The Man Who Can't Be Moved

“Tu m’ as marque,” Max’s voice, uncharacteristically soft and tender, cuts through the haze of sleep that had rapidly descended on me the moment we’d pulled away from the airport.

It’s a tone that he reserves only for me; one that he busts out when no one else is around and he’s in a rare melancholy mood. Like his eyes that can go from vivid, striking turquoise to deep blue and everything in between depending on how he’s feeling, his voice also changes under different circumstances. Low and sultry when he’s giving me explicit play by play in bed of what he’s doing to me or making dirty, kinky promises about the ‘torture’ he plans on inflicting as soon as he sees me. Boisterous and booming when he’s been drinking or he’s in the dressing room or on the ice or when he’s immersed in a fierce video game battle with his buddies. And gentle, subdued and patient during our many middle of the night phone calls when I’d dissolve into tears over how much I missed him and he’d abandon his macho, ‘class clown’ shtick he assumes when he’s around his friends in favour or assuring me that everything was going to be okay and that we’d see each other again in no time. It’s all the little things bunched together that make Max who he is; that separates him from every other man on the planet. The way his eyes change colour, the variations in his voice, the way he mixes French and English, his familiar, intoxicating scent. All of the things I’ve missed so desperately and now get to spend the rest of my life enjoying.

“Tu m’as marque,” he repeats, as my eyes flicker open and I lift the side of my head from its resting place against my ice cold window and glance over at him. “Tu m’as marque beaucoups,” he stresses the last word.

A gentle smile curves my lips and reaching out, run my hand slowly over the top of his head and use my palm to smooth down several wayward tresses. Along with being too lazy to shave, he’s also apparently developed an allergy to haircuts; it’s growing over the tops of his ears and just grazing the nape of his neck. He knows full well that I have a weakness for men with extremely short hair; that I prefer when he’s wearing it closely cropped to his head and it’s sticking up in several different directions. And while I don’t mind a few days worth of growth on his face, I’m unsure how I’ll ever deal if the Pens get deep into the playoffs again and I’m forced to share a bed with Grizzly Adams. Not to mention he looks like an entirely different person with a beard and appears at least ten years older than me, if not more.

“Tu m’as marque beaucoups aussi,” I say in return, and trace the outer edge of his ear with my fingertip and then scrape my nail along the side of his throat and around to the back of his neck. “But I missed you more,” I add with a childish giggle. “Have you been a good boy, Maxime? You haven’t been doing anything naughty in our brand new bed? I hope you’ve been saving your first time in it for me.”

“I’ve already told you that I have been a good boy,” he says, as he glides our black Range Rover to a halt at a red light and glances over at me. “Un petite ange. Don’t worry, baby. There’s been no action in our bed…” a shit eating grin tugs at the corners of his mouth and I can see the mischief twinkling in his eyes; a sure sign I need to brace myself for either a totally smart ass comment or a phenomenally filthy one. “I swear to you, I have only had sex with other women in different areas of the house. On the couch, on the kitchen table, in the shower…”

“And were any of them as good as me, baby?” I inquire. “I highly doubt any of them could hold a candle to me. I’m sure I make much better porn star noises and get you off a lot harder and quicker than any of them ever could.”

“I don’t know…there was this one girl that could put her ankles at the back of her neck and…”

I frown and curling my fingers around the hair at the back of his neck, yank down aggressively.

“Taber-fucking-nac!” my husband roars, and reaches around to swat my hand away. “I don’t mind you pulling my hair as long as you’re doing it when I’m going down on you! Sacre bleu! Tu as une vraie salope! You’re a vicious little thing!”

“I thought you liked the abuse,” I say. “I thought you liked it when I got all mean and nasty.”

“Mean and nasty in the right way! Mean and nasty when we’re in bed! Not mean and nasty just for the sake of being mean and nasty! This is how you treat me after two months? This is the reception your suffering, frustrated and completely celibate husband gets? Ce n’est pas juste. It’s just not fair at all.”

“Well you think you’d be nicer to me considering you haven’t managed to tap my ass in almost nine weeks,” I chide, and then squeal and give a jump when he reaches across the seat to playfully pinch my side. “You think you’d shelve your smart ass, perverted, egotistical at least for a couple of days. But no…you just go ahead and open your mouth and risk spending my first night home on the couch. And you think….” I shriek and arch clear out of my seat when he proceeds to aggressively tickle the inside of my left thigh. “Arretez maintenant!… Maxime!… stop it!…Before I pee my pants!”

“You’re going to wet yourself?” he grins victoriously and continues to tickle me. “You’re going to take a leak right here, right now if I don’t stop?”

