Author's Note: I edited and reedited this until it was right in my own mind. I hope it makes up for taking so long to update.
Chapter Eleven
Day One Thousand Ninety-Six
His summer had been filled with routine. Eighty forty-five, alarm sounded and cut into whatever dream he had on any given night. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he blindly smacked the top of the clock until silence filled the room. He managed to stumble into the bathroom twenty minutes later and, under the pulsating showerhead, he completed his journey into the waking world. And by the time the clock struck ten, he was out the door with a travel mug filled to the brim with coffee so strong it could eat paint in one hand and his playbook in the other.
He swung by one of the many fast food chains that lined the road for a breakfast sandwich, flirting with whatever drive-thru girl working as she refilled his partially empty mug, and was calling out plays to his team on the field exactly at eleven. Practice lasted until four-thirty with breaks in between and he was in his car heading home before rush hour traffic became a problem. Once he arrived home, he jumped into the shower to wash away the sweat and grime before preparing dinner for one and veg'ing out in front of the couch for a few hours.
Some nights, he prepared his curriculum for the coming school year and reviewed his playbook for the upcoming season. Those were the nights that he retired early to bed so he could be alert the following morning. He had gotten to enjoy the routine he had invented for himself that encompassed five—sometimes six—days a week, wishing that he had been intelligent enough to implement it as a teenager. He might not have made such a mess out of his life if he had.
But, then again, he might have ended up like some of the guys he played with in the junior league. Bitter at the world because they believed it owed them something and all because what they wanted had always been handed to them on silver platters. Spiting those who actually did the work to make it to where they were.
And on the few nights when he wasn't lying around at home, he could be found with his core group of friends. It was usually because they spent a good hour or two persuading him to join their reoccurring bar nights, using every argument from he was beginning to become a stranger to all work and no play made him dull. He would indulge them by staying for a beer or two, spinning both Alli and Hannah around the dance floor exactly twice, before begging off by claiming an early morning.
However, there were times that indulgence won over his newly developed straight-laced side and he staggered home sometime after last call. The hangover and disruption to his routine always caused regret and a determination not to do it again. And again, against his better judgment, another time of drinking, dancing and whiling away the night in a bar instead of his apartment always came around, followed by a hangover that made him feel like he'd been run over by a cement truck.
The night before was one such night. They were celebrating Eddie's promotion and the house he had put a down payment on with Hannah. He spent half the night watching the clock, promising to leave after just one more drink, and the other half losing himself in the camaraderie and atmosphere that the bar provided. Before he knew it, the bartender was calling out that she was closing up and he was pushed into a cab, wondering just where the night had gone and how he was going to get through the next day.
He awoke an hour late, not because of some internal alarm clock but because of the turning of his stomach. Rushing to the toilet, he unloaded the contents with a painful heave and almost cried out from the pounding in his head. Dry swallowing a handful of aspirin, he ran the shower and tried to make himself appear more human than the living dead that he felt like. And even though he had to forgo the morning coffee—there was always the drive-thru and the cute girl who worked the window with a smile on her face—he still managed to make it to the door by ten.
Only this morning when he swung it open, instead of finding the hallway devoid of human life as per usual, he found a woman pacing back and forth while muttering incoherently to herself. A woman clad in the summer uniform of ballet flats paired with a brightly colored sundress, her cinnamon tresses cut and curled so the ends barely brushed her bare shoulders. A woman that so greatly resembled the girl she had once been that the jolt to his gut almost caused another upheaval.
"Clare?" he managed to croak out, hating the weakness in his voice. He cleared his throat and repeated her name in a stronger voice, hoping that it belied the shakiness he was feeling from both her sudden appearance and the abuse made on his body the previous night. "Clare!"
Immediately, she halted her pacing and whirled around to face him. A smile brightened her features and she ran up to throw her arms around his neck. Her breath tickled his neck, causing a tingling sensation to crawl down his spine. And pressed against her, he could feel her chest rise and fall as she inhaled deeply. "Owen," she murmured. "You smell good."
He chuckled, pulling out of their embrace. He had missed her ability to say whatever came across her mind no matter how childish it sounded or how random it was. "I just got out of the shower. I've got to head over to the field, actually."
