He groans at the nickname he’s hated since birth and hangs up.
If Adam doesn’t bend and move out, living with each other is going to be awkward and annoying. But I still feel better—about myself—for having taken this stand, so I know I’m not leaving first. Not unless the lawyer makes me.
6
Jude
“Hey, Ry,” I say with a light smile as I lean on the counter.
He gives me an easy but professional smile. “Mr. Braddock! Will you be staying with us again? Renovationsstill ongoing at your condo?”
I shake my head. “No. Well…maybe.”
He looks confused, and I feel it. What the hell am I doing? I know that he can’t tell me if Zoey is still staying here. It’s against hotel policy. Still, I’m only here so I can ask that very question. And if she is still here, you bet your ass I’m checking in, even though there hasn’t been a wayward hookup knocking on my door since my sister pretended to be my pregnant wife. Of course, that was only thirty-six hours ago.
“We have some availability,” Ryan tells me, glancing at the screen in front of him. “But it’s going to fill up, so if you want me to hold something…”
“You know, I was in my friend Zoey’s room, and I really liked her view.” I pray that Zoey’s room had a good view. I didn’t look out the window at all. I only looked at her. Ryan repeats the name with a furrowed brow, so I elaborate, in a casual tone. “You probably know her as Zoey Penner. I knew her before that, as Zoey Quinlin. Anyway, I don’t know if she checked out or not, but if she did, I would love that room. It had fantastic light.”
Ryan still looks confused. Good. Confusion will lead to being less guarded with his response…I hope. “Oh, wait. You mean Mrs. Penner. Zoey Penner. You know her?”
“Since I was a kid. She was here having brunch with my sisters, and I asked to see her room because, you know, I stay here all the time, and I haven’t found the perfect suite yet. I’m particular about the layout and the light. Feng shui and all that.” I am rambling like an idiot. I’m pretty sure Ryan thinks I’ve got some weird interior design fetish now. Oh, well, who gives a fuck, if it gets me the information I want.
“Well, actually, her room is available, since she checked out. Do you want that exact suite?” he inquires, his overly bushy eyebrows still pinched together. “I didn’t know you liked views of the alley, though. We rarely have requests for that.”
I smile as my phone starts buzzing in my pocket. It’s my alarm. I have to get to the rink for a photo shoot. I pull it out of my pocket. “Shit. Sorry, Ry, I have to go. I forgot that I have an appointment. Thanks for checking availability for me. I’ll call if I need the room.”
I head out of the hotel lobby and hand the valet my ticket. I text Dixie to tell her I’m on my way. She texts back,Hurry up, dirtball.I jump in my Tesla and pull out into downtown San Francisco traffic. It was a little bit dumb swinging by here before the photo shoot. There was no way it wasn’t going to make me at least a little late. But I had to know how she was. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
Something was wrong with my Zoey. I could tell, even before I saw her at the concierge’s desk. She was exactly the same on the outside—beautiful in a classic, pure way and yet sexy as hell in a wild, untamed way. But on the inside, I could tell despite her smile that something was not the same. I could see a glimmer of the girl who had been my teenage obsession, but it was weak, like a flickering ember on a dying fire. Then I touched her, we hugged and more of the inner flame seemed to glow. She smiled again, but it was the one I remember. Wild, carefree, unabashedly joyful. And then Ryan had interrupted.
I was going to leavewith the sorority, but as we filtered down to the main lobby, toward the valet station, I glanced over and saw her standing at the desk. Her shoulders drooped, her head hung in defeat and she was biting a quivering lip. So as Dixie, Winnie and Sadie, oblivious to what I saw, disappeared out the front door to go shopping for the day, I found myself being pulled toward her.
In the hotel room, I wanted to take her. I wanted to strip her naked and worship her body, because it’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was sixteen. And it wasn’t the name Mrs. Penner that stopped me. I looked at her ring finger as soon as I walked into that restaurant, before I even approached the table. She wasn’t wearing a wedding band. And she wasn’t staying with anyone in that hotel room either. She wasn’t married, no matter what paperwork still had to be filed.
But I knew she didn’t need a reminder of how physically desirable she was. She needed to hear how incredible she was in other ways. So I gave her the words I could find, but honestly, even they don’t express what I feel about this girl. She was this bold, confident and happy teenager when I first met her, and I know that girl is in there still. I know she just needs to be reminded of how strong and radiant she really is. And I want to be the one to remind her.
My phone rings and Levi’s name flashes across the screen. I shouldn’t ignore a call from the captain of my hockey team. But since he’s also my best friend who’d been lying to me for months, I let the call go to voicemail as I get on the freeway in the direction of the arena. Levi and I have always been a great pair—on and off the ice. We balance each other out. I’m the upbeat, brash extrovert, and he’s the rational, intense introvert. We never talked about it or purposely picked roles, it’s just who we were, and it worked.
One thing we had talked about was the bro code. You didn’t touch another guy’s girl. This wasn’t just a friend rule, it was a team agreement. The San Francisco Thunder is one of the youngest teams in the NHL, with most players under the age of twenty-five and only two players over the age of thirty. We’re an untamed bunch of athletic, horny, rowdy guys. There haveto be rules about women, or else off-ice drama would affect our on-ice chemistry. And that’s exactly what happened when Levi started seeing my ex-girlfriend.
Yeah, Tessa was an ex, but she wasn’t just a random hookup. We dated for a couple of months. It wasn’t a smooth or easy relationship, but it was still a relationship, my first and only one. Even though we’d been broken up for ten months, they started hooking up behind my back, and even after it got serious, he didn’t tell me. I caught them. I was a lot of things—impulsive, wild, willful—and I may nothave been honest with Tessa, but I was always honest with Levi. And he wasn’t with me.
And now I was on what felt like an emotional seesaw. I had to work with him and see him almost daily, and sometimes I could push past the betrayal. Sometimes it felt almost like old times. And then something happened—Levi said something, or, worse, he avoided saying something—to remind me that he betrayed me, and I would have never done that to him.
My phone rings again. This time it’s my mom, so I answer it. “Hey, Ma.”
“Hi, honey. Just wanted to make sure you’re surviving your sisters,” she says.
I smile. “I’m making it through. How are you doing without them?”
I know that having Winnie and Sadie close by is a blessing she’s eternally grateful for, although she won’t admit it. She’s worried that they feel obligated to stay in Toronto, since Dad is so unwell and Dixie and I are so far away.
“Oh, it’s fine,” my mom tells me quickly. “It’s only a few days, and your dad is doing well right now.”
That news lifts my spirits instantly. “So the new meds are working?”
“It seems that way, yes.” My mom has been, sometimes aggravatingly, realistic about my dad’s diagnosis with ALS. She knows there is no miracle cure, and she works really hard to keep the hopes of her four children in check. I know that it’s for the bestnot to get too excited, but I fucking hate it.