“Yes!” I cry, and attempt to wriggle away from those long, thick fingers. “Stop it! I will be myself if you don’t knock it the fuck off! And if you value you’re Johnson where it is…”

“D’accord…d’accord…” he holds his hands up in surrender and presses his lips to my temple. “I’ll stop. I’ll be good. Besides, I’d rather make you wet yourself in a completely different way.”

“Oh don’t you worry about that…” I grin, as he entwines lays his big, strong hand over my tiny, fragile one and entwines our fingers together. “You’ve already been successful at that today. Second you decided to do that whole tip of your tongue on the roof of my mouth thing. Just so you know, I expect you to replace the two hundred dollar Le Perla underwear I’m currently wearing.”

“Two hundred dollars for some satin or lace that barely covers your goods? That’s a total rip off. I can get you a hundred pairs for that price at Wal-Mart.”

“Two hundred dollars for French lace panties,” I correct. “Crotchless ones at that.”

That devilish smile appears on his face once more and he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and runs the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip. A simple, seemingly innocent gesture that has a dull, throbbing ache forming in the pit of my stomach and an agonizing heat that spreads from between my legs to every extremity. It’s the memories of what he’s done with that tongue and what he’s capable of doing that just does me in, and I squeeze my thighs together, shift uncomfortably in my seat and clear my throat noisily.

“Is it hot in here or is it just me?” I inquire, as I vigorously fan myself with my hand.

“It’s just you,” Max replies.

“Christ…” I blow my bangs off of my forehead. “I so need to get laid.”

“Well then you’ve come to zee right place, mademoiselle,” he thickens his accent to the point that he sounds exactly like Pepe Le Pew. “You ‘appen to be in luck. I am just zee right man for the job. I do not mind pulling over on zee side of zee road and taking one for zee team.”

“As kinky and as exciting as that would be, I think you better just get us home safe and sound,” I say, as I slide our joined hands further up my leg and then slip them between my legs, allowing the back of his hand to come in brief contact with my crotch. “So we can get a start on christening every room in the place.”

“It’s a four bedroom, three bathroom house,” he reminds me. “Not to mention a kitchen, a den, a family room, a two car garage…”

“Are you trying to tell me that you don’t think you’ll be able to handle it?” I inquire. “Are you saying that you won’t be able to satisfy all of my needs? Because it’s been a hell of a long two months, Maxime. The most excruciatingly and painful eight weeks of my life. And if you can’t man up and take care of business, I just might have to go elsewhere. Do we have a lot of batteries in the house? I’m not above resorting to my faithful friend.”

“No piece of plastic can do for you what I can, ma couer. I thought I proved that five months ago. I thought I proved that there’s no toy or no man on this earth that can rock your world like I can. Face it; t’adore ma queue.”

“I do,” I admit with a heavy, dramatic sigh. “I love it; I worship it and the ground you walk on. But if you don’t think you’ve got what it takes to make me happy…”

“Oh I’ve got what it takes,” Max confidently declares. “I’ve got more than enough. Don’t you worry, mon chere. When I’m through with you, you won’t be able to walk properly for a week.”

“Promises, promises…” I smirk. “How about you just shut up, get us home and put your money where your mouth is, Superstar?”

He gives a grin, reaches over to yank on my seat belt in order to tighten it, and then slams his foot down on the gas.

One thing about Max Talbot, he’s always up for a challenge.

*****************

2:27 am

As a wicked winter storm batters the entire state of Pennsylvania, I struggle to find sleep. Despite being both emotionally and physically exhausted -who wouldn’t be considering the stress of he flight from Montreal and the half a dozen times I’d been subjected to most intense, mind blowing sex I’ve had experienced in my entire life- I can’t turn my brain off long enough to allow rest to claim my weary body. And while the bedroom windows rattle with the force of the wind and ice pellets patter against the glass and snow ploughs work diligently to ensure our quiet, scarcely populated - only four houses on the entire street, one of them belonging to Mark Recchi’s wife and kids (and Jordan Staal, who lives in their pool house)- cul de sac doesn’t become totally snowed in, I continue to fight my own losing battle.

I’m overwhelmed; being back in Pittsburgh and facing the demons and the mistakes I’d left behind is turning out to be more difficult and painful than I thought it would. I had thought that the time away would help me distance myself from the bad memories; would make it easier for me to come back with a clean slate and help me start a brand new life. It’s not that I regret choosing Max or marrying him so soon into our relationship; both were quite possibly the best decisions I’ve ever made. I simply regret the way things had gone down; for not handling things in a more mature, responsible fashion and for allowing myself to get so caught up in a fantastical ideal of life with Sidney Crosby that I’d been blindsided when he’d failed to live up to my lofty expectations.