"I forgot you had practices during the week. I should've remembered but I just got into town and all I could think of was seeing you." She began to wring her hands together. "I've got some shopping to do so you can just call my cell when you're finished."
She went up and briefly kissed him on the cheek, turning to make an exit only to have her wrist captured in his firm grasp. "You're here already so why don't you go inside?"
"Owen, I know you're busy and I don't want to be a hindrance. I think it'd be best if I—"
"If you marched your butt inside my apartment and waited for me to make a call to cancel practice." He placed his hand over her open mouth before another sound could be uttered. "And before you give me that same line about being a hindrance or whatever, you should know that I'm doing this for the guys on the team. They've been bugging me for a break and when they find out that they're getting one because of you, they'll probably throw you a party."
Clare laughed, grabbing his wrist and pulling it away from her face. "Is that so, Coach Milligan?"
He felt another jolt at the sight of her eyes sparkling with uncontained mirth and resembling two glittering gems, the impact of how much he had missed seeing them like that hadn't hit him until just that moment when they were standing face-to-face. Slipping his key into the lock, he turned it and pushed the door open. "Just go inside, Clare, and I'll join you in a minute."
She opened her mouth as if to offer another argument but closed it with an audible snap. "Okay," she acquiesced with a nod, brushing past him to enter the darkened apartment.
Owen took a deep breath in, filling his nostrils with the lingering scent of her subtle perfume. It was another thing that took seeing her in person to make him realize fully just how much he had missed it. Digging his phone out of the pocket of his jeans, he flipped it open and dialed the seven digits that would connect him to the quarterback who was as big a gossip as his little brother.
After exchanging pleasantries, he informed the seventeen year old football player that practice would be cancelled until Monday. He had to hold the phone away from his ear during the whoops and hollers and winced when the volume got a little too high; having to wait until he was sure the teenager was done with his outburst before he could return the phone to his ear. Quickly ordering the quarterback to inform the rest of the team of the cancellation and snapping his phone shut, he slipped inside the apartment to find Clare perched on the couch with a magazine in her lap.
She raised her head to look at him upon hearing the door bang shut behind him. "Hey Coach, how did the guys take practice being cancelled?"
"I'll let you know when I get my hearing back."
"They were that excited, huh?" she said with a sympathetic smile.
"I only talked to my quarterback but I'm sure the rest of the team will know within the hour." Owen shrugged, tossing his things on the kitchen counter and going over to take a seat beside her on the couch. "So, Alli forgot to mention that you were coming back."
"I wanted it to be a surprise so I figured I probably shouldn't tell her if I wanted it to stay that way."
"You got a point there," Owen agreed, chuckling. "Your boss must really love you though."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, her brow furrowed in confusion.
"Well, you had a vacation in December and the weekend in February. And now he's giving you another vacation only six months after the last one. I don't know of many bosses who would do that for an employee," Owen explained.
"And Josh isn't one of those bosses either."
It was his turn to be confused. "Then what are you doing here?" She looked down at the magazine, one hand shakily pushing a lock of hair behind her ear and the other playing with a dog-eared corner of the periodical. Her lips were pursed together and it didn't seem like he was going to get an answer anytime soon. Lightly grasping her chin, he tilted her head towards him. "Clare?"
"I'm an idiot who quit her job without a plan or a place to live and no job prospects anywhere on the horizon," she replied in a rush of words.
He nearly swallowed his tongue at the confession. "You did what?"
"I quit my job," she replied, rolling her eyes. "And I have no idea what I'm going to do now."
"Why would you do that? You are the woman who plans everything down to the last detail so why would you start living without a plan now?" he inquired. "Isn't high school the time for living by the seat of your pants?"
"I guess I was making up for lost time," she retorted. Clare gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I wasn't happy, Owen. Josh could see that. No matter what I did, who I met or happened to date, Seattle never felt like home. And coming back to Toronto for periodic visits made me feel a thousand times worse, especially after the wedding in February. So, Josh sat me down after the Fourth of July weekend and we had a long talk about what I wanted and what direction I saw my life heading in the future. Surprise, it wasn't in Seattle."
