Page 10 of Forecasting the Forward

He is at my apartment. It’s basically the middle of the night, and he’s waiting for me. This brings back some incredibly bad memories, and I need to nip this in the bud — whatever Jacob thinks is happening here.

“Fancy meeting you here —” he begins, but I cut him off.

“Are your teeth real?” I blurt out.

“What?” Jacob asks, chuckling lightly.

“Your teeth. Are they real? Or do you have one of those things that people put in there? What’s it called, a porpoise? A dolphin?” I know it’s called a flipper, but I want to aggravate him.

“A flipper,” he murmurs, the smile sliding off his face. “I don’t have one of those. I’ve been lucky.”

“Eh. Why are you here? You know this is stalking, right?” I routinely search my own name to make sure my address doesn’t appear anywhere. Female meteorologists have to be way too careful. I’m a little apprehensive about Jacob finding my address, but assume he has connections somehow.

“A friend of a friend works at your station,” he says hesitantly.

“I need a name, please.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I wait. There isn’t much light at this time of morning, but I can still see a faint red blush creep up his neck.

Jacob reaches up to scratch absentmindedly against the back of his neck. “I’m not revealing my sources.”

“Whatever. I’ll find out on my own then,” I say cheerfully, walking around Jacob. He falls into step beside me, holding a disposable coffee cup from one of my favorite small coffee shops a block away. I hadn’t even noticed he was holding two cups in one hand. His hands are big enough to do that, which makes me think of —get your mind out of the gutter, Becca.

“The friend of a friend also told me your favorite coffee order, and I’m hoping this small token of appreciation convinces younotto look into the friend of a friend, because they only did it to help me. I’d feel awful if they got fired,” Jacob says quietly.

“How would you feel if I managed to get your home address?” I ask softly. “I can only assume you know what it’s like for people to show up at your home uninvited. Why would you think it would be okay to do that to me?”

“Fuck,” he breathes, his face paling noticeably. “I swear I didn’t even think about it like that. I didn’t intend to make you feel threatened or anything.”

We continue walking silently, and as I’m about to turn to speak to him, Jacob grabs my elbow carefully. “I’m sorry, Becca. I wasn’t thinking.”

I’m not used to a man so confidently admitting their own fault, and my mouth drops open in shock. Jacob looks down quickly, but his eyes pop back up to mine, his gaze never wavering as he waits for my response.

“I’ve had a stalker before,” I whisper. “It was bad. You showing up at my apartment hit too close to home.”

His face falls as he processes my words. “Here? In Denver?”

I shake my head. “No. It was when I first started out. I had to move twice, and it sucked. I was already a private person, but that just exacerbated it. I don’t like finding men I don’t know outside my building.”

He nods, looking down at his feet. “It, uh, won’t happen again.”

“Thank you,” I say politely, turning away from him again. After walking a few steps, I look back, finding Jacob staring intently at me. “This coffee shop isn’t open for another hour. How’d you get it?”

He shrugs. “Friend of a friend.”

I shake my head, a light giggle bursting from my mouth. “Is that your answer for everything?”

“No, just for things concerning you.”

It’srare that I feel like a complete douche. Yeah, I make some dumb decisions, but I’ve never felt worse than I do right now. To know that I may have made Becca feel threatened? Fucking hell.

“You alright, Jax? You’re looking like you want to take that treadmill out back and beat the shit out of it,” Gabe Dawson, my teammate, comments. While we aren’t in training camp just yet, those of us who live in Denver all year round still meet up to work out and get some ice time a couple times a week. Our other buddies, Grant McNally and LeviQuinnlook on with interest.

I sigh. “It’s nothing. Well, mostly nothing.”

“Ah shit,” Grant says as he jumps off the elliptical, coming over to rest his hands on the edge of the treadmill. “What did you do?”

I look around the cardio room at the Sports Facility Zone, where every state-of-the-art machine known to man resides for the professional athletes of Denver to use. Just to the west of downtown, all kinds of practice facilities are available for us. We share an arena downtown with the NBA for our games, but the majority of our time is spent at SFZ. The football teamoccasionally works out here, but they have their own private space next to the massive stadium north of here.

“Earth to Jax,” Levi says, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Seriously, what did you do?”

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