It wasn’t his fault that things had gone down the way they did; I don’t blame him for not being able to please me. I’d fallen in love with a completely different person when he come to Sault Ste. Marie; I’d been a foolish little girl and in the end I couldn’t deal with the fact he wasn’t able to be that way all the time and the fact I couldn’t be in even the top five on his list of priorities. Once we’d re-entered the ‘real world’ I hadn’t been able to accept the professional, almost emotionally absent side of him. I had tried convincing myself that I could deal with it. That I could accept the fact that I wasn’t ever going to be his ‘be all and end all’; that hockey would always be the greatest love of his life. And I would have never begrudged him the one thing his world has revolved around since he was a little boy; I would have never asked or expected him to give everything up to be with me. Instead I’d relegated myself to the fact that our lives together would always be that way; that I loved him enough to put up with the incessant loneliness and the pressure of a ‘fish bowl’ existence and the fact that the sport and everything that came with it would always be pulling him in different directions.

Despite what people think, I had been in love with him. He’ll always possess a huge, integral part of my heart; we’d been through so much together and we’d both tried so hard to make things perfect. And it had been that constant struggle that had destroyed everything that had started out so promising. In the blink of an eye we’d lost a baby that we’d just found out we were having and we’d barely given ourselves time to grieve before we began trying to make life altering, ‘always and forever’ plans because our lofty dreams made the pain so much easier to bear and kept us connected. Our ages and our relative immaturity and inexperience had been our downfall, and when the whirlwind in our lives finally subsided, reality had slapped us both in the face. We weren’t ready to get married anymore than we were ready to be parents; we loved the ideals we’d created of reach other and we both hated who we really were.

Sidney had wanted a version of Emma-Leigh Kennedy that never really existed and never would; a submissive, picture perfect hockey wife that would give up all of her own dreams and desires in order to project an image of a beautiful, happy family to the outside world. Ideas that had been all but programmed into his head by Pat and his father; years of having to be politically correct and emotionally absent made him want someone who was flawless and he couldn’t deal with the fact I was anything but. Likewise, I couldn’t accept that he couldn’t be the Sidney that I met during the summer; he’d never be totally and completely mine and would never love me the way I wanted him too.

And despite the what people may say and think about me and no matter how much they feel they have the right to judge, there’s always two sides to every story and I’m tired of no one bothering to hear mine. It had broken my heart to hurt him; I’m not the cold hearted, vindictive whore that I’ve been painted as and I truly I regret not handling things in a better fashioned. But in a way Sid had sealed his own fate; convinced me with his actions and words and the lack there of, that I’d made the right choice. The beginning of the end had come when he’d so willingly allowed me go back to Pittsburgh; when he’d put up little to no resistance and he hadn’t argued or even dared to forbid me to. As if it was easier for him to temporarily rid his life of me -a nuisance that demanded way too much time and energy- and allow someone else to fix and cure me so he could just gallop back into the picture and sweep me off my feet once all the hard work had been done. And it had made me wonder if it would always be that way; of once we were married and started a family, he’d bail when the going got tough and leave me to solve every problem on my own. Even after that I’d been willing to ‘hang in there’; I’d been willing to keep trying to save us. And even after I’d had sex with Max -several times, in fact- there’d been that shred of hope that maybe my infidelity would make Sidney realize that he wasn’t so innocent when it came to creating such a mess of our life together. That he would be more like his friend; someone who loved and wanted the entire package and worshipped and adored me with a blinding, all consuming passion.

The morning after had been all the convincing I’d need to walk away from him for good. To break things off no matter how much I still loved him -and probably always would in some sense- and no matter how badly it destroyed me inside. When he’d come to TK’s to confront me, the emotionally absent Sid was operating at full throttle; he hadn’t wanted to hear anything I had to say and refused to listen to any apologies or explanations. Instead he’d simply grabbed me by the arm and physically removed me from my brother’s apartment and took me back to Mario’s, where he demanded I pack all of my belongings and then literally sat in the room and supervised while I did it. I had wanted to say I was sorry; I had wanted to explain why I did what I did and why I felt a stronger connection to Max than I did to him. I had wanted to tell him that I thought it was bullshit that I could take him back after sleeping with some random slut yet he couldn’t grant me the same. At least I’d been with someone I knew; someone that wouldn’t splash filthy pictures of us all over the internet and wouldn’t brag to his friends about what a good fuck I’d been.

And I’d wanted to tell him what I needed from him to make things right between us. Yet we’d never uttered a goddamn word to me; he’d even remained emotionless as I sat crying in the passenger seat of his SUV on route back to Max’s apartment, pleading with him to at least listen to me, to at least give me the chance to explain.

