“I’ve had to take control of my life a long time ago,” I inform him, not that I owe him anything. “So, yes. I am.”
Janel clears her throat. “We think we’re quite capable of handling this situation with a few tweaks to your…lifestyle. At least, your lifestyle as the public views it. We’ll organize a few events, some interviews and photographs, and get ahead of whatever online narrative is being formed.”
Thomas doesn’t look at Janel as she speaks.
He stares at me.
With far,fartoo much interest in his smile.
His head cocks as his focus dips to the top half of me, visible above the table. His lips curl up higher at the corners, and he says, “Good. When do we start?”
*
Thomas Moskins, asI learn, is trouble with a capitalT.
After our meeting ended and he left to do God only knows what, Janel gave me a stern talking to regarding my people skills. Specifically, hownotto let someone like Thomas get under my skin.
While the scolding made me flush and apologetic over my behavior, I could tell Janel was secretly impressed by my ability to bite back. She turned to me with an arched brow, told me she didn’t know I had it in me, and…smiled.
It’s the only reason I held my tongue rather than begging her to remain on the case despite how I acted toward the hockey MVP. Was it unprofessional to give him attitude? Absolutely. Would I do it again if he spoke to me with disrespect? I sure as hell would.
Which is how I wound up with a six-inch binder full of everything I need to know about the two-hundred-and-twenty-pound professional right-winger. According to his file, the thirty-five-year-old has won a lot of awards throughout his career—everything from the Calder Memorial Trophy as a rookie to the MVP Hart Memorial a few years ago. He’s good, based on whatever standards these awards are measured by. I’m certainly not going to YouTube the inner workings of his sport to figure it out, but I don’t need to.
My job isn’t to praise him on the ice and remind people why he’s an amazing hockey player. The world already knows that. His stats prove it. My responsibility is far harder.
It’s to make Thomas Moskins look like a decent human being.
And based on every tabloid printed out in front of me, that is no easy task.
Perhaps taking this on is biting off more than I can chew. Maybe I’m overzealous for acting as if I can fix his reputation, like all it needs is a bubble bath and a pretty bow slapped on top of it. Scrubbing a hand down my tired face, I lean back in my dining room chair and sigh. “What did you get yourself into, Win?” I ask myself before glancing back down at the latest headline.
NHL right-winger Thomas Moskins is seen leaving the Yokav Center in Fairbanks, Connecticut, following the accusations of his latest affair reported by TMZ. There are rumors that Mikhail Yokav, owner of the Fairbanks Fireflies and father-in-law to Moskins, plans to suspend the one-time MVP award winner after images of him leaving a hotel with a mystery woman went viral three weeks ago. A source close to Moskins claims there is no tension between him and his wife, Emaly Moskins-Yokav. However, it appears the meeting with the Fireflies owner did not go in Moskins’s favor as seen in the images below.
I cringe at the pictures taken in rapid succession of Thomas knocking down a planter and then kicking a dumpster so hard it looks like he dented it.
With the current tensions rising between the right-winger and his father-in-law, it doesn’t appear that the star offensive player will start in the Fireflies first season with the NHL without a major overhaul to clear Moskins’s name.
I can understand why Janel told me not to judge when she started discussing the reasons Thomas needed our assistance. Italso makes sense why I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement that was as thick as his file.
Based on all the articles about him, this is the third time over the last year and a half that he’s been seen with women who aren’t his wife. A year before that, he’d been seen with the same blonde over the course of six months in Boston. The year beforethat, during his last season with New York’s team, it’d been a brunette he was constantly spotted out with in Seattle.
None of them his wife.
In fact, most interactions between him and Emaly Moskins-Yokav seem to be strictly online. There are cute selfies and candid pictures posted between them with messages that are equally adorable. She never posts anything about the alleged affairs, and only ever praises and supports him throughout his hockey seasons.
It’s a bit…strange.
It also means that if I’m going to help him like I said I would, I’m going to need to figure out their dynamic. Something tells me getting that information will be as easy as giving medication to a cat. I have the scars to prove how hard that actually is. Thomas Moskins is about as open as the sealed exercise bike still sitting in its box in the corner of my bedroom, waiting to be used.
So, yeah.
I may be screwed. And not in a fun way.
Standing and stretching my stiff muscles, I walk over to the sink and fill a glass of water. A picture frame sits on the windowsill, filled with smiling faces that hit me square in the stomach.
What once used to be a family full of love and laughter got torn apart when a thirty-six-year-old decided to get behind the wheel of a car drunk. One choice turned my life upside down and took both of my parents from me.
Kourtney, my sister, was old enough to take me thanks to our nine-year age gap. If it weren’t for her, I would have had to move out of state to live with our aunt and uncle in Detroit, Michigan—a far cry from Fairbanks, Connecticut.
