“What was caught on camera was a man defending his girlfriend from a bully with a serious attitude problem,” she says.
I make a face. “I have a reputation for being a hard ass who doesn’t know how to hold his tongue or temper, I’m sure the media is going to latch onto that.”
“Although he was gripping me against my will, you didn’t touch him. Sure, you made a threat, but you didn’t follow through?—”
“The only reason I didn’t pummel his face to the ground and send him back to his maker is because Erik showed up at the scene.” My nostrils flare. “Chett disrespected you.” Fury snakes down my spine at the memory of Chett gripping her.
Harley pulls her lower lip between her teeth and glances up at me from under her long lashes. “He disrespected your mom as well…”
“I don’t have a mom.” I scoff. “Chett disrespected the woman who was my womb for nine months. Once I popped out of her, that certified puck bunny, didn’t stick around to get to know her son.”
Harley’s eyes flutter. “She just left you?”
“You have six weeks to name a child after his or her birth. A month after I arrived into this world, the woman climbed into a taxi, with me in my baby seat, and headed to my grandparents’ house. My dad was playing an away game at the time, so this was her window of opportunity. She gave my grandmother a story about having to go back to Chicago for a family emergency. When my dad returned home a couple days later, he discovered a note in which the woman he had knocked up was giving up her parental rights. She wasn’t cut out for motherhood.”
Harley blinks with her mouth open.
“So there I was, a newborn without a mother and without a name.”
She’s still staring at me in disbelief. “My chest aches for the small, motherless boy you were.”
“Nana made up for it.Shewas my mom. I never missed not having a mother. She didn’t stick around long enough for me to miss her.”
Harley purses her lips. “I guess.”
“In any case, you won’t read any of this in the press. I never talk about that woman.”
She frowns. “How did Chett know?”
“In a moment of sheer stupidity, I confided in Devlyn.”
“And she spilled your secret to her son––which she had no business doing.”
“It’s only after I married her, I discovered she had never cut the umbilical cord.”
She nods. “You’re a big deal. She must’ve been aware of your success. Did she ever reach out?”
“Once.”
“Did she want to make amends?”
“She didn’t track me down so she could make up for the fact she was a shitty human being. Since she had given birth to one of the best NHL players to ever grace the ice—her words, not mine—it didn’t make sense that she was struggling to make ends meet.”
“She’d lost her job?”
“She’d picked up a gambling addiction.”
“How did you know?”
“I had hired private investigators to keep tabs on her. From the moment we got drafted in the big leagues, Erik always warned me my mother would come out from under the rock she lived in and ask for money.”
“Did you cave?”
I shake my head. “When she threatened to go public for a quick payday, I told her to go for it.”
“You did?”
“A mother who abandoned her newborn child before even naming him so she wouldn’t lose her puck bunny status—so many cocks, too little time—wasn’t going to garner much sympathy from the public.”