“You want him, then go and be with him,” Sid had said, after he’d helped me unload my things onto the sidewalk. “That’s what you want, Emma-Leigh? Someone like Max over someone like me? Then go. Go and be with your boyfriend. You two fucking deserve each other.”

Those were the last words he’d ever spoken to me.

And now five months later, here I am. Back in the city that had nearly destroyed me. In the middle of a rumbled double King, antique four posted bed in a house that I’d only ever seen in pictures that Max had emailed to me when we’d decided it was time for us to buy a house. Everything is foreign to me; every piece of furniture that had been purchased in my absence, every spacious yet uninhabited rooms in an exquisite colonial style home that sits next to a dead end in a picturesque community. Rooms that may never get filled. A home that may never hear the pitter patter of tiny feet because of my inability -at least until the operation in May, and even then it’s a huge ‘if’- to be a ‘proper wife’; my failure to give my husband children on his own.

And it’s that thought and a million more -and vivid memories of Sidney and the sound of his voice and the taste of his kiss and the smell and feel of his skin- that prevent sleep from claiming me. That creates emotion so thick and so powerful that I suddenly feel as if I can’t breathe; as if there’s a thousand pound weight sitting squarely on my chest and an invisible noose tightening around my neck, threatening to prevent me from drawing in any air. It sends me into a state of blind panic and I bolt upright into a sitting position and clutch frantically at the sheets below me with one hand and at my chest with the other; gasping for breath in between the sobs that erupt from my lips. Anxiety attacks are nothing new; I’ve been struggling with them since I was in university and exam time used to be way more than I could handle. But they’ve become worse since the night I’d slept with Max five months ago; there’s moments where I legitimately think I’m going to have a heart attack or that my lungs are going to actually stop functioning. Normally I can get out of bed on my own and take care of things; I can find a way to the bathroom and to the bottle of anti-anxiety meds that sits on the ledge of the sink. Tonight I feel as if I’m going to die; as if this time there’s no escaping the pressure on my chest, no way of stopping the feeling of suffocation threatening to overwhelm me.

**********

It’s my clawing at the sheets and the horrific gasping noises I’m making as I try to breathe -like a child suffering from the croup or having a fit during a case of whooping cough- that rips Max from his own peaceful slumber as he lies beside me on his stomach, both forearms under his pillow and his face turned towards me. He looks years younger than twenty-five when he’s asleep; so beautiful and angelic with the moonlight bathing those muscular, chiselled shoulders and back and those long, dark eyelashes falling onto his now clean shaven cheek and those luscious lips slightly parted as he breathes slowly and deeply. And when I attempt to turn my back on him in order to disguise the distress I’m currently in, he quickly rolls over onto his back and sits up and lays a comforting, reassuring hand on the back of my neck.

Despite the limited amount of nights we’ve spent together, he’s a consummate professional; he doesn’t panic when one of my attacks come on and he doesn’t get irritated or condescending or scold me for ‘embarrassing myself’. And he doesn’t pity me or go overboard with protectiveness; he simply gives me the chance to calm down and only steps in if it’s apparently I can’t take care of myself. And his mere presence is a huge comforting factor; his smell and the warmth that radiates off of his body and the way he intently watches me and the way he strokes my hair or rubs my back.

“Ca va?” he asks, when I’ve finally regained the ability to breathe properly and the trembling in all of my extremities begins to subside. “Are you okay? What happened, baby? Was it a bad dream?”

I nod in response. I could never tell him what had exactly caused the attack to come on; I could never hurt him by telling him what I’d been thinking about and what -and who- had sent me over the edge. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him; and he doesn’t deserve to be hurt.

“I’ll be back,” he says, and presses a tender kiss to my temple before slipping out of bed; completely naked, that firm ass and that glorious, thick length of him on full display as he heads for the ensuite bathroom.

All of the rumours about Max Talbot are true; he is ‘well endowed’ and he knows how to use his ‘equipment’ in ways no other mortal man can. I’ve never met anyone that’s so confident; that’s so at ease with himself that he can walk around as naked as the day he was born. And I have to admit, I’m slightly disappointed when he emerges from the bathroom a couple minutes later and he’s slipped into a pair of tattered and worn Pens jogging pants.

“Voici,” he says, and holds out his left hand, palm up and revealing four tiny white pills. Lorazepam; an anti-anxiety med that dissolves when placed under the tongue. “Voici ta pastilles. Take them, baby. You’ll feel better soon.”

