Jessie smiles and it’s as bright and beautiful as it has been since the minute they stopped being idiots and got back together.
“Never been happier,” she assures me and I can’t help but smile. She turns to Wyatt and Donna and gives them both a quick hug. “We’ll meet you guys at the seats. I need some alone time with my little sister.”
She hooks her arm through mine and leads me down the hall, away from her future husband and his parents. She asks me about my job for the first four questions and, God bless her, she actually pays attention to the answers. And I can tell she’s truly happy and excited for me. I can also tell she has other things she wants to talk about.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Devin?” she asks finally.
“I couldn’t,” I reply honestly. “He didn’t want Jordan to know.”
“You could have still told me,” Jessie argues and I give her a hard look.
“You and Jordy don’t keep secrets from each other,” I remind her. “I’m not about to start asking you to.”
“So you’ve just been living there with him the entire time? And he and Ashleigh are what? Separated?”
“Yeah. I guess,” I say softly as we follow the curve of the hallway in no particular direction. “He had already moved out when I got here and he was a mess. He needed a friend.”
“He needed his family too,” Jessie adds, slightly scornfully. “Jordan has been really worried about him. He sees how badly Dev’s playing. And I could have talked to Ashleigh. She probably needed a friend too.”
“She doesn’t deserve a friend,” I snap and Jessie looks at me with surprise.
“Callie, come on. I’m sure this isn’t all her fault,” Jessie tries to rationalize. “I mean when Jordy and I had issues it wasn’t totally his fault. I liked to think it was, but it wasn’t. I made it harder than it had to be too.”
“She’s lonely. She hates the road trips and the hockey wife lifestyle. He can’t change that,” I explain. “She’s being selfish and ridiculous.”
Jessie thinks about it for a minute as someone in a Winterhawks tracksuit walks by and waves at her. He’s too old to be a player, probably a trainer.
“See, if you’d told me, I could have talked to her,” Jessie says finally. “I still can. I know it’s hard. I live it too. But it’s not impossible and…”
“She cheated.”
“WHAT?” She stops walking as her voice bounces off the cavernous cement hallway we’re in.
I shush her loudly and she covers her mouth with her hand. “See! This is why I didn’t want to tell you. This and because if Jordan knows, Devin will go completely off the deep end. He’s pretty close as it is.”
“She cheated?” Jessie repeats the words as if they are some foreign language she doesn’t understand. “Had sex with someone else? Someone other than Devin?”
“That’s the definition, yes.” I nod solemnly. “But worse than that, she has feelings for someone else. She says she’s in love with this guy Andrew and with Devin. And that she kicked Devin out so she could have time alone to think.”
“She can have the rest of her life to think, now that she destroyed her marriage, that cheating bitch,” Jessie seethes and I can’t hide my shock—or awe.
“Jessica Caplan!” I say with a smile. “Since when are you the irate, protective sister?”
“Since it involves someone hurting Devin and that precious little ray of sunshine he created,” Jessie responds and sighs. “Poor Conner and Devin. My God, of all the Garrison brothers to do this to, he’s the one that it might honestly kill.”
“Oh, yeah, because if you cheated on Jordy he would bounce back.” I roll my eyes and give her a playful shove.
“Jordan would be devastated, but he wouldn’t self-destruct,” Jessie admits as we continue walking again. “Devin is so proud and so scared of failure—because he’s never experienced it. No wonder he’s falling apart.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I whisper and Jessie catches my eye. I open my mouth to tell her about the booze and the random hookup but someone calls her name from down the hall.
“Jessie! Where’s your worse half? It’s almost time to hit the ice.”
We both turn and see a guy walking toward us in workout shorts and a black dry weave T-shirt with the Winterhawks logo on the chest. His brown hair is tucked under a Winterhawks hat but there’s no mistaking his pale blue eyes. I grab Jessie’s hand and squeeze it—hard.
She glances at me with stunned green eyes and then turns to him.
“Hey, Seb. Jordan’s with his parents,” she says and uses the hand I’m not clutching to point to me. “This is my sister Callie.”
