Jack breaks first, and I heave an internal sigh of relief. Maybe he can sense how much I need hockey in the wake of the breakdown in my marriage, or perhaps he recognizes the chance his teammates gave him when he first stepped onto the team.
I don’t know. I’m just grateful for the reprieve.
“Do you want to hit Lloyd’s tonight?”
“Are you going?” I reply, pleased at the change in subject even though I’m not all that eager to head out.
I was hoping to see Scott after his surgery, but a week later, he still isn’t discharged from the hospital, and by the time I get home from practice and change, visiting hours will be over.
Jack scratches at the back of his neck. “I feel like the team needs to bond over the shitshow in Pittsburg. I’ll probably show up for a couple of hours.”
My low mood tempts me to decline and spend the night slumped on my couch with a meal for one.
“You should come out.” Jack’s encouraging voice has me wondering if he is, in fact, Edward Cullen.
Going out with the guys is an option I didn’t have when I was married to Maria, and I know I should take advantage of my newfound freedom. Still, the only time I’ve felt remotely motivated to socialize is when I’ve been around Billie.
“Listen,” Jack continues, “if I’m coming out and choosing you guys above my beautiful baby girl and wife, then you can pry yourself away from a date night with yourself and whatever trash fiction you do like to read.”
“Thrillers. I like to read thrillers,” I clarify.
Jack turns his nose up. “To each their own, I guess. There’s something about a romance that just gets me going.” He leans into me like he’s sharing the secret to happiness—maybe he is. “Kendra has a small collection of sports romance books, and let me tell you …” His eyebrows rise into his hairline. “You can learn some stuff from those pages, buddy. I’ve made her scr?—”
My hand shoots up in surrender. “Yeah, yeah, great. Whatever you say, Cap.”
With his arms folded across his chest, challenge blooms in Jack’s eyes. “If I promise to stop talking about romance books, do you promise to join us tonight at Lloyd’s?”
“You speak like I have a choice in the matter,” I huff out and take another drink.
He smacks me on the chest, interpreting my response as a yes. “Good man. You never know; you might even find a girl to have a little fun with. I think it’s high time you hooked up.”
I’m tempted to reveal that I already tried that and it didn’t work. The words don’t leave my mouth though as unsolicited thoughts of Billie come flooding back.
What should’ve been a quick lunch after the hospital turned into three hours of us talking about anything and everything. From her courses in college to the “friends” she made and lost when everything went down with the pregnancy and Tucker.
When I’d first set eyes on Billie a couple of weeks ago, I had been shocked at how much she’d changed and even more freaked out by her beauty. Last week, as we ate steak, she surprised me again, only this time it was at her maturity and levelheadedness. I meant it when I told her that not many twenty-one-year-olds would have approached the cheating rumors like she did. Hell, my ex-wife couldn’t stop shooting baseless accusations at me, no matter how many ways I tried to prove my loyalty to her.
Tucker Price is a fucking idiot.I don’t need all thirty-five years of my experience to conclude that.
“I’m not interested in getting with anyone.” I eventually supply Jack with an answer as we slowly glide toward center ice and join the others. “I need to keep my life simple and uncomplicated.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EMMETT
The way Lloyd’s is packed to the rafters is like a baptism of fire for my single status. If we weren’t holed up in the private section, we definitely wouldn’t have seats.
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve been out before with the guys, but never without a “curfew” in place or one hand on my pocket, feeling for the familiar vibration of Maria’s call.
“It’s like a freaking cattle market in here,” Jensen Jones’s wife, Kate, yells across the booth.
We’re only sitting a few feet apart, and even then it’s hard to hold a conversation.
Christ, I’m fucking old.
While most of the twenty-somethings in this bar are approaching the resident DJ—that none of us had any idea would be playing tonight—requesting songs, I’m tempted to head over and ask him to turn whatever shit he has spinning down so I can at least keep my hearing.
I nod over at Kate. Other than her being in her early forties with blonde hair and blue eyes, I don’t know all that much about Jensen’s wife.
