"Just go home now, Mallory," Mom chides. "Yoga isn't going to help you. It's all hogwash, new-aged crap. Your brother is a doctor. You can stay with him and he and Heather can heal you while you help her plan her wedding. That will be exciting."
“Nope. I’ll stay where I am for now. I’ll let you know when that changes,” I reply firmly.
“Since when did you become the stubborn child?” Dad grumbles. “I saw that Garrison kid you hang out with, by the way.”
I furrow my brow like I have no idea who he’s talking about for a millisecond and then act confused. “You saw Tate?”
“Yeah. I went on the west coast trip with the team,” he says, adding, “We beat his team.”
“Good for you Dad,” I say with no cheer whatsoever.
“Kid played like shit. I don’t know how he ever got close to his dad’s record,” Dad laments.
“Because his dad’s record isn’t that great.” There goes Mom, always willing and able to jump on the Garrison-Haters bandwagon.
“Well, if you play him in the playoffs, tell him hi,” I say and an alert pings on my phone telling me there’s motion in Dylan’s crib. If he’s waking up and I don’t get up there, he’ll wail and they’ll hear him. “I have to go. I have a Vinyasa class to get to.”
“What’s that?”
“Yoga, Dad.” I sigh. “I’ll reach out again, but don’t worry about me. I’m okay.”
"We love you, Mallory!" Mom insists, and I know they do. In their own way.
“Love you both. Talk soon.”
I hit end at the same moment Dylan lets out a cry. Tucking my phone into my pocket I head upstairs. I can't believe how many lies I'm telling lately. I can't blame Tate for all of them, but we better sort out Dylan's custody fast so I can just get the hell out of here. Because the biggest lie of all is the one I have to keep telling myself while I'm living under Tate Garrison's roof. And that's the lie that I don't want to pick up where we left off in that bathroom last night.
Chapter9
Tate
No one sits next to me on the flight to Seattle, and I don’t blame them. By the time I left for the arena, for the eleven a.m. skate, Mallory hadn’t come back from her walk. And when I got home after the skate to grab my luggage, she and Dylan were in her bedroom with the door shut so I never even got to smooth things over with her or say goodbye to him. Now I was angry at her too.
I wanted to say goodbye to Dylan. He would probably screech at me but I still wanted to see him before I left for four days. He was mine. My brain was finally starting to wrap itself around that fact, and every day I saw him I started to feel more and more for him. It was nuts. The fear and confusion I felt when I looked at him has faded and now it’s being replaced with a warm, tight feeling in my chest. Love? Awe? Pride? Probably all of that.
The plane taxis to the gate and most of the guys are already out of their seats grabbing their carry-on stuff. I unclip my seat belt and take my phone out of the seat pocket in front of me. I turn it on and feel a pinch of disappointment that there isn’t a text from Mallory. Dylan would be having dinner now. I would love an update. A picture. She said she’d send them while I was on road trips.
“She’s being unfair,” I growl to myself but a head pops up over the seat in front of me. It’s Nash.
“Who is being what?”
"This woman… I'm…" Oh shit. What do I say? "I'm involved with is being unfair. About something. We're fighting. It's a long story."
Nash smiles. “Gee, Garrison you seem like you’re great at communication. I have no idea why this woman would have a problem with you.”
“Ha. Ha.” I roll my eyes as his brother pops up next to Nash, and rests his thick, inked forearms on the back of his seat.
“Do not tell me you’re in arelationship,” Crew says, the disgust in his expression is matched only by the disgust in his tone. “You promised me you’d be here for my single era. All of it.”
“Iamhere for it,” I promise and rise myself, slipping into the aisle and yanking my Tumi leather travel bag from the overhead. “Bachelor for life, amigo. This is just… someone I’m involved with for, like business reasons. And she’s being unreasonable and I’m pissed off. But yeah, single for life bro. Or at least until this career is over.”
"Well, thankfully you had your shit together at morning skate so the career isn't on the chopping block just yet," Crew jokes, and Nash snickers.
“You two are fucking comedians,” I mutter as we all start to file off the plane.
I’m hit with a gust of frigid air, which reminds me that it’s barely spring. It’s hard to keep track of seasons in LA because they don’t have any. March feels like January or November. It’s not any different. Although Tenley jokes that they do have seasons in Los Angeles. They have drought and fire instead of summer and winter.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I yank it out hoping to see Mallory’s name. But it’s not. It’s Tenley. I swear she’s a witch and she knows when her name is thought or uttered anywhere in the world.
