~Ben~

Turns out I didn't speak to Eleanor in LA. I tried to, but her van had already left when I showed up in the hotel parking lot, and she was sitting next to Matthew on the plane. We're in BC now, and we were booked from the moment we exited the plane to when we board another. First, there's the signing in Vancouver that is happening at the moment, then Eleanor has to attend Will's engagement dinner. Tomorrow, we drive to Victoria where there will be another signing after which Eleanor goes out for lunch with her family and I go for dinner with mine. I tried to work out the best time to talk to Eleanor and I came to the conclusion that there is none. I'll have to use my strategizing skills that have mostly served me for hockey to corner her somewhere she'll have no choice but to give me what I want. I planned my attack right after the signing in Vancouver. I'll do what I like to call a "surprise recovery." I came up with this tactic when I was still in Midget, but it works quite well. When an adversary, in this case, Eleanor, thinks you'll take a certain amount of time to catch up to them, you simply do it faster. For example, a player from the opposite team has the puck. He also is a step ahead of you, so he thinks he's safe, that it'll be an easy shot, but you beat him to it. You skate as fast as you can or motion to someone who is closer, and you take the puck from him. If you do it correctly, your adversary won't even see you coming. Alex wanted to call it the "easy quickie recovery," but the coach found it too sexually connoted. We were fifteen so he was probably right to decline the name. This got me the nickname: "Sneaky Benji," something I always hated. I didn't want to be sneaky, I wanted to be fast.

I am supposed to hand over Ophelia to Hannah at four pm, even if the signing ends at three to allow Eleanor to prepare for the dinner. She will, as always, pick her up from my hotel room. At least that is what she thinks. In this strategy, Hannah is the defenseman that was sent to stop me from reaching the forward. But I'm too smart to let that happen. When Hannah will knock on my door, I will already be in Eleanor's hotel room, hopefully talking to her. I overheard the hotel's receptionist when she listed the room numbers to Craig. Eleanor stays in room 286. At exactly 3:30 pm, I'll knock on her door. Why 3:30? To avoid any awkward run-ins with Hannah in the elevator. The last thing I want is to bump into her as I enter or exit the elevator. My plan is well thought out. If I wanted to brag, I'd even call it perfect.

At 3:25, I exit my hotel room. My heart rate speeds up as the elevator goes up as if it was trying to match its speed. At 3:28, the elevator stops at the 8thfloor. I get out, struggling to push the stroller past the bump on the floor between the cabin's ceramic and the hotel's rug. I walk down the hall following the numbers on each door until I see room 285. I stop to take a deep breath before taking the two steps that will lead me to her.

It's exactly 3:30 when my fist touches the hard wood of room's 286 door. Barely a second later, I hear her voice. I try not to focus on how happy she sounds. She's not expecting me, if she was, her voice would probably be filled with anger since it's how she has been speaking to me ever since we left for this tour. Ophelia starts to babble, and I hear something fall on the floor. I bend down to pick it up, and at the same time, I hear Eleanor's voice.

"Wow, you're early. Come in, I need you to help me zip up my dress." I do as I'm told, surprised by her reaction. "Don't tell me Ben told you to pick her up early," she adds, facing away from me. She's holding her hair up, waiting for who she thinks is Hannah to zip up her pale pink dress. I always loved seeing Eleanor in a dress, especially one that shows her legs, like this one. It stops just above her knee, and the thin straps that are hanging loosely on her shoulders accentuates the shape of her shoulders. I walk closer to her, holding in my breath to avoid smelling the distinctive coconut smell of her hair that drives me wild.

"No, I wanted to drop her off myself," I say as I slowly pull up the zipper of her dress. As soon as she hears my voice, she backs away from me, turning around to face me with anger covering her face. "And I wanted to talk," I add softly.

"I told you I didn't want to see you," she angerly says, crossing her arms over her chest.

"You said you didn't want to see me every day. It's been almost a week since we last spoke. And I need to talk to you about Hannah." I add the last sentence as Eleanor kneels down in front of the stroller to say hi to Ophelia.

"What about Hannah?" she asks, still not looking at me.

"That picture," I start but get cut off by Eleanor's strong look in my direction. "That wasn't my idea. I was against even taking it, but Hannah insisted. I didn't know she was going to post it, I swear," I cautiously add.

"I don't care, you do whatever you want, Ben." God, I had missed the way she says my name. Even when she's angry at me, the way my name rolls on her tongue holds the power to calm me. "Was that it?" she asks, facing for the first time since I walked in.

"Ophelia said dada the other day." Eleanor looks at Ophelia with a smile, clapping her hands together. "Did you talk about me to her?" I ask, trying to sound as confident as possible. She stops what she was doing and gets up.

"Maybe," she answers.

"What did you say?" I know I'm pushing my luck, but I need to know. Something changes in Eleanor's eyes at that moment. The anger disappears only to be replaced by sadness.

"I told her about you. Who you are, what you do. I explained why you left until I didn't have an explanation anymore. For the first six months of her life, I kept telling her that you would come back and for the six others I told her that you still loved her and that even if you had left me, you hadn't left her. I showed her pictures and videos to try and explain to the both of us why you weren't here. But I couldn't. I couldn't explain to her something I don't understand myself. That's when I started to despise you, and that's when I heard you had made it to the NHL, and that's when I called you because I didn't care anymore. So, yeah, I told her about you. Can you please leave now, so I can get ready?" I would have expected her to be crying by now, but she isn't. There is not even one trace of tears in her eyes. She didn't sound angry nor sad. It was as if what she was saying was true. She sounded like someone who didn't care, and I can't accept that.

I head for the door when she turns away from me. When my fingers touch door knob, the coldness of the metal spreads through me erasing all my inhibitions. I realize that I don't care anymore either. I don't care what she thinks of me anymore. She can think I'm the biggest looser or the most pitiful human on earth. In fact, I don't care about what anyone thinks of me. The second I walked out on Eleanor I lost the right to have an ego.

I feel like I'm in slow-motion when I turn around and say: "I don't know why I left, but the one thing I know is that it was the biggest mistake of my life. I don't give a shit about the NHL because I couldn't share it with you." Her back is facing me, but I know she's listening. I walk to the stroller, taking out Pride and Prejudice from the diaper bag. "There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well," I read. "That's you, El. You're the only person I really love in a sea of horrible people. I'm sorry I didn't see that earlier." I place the book on the table beside the door before exiting the room.

Later that night, I decide against going to the gym. My heart is still racing from what happened in Eleanor's room. Instead, I open the book with the pale blue cover and an ice skate in the background. I plunge myself in her words, recreating the images in my head to try and see if I could maybe make her care again. 

Sorry for the wait!! Hope everyone likes this sequel so far even if we are still at the very beginning. Thank you for reading xx