"So you quit your job."
"And sublet my apartment and sold my car, packed up everything I own and moved back in with my mom and Glenn."
"Why?"
A clear expression of confusion passed over her features. "I thought that was explanation enough."
"You weren't happy with the job or the city and you were feeling homesick. I get all that. But why did you give up everything you worked so hard for to move back to a place that stifled your creative side?" Owen asked, echoing words that she had said a while back to explain leaving in the first place. "And I want the real reason this time, Clare, not just the one you invented to appease Alli and your family."
She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, her eyes shifting and looking at everything in the room but at him. Finally, Clare took a deep breath in and let it out slowly before finally settling her gaze onto his. "I missed you. Are you happy now? The God's honest truth of it all was that I missed you. And not just like one friend misses another friend when they move away."
Clare ran her hands through her hair, unfurling herself from the couch and beginning to pace the length of the room. "I really thought I was doing the right thing by moving. I mean, all I ever wanted was to be the editor of a newspaper or a magazine. To do real journalism and not just the fluff pieces they had me writing at the Daily. Even leaving after we slept together was the right thing in my mind because hey, it was just sexual tension we were relieving and it could never mean more than that.
"But I ignored one simple fact. It was never going to be just sex between us." She stopped pacing right in front of him, tilting her head to the side as she stared. "But you knew that already, didn't you? The one time when you were right and I was so completely wrong and it took me this long to figure that out."
Owen stood. "Clare—"
"You got under my skin. You got so far under that when Dimitri asked me to move in with him, all I could think of was how many ways he wasn't you. Let me tell you, thinking of how many ways two people differ does not make for a sound relationship," Clare said with a small chuckle. "I know I'm probably being a day late and a dollar short when I say this, but I could only see one thing when I took a good look at where my future was going."
He held his breath, not daring to let it escape lest he was getting his hopes up again. "And what was that exactly?"
A small nervous smile formed on her lips. "A future where there's no one else we're ever going to need or want. A future together," she replied, reiterating those words spoken on a cold February evening.
Owen narrowed his eyes cautiously. "Are you sure this time? You're not just rebounding from Dimitri?"
Clare took a step closer to him with a teasing glint in her eyes, tapping a finger against her chin as if thinking over his words. "Hmm, you could be right. I mean, moving halfway across the continent and giving up my dream job to be with some guy who makes my toes curl when he kisses me? That just screams rebound. I should probably hurry back to my parents' house, pack my things and catch the next flight back to Seattle."
She let out a squeal as Owen swept her into his arms, using a hand to push tendrils of hair behind her ears as he crushed his lips to hers with an almost bruising force. Weaving her arms around his neck, she pulled herself onto her toes for better leverage in their fight for dominance. It was almost like warfare, neither wanting to acquiesce to the other in this battle for control. When he nipped playfully at her bottom lip, she gasped at the jolt of electricity that surged through her nerve endings and the sudden loss of control allowed him to gain the upper hand.
Tongues dueling and lips moving with reckless abandonment, fingers tangled in hair and their bodies molded together so tightly that the Jaws of Life would be needed to separate them. It was air that finally drove them apart, the need for it ending the passionate moment in time. But the need to keep some kind of connection with the woman in his arms kept him from retracting entirely from their embrace.
"You're not going anywhere," he growled, touching her forehead with his own.
Clare smirked. "I wasn't planning on it," she whispered, leaning up to steal another kiss that leaned more towards being chaste. She looked down at her feet, the thin fabric of her shoes doing nothing to disguise the fact that her toes were, indeed, curled into themselves. "See? You really do make my toes curl. I wonder what else you can make curl."
He let loose a bout of laughter that hadn't been heard in a long time at the seemingly innocent innuendo, causing another squeal to escape her lips as she was lifted into his arms and carried to the bedroom. He had a lot of lost time to make up for and, this time, he was more than certain that she would still be there in the morning. Because the fact was that if she did plan to run away, she'd have to be prepared for the fight of a lifetime since he was not letting go so easily this time around.
To Be Continued…