I pluck the medication from his palm and slip them under my tongue, pressing down and holding them in place as they rapidly dissolve and leave a horrific, bitter and pasty taste behind.

“Drink up,” Max says, and offers the cup of water that he carries in his right hand. “I know they taste like complete and utter shit.”

I accept the drink and give a grateful, appreciative smile before downing the ice cold liquid. I’m hoping and praying that he doesn’t ask me to talk about it; that he doesn’t want to hear details about the apparent nightmare I’d been having. Max usually is the type that doesn’t press for information; he patiently waits for you to talk about things if -and when- you’re ready to do so. And it’s not that he doesn’t care; the concern and the questions are in his eyes and in the way he runs a hand slowly and affectionately down my hair and drops a kiss on the top of my head. Despite what people may think of him and the reputation he’d built up for himself, he possesses a phenomenal amount of compassion and has moments of startling tenderness.

“Are you alright now?” he asks, worry dripping from his voice and turning his eyes dark, stormy blue. “Everything’s okay?

I nod and attempt a shaky smile.

He lays a hand along the side of my face and leans over the bed to kiss me softly.

“I can’t sleep,” I admit, as he climbs back onto the bed. “I know I should be exhausted, but…”

“You’ve gone through a lot in the past five months,” he sympathises, as he sits alongside of me and pushing my hair behind my ear with gentle fingertips. “It’s a huge change, Emma-Leigh. Coming back here is a big deal. And if you just want to ignore the outside world for a few days and just lock yourself away from everyone…”

“That would do me any good,” I gently object. “I came back here to have a life, Max. A life with you. And hiding myself away only makes me look worse in everyone’s eyes. I don’t want to feel like I have something to hide; like we have something to be ashamed about. And I know you don’t want that either.”

“I’ve never thought we had something to hide or be ashamed about,” he says. “That’s not why I sent you to Montreal. You know that, right? That I didn’t send you away because I was embarrassed about us; about you. I sent you there because…”

“Because you wanted me to get better,” I finish for him. “Because you knew it was the only way it would happen. That the only way I’d get healthy again was if I got as far away from Pittsburgh as possible.”

“I did it for you. I did it to protect you. Don’t think I didn’t go through hell each and every day. That I didn’t miss you every possible second. It wasn’t easy for me, you know. To be that far away from you. To let you go the second I managed to get you.”

“You never should have had to go through all the drama here by yourself,” I wrap an arm around his shoulders and press a kiss to his cheek. “You never should have had to deal with all of that on your own. All the people talking about us, all the drama with Mario and your team-mates. You never should have…”

“I don’t care about all of that. N’as pas d’importance. None of that matters anymore. Je suis un grand garcon. I can more than handle myself.”

“I know you can,” I say, and nuzzle his ear with the tip of his nose. “I just wish you hadn’t have had to handle it all by yourself.”

“C’etait mon choix. It was my decision. And it was for the best. You got what you needed; you’re better now and you’re healthy and it’s why I did what I did. To make sure you got that way. To hell with everyone else and what they say or think. Fuck them.”

“I still wish I could have gotten here earlier,” I sigh. “That why we could have celebrated your birthday properly.”

“Properly?” Max chuckles at that. “The way we celebrated my birthday was just fine. It was perfect. What more could any man want? A beautiful, sexy woman in his bed? Doing entirely improper things to him. C’est parfait. I have no complaints.”

“I should hope not,” I laugh, and then slide my hand down his back and along his side, my finger tips lightly tracing the elaborate cross and fleur de lis tattoo that graces his right rib cage. “But now that it’s after midnight, it’s no longer your birthday and…”

He stares down at me expectantly.

“And now it’s your turn to do totally improper things to me,” I finish, and he gives that grin that never fails to get my heart racing and laying a hand on the side of my face, twists his body towards mine and captures my mouth in a deep, intense kiss that takes my breath away.

“You’re lucky I have so much damn stamina,” he teases, as he uses the full weight of his body to push me onto my back and I spread my legs in order for him to place himself between them; my fingertips exploring every inch of his arms and shoulders and travelling over the shield and T tattoo on the inside of his right bicep as he places his palms on the matress in order to spare me his much heavier bulk.

“I’m lucky in a lot of ways,” I declare, and then curl my arms around his waist and my arms around his neck and yank him down into a kiss. I want him to help me forget; I need him to help me forget. I am desperate to feel beautiful and loved; I don’t want to feel disgusting and repulsive because of the choices I’d made.

And as his greedy, hot mouth begins a delicious assault on my neck and he removes a hand from the mattress in order, slides it between our bodies and pushes two fingers inside of me, all my worries and fears evaporate.

All of the guilt vanishes.

At least for now.