
her and their hearts beat as one.

On second thought, breaking up with
Dean could wait. “It was a good flight,” she smiled.

“Mmm…I know that smile,” he purred in
her ear, “that smile means you’re not being completely honest with
me. Do you want to tell me what’s really on your mind?”

Sydney grinned. She hated how well he
could read her. It was like if he had a past life being a psychic
and was reborn as maniac hockey player. Come to think of it, maybe
the two weren’t so far connected. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.” They walked over to
baggage claim and he picked up her luggage. Just as he expected,
Sydney definitely over packed. “So how many days are you staying
again?”

Sydney playfully socked him in his
arm. “Just three.” She convinced her manager to give her an extra
day as long as she worked every weekend in January in
return.

“Hmm…we gotta change that.”

“Oh?” Sydney felt embarrassed. “Did I
overdo it for three days?”

“Yeah, you did.” He answered. “I don’t
want you here for three days.”

“Oh.” Sydney looked down at her feet.
She guessed at that point, she didn’t need the talk with Dean after
all. He told her everything she wanted to know within the first few
minutes of her trip. It was going to be a long and painfully drawn
out visit. Oh well. She knew the truth and that was that. “I
see.”

“You should’ve packed like you’re
going to permanently stay here.”

Sydney went from feeling like the
lowest of the low to being confused about what everything. It was
like if someone took her emotions, stuffed them in a tumbler, and
jumbled them all up and handed them back to her as if nothing ever
happened. “You have a wicked way of playing with a girl’s
emotions.”

The two walked hand-in-hand to the
parking lot. “Well, I have to keep you on your toes
somehow.”

****

Manhattan Beach was everything Dean
promised it was going to be. Sunny, clean, friendly. Swaying palm
trees to the slight breeze and the crisp scent of the ocean air. It
was deathly quiet, which shocked Sydney. No frat parties. No
paparazzi. The homes looked similar but not Stepford Wife-ish. Dean
explained to her that most of the team were married and had
families and that they were more of a community, than just
teammates.

Sydney didn’t know if Dean was selling
her a fantasy or just merely explaining his quality of life. Either
way, she brought it completely.

Dean’s home was very impressive. It
had five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a two-car garage. The
living room boasted of high-vaulted ceilings that led to an open
kitchen with a corner-wet bar. Dean’s bedroom was located on the
second floor and had a private balcony with French doors that
opened out to a beach view. The master bathroom, Sydney correctly
assumed, was bigger than her apartment. In fact, it was twice as
big.

“You have a very nice home, Dean.” She
looked around his bedroom. “I’m impressed.”

“I would take credit for decorating
but I really don’t care about any of that. My mother couldn’t stand
coming over and saw nothing but white walls and bare floors so I
just told her whatever she thought looked good, I’ll just write a
check.” Dean looked around his bedroom as he sat on his California
King size bed. His bedroom also boasted of high vaulted ceilings
and had a fireplace. A large flat TV hung on the wall across from
the bed. “She did pretty good.”

“I’ll say.” Sydney casually folded her
arms. “She did very well.”

“Yeah, but you know what?”

“Hmm?”

He removed his shirt and exposed his
ripped physique. “I have a beautiful and incredibly sexy girlfriend
standing just a little too far from me, when she should be over
here, taking full advantage of me being uninjured and maybe just
slightly unhinged.” Dean lay back on the bed and beckoned Sydney to
come to him.

Sydney removed her shirt and climbed
on top of Dean. “I guess I have to correct, huh?”

“I guess so.”

Twelve

L.A. was a different world from San
Francisco.

There were many similarities between
the cities. The beautiful architecture. The sunny skies. Some of
the best restaurants known to man. The friendly smiles of
strangers. The carefree attitudes. Those were the good
things.

The bad, Sydney discovered, was a
laundry list: the unbelievably cattiness of some women, who gave
Sydney a dirty look when all she did was smile at them; the insane
traffic jams that meant a 10-mile distance was a 45-minute drive;
the uneasiness of hearing a helicopter circling every so often and
the non-stop sounds of sirens.

Sydney discovered, however, it didn’t
matter if they were in her too-cramped apartment back in San
Francisco or at Dean’s home in Manhattan Beach. Wherever he was,
was where she wanted to be.

Blech
.

She’d been in L.A. for only a few
hours and there went her brain, secretly planning a trip to go
registry shopping and wondering what china patterns would go nice
in Dean’s home. She already envisioned couples’ dinners with his
fellow teammates and their wives or girlfriends. Soon after that,
there would be play dates with a mini-Sydney or a mini-Dean and
Sydney hoped a mini-Dean had his father’s beautiful
eyes.

There I go
again…

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook
her head. She was about a sentence away from breaking up with dude
just a few hours ago and now she’s silently reciting how Sydney
Winchester sounded. She was no longer a grown woman in control of
her emotions and her life; she was a lovesick adolescent teen who
still had posters of her favorite boy bands covering the walls and
giggled whenever she heard the word penis.

She barely knew Dean and vice-versa.
Maybe that’s what made the electricity between them so hot. They
got to know each other as they went along and it was never a rush
to find out. They were in discovery mode. They were content in pure
silence or having a marathon discussion talking about everything
under the sun and against the moon.

When they made love, it felt like when
they were back in Chicago, except it was ten times hotter. They
were unbridled with their souls to bear and eyes wide open to each
other. They christened every room in his home, with promises to do
other positions in different rooms eventually.

Eventually.

She didn’t want to get her
hopes up with the elephant in the room regarding their future. Dean
all but said he wanted her there with him full-time and
all
of the time. Sydney,
however, wished she could be so